Mona Liza Lies

16 | Newspaper Clippings

"You look happy, I take it that you slept well?"

Mona did not look happy.

She slammed the newspaper on the table, but Lucien didn't flinch. He looked at the headline with a curious frown.

UNKNOWN MAN BREAKS INTO A HOUSE, LEAVES WITH A BOTTLE

"Oh hey, that's me!" He said excitedly, pointing to his picture. In the dark, he wasn't that visible, but the flash of the camera definitely made his face stand out. He was standing against the wall of a house, looking guilty as charged.

"Tell me what happened," she hissed, and anyone would have melted by her angry glare. If he was scared, he was careful not to show it.

With a sigh, he started his story. "When the Shadows walked in, I slipped inside one of the rooms and got out through the window."

"Without me? Wow." 

"Hear me out, I thought of getting help. I saw a bottle through the window of the neighboring house, so there was no harm in borrowing it! Fine, someone saw me and screamed for help, and I may or may not have hit his head—"

"You did what?"

"I thought you already read it in the paper!" He said defensively.

"I was kind of distracted by the title and your picture, I haven't yet read the details!" Mona found herself scrambling around for coffee, then realized that she wasn't in the kitchen. She walked there, and Lucien followed, spewing explanations Mona couldn't even understand.

"I didn't want to hurt him, I didn't want to be caught either!"

"Both of which happened!" 

"Okay, that's on me," Lucien shrugged. "I should have hit him before he took my picture. I'll remember that next time."

"There isn't going to be a next time, the cops are looking for you," she said bitterly. "If Finn or Dennis reports you, you'll be in tons of trouble."

"That'll be okay, they're both asleep in their houses, right? I'll steal their papers before they get a chance to—"

"More breaking in? Did you not see the article?"

Lucien took a mug and poured some of the already brewing coffee into it, and slid it across the table. It almost fell right off the counter, but Mona stopped it quickly. 

"I'll be fine," he said, just for the sake of it.

"I know, you can just change your face or something, right? It's me I'm worried about," she said, taking a sip of the hot drink, instantly feeling calmer. "What if Jerry goes to the cops too?"

"He's the one who has done more crimes than you," Lucien waved it off like he wave off everything of importance. "There's little to no chance the cops would be after you. You have to be careful of the Shadows now, but eh, nothing you can't handle. Wait, what do you mean change my face?"

"You're a ghost," she stated.

"Ghost, yes. A ghost born of stories, not Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead." He scoffed. "How many times do I have to tell you that just because I'm a paranormal being doesn't mean I can do everything extraordinary?"

"Because being paranormal in itself is extraordinary." Mona took another sip of the coffee. "How come you can make things work, but can't vanish at your own will? How come you're immortal, but you don't have super-strength? Does your body work the same as us? And what did you mean - born by stories?"

"If I wanted more questions, I'd have taken up the offer to be a philosopher," he said, disappointed. "Okay, I woke up in Larnswick, fully grown and with awareness of who I am. It took a fair few years to understand that others here already knew and feared me. I found more of my kind and I soon came to realize that stories build monuments."

"You are only here because there's an urban tale of you?" she asked curiously. "Does that mean if we suddenly stop talking about you, you'll die?"

"Imagine not even realizing you're a ghost for years and years," his eyes gleamed. "Death is a kindness our kind never receives."

She wasn't sure how to respond. The kitchen went too silent then, as if every piece of cutlery was listening in on their conversation. 

"As for why I don't have many powers," he continued after clearing his throat. "It's quite simple really. There needs to be a balance on earth, obviously. If everything happened because science and logic prevailed, I would never have been here. If the world was taken over by facts, nothing would have made sense. If the world was filled with ghosts who could see the future and pick up cars, it would have been more of a dream than an actual physical place."

"So what you're saying is, the earth has just enough amount of strange, unexplainable things to even out the scientific things?"  

"Has been that way from the start of time." He nodded. "So I may not be a transformer, but I can make excellent coffee. See? Balance."

"I'll drink to that," Mona said, rolling her eyes. 

After they cleaned up the kitchen and started to go over to Dennis's, Mona asked Lucien whether anyone would recognize him from the papers. He promised her he'd be careful from now on, but even she could see a faint light of concern in his eyes.

-----

"We're not doing any ridiculous plans," Mona said, stepping inside his house.

"Do come in," Dennis said drily.

"She's worried about me," Lucien threw in. "Isn't that the sweetest? It's like we are—"

"—best friends, we know." Dennis sighed, stepping aside. The ghost did not walk in.

"Things got out of hand last day. He broke into a house and knocked out someone," Mona explained, scowling. "It was careless, and even if we did find Shadows' safehouse, what next? We can't do anything on our own! Everything about our plan was stupid."

"Technically, we did find the safehouse—"

"Which won't be the safehouse any longer because they know that Mona knows," Lucien pointed out. "Besides, the Shadows might try and see if they could talk to her again, so it's best if both of us lay low for a while."

"See, stupid!" Mona threw her hands into the air. "We had a messy idea, and somehow we made it messier. Lucien could go to jail and I could be killed."

Dennis looked stumped. "Come on, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Surely it was night and Jerry might have been sleepy?"

"We're all fucked." Mona leaned against the wall, ignoring his question. "We can't do anything about the Shadows now."

"Do you want me to call Fin and say that?" Dennis asked, feeling down. 

"No, we can- we can do something else," she bit her lips hesitantly. "The Shadows may be the one distributing illegal drugs, but maybe we can change the minds of the ones using them?"

"That's not how it works," Lucien said sympathetically.

"No, I know. But we can start a campaign! Drug awareness program or something like that!" With each word, Mona's tone rose higher, maybe with excitement, maybe with exhaustion. Or a mixture of both.

"I hardly doubt anyone would—" Lucien began, but was cut off by Dennis.

"Would that be enough?" He asked seriously. "If we start an awareness program, would you finally give up on trying to get in trouble?"

"Yes," Mona said, nodding. "Obviously, this is not what I want. Nothing would be enough until the Shadows are caught. But maybe we'll leave that to the cops and do things we can do. It's not like we're cut out for this."

"I'm in," Dennis said quickly. Lucien just frowned.

"Are you sure about this?" 

Mona started stammering. "N-no. Yes. Maybe. I don't know and I don't care, we're doing it." 

"Good," her best friend stepped inside. "Then we have a lot of research and planning to do, and luckily, my pen doesn't run out of ink."

◢✥◣