The Liar

I don't understand why Mom got together with that man. I was six when he moved into our house. He's much older than her, with a huge belly and a swollen nose from all the drinking. All he does is eat, drink, and snore. He doesn't even bring any money home—he's just a burden. I still don't get what she saw in him.

When I was little and Mom left for work, it felt like I was dying. I didn't want to stay in the house with him. I just wanted to be big enough to run away. I tried to tell Mom, but she didn't believe me.

Every time she left, I felt like the air got stuck in my throat, something clawing up from my stomach and pulling hard at my ribs. A desperate kind of suffocation—like when, in a dream, a dog is chasing you and you run and run, turn a corner, and hit a dead end.

So, with no other way to escape it, I started inventing a character—another version of me. I'd turn into someone else, so it wasn't me staying in the house—it was her. My other self. She's the one who stayed. Not me. I disappeared into her.

Little by little, it started to work. The moment Mom closed the door, I became the other girl. I disappeared—like I'd fainted. The real me only came back when Mom walked back in.

I swear, without even realizing it, my character started to take over, and I began to fade. The thing is, before my real self disappeared for good, I met Lorna—my best friend, my lifeline, my salvation, I swear. With her, I hit the streets. And even though the streets had their own risks, they were still safer than home. Sometimes we'd sleep curled up in the community center in her neighborhood, or at one of her friends' places—because I had no one. Lorna became everything to me.

So I became someone new—part me, part Lorna. Then I became more Lorna than myself.

Truth is, I thought her life was way better than mine. I wanted her life. That much I can tell you—mine, I didn't want.

Besides, it's like my real self is kind of... useless. How do I explain it? I've got this thing where, even when I tell the truth, nobody believes me. Since I was little, I'd try to tell Mom things, and she'd just say I was a liar.

So it's like having a defective version of yourself. Like—what are you supposed to do to make people believe you? Eventually, I just stopped talking. I mean, why say anything if no one's listening?

It's hard. I'm telling you—it's not easy.

I started running away—from home, from school. Lorna and I went everywhere together. We were life-twins. We'd pretend she was me and I was her. We mixed our lives up so much that, in the end, it became just one story.

You have no idea the relief I felt in my new self. Honestly, now that I'm telling you all this, I'm not even sure if these memories are mine or Lorna's.

You want to know why I'm in prison?

The little worm of everything I went through—mixed with everything Lorna went through—got into my bloodstream. Sometimes I didn't feel it, especially when I was with her. But say we were out messing around, just having fun, and some guy said something on the street—suddenly the worm would go wild inside me.

That same worm is what pushed me to stab that guy—over and over. I don't even know how many times. Or maybe it was Lorna?

No, no. You're not getting it. I didn't kill Mom's boyfriend. I didn't. But… I kind of did.

The problem was the mix-up—of lives, of stories, of feelings—and the one who ended up paying was the guy who looked the same, talked the same, touched the same.