somebody sold us all kinds of lies (August Cleary)
August wonders when he first started being disappointed in Lily.
Not angry at, not frustrated with, not annoyed by.
Disappointed.
It's a weird feeling. She's the older sister, the oldest of all three of them. She was someone to look up to, especially considering how rarely their parents were around. She was someone admirable. The kind of older sister that August, at around half the age he is now, would've thought of as invincible. The elder that knew everything. The shield that kept them safe.
She was always so on top of things, when they were younger.
"August, see, the water's boiling," she had said to him one inconsequential day. A day just like the ones that preceded it and just like the ones thought would follow it. A day that was so mundane that August didn't know why he remembered it. "Once it gets hot enough, I'll put in the pasta, okay? Right now, I need to change Roy."
August was impatient back then. He still is, of course, much to his chagrin, but he was even moreso when he was younger. So he pouted and whined, but then when Lily went back to cooking, he stared in wonder as she effortlessly put pasta into the pot, without spilling anything.
Back then, August just thought she was that cool. She could do everything. Like nothing was impossible for her. She barely knew any french, but to August, one well-pronounced 'bonjour' was like knowing the entire language.
"'Bonjour' means hello," she explained. "And 'je' is I."
"What's 'family' in french?" August had asked.
"Familie," she said, without missing a beat. August knows now that she was wrong, but back then, she was just that good at lying.
"Familie," he repeated, letting the word sit on his tongue. Even though it was wrong, just a little bit off from being the correct pronunciation, August’s mind still jumps to that when pressed in class. He wishes she never lied to him like that.
"See? I know everything in 'francis,'" Lily bragged, horrendously butchering 'français.'
Now, he wonders just how rarely she told the truth. He wonders how quickly Lily grew up. He figures it was probably pretty quickly.
So that disappointment has a bit of an undercurrent of pity. Sadness. Something. Or maybe it’s nothing.
He wonders if that thing from a few years ago meant he grew up fast, too. He's mostly started thinking of his life as before and after. It was only a few years before before when Lily had started acting differently. Reckless, impulsive, mischievous. She took up skateboarding.
"Roy, August! Come check out this new move I learned!" Lily had shouted at them from in the middle of the road, attempting some weird trick August couldn’t name.
She had just barely avoided getting hit by an incoming car when she had burst out laughing.
After that near-death experience, she had only laughed.
When Roy and August saw that she was laughing, they laughed, too. Just a bit. It felt both wrong and right.
"Holy crap, that was close!" Lily said between pants and giggles.
August hadn’t minded the change. It was a bit worrying, but she was also more fun. Not that she was not fun before, but. Well. Skateboard tricks were cool.
Then, Lily's new attitude led to that thing, which led to after, but Lily was still the same. It was just an accident. A mistake, on her part. It wouldn't happen again, August thought, when he questioned her stagnancy, so that's why she's not changing again.
He wonders what really caused her first change. Some dumb altercation between her and their parents spurred it on, he recalls.
August wasn't the same. Not entirely.
It was enough for him to change, but why not her?
He doesn't want to consider himself the centre of the world or anything. Just because something happened to him that made him change doesn't mean Lily should change, too.
Still.
August wonders if it was around then that he started being disappointed.
"Lily, what're you freakin’ doing?” August asked one day, after. Angrier (or pissier, as Eva would put it) than before.
Lily spoke, muffled from the strip of duct tape in her mouth. "Makwing impwovemens." She placed the tape over the diet cola bottle on the end of her skateboard with her free hand; the other holding a pack of mentos. "Making improvements," she repeated, grinning.
"You're an idiot." August tutted, and he crossed his arms. "An idiot that's gonna give herself a concussion."
"Nope," Lily replied simply. "Got a helmet," she said, knocking on the helmet next to her.
August frowned. "Helmets aren't magic force fields."
Lily just shrugged, and kept taping the diet cola down. "Y'know, fruit mentos don't actually work to do the whole explosion thing, 'cause they don't have bumps on their surface. The bumps on mint mentos act as points of nucleation."
He was going to protest the change in topic, still wanting to tear down Lily's terrible, godawful idea, to release an otherwise directionless anger, but he was interested in what he was learning. For a moment, it was like Lily was that all-knowing elder again.
"I only found that out 'cause I got the fruit mentos and then found out it didn't work," she laughs, destroying the image in August's head. She pulls out an open pack of fruit mentos, and offers it to him.
He takes one, because, whatever. Lily's an idiot, but at least she's a generous idiot.
Such an idiot.
A self-destructive, stupid, dumb, idiot idiot.
She doesn't listen as well as she used to. She heeds no warnings, follows no orders. She ignores others' problems, and sometimes even her own.
August's not sure if he wants her to go back to before before before, or if he'd be fine if he could just go back to before. Roy does all the housework, now, and August thinks for one, regretful moment that it was about time for their turn to hurry up and grow up. Like it's a Cleary sibling ritual.
After he has that thought, he tries to help Roy, but because it's after, he only becomes a hindrance. Roy gives him a smile--so genuine that, for a second, August wants to shake it off of them--and takes their own, not-ruined mop into the room to start cleaning it properly. August provides company, but he has to leave before long. Roy gives him a parting smile, still so full of warmth that August isn't sure if he's jealous.
All he can feel, sans short moments of embarrassment or humour, is... not quite anger. Closer to pissy, August admits to himself, begrudgingly using the terminology Eva had so eloquently provided. Like he's always walking a line too thin.
Lily doesn't do anything at all.
Other than be an idiot.
If it was before before, after, or somewhere in between, August still isn't sure. Not sure when he felt disappointment, a feeling he covered up by constantly feeding his own anger, exaggerating his posturing.
"Do you hate me?" Lily asked him, once.
"What?"
"Forget it."
August knows that Lily noticed he didn't say 'I love you,' or even a 'no.' Just a ‘what,’ like the question was so out-of-the-blue, August couldn't even think of an answer.
August hopes that Lily thinks it's because August thought it was just that ridiculous of a question.
August thinks that Lily believes it's because August can't say that he hates her, but he also can't say that he loves her.
August wonders which one is the truth.
August wonders if Lily hates him, loves him, or neither.
August still wonders when he first started being disappointed in Lily.
and i've trained myself to give up on the past (Lily Cleary)
Lily doesn’t usually like to mince words. She doesn’t like to draw lines in the sand, and she doesn’t like to see things in black and white, like there’s only good and bad and like they can only exist completely independently of one another.
But she still does.
She avoids tough conversations by putting on a facade that’s not really a facade, a mask that’s just her own face, and she divides her life in terms of before and after, and she thinks of before as all bad and after as all good, and she tries to ignore all the bad that came with after, and she manages to succeed thanks to the mask that she’s taken off, thanks to the mask that’s not a mask and the facade that’s not a facade, thanks to doing the things she usually doesn’t like to do.
Lily wonders if it could be considered faking it, if it’s real, and if it’s only faking it because she’s not like she was before.
She was only responsible because she had to be, back then. But she didn’t want to be. But that’s how she acted, how she grew up, how she ended up developing. Before the total 180, she wonders if that was the faking it, if now is the not really faking it faking it, and she doesn’t really know and she feels like, in her entirety, that maybe she’s actually nothing but disguises and camouflage. Like she’s been made up of masks and facades her whole life.
“I don’t wanna go to school,” August had whined. It was a Wednesday, Lily knew, because it had to be, because after school, Lily had to send August to his math tutor, and he only went to his math tutor on Wednesdays. At least, that’s how it was before.
“Well,” Lily sighed, already exhausted, “are you sick? Or do you just not wanna go?”
August pouted, his glare shifting from Lily to the ground. She placed a hand on his forehead.
“I don’t think you’re sick, August. Sorry, buddy,” Lily patted his shoulder, “but you’ve gotta go. It’s important to get a good education.”
“Why?”
Lily wanted to tear her hair out. They were already running late. The bus was gonna be there any minute, and here August was, delaying and whining and stomping his feet like a petulant child.
And then Lily remembered that that was what he was, and Lily sighed again in an attempt to release the tension knotting her veins.
It didn’t work.
But she sucked it up.
“Because,” she said, voice barely tinged with animosity, “education’s super important. Keep going to school, and you’ll even get to learn ‘francis,’ just like me.”
August’s eyes widened at that.
(And how strange it was to think of August with two eyes.)
Jackpot.
“Right? You only know the bare minimum, ‘cause I study at home when you’re around sometimes, but keep going to school and study well, and you’ll know almost as much as me,” she grinned, picking up August’s backpack from up off the floor. “Now, c’mon, you’re gonna be late.”
August got to his bus quickly enough, but the sitter for Roy was late, and Lily missed her bus, and so she ran all the way to school that day.
Lily wonders, always wonders, thinks, questions what was real for her. There were days she questioned her love for her siblings, despised them for the burden they placed on her, and there were other days where she blamed her parents, and then there were days where she blamed herself.
She never really understood that last one.
Was the blame real? Was the hatred real? Was the love real?
Sometimes, she didn’t feel real.
Even now, in the after, after she renounced the facade that wasn’t a facade, or maybe it was one, maybe she’s too deep in layers of masks and veils, she doesn’t feel like she’s real. Because, again, she doesn’t know what’s what, sometimes. It’s confusing. She hates it. That’s why, even though she doesn’t like drawing lines in the sand, dividing things into two, she still does, because it’s easier that way.
So, before is bad. After is good. Even when it’s not.
Going into the after only happened once August got old enough, anyway. It’s not like Lily was planning on leaving two children floundering.
Just one.
She didn’t really like to think about Roy.
“I’m gonna take up skateboarding,” she had said to August and Roy, on the cusp of before and after.
“Oh, awesome!”
Lily smiled at August’s enthusiasm.
“You’ll be careful, right?”
Lily tried not to grimace at Roy’s concern.
She’s been careful for so long. She’s had enough of it. More than enough. Who was Roy to dictate how she lived her life, when they had played a part in pulling her strings for so long?
“Of course,” Lily replied. “I’ll wear helmets, knee pads, and everything.”
Roy had smiled, so warm and so childishly, that the venom Lily had faded, leaving nothing but exhaustion.
“I can’t wait to see what tricks you learn, then!” Roy beamed.
“Yeah, same here,” August chimed in. “Maybe when you’re done learning, you could teach me, afterwards.”
Lily tried her best to smile at that, and she doesn’t know if she succeeded or failed, because she’s always been teaching him. Teaching August everything. She didn’t want to be selfish, but fuck, she wanted something to herself.
“Of course,” she lied.
And then that thing happened, and then August never really asked again about it, and so Lily never brought it up either, happy that she could still keep this one impulsive thing she simply wanted to herself.
It felt good and bad. Strangely contradictory, but she just leaned into the good, and ignored the bad, dividing the two like the border between the shore and the waves, dismissing whenever the waves made it just a little bit farther than she wanted them to.
But even in the after, when she became reckless, impulsive, really got into skateboarding, she still had responsibilities. Slowly, she abandoned them, leaving August and Roy to their own devices more and more frequently. Then there was that thing, and August didn’t really need to be tended to anymore at all. At least, in Lily’s opinion. And, at that point, she had left pretty much all of it behind, anyway. Roy grew up, too.
So it was a while before she was really responsible for anything again.
“Is that a ferret?” August asked, condescending. In that new pissy (thanks, Eva) tone of voice of his, one that he developed after that thing.
“Yep!” Lily grinned, holding up her brand new pet proudly.
“Why.” August frowned, crossing his arms.
“Because.”
August scoffed, and diverted his gaze for a moment, before returning to glance at the remarkably cute new addition to the family.
“Cute, right?” she smirked. Lily held the ferret up closer to his face.
August scoffed again, and he turned his head away. “Not that cute,” he muttered. Lily didn’t miss how he, once again, looked back at the little fuzzy creature.
Lily only laughed, and she began petting him.
“...What’s his name.”
Lily suppressed further laughter, and said, without missing a beat, “Ollie.”
August grimaced. “What. Like the skateboard thing,” he deadpanned.
“Exactly!”
August slumped in his chair and sighed.
“Whatever, it’s a good name,” she stuck out her tongue. “Hey, did you know a group of ferrets is called a business?”
August stared at her for a moment, that look in his eye that Lily recognized as curiousity and admiration overwhelming his features.
Lily wanted to frown. It’s not like it was that interesting of a fact. It’s not anything to be impressed by.
But then, it’s been so long since she last saw that look on his face, and she didn’t know if she loved it or hated it or missed it.
“Maybe I should start a business with this lil’ guy,” she snuggled Ollie closer. “Ferret and Human Inc. We make both.”
That look immediately disappeared from his face, replaced with annoyance, or disgust, or… something.
Lily didn’t know if she wanted to be upset, or if she wanted to feel relaxed.
Lily doesn’t know if she prefers before or after, actually.
Maybe it’s a consequence of drawing lines in the sand the way that she does, even when she doesn’t like doing it. Or maybe she does like it.
It’s hard to be certain, but there’s a lot of things she doesn’t like doing that she does anyway, and that doesn’t include not mincing her words, and so she softens these blows to herself by lying and lying and lying.
She doesn’t like to do it, but she still does.