LIAR, LIAR ; tom blyth

one

Analise Hwang definitely did not have a boyfriend. She has been single since she could remember and never ventured out to find love after her heart was broken by a man she thought she would marry someday.

   But that is not the lie she told the girls she shares her house with. To them, she has been hopelessly in love with an upcoming actor and they have been seeing each other for the better part of a year. To them, her new mystery man is a secret because Analise doesn't want his doting fans to hate her.

   And that was the reason she was running out of her accommodation to have a secret rendezvous with her pretend boyfriend. The truth? There isn't a boyfriend to begin with. She would rather lie and keep up pretence than come out with the truth and be shunned by her friends.

   Analise hated feeling left out more than anything. Maybe it was because she was always the last to picked in P.E. or because she never had a group of girls to sit with her at lunch that she vowed to herself, when she left New York to pursue her fashion career in England, that she would fit in, no matter the cost. And so, her string of lies started to form.

At first, she couldn't understand it herself why she lied. It was about the smallest of things like she had an older brother who is a sous chef at some big, fancy restaurant in Paris, when, in fact, even though she has an older brother, he was not a chef, nor did he live in Paris.

That was the beginning of what would soon become a never ending list of lies she had to keep pretence with. She created a note in her phone's note app, titled gifts to buy, so she didn't give herself out from the title and placed a lock on it.

There was almost a hundred things she had lied about.

gifts to buy
1. I have an older brother who is a sous chef in a big, fancy restaurant in Paris
2. I was born in Seoul, South Korea
3. My first kiss was when I was eleven. I had a crush on this guy (Ravi) in my class and he kissed me in front of the whole class during registration. We 'dated' for a long time; we didn't really know what dating was (2 years)
4. I had a crush on the new guy that moved to my class (Rio) and we dated up until we were 16. Then he broke my heart when he went back to Spain without even saying goodbye
5. I had a group of the world's greatest friends; 4 others girls - Remi, Tian, Sarah and Amy

Those were some of the lies she told them. Some of them were true but she bent the truth a little bit to suit her convenience. She really did have a crush on the guys she mentioned; she was just never close to them. The girls she talked about do exists but they hated her.

Maybe it was because, in another life, there is a possibility that her lies are truths so she played the long game.

The game is never ending now. It's been going on since she moved London, eight years ago and it still hasn't stopped.