Page 24 of That Girl is Trouble

After that first one, the lies came easily.

I’m living on campus for the summer.

Lie.

I can’t come home this weekend. I’m doing an archiving project for the library.

Lie.

I love it here.

Lie.

I hadn’t intended on staying. Figured the lies would stop when I returned to school. At the end of the summer, I’d pack up my shit and go back and pretend none of this had happened. But September came, and I never left.

“What do you girls got going on tonight?” Triss asks me.

“Oh, you know… just heading out to some bar.” Like every time I lie to her lately, I have to avert my gaze and tamp down the guilt.

Across from me, Jade is sitting at my vanity doing her makeup. Saturdays at the Garden are busy. It doesn’t matter that it’s my birthday. If it’s a Saturday, I work.

Jade hops onto my bed and flops down beside me. “Hey, Triss!”

“Keep my sister out of trouble tonight, Jade,” Triss warns.

Jade puts on her most innocent smile. “Of course.”

Lie.

“Did you get it?” Triss asks her.

Jade rolls to the edge of my bed and pulls out a small box from her bag.

The feeling in my stomach—the guilt, the unease—twists again, tighter this time, when I see the box. And again, so hard I have to fight the sudden urge to puke, when Jade pops it open, revealing that little cupcake, slightly crushed, with a small candle already in the centre.

Jade lights it.

“Make a wish,” Triss says.

But when I close my eyes, my mind is blank.

When I was a kid, I’d wish that my mom would get better. Sometimes I’d even wish my dad would come back, because Triss always swore mom was different before he died. That she’d laugh and paint rainbows on the walls. And sometimes in the summer, if it was really warm, they’d sleep outside under the stars. When Triss left, I wished she’d come back. I wished it every single night, not just on my birthday.

My mom never got better. My dad wasn’t resurrected from the dead. And Triss… well, she did come back, but only because one day, I came home from school and found my mom dead on the kitchen floor.

I didn’t make another wish after that. With one exception. That time with Axe two years ago, and I’m not sure why I did that.

But I go through the motions for Triss because it makes her feel better. This tradition we have makes her feel like she didn’t mess me up too bad. I fake it for her sake. And maybe for mine too. This way I get to see the smile on her face. Because I need to know she’s okay. That when she took me in after Mom died, I didn’t mess her up too bad either.

I blow out the candle.

Triss smiles.

I smile.

Lie.

“I gotta run, babes,” she says. “Happy birthday. And be safe.”

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