Good Girls Lie(3)

And who’s to say I’m not the stranger to be worried about?

“I didn’t. England.”

“Thought so, from your accent. Ever met the Queen?”

Hardly. We don’t exactly run in the same circles.

But I’m embarking on a new life. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of embellishment.

“We go to the same church in the countryside. Have you ever heard of Sandringham? There’s a beautiful little stone church there, with a graveyard that dates back to the 1300s. They—the Queen and her husband, I mean—spend much of their time in the country, especially now they’ve been handing over duties to the younger members of the royal family. We saw them only last week.”

“I know exactly where you’re talking about. That’s the place they filmed part of Game of Thrones, didn’t they?”

“The very one.”

The best lies are based in fact. The stone church at Sandringham exists. It’s called St. Mary Magdalene, and it’s a bit more than a stone cottage, but I have no idea what it’s really like. I’ve never been there. I’ve never met the Queen. I have exactly zero idea where Game of Thrones was filmed, but I assume it wasn’t on the royal estate.

The driver has no knowledge of what I’m talking about but doesn’t want to seem stupid, so he is more than happy to pretend. He grins at me in the rearview, and I smile in turn. We’re connected now, over this lie. We both know it. Accept it. These are the social niceties of a modern civilization.

I resume my outdoor viewing, pretending I didn’t enjoy the tiny frisson of excitement I got from the dopamine rush of telling a lie.

Why did I do it? I swore to myself I wasn’t going to lie anymore. All part of turning over a new leaf, as my mum would say.

And I have no business lying to this stranger, one who knows where I’ll be for the next few years.

But it is so easy. And what will it harm? He’s practically a child himself.

I’ve never understood my compulsive desire to lie. I’ve read so many articles I’ve become my own sociology experiment. Everyone lies. To themselves, to each other. It’s a way to belong, to be included. To look important.

In the past, it was much, much easier to get away with these transactional lies. Purveyors of falsehoods were con men, flimflam artists. Now, everyone is a grifter. With the advent of social media, allowing the masses to peer in through the open windows and doors to your home, to your mind, your body, your soul, the only way to lie properly is to curate your life for the masses to behold, carefully, carefully. Stage. Filter. Design. My very existence is so much better than yours. Hurrah!

I have no accessible online accounts. I don’t tweet or book or gram or snap or tok. I’ve never been interested in living out loud, and now, it’s working in my favor. It’s much, much too dangerous for me to have a past. I’m forward-looking, marching ahead. My life, my new life, waits for me on top of the mountain, in a town appropriately called Marchburg. The Goode School doesn’t allow the students to have mobile phones. There’s a solid chance I can get away without the accounts for the next few years. There’s luck, already going my way.

In the modern age, with the ubiquitous connections available, not allowing personal mobile phones on campus is believed to be an archaic approach to education. I’ve seen the reviews, the message boards; the students hate it, hate leaving behind their screens. Even some of the mothers and fathers think this is a ridiculous rule, too, often sneaking one into the luggage for a midnight texting session with their little darlings.

We top another rise and finally, I can see the city of Marchburg ahead. It looks like an Italian hill town, accessible only through winding switchbacks, a fortress behind a redbrick wall.

Lies have kept me safe, kept me protected, my whole life. But here, in this new place, in this new world, I don’t need them anymore. I will be safe on the mountain. Protected.

“Starting over is always hard,” Mum told me, “but you can do it. Go far, far away from here, daughter mine. Reinvent yourself.”

This is exactly what I intend to do.



4

THE ARRIVAL

The drive up the hill makes me slightly queasy, all the switchbacks, the steep drop-offs, but soon enough we are on even ground again. The little town of Marchburg, its streets forming an X, surrounds the school which sits in the middle, at the crossroads. I ignore the stores and restaurants and their quaint, New World names, focusing on the behemoth ahead. A castle, for that is what it looks like, an overly large country house, like those of my homeland, spreading across the glossy green acreage like a stone gargoyle, but with red brick instead of gray stone.

The original building was damaged by fire in 1890, and the phoenix rebuilt in the traditional Jacobean style using the famous Virginia bricks known as Chilhowie, the name stamped across the face. “Chilhowies have been found as far away as Paris, France,” says the literature. A bell tower rises above the entrance, perfectly centered on the main building, which is five stories high. Similar Jacobean-style buildings wing each side of the main hall—their signs denote they’re creatively named Old East and Old West—but these were added later, and aren’t the same exact color as their mother. They are three stories each, with white wooden balconies that jut out from their top floors.

Taken in one shot, the school is monstrous in its austere beauty.