Embellished With Lies

Chapter Six

The glow wasn't obvious. At first, anyways. Originally the glow was almost nonexistent; I thought it was a figment of my imagination. But the longer and more intensely I looked at it, it became brighter and more of a gold in color.

It scared the heck out of me.

And, much to my dismay, I wasn't the only one who noticed it.

"Matt..." Tessa looked at me with wide eyes. "What is that?"

I cocked an eyebrow. "How should I know?"

There was only one way to find out.

I had to open the drawer.

When I did, I was surprised. Surprised, and confused.

The origin of the rays of light was Tessa's Cinderella hand mirror.

"Oh, it's nothing." I shrugged it off. "Your mirror's lights never really did shut off, did they?"

Tessa opened her mouth to protest. "What? My mirror doesn't have -"

"Yes it does," I insisted. "You know it does."

I left the bathroom feeling more nauseous than I'd felt when I'd entered.

"Matt," Mom started, placing her hands on her hips, "are you sure you're okay?"

I nodded. "I'm fine."

"I don't know whether I believe you," she told me. "You look like you've just seen a ghost." She paused. "Oh, and Caitlyn called. She hopes you're okay too."

I didn't reply to that.

I had nothing to say at all.

---

"We are going to crush tonight!" Kirk exclaimed loudly in the locker room.

The team laughed.

"Yeah," Owen agreed. "Luckily Kelton recovered from his," he put his fingers in air quotes, "cold."

"Excuse me, but I actually was sick," I protested and pulled on my number 20 jersey.

"Whatever." Owen rolled his eyes. "Keep on lyin' to yourself."

"I'm not kidding!" I slid on my cap. "I was seriously sick! Call my mom."

"Aw..." Isaac cackled. "Poor Matt needs to call his mommy."

I rolled my eyes. "I am so done with this conversation."

The guys kept going for a couple minutes, and then they dropped the subject altogether.

Once we were all completely dressed in uniform, we ran down the tunnel.

But Coach stopped us.

"Sorry boys," he told us. "We don't get to practice beforehand. The game is now."

We looked around at each other. "What?"

"Apparently the Rodgersville team has to get back for," he paused, "for one thing or another. I don't really remember."

This was completely weird for us. We knew that there were loads of teams across the United States that didn't have a chance to warm-up before a game, but we always did.

It wasn't fair.

Before we even had the chance to protest, Coach cut us off. "I don't want to hear you complain. I really don't. I picked you boys for the team for a reason. Besides the fact that you all have incredible skill, you have optimistic attitudes even in rough situations. You support each other and will each other on. You have an all around good character. If you start whining now, I don't even know who you are."