If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

Seven seconds. That’s all it took to kill you.

I’d never forgotten what I caught her doing in there when we were eleven. She might be fooling everyone else, but she wasn’t fooling me.

My job was to be the one that showed them. Introduced them to a life with consequences. Where you pay for your actions. Where you’re punished when you hurt other people.

For the first time in their spoiled, entitled lives, they were going to live like the rest of us.

You’re just way out of your comfort zone.

Because the truth? If a group of teenage girls had done what we did? I might’ve wanted to hurt us too.

Powerless. Terrified. Frozen.

I’d lived with suicidal hate for so long that the moment I tasted what it felt like to have an ounce of love for myself, I chased that shit like it was heroin. I’d never stopped.

Do you know how freeing it was to live in a world where you didn’t give a fuck what people thought about you? Especially as a woman? There’s no better feeling on the planet. At least I haven’t found one yet.

The secret was out. In the air, where it could breathe.

Fake it until you make it.

Do you know how much work it takes to pretend like you’re fine every day? To be the sunshine when you’re really the darkness?

“We got rid of the body.”