The Girl Who Kissed a Lie by Skylar Dorset Page B

desperately.
    “What about her?” demands Aunt True, a challenge being flung to me. Ask another question.
    “Who was she? Did you know her? Where did she come from? Why can’t I find any other Blaxtons?”
    “Have you been looking for them?” asks Aunt True.
    “You need to stop looking for them,” commands Aunt Virtue.
    “Do you understand how hard it is for me to know nothing about her? She’s my mother ,” I cry, trying to make them see .
    “It means nothing,” Aunt Virtue says staunchly. “She was never supposed to be here. She did not belong here. You are one of us: a Stewart of Boston. We who have been here from the beginning and will be here to the end. This is your home, we are yours, and you are ours. It matters not what anyone else may say, what words may be used on you. You are a Stewart of Boston. Remember that.”
    “I know that,” I say. “I won’t…run away. I’m not trying to—”
    “Are you unhappy?” Aunt True asks me gently.
    “No,” I say honestly. “I’m not.”
    “Then forget about your mother,” she says, still in that tender, loving tone of voice. She walks over to me and cups a hand on my cheek. “This is your life. This . This time, this place, this world.” Her words are strangely firm, as if, by pronouncing them so clearly, she can make it be this way, make me be this way.
    She turns back to Aunt Virtue, and they resume the minute adjustments of everything in the room, but I stand frozen, her words trembling in the air around me.

CHAPTER 3
    School the next day feels unbearably long. It’s so hard to concentrate on things like the Pythagorean theorem when I have decided that it’s possible my aunts are immortal creatures. I meet up with Kelsey for American literature class. She is complaining because she lost a button on the brand-new cardigan she’s wearing.
    “Oh,” I note. “I picked up a button this morning.” I fish it out of my pocket, avoiding the old book pages occupying the same space, and hand it to her.
    “Of course it’s a perfect match,” Kelsey sighs. “I don’t know how you do that.”
    “I’m a good best friend,” I tell her.
    “That you are.” Kelsey tucks the button into her own pocket. “You okay, by the way? You seemed quiet in Salem, but I thought you just weren’t having a good time. But you don’t seem yourself today either.”
    “I’m fine,” I say.
    But I’m not, of course.
    I decide that I have to go see my father. I just have to. I spend a sleepless night worrying about all the questions in my head and knowing that my aunts will never answer them, but somebody has to. I know my aunts are convinced I should know who I am without knowing anything about my mother, but I feel like I just can’t. How can I? And the fact that my aunts are so dead set against it makes me feel like I really have to know. I’m not usually such a brat, but in this case I can’t help it. I just have to go see my father. He is not always lucid enough to answer questions like that—the poem about my name being a prime example—but I can at least give it a try.
    The day is mostly sunny, although there is a chill in the air, and Ben is doing a brisk business in sweatshirts. I wait impatiently for him to give change to a customer. I haven’t seen him glance my way, but as soon as he’s done, he turns toward me, his pale eyes sharp.
    “What’s wrong?” He has obviously immediately seen my agitation.
    “I’m going to see my father,” I say.
    Ben and I have never discussed anything about our family lives—Ben and I know both everything and nothing about each other—but he doesn’t ask me anything about why my father is someone I have to visit. He just says, “Why?”
    “Because I have so many questions, Ben. I don’t have a mother—”
    “Everyone has a mother,” Ben interjects calmly. “You have a mother; you just don’t know your mother.”
    It seems like a pointless distinction for him to be making right now. “Fine,” I