The days leading up to Christmas Eve had been tense in our household. I figured it was just grown-up business and let it drift into the back of my consciousness. My childhood thus far had been largely spent in the realms of imagination, and the grown-up business was largely inconsequential to to my own little private universe.

I kicked a ball around with my best friend, Ali, until the darkness set and the streets became quiet. I wandered inside to find the adults all congregated in the kitchen. The women had smudged eyeliner and puffy eyes. I recognised this scene, almost like a kind of de ja vu. I knew that they had been crying. Something was very wrong.

“Why don’t you go and open your present from me, love.” said my auntie Carol. I immediately obliged, but my grandfather stopped me. “Go and sit next to auntie Carol.” She gave me a comforting but unconvincing smile. I went and sat beside her. I began to feel terrified that someone was dying. There was a lengthy pause before my sister said that there was something she had to tell me and it would be a shock. The following moments remain blurry and scattered in my memory. I remember a lot of crying, before she said “I am your mum.” I felt a gentle push from auntie Carol to go and give her a hug. Then I hugged all the women, and my grandfather patted me on the shoulder and said I was a brave lad. I thought I was reacting the way they wanted me to, I just wanted the crying to stop.

That night I lay in bed looking up at the glowing stars I had stuck on the ceiling. I felt relieved that no one was dying.

“What do you mean you didn’t save me?”

I looked at Andrew, his grey-blue eyes were downcast.

“Andrew! Fucking say something. You can’t just drop a huge bombshell on me like that and then give me the silent treatment.” I huff.

On the inside, I was panicking. The whole reason I agreed to date Andrew was because I thought I owed it to him because he saved me from drowning at camp. And now I’m finding out that he wasn’t the person that saved me?

“I mean just that. I didn’t save you, Sage.” Andrew tells me, his voice rough from holding back tears.

“You have to understand, I didn’t mean to lie to you. Andres jumped into the lake and saved you and when you woke up, you saw me so you assumed that I saved you.” Andrew explains.

“And you never thought to clarify this important piece of information. I mean, God! I thought this entire time. When you asked me out, even though I told you countless times that I didn’t see you that way...then I thought you saved me, I was willing to give this relationship a chance. You made me feel like I owed it to you. And now I find out that it’s been a lie? I can’t do this. We’re done.” When I finish the last sentence, my voice cracks, and I’m crying.

“Sage, please.” Andrew begs.

“Forget it. You’re a fucking fraud, Andrew. How could you live with the guilt of taking credit for something that someone else did. Or do you not feel guilty at all?” I ask Andrew.

He says nothing but looks blankly at the wall next to me in silence. It was enough to answer my question.

“My god...you make me sick.” I spat before turning on my hells and running the hell out of his house.

Once my feet finally hit the asphalt of the street. I start dry-heaving by Andrew’s mailbox.

Where the hell am I supposed to go now?

Then I saw it. The blue house that housed the “trouble” child of the town. He wasn’t really a trouble child, just a misunderstood kid who had fucked up parents. He grew up in the system until his Aunt Maggie took him in when he was 16. Now we are seniors in high school and he keeps mostly to himself other than his friends Jansen and Billy.

I swallow the growing nerves budding in my stomach and force my feet to move forward, getting closer to the blue house.

Before I know it, I’ve rung on the doorbell.

Shit.

I am turning and getting ready to leave when the door suddenly opens.

“May I help you?”

I turn to face the person at the door.

“Andres.” I whisper.

Hunched over, my gaze froze burning holes through bitter words. One hand clenching the armrest whilst the other slowly crumpled up the small document. malicious and seething. Those were its purpose. Like a coiled spring I leaped out of my chair and punched the desk in front of me, dust falls around me as I shout profanities that no language could ever sympathize with. They were clever, clever enough to think they could just let me rot where I stood. So proud of their actions they thought they could just mock me where I couldn’t hit back. If they were to mockingly beckon me, then so hope me god I was going to do anything within my power to regret them ever crossing me. There I stood in an outpost fashioned to look as convincing as possible, I was sent here to recover key information left behind by this dead colony. It was a last ditch effort to gain any whips of hope in an ever ongoing war. It was a dangerous task and I very much knew the risks, we needed this more than anything so I knew that I would take as many risks to do my part. Of course this was never anything of substance, it was but all but a cruel way of knocking off key pawn in an inevitable defeat. It was obvious, deception and ploys were rumored back at high command but nobody could have predicted that it had injected itself so deep. Spies had clearly perpetrated the tightest of tanks and were pulling strings far greater than I could have ever imagined. I needed to get back to warn the high command, before they get into vital meetings and obtain crucial information that could end the war within days. I was left nothing, barely food and water for a couple days and was surrounded by the carcass Of a city. Perseverance for my people and a cold blooded anger for those who deceived me would push me more than anything before. I was left no choice as the very place I would call home would be no different to this dead landscape of concrete and steel.

My best friend’s name is Ian, but I call him Yardley.

I suppose that once upon a time the nickname meant something, but it has long since been lost to those fiendishly impenetrable trails of memory where the thistles have grown so dense there is no way through.

It is a nickname that defies explanation. Yardley is a brand of cosmetics favoured by the kind of middle-aged, middle-minded lady who lives in every house on our street.

Yardley is an eleven year old boy.

He is tall for his age, has a beaky nose, and a thick black Afro that sits on his head like a lacrosse helmet.

If you’ve ever seen footage of the Jimi Hendrix Experience playing at the BBC, then he looks like Jimi’s bass player, Noel Reading, but shrunk down into school boy size like he’s been zapped by a shrinking ray gun.

Yardley rides a green racing bicycle with five gears. The tyres are as slender as your little finger, and we have never made it more than a quarter of a mile without the chain falling off.

Once, Yardley got his picture in the paper for growing an unusually tall sunflower. His family had been looking after Madge, a neighbour’s budgerigar, and on a whim had planted some of the sunflower seeds that should have been Madge’s dinner. The sunflowers grew to somewhat over six foot tall, and the black and white photograph showed Yardley perched half way up a step ladder, tilting a watering can and grinning. This is what passed for news in our town. Yardley later confessed to me that the watering can contained no water.

Had I known what was coming, perhaps I would have seen this dark foreshadowing for what it was, but I was eleven years old and focussed on setting up a Subbuteo league, so I failed to spot it.

There was a little gang of us. Me, Yardley, Colin, Robbie (who is dead now), Natalie (who I loved), and Hayley (who I married).

Every Friday night, we walked up the hill to the sports hall to play a game of badminton.

Yardley was responsible for collecting the money and paying the woman who ran the place. She had short hair and glasses, and we all suspected she was a lesbian. This was both unusual and amusing to us. Don’t judge us, it was the early nineties and we didn’t know any better.

One week, Yardley was poorly. I think it was mumps, but maybe it was just a cold, I forget. So, it fell upon me to collect the cash and hand it over.

This is when I discovered that Yardley had been overcharging us and pocketing the change for himself.

I confronted him when I saw him. He had the good grace to blush as he admitted he’d used the surplus to buy a Highland Toffee.

I didn’t tell the others.

How could I with all the shit he had on me?

I never thought I would get married, before him at least. I met Sam Bloom at the Boston public library one year ago today He had a bunch of sci-fi paperbacks stuffed under one arm, coffee in his free hand. We got to talking about books and... Sam left the library with my name and number written in pink gel pen on the side of that paper coffee cup. I had made the “O” in Robin into a smiley-face [Cute right?] Sam drew a happy little alien on the palm of my hand with a sharpie, along with his information

I’m pretty sure we saw each other all the time after that, and it wasn’t long before he said he loved me. Six months later, he asked me to marry him. Young. Stupid. I accepted. Fast forward to today, I am coming back from the flower shop on the corner. When I got to the apartment that we shared with Sam’s best friend Matthew. I didn’t hear the Xbox playing in the living room. I thought they would be playing it all day considering Matthew had just ordered the new Madden game. Silence. I walked into the living room Xbox controllers on the floor, widescreen television glowing blue.

Just as I was about to put the controllers away and turn off the TV I heard a noise coming from the bedroom... I went into the master bedroom to investigate and found the source of the sound. It was this stifled giggle and it had been coming from my fiancé's best friend. The man I loved was lying beside him. They didn’t see me at first, the way Sam was looking at Matthew I knew this wasn’t some sort of misunderstanding or hallucination. This was real. This was happening. Without meaning to, I dropped the pile of flower arrangement magazines I had been holding onto the floor. They finally noticed me then. Realization trickling over them slowly, like molasses. I couldn’t move I wrapped my arms around myself and waited. For what? I don’t know. Surprisingly I was the first one to find my voice. “How long?”It was a reasonable question to ask my opinion.

The response came in the form of a whisper “I’m so sorry, Robin. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” I almost laughed, “This is not not like leaving something in the oven for too long Sam.” You can’t say you didn’t mean for something like that to happen, this is a lot different. My voice was more steady than I had expected it to be. Finally Matthew put in his two cents. “ I hope You’ll forgive me if I’m not nearly as sorry as he is about this, It’s probably better that it happened this way. I couldn’t help but notice neither of them are trying to make excuses, it was what it was. I slipped The ring off my finger. “I love you, Sam, love yourself please? for me?

The moment the words left Cassandra’s mouth and rang clearly into Logan’s ears, he could feel his stomach twist and distort in anguish. Clearly Cassandra felt Logan was buying this rubbish, on and on she went, digging a deeper and deeper hole from which there was already no return. No climbing, dragging with fingernails, no miraculous retreat out of this hole. This grave.

“So, what are we going to do about it, Logan?” Cassandra asks. “We need to do something!” “You’re right” replied Logan, hatred clear to see in his eyes. “I know just what I need to do.”

With that Logan drew his sword...

Bobby was on a morning walk in the park, when suddenly, he got a text message. It was from his sister, Barbara. The message said that mom had bought cookies. And not just any cookies, but chocolate chip. His favourite. He ran all the way from the park to his house, only to find there were no cookies. He was extremely sad, and he ignored Barbara the rest of the day. Don’t lie. Especially about cookies.

Her name is Nam,and we are working in the kitchen of a restaurant for a long time.everyone in the kitchen knows she has a lot of pets,because she always says”oh can I take the left food home for my little puppy?”when everyday we are going to close off the kitchen. One Saturday afternoon, I was day off , I just go out for a little walk around the town,when I pass by a street, I realized it is where Nam’s home was. I thought why not visit her and her little puppies.

The safety pin that had been holding her life together had just been swiftly removed, the contents spilling out. She had had so much faith, so much trust, relied so heavily on his honesty that she felt like vomiting from the discovery of such enormous transgressions. So her life had been ruined by that one lie, but her mind was also traumatised, she felt lost and confused. A lie devastates on so many levels, she no longer had faith in humanity.