Free The Girl Who Kissed a Lie by Skylar Dorset

shark, the newspaper tells us. In a very rare sighting. Who grabbed a Boston teenager who happened to be too near the water.
    Kelsey and I read the story together, and then read it again. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think of Brody, turning into a monster in my arms, of his talons closing onto my wrist. I look down at the wounds those talons left behind. But they’re not there anymore. Did I really imagine all of that? I’m so confused.
    “That’s not how I remember it happening,” I tell Kelsey.
    “No,” Kelsey agrees. “That was no shark.” She pauses. “Maybe our brains tricked us? Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, to help us deal with what we saw?”
    “So really what happened was a shark attack? And instead of letting us remember a shark attack, our brains have decided it’s better if we think we remember a boy turning into a monster while I kissed him?”
    “I don’t know.” Kelsey sounds exhausted, which is so different from how energetic and bubbly and enthusiastic she usually sounds. “Poor Brody.”
    I want to feel something about Brody being involved in a terrible shark attack. But I can’t feel anything. I’m numb. All I can think about is opening my eyes to see Brody as a monster in front of me. Maybe that’s why my brain isn’t letting me remember it the way it happened. Or maybe I’m just going insane like my father.
    ***
    I go to Brody’s funeral. I don’t tell my aunts where I’m going. It is mostly populated by his friends, and the word goes around that his family was too distraught by everything that happened to be at the funeral. I can understand that.
    Afterward, Kelsey and I go and sit on the Esplanade, watching the sun set behind the buildings. Twilight is falling, and it is bringing a chill with it. The summer is almost over, dying right in front of our eyes. I am really sick of death.
    Kelsey says, out of nowhere, “My dad left us last year.”
    I look at her in surprise. “What?”
    “That’s why we had to move. Dad left and… The thing is, he is my real dad. My mom’s not my real mom. She adopted me. And she’s the one who’s still here. She’s the one who really loves me. Does that make any sense? It doesn’t seem right .” Kelsey sounds so frustrated and so hurt. “I’m so glad I have my mom. I love my mom more than anything. But I can’t stop being angry at my dad.”
    “I know,” I say understandingly, and then I say something I’ve never said, not once, in my entire life. “My mom left me too. When I was just a baby, she left me on my father’s doorstep.”
    Kelsey looks at me. “Really?”
    I nod.
    “Which do you think is worse?” Kelsey asks musingly, but she asks it with a forced lightness, like she is trying to make it into a joke.
    “Let’s just agree that both situations are pretty bad,” I tell her.
    “Deal,” she says. There’s a pause. The sky is nearly entirely dark now, just a few red clouds clinging to the idea of day. “Do you ever think of trying to find her?”
    “Do you ever think of trying to find your dad?” I counter.
    “No,” she says firmly. “If he wanted me, he could come find me. It’s not like I’m hiding.”
    I wonder the same thing about my mother, really. I say, “Sometimes I think I’d like to know more about her than I do. But it just doesn’t seem like the right time yet. I just don’t feel like I’m ready.” I think of all the weird things that happen around me, all the things I can’t make sense of. And I don’t know anymore: Are they weird? Are they perfectly normal and my sense of normality versus weirdness is skewed? I had no idea Kelsey’s father had left her. Maybe it’s more normal than I think, my odd home life. It’s not like I have any other experience.
    And my life is my life . It’s weird and crazy, but I don’t really want another one. Would I like to know my mother? Yes. Of course. Would I like to really know my father? Yes to that too. But I love my aunts, and I know