Only the Pretty Lies

by Rebekah Crane

Aren’t we all cover songs, in a way? I was sculpted from Rayne, who was sculpted from her mom. Breaking from that tradition sounds lonely.

The mind is the worst kind of a tease, playing with memories at will.

“Is it really my home or family if I’m not accepted as I am?” he asks. “Home should be a place where you feel safe. Where you’re accepted just as you are. I’m living in the illusion of home right now, but the truth is, Sam is my home.” Tucker may have just described love perfectly, or at least what I think love is meant to be. “That’s beautiful,” I say.

“So what does help?” I whisper. “If anger doesn’t work?” He whispers back, “Merciless honesty.”

train of people have come and gone from Rayne’s studio lately. So many broken people in search of hope and a quick fix. Making appointment after appointment. And maybe that’s how it goes—you fix the little things until one day you wake up and everything has changed. You look in the mirror and you don’t recognize your old broken self anymore. Or . . . you keep fixing the little things, and suddenly you wake up one day and the little things still break down, and you’re still in pain, and nothing has changed.

The day is the same as always, the forward march of education, fact stacking on fact as seniors try to appear engaged while texting under desks and counting down the minutes until the next bell, and the next party, and the eventual exit from high school so we can move on with our lives.

know . . . I can’t stay there.” I point to the front of the store. “I’m just listening to the same damn albums, you know. Playing the same damn songs by the same damn artists with the same damn lyrics. And they’re the same songs my mom listened to, and my grandma. I’ve always considered it a legacy, a good thing, but maybe it’s not. Because it just goes on and on, everyone in my family listening to the same music, generation after generation hearing the same message. It’s like I’ve memorized my life by listening to the same damn thing over and over. I’m just on repeat.”

“Books are like hearts,” he says. “They should be shared with the people we trust.”

Just being around books, smelling them, touching them, makes me feel closer to Jamison. Love has limbs after all.

It’s the pretty lies, only the pretty lies, that destroy us the most.

The answer to my question is this book. But important answers must lead to more questions. On the subject of racism, no single answer absolves us from constant and vigilant work. There is no typing THE END and walking away. There is no putting down the pen. There is no homework pass, or gold star, or A-plus grade that tells the world, “This person has mastered antiracism.” There is only work. This book is not a pardon from the role that I have played in perpetuating racism. It is, instead, a doorway. And now that I’ve stepped through, I cannot, will not, must not go back. This story is just one step forward in a lifetime of repeatedly asking myself, Who am I and what is my role in perpetuating or dismantling racism? I must be mercilessly honest with myself. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. We all must be. To all my teen readers—you have the power to change the world. I know this because I was changed by one of you.