Liar Liar

"Not much, really," I eventually replied to my mum's questioning. "Like I said, finally found some friends, just been uh… hanging out with them."

When she looked at me it was with a decidedly critical eye.

I hated feeling this tense around her and tried to allow myself to relax. This was just a normal conversation between family members, right?

Nope, I couldn't do it.

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, I was waiting for her to tell me that she already knew everything and that… that would lead to eventualities too awful to think about for too long.

And if she didn't already know? Well, that was awful in its own way. Because then I was about to commit a breach of trust the likes of which I had never done with my mother before.

If she found out about that, well, I couldn't help but think that things would never be the same between us again.

"So, these new friends of yours, what are their names?" She said after another mouthful of chicken.

"They're uh… Greave, Lauren, Allen and Becca," I said, giving her their real names after all. "They're cool, I get along with them. Well, most of them."

"And where did you meet them? I don't recognise any of those names from your school."

With only one school in the community, this had been a pretty big worry of mine. All of the kids went to the exact same school for a couple of days at a time. Well, almost all of them. Some kids, the lucky ones, in my opinion, were homeschooled by their parents. Usually the ones from the upper echelons of the communities society.

"Oh uh… no, they're all homeschooled," I said. "Met them when I was going through the Main Quarter one day on the way home, they were just kind of watching the boats go by on the Thames."

"They sit and watch the boats go by? What are they like?" She said, her suspicion seemed to be bleeding away to genuine interest.

"Uh, Lauren's all right I guess," I said, hoping that I wasn't coming up in a blush. "She's the one I've talked to the most, anyway."

"Oh It all makes sense now," My mum said, a sudden and satisfied smirk across her lips, "You've found yourself a girl!"

I all but choked on a forkful of chips.

"Mum! It's not like that!" I said, a blush was definitely creeping its way onto my face now.

There was no way that Lauren was interested in me, anyway. For a start, I was pretty sure that I was a couple of years younger than her. For a second, I was… well, I was me. No girl ever wanted anything to do with me, and I couldn't see that changing any time soon.

I opted to just change the subject instead of trying to explain that complex mess of emotions to my mum.

"Greave's pretty cool as well. He's smart but in a savvy kind of way. He's the sort of guy you'd want around you in a fight if one broke out around you. It's been nice to hang out with another guy my age, I've gotta admit."

"Well, if he's smart I'm sure he's great."

Ah yes, the supervillain with powers that allowed him to erect powerful forcefields. He was definitely… great.

I'd managed to talk myself into a corner, if she pressed the point she'd uncover everything and the whole ruse would fall apart.

"Yeah, he's got a really good grasp on building things," I ended up saying, it wasn't technically false, even if the things he built were spectral apparitions. "Architecture and that sort of thing."

My mum smiled, somehow she'd managed to buy it, "Sounds impressive, "I was worried that you'd managed to fall in with one of the gangs or something, but it doesn't sound like you have."

I gave her a smile, I didn't trust myself to respond to that question.

"So, what about the others then?" She asked.

"Well, Allen is the youngest. He's a bit of a jokester, doesn't really seem to take anything seriously unless it's some sort of practical joke," I said. "I think, if I get to know him a bit better, we could end up being really good friends."

"And the last one? Becca, right?"

"Yeah… Becca. We don't really get on all that well," I said, "She kind of wants things her way and her way only, and if the opposite happens she can be a bit, I dunno, mean I guess?"

"I know the sort of person you mean," My mum said with a nod.

"Yeah, I get enough of that at school, don't really need it when I'm trying to relax with my friends as well," I sighed.

I hadn't intended to mention school, it had just sort of happened.

When the thing with the river had happened my mum had wanted to pull me out of school entirely, home school me herself. But she didn't have the resources or the knowledge necessary so I had managed to talk her out of it.

These days, whenever I mentioned school or the people in it, she kind of stiffened up and a stormy frown washed over her eyebrows. Just like the one she was giving me now. I'd have to explain.

"Well uh… yeah, school," I said lamely, "Still hasn't been great. Everyone sort of ganged up on me again took turns to put me down and insult me. It's the reason I met my new friends, actually. I sort of ditched, ran away toward the library at lunch."

I felt embarrassed saying it all.

It was humiliating when it happened, and recapping it somehow felt even worse. Especially after I'd just been talking about how much I'd been enjoying hanging out with my new friends. Talk about emotional whiplash, right?

But the truth of the matter is, my mum deserved to know, and if we didn't talk about it now then we might never.