lie to me → s.d.

.01 | hardly a secret

This is the story of how Theodora Thatcher died.

It's not a sad story, no, but rather a tale of adventure, overflowing with the vastness of what conundrums the undiscovered world might hold. Entire universes await, hidden in the unseen crevices in the cracks of the earth, sitting patiently, silently, to be found by those who dare to look further than the smooth, gleaming surface. She didn't happen to be one of them; she was born to be. Bound for fame and glory, her name meant to be known for centuries even after she delved into the fortune that awaited her at the end of her journey. She was greatness itself.

She did die, though.

But the story doesn't begin there. Instead, it started a long, endless stretch of years ago, in a dark bedroom nestled in the right wing of Boston, Massachusetts.

Golden beams from the streetlights cast perpendicular beams across the old, aged wood of the floorboards. They gave color to the books and drawings scattered like waste across the floor, but they were far from that. The bed, a small, compact piece of wood barely holding the mattress in its groaning arms, nestled a mass of blankets tossed over the head of a small girl. The screaming glare of a handheld flashlight wiggled its way through the quilts and throws. Beneath her mass of covers, the girl, maybe seven or eight, murmured low to herself as her eyes scanned over the book in her grasp, a thick volume full of things not meant to entertain such a young thing such as her.

Her entire bedroom was a barely-subtle nod to the interests swimming like sharks through her head. Posters of maps depicting far-away places and haunts, overdue library books detailing old rivalries and shootouts that never allowed both parties to walk away; it looked better fitting for a historian, or an archeological student, at best.

The girl's heart skipped a beat inside her ribcage when a noise dragged her back to reality. She clicked off the flashlight and held as still as one of the stuffed animals sitting in the corner, and if one didn't know any better, they would have thought she was a wax figure. She listened hard, straining her ears as best she could. The noise reached her again and she emerged from the den of blankets, no longer concerned over if it was the sound of footsteps treading down the hall. No, it was a tiny, sharp-sounding crack against the window set on the far wall.

Her shoes already slipped on, she tiptoed to the glass and gently pushed it up on its track. The shutters outside groaned with protest and age as she wiggled the pane up just enough to allow her through. Fitting her head through the gap, she was met with the white noise that cranked a tune to Boston's streets at night; a dog yapping in the distance, low motors drifting through narrow roads. Waiting on the sidewalk below her window was a small figure, a young boy, waving a hand gingerly.

"Come on!" he said in a stage whisper. His voice just barely reached her all the way up. "Sam says he's got a surprise!"

"Nathan!" she said when he turned away. "Catch this." She wiggled a small arm through the gap between the window and the sill, grasping the book she had been reading, and dangled it as far as her little body would allow before letting it go. The book fell, pages fluttering as it completed a few somersaults, before he caught it like a football.

After working the zipper on her jacket up to her chin, she squirmed herself through the window. She went through horizontally, so as to leave the glass as low as possible, and when she was nearly hanging from the sill by her fingertips, she maneuvered herself to the side. There, on the face of the brick wall covered in chips from the weather, a drainpipe was bolted by rusty-looking appendages. Like a spider being washed from the spout, she shimmied down to the ground before hopping off and nearly losing her footing.