Black Secrets & White Lies [On Hold]

Chapter 4 - Homes and Houses

"Hey, my name's Kristy," said the girl sitting next to me. She was blond with bright green eyes and had a nice kind of smile.

"Hi, I'm Rose." I said.

"Liam tells me you're friends," she continued. Did he now? I thought. It looked like I wasn't going to get away with not making friends. Perhaps I could. After all, it would look suspicious if I didn't talk to people, that's what I'd tell Dad. But he doesn't care anyway. He doesn't care as long as people don't find out. It's me who cares. I'm the one who ends up hurt. People always hurt me by either stabbing me in the back, or taking the true friends I have away. "So, I thought you might like to come sit with us at lunch. You still there?" She said, waving a hand in front of my face.

"Oh, sorry." I smiled sheepishly, "spaced out for a little."

Kristy laughed, "it's ok. Happens to the best of us." She ran a hand through her hair "so, tell me about yourself. Do you have a boyfriend?" Her eyes sparked with interest.

I laughed softly "no, no I don't."

"Did you like someone back at home?"

"I...I don't know. Sort of yes and sort of no. It's complicated." I sighed, not particularly wanting to think back to past events. Things I'd rather not remember.

"Ah, always the interesting sort of thing." She winked at me, "but hey, that's old news now. There are plenty of people here to fall in love with. I'll ask you this question again at the end of the week." Love, I thought scornfully, what is the use of love? It always comes back and bites me. I glanced down at Kristy's multicoloured fingernails and she followed my gaze "oh, I couldn't decide what colour this morning, so I put a bit of everything on. You'll get used to me as being indecisive but then picky at times. And I can be weird. Really strange. Feel free to pretend not to know me when I'm having one of my moments."

A little later, I found I didn't mind having Kristy as company. She was cheerful, bubbly, quite unlike me. It took some of the pain away. Made me forget a while. Maybe school wouldn't be so bad if I could keep my friendships within the building. After all, nobody knew what school I was at. My friends couldn't get hurt. And it wasn't as if I'd get close enough to let my school friends hurt me. Let them stab me in the back, their opinion doesn't matter anyway. Simple.

"We should hang out sometime," Kristy said, unwrapping a chocolate bar at lunch "but not tonight. My parents are taking me shopping to buy a birthday present for my auntie. You doing anything nice tonight?"

"No," I said, so sucked into the conversation I didn't even realise what came out of my mouth until it was too late "my dad's out so I'm on my own, guess I'll just do some homework and...yeah."

"What's your dad do? It must suck to be left alone like that."

Me and my big mouth. "He has his own business, so he gets called out to meetings a lot. Sometimes he needs to travel to get to them so I get left alone. It's fine, I'm used to it." Kristy tactfully didn't ask anything about my mum, guessing I probably wasn't willing to talk about it since I didn't offer the information myself.

"I know what you're doing tonight." Said a voice and I flinched as hands rested on my shoulders. Craning my neck, I saw Liam grinning down at me. "You're coming over to mine to start the Geography project."

"Is that so?" I said.

"Yeah, you have nothing else to be doing anyway. You said so yourself." Brilliant. I thought, no way of getting out of this one.

*****

"Liam," I pleaded, walking after him "why don't we do this separately? I mean, we only need to show each other what we've done at school-"