Free There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake Page A

denies it now.
    The sun is already setting when we go back to the car – it was a late lunch, and Mom and Luke talked and laughed for a long time in the diner, like teenagers. It was, like everything to do with over-weight glassy-eyed Luke, THE BOMB. Especially when she touched his arm when he was speaking. I have made a particularly highlighted mental note to myself to NEVER DO THIS when I’m speaking to a guy.
    If I ever speak to a guy. Which if my mom gets her way is unlikely.
    We get in the car and this time I go in the back so the two of them can talk in front – I can’t see their lips so I don’t know what they’re saying.
    Back at the campsite, Luke parks the car and then busies himself making dinner on the stove, to repay us for the burgers. I think it’s some kind of chicken. He has cans of sauce and little plastic plates.
    My foot is killing me, after the walk in the reserve, so I snag my backpack from the car. Mom packed me a make-up bag when weleft the hospital and I put my two bottles of codeine in it – now I take two pills out and wash them down with a bottle of water from the front seat. Then I go back to the fire.
    The whole time, I’m wanting to talk to Mom, grill her about, oh, the whole bashing-in-Luke’s-head-with-a-rock thing, but I never get the chance because there’s no way to get her on her own. Instead, we all sit together by the light of a fire that Luke has built and eat, and I wonder how soon I can say I’m tired and go to bed.
    I say bed.
    I mean car.
    Because I totally sleep in a car now, with a woman who thinks nothing of picking up a rock to smash someone’s head in. That is my life. And it is super!
    To be clear, I’m being sarcastic here. It is not super AT ALL. It is so not super that I feel like I’m going to cry, only the tears won’t come, and anyway you don’t want to hear about that. It’s depressing.
    After a while, it’s obvious that neither of them is paying much attention to me, so I get into the car and close my eyes.
    When I open them, there’s a blanket over me, and it’s full night. I sit up – Mom isn’t in the front seat, but I see the glow of a flash-light or something from Luke’s tent. And I see two shadows in there, kind of intertwined. Oh, no.
    Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
    Not only is Mom no longer Shy Mom, but she’s being un-shy over there in LUKE’S TENT. WITH LUKE. UGH, I think. And then an image flashes in my mind of Luke’s double chin and I think, UGH, again, UGH X 10,000.
    I die inside a little, that very moment. This is my mom, who has lectured me my whole entire life about being careful of men, about what they want, and how they get it, and here she is in Luke’s tent.
    At the same time, I’m worried about her. I mean, I know how it is. I know how much more Luke weighs than her, even though she’s big. I know he could do anything he liked to her, hurt her, kill her.
    Men are dangerous – I know that. Mom told me, but I watch a lot of TV, I could have worked it out for myself. I mean, the serial killer is never a woman, right?
    So what is Mom doing putting herself in danger?
    What is happening to her?
    What is happening to me?
    I think about those fairy tales Mom used to tell me, the ones about the changelings, where fairies would take a human child because they found it beautiful, and replace it with a fairy baby. Right now, though, it feels like Mom is the changeling, like she’s been taken away and replaced with some other mother, some simulacrum, some clockwork woman.
    I lie there, and I think how screwed up my life is, and I wish I could just be back in our apartment in Scottsdale, doing the same thing every day, living the old routine. I promise, I tell myself, closing my eyes. I promise, I’ll never complain about going to the Grand Canyon again, or college, or whatever, if I can just go back to my old life.
    Then I open my eyes again and I look out of the other window of the car and I see Mark standing there. Right out