Member-only story
The Big Lie
My heart sunk into the hollow pit of my stomach. The couch’s old, worn fabric scratched my hands like sandpaper as I dug my fingernails into the thick, woven threads and let the news sink in. The truth in it was undeniable.
For the first time in my life I turned to the person I loved the most, the guardian assigned to me at my birth, and looked upon them with distrust.
“You lied to me,” I said. “You lied.”
Tears pilled on the ends of my eyelashes before dropping onto my lap and sinking into the deep blue fabric of my jeans. Somewhere inside my chest a dam burst and drained the reservoir of faith I had entered into this life with. The light that had reflected off those pristine waters flickered out and I vowed to never ever trust a human again.
“Is Santa a lie too?” I asked.
I inhaled shakily and forced the tears to stop, replacing their shimmering, shallow riverbeds with a hardened expression.
“Well…” Mom looked sideways at dad for help but the man only ever knew how to shrug and grunt like a lifeless gorilla. I didn’t even need to look at him to see his shoulders scrunch and his face adopt that agonizingly familiar look of bewilderment.
Mom sighed.
“Yeah, Santa’s not real either. Neither is the tooth fairy.”
