We Were Liars | ONC 2020 ✔

Talking Is Annoying

TWO DAYS AFTER

"It wasn't because she was kissing a girl. It was because she cheated on her boyfriend."

Ezra Sawyer pulled out the chair next to me and sat down without asking. I shot him a dirty look, which he seemed blissfully oblivious to. The library was my sanctuary, a place for me to study and think without grinning idiots disturbing me.

"I don't recall asking you," I grumbled.

"You didn't need to. I saw the way Brittany looked at you. She blamed you for it. I thought I'd tell you the reason for her getting beat up in case you felt guilty," he said. "Did you really do it?"

I snorted. "I have more respect for a dead girl than that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just had a best friend die on me, braved the intensive scrutiny of the useless police department, and my head still hurts. I'd appreciate it if you went away."

"Don't worry, you won't even know I'm here." So he wasn't leaving; I wasn't too happy about that. If he kept his mouth shut, though, I would allow him to stay. For some reason, the cretin seemed intent on getting to know me. I had no intention of making friends with him or his stupid t-shirts---he wore a different one today, still black, but with another band logo. If he talked less, slumped more, and wore eyeliner, he'd be a poster emo kid.

I hoped I would get at least twenty minutes of peace and quiet to finish the work I'd missed while answering Officer Rhodes' and Officer Hickory's moronic questions. I had no such luck, though. Ezra started flapping his lips before I could even finish a page. "You didn't wear a bowtie today," he noted.

"I noticed," was all I said, not even raising my head to look at him. To tell the truth, I felt naked without my bowtie. Bowties had become a part of me, and forgetting to wear one was akin to losing a limb. My neck was cold.

"Brittany's fine, you know. Honestly, Avery's death hurt her more than any words ever could. She cried the whole of last week and still hasn't stopped," he continued. "It looks a lot worse from a distance than it is up close. The only real damage done was that Josh broke her nose, I think. He'll be suspended, probably, but Brittany will get it way worse. Josh is well liked. Cheating girlfriends aren't. Besides, she's a Liar. You know us, always trying to find ways to bring the ones at the top down." The way he said us made it sound like he was referring to society in general.

"Can you shut up?" I snapped. "If you're not going to stop talking, then go away."

Ezra's face softened, all the animation leaking out of it as his expression gave way to sorrow. "Sorry. I forgot," he apologised. He chewed on his bottom lip nervously, lacing his fingers together. "It's not every day that---"

"Zip it."

He did. I was grateful for that. Although the curious part of my brain wondered why he had come to the library just to talk to me, the educated part of my mind---which was ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it---told me to focus on my homework. My best friend may have died, but that wss no excuse to let my grades slip below a ninety-eight. In fact, that was already too low.

To my horror, when I stared down at my sums again to double-check them, I realised that I had written not one, not two, but three mistakes in my quick calculations, which was three mistakes too many for a genius like me to make. I'd never made three mistakes in one exercise ever.

I put my head down with a groan as Ezra stared at me in concern. Who am I kidding? I missed Ette, and I felt ridiculously guilty over his death. No matter how many times I told myself that it wasn't my fault, that he'd chosen to follow me and get himself killed, the nagging, uncultured zero-point-one percent of my brain insisted that he'd died because he'd tried to save me and I couldn't even do the same for him.

I wanted to cry, but I'd done so much crying in the past week that it felt immature to do so---and I was certainly not immature.

"For what it's worth, I think you look better without a bowtie."

Exasperated fingers splayed over my eyes, I snuck a small peek at Ezra's hands. His fingers were long and knobbly---much like Ette's---but there was no ebony serpent slithering its way over his knuckles in splashes of intricate jet ink. He hadn't been the one to pull me from the lake. I owed him nothing.

"I told you to zip it." I liked my bowties. I would defend my bowties to the end of the earth. If a wannabe emo kid decided to insult my precious bowties, I would readily duel with them. I was already sharpening my words in my head, ready to verbally fight him if he dared insist that I looked better without a bowtie.

"Sorry."

The appreciated silence lasted for a full minute before he started again, voice shaky and hushed. "You know, I wanted to be a Liar too." Again with the lip biting. "Avery was really scary at the initiation."

She was always scary. Even her corpse was scary.

That was a brutal reminder that one of the two Liars who wanted me dead was dead themselves. It was a reminder I didn't need, but a reminder nonetheless.

☆☆☆

My father had come back early.

He hadn't visited me at the hospital, but he'd come back early yesterday---as if an attempt to reconcile would make up for how he had treated my mother and I over the years. I'd shut and locked the door. He skipped out on visiting his mistress again today, opting to come home. I half-expected him to be a drunken, blabbering mess, as he usually was.

To my surprise, when he knocked on the frame of my bedroom doorway, he was stone-cold sober. "I'm sorry," was the first thing he said.

I slowly took my attention away from the essay I was writing to stare at him. "I'm sorry," he repeated, but his voice was flat. I hated how much I looked like him, with his wispy blonde hair and intense eyes, although mine were always hidden behind thick lenses. This was not a man who had raised me to be the genius I was. This was the man who had disappointed me from the very beginning.

My scornful laugh sounded broken to my own ears. "I can't believe I actually waited for you to come and visit me at the hospital. I should have known better than to think nearly dying would have given me a proper father." Normally, I wasn't so vocal about my displeasure of his ways, but I felt like I deserved that bitterness at the moment. My best friend had just died, my head still ached, and I was believed to be the possible perpetrator of the greatest murder and scandal that had ever struck Rockwell.

There would soon, no doubt, be a manhunt for my head organised by the remaining, unshamed Liars.

"I'm sorry." It was almost like he believed repeating the same empty words over and over again would make things right. "I should have come."

"But you didn't," I sneered. "Why did she even let you in?"

"I wanted to see my son. She can't take that away from me."

I was disgusted by this man. I saw the insincerity in his eyes, in his tone, in his lying, lying, words. "You need money, don't you? You need money and you're just using me as an excuse." He wouldn't look me in the eye, and I realised it: he wasn't my father. He was just another treacherous human being. No matter how blase I acted about it, no matter how much I tried to pretend that he hadn't done anything, no matter how much I tried to tell myself that he would eventually come to his senses, I just...couldn't.

"Get out of my room!"

He did.

"Get out of my house!"

I heard the door slam as my mother shooed him out, obviously hearing my accusation.

"Get out of my life." My last words were a whisper. I wouldn't cry for this man. Ette deserved what few tears I had to offer. When my mother came in, staring at me with nothing but sympathy in her eyes, I couldn't stop myself from asking, "When are you going to divorce him?"

"Whenever you want me to," she replied.

"Do it as soon as you can." I turned back to my essay. My pen was leaking. Its cap had come off, spilling black ink all over the half-written page.