The Darkest Lie by Pintip Dunn

Rollerblades, it glides brazenly, unflinchingly on. “It didn’t take long to piece together how they’ve been treating you. You don’t deserve that. Nobody does.”
    I don’t say anything. I can’t. No one’s been this kind to me in ages, except maybe Alisara. In the weeks after the funeral, she would sit by my bed for hours, carrying on a monologue about who hooked up with whom and did I want to try her raspberry lipstick and how she might go to Homecoming with Brian Finnigan. Innocuous gossip in which she only had a mild interest, conveyed in hopes of drawing me out.
    But even Alisara has her limits, and after a few weeks of our one-sided conversations, her visits became further and further apart until they stopped completely.
    I’ve told myself I’ll be wary around Sam. He’s writing an article about my mom, and he’s determined to root out every last salacious detail. But I feel myself tipping toward him. A magnetic pull that has me teetering on the edge. Involvement. If there’s a way to be around Sam and remain detached, I haven’t figured it out.
    Maybe I don’t need to. Maybe the best way to control what he finds out is to stay near him. Keep my enemies closer and all that.
    Except when I look into his face, silhouetted by the moon, the last thing he feels like is my enemy.
    â€œI can’t go anywhere because I’m Alisara’s ride.” I chew on my lips. “But could you . . . hang out with me? I don’t want to be alone right now.”
    I’ve said it to myself dozens of times over the last year, in different ways, but it all adds up to the same thing. I’m so lonely. I feel alone. I miss my mom.
    It’s funny how I never felt alone before. Even when I was up in my room, studying late at night with only my earbuds for company, I didn’t feel alone. I knew I could always find my mom somewhere in the house, and no matter what, she would drop whatever she was doing and have a cup of tea with me. It’s not that I sought her out often. I didn’t always agree with her advice, and most of the time, I didn’t want to hear it. But she was always there, always available. The equivalent of a teenager’s security blanket.
    I miss her.
    The feeling washes over me, and I lean against the car, tilting my head up to the black sky. The stars are hidden somewhere beneath a thick blanket of clouds, but I feel their beauty as an ache inside my heart, even if I can’t see them.
    Kind of like my mom. I can’t see her or talk to her, but she’s still here, living inside me, the good parts and the bad.
    I turn to Sam, my eyes wet for no reason I can understand, and what I see in his face takes my breath away. A yearning so raw it peels away every layer of myself, leaving me more exposed than my mother’s topless photo.
    â€œI’m not going to kiss you,” he says in a strained voice. “After the night you’ve had, I don’t want you to mistake a kiss for anything but what it is. But I want you to know, just because I don’t kiss you doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to dream about it. Doesn’t mean I won’t want to do it, next time we’re together.”
    My heart sprints, each beat trying to outpace the other. My second almost-kiss in the space of one hour. When I can count my lifetime number of such encounters on one hand. I have to swallow twice before I can speak. “Duly noted.”
    â€œGood.” He grins, the lens of his glasses reflecting the moonlight. “I just wanted to make that clear. Wouldn’t be a very good investigative reporter if I didn’t set the record straight.”

Chapter 12
    I’m late meeting Alisara at the cabin. Like thirty minutes late. She accepts my apology without saying much, and we drive most of the way home in silence. The headlights cut through the darkness, giving us