A Little Lie

Chapter One

Quiet voices ripple across the tiny bookstore. The large crowd of people is overwhelming; not an empty chair in sight. Lenore Rosetti sits all by herself with her coat and hands on her lap. The event hasn't started yet and she's already bored. She glances over at her watch – once, twice – what's taking so long? The minutes drag on and on; the people around her no longer want to use their inside voices and the conversations become longer and louder than before. She looks around; everyone except from her seems to have put some effort for the occasion and for a brief moment Lenore regrets taking off her coat.

"No, no – the rocks are a metaphor. The parchment is merely a mention of the...-" She doesn't bother to continue eavesdropping on the conversation two English Lit students are having behind her. The girls on her left are having a similar discussion, although theirs revolves around a ridiculous hyperbole that shouldn't have been there in the first place. The couple in the front row is arguing: boyfriend thinks the whole event is a waste of time and money; his girlfriend scoffs and Lenore stifles a chuckle.

Suddenly the room grows exceptionally quiet. All conversations come to an abrupt stop. The girlfriend aggressively tells her boyfriend to shut up and to Lenore's great surprise he does exactly what he's told. Everyone's eyes are now focused on the small podium at the front of the room and the man slowly climbing the steps towards it. Lenore watches him intently. He's looking straight through her, but surprisingly she doesn't mind.

"Good evening." His soft voice echoes from the small speakers; he's tall, straight shouldered and seemingly approachable. His hair is the same color as sand and he keeps pushing back the small strands that disobediently fall over his eyes. "Thank you all for coming." He smiles and this time, his eyes meet Lenore's, but he instantly looks away. She on the other hand doesn't. "Tonight, we will be revisiting the works of B.K. Barnett..." His grip around the old and heavily annotated book tightens.

"For those who are new here," Lenore watches as he carefully leans against the stool beside him, "My name is Milo Briggs and I will be your host tonight." Milo's gaze clashes with hers and unlike before, he actually allows it to linger for a moment. The first time he did that; the first time their eyes met during one of these literary readings, Lenore's heart skipped such a large beat she thought she'd died for a moment. Two years later and not much has changed: Milo still looks like a regular, broke college student (even though he's never been broke a day in his life); smells like cigarettes, Paco Rabbane and thin mints; wears sweaters that cost more than Lenore's share of the rent and is obsessed with a writer that vanished into thin air.

'The height no longer scares me. As a matter of fact – I'm strangely attracted to the ground lying countless feet below me. The people, the cars, the noise.... The abundance of life. Life that could've easily been mine if I weren't so fucking stupid! Stupid and weak. My father was right... I truly am a weak excuse of a human being. A coward. An embarrassment. To both myself and my family.'

The girl on her right lets out a quiet sob; she's started crying and Lenore wonders whether it's because of the book's plot or because there are two more hours left of the event. For a brief moment in which she almost lets out a monstrous yawn, Lenore wishes she can switch places with the people experiencing Milo read Melancholia for the very first time. She too wants to cry uncontrollably into a rumpled-up Kleenex while cheap drug store mascara runs down her cheeks; gasp in shock whenever Travis – the insufferable main character – says or does something disturbing; uncomfortably shift in her seat when a straight-faced Milo begins reading the overly graphic sex scenes. Not because the experience is life changing, but because that may be the only thing preventing Lenore from falling into a boredom induced coma.

She's completely lost count of the number and times she's heard the same boy recite those same passages over and over and over again. If right this second, Milo were to stop midsentence, Lenore will have absolutely no problem continuing in his place. She won't even have to look up the page he'd stopped at. That's how many times she's gotten the chance to experience the so-called 'wonders' of B.K. Barnett's Melancholia.