The Lies We Tell by Katie Zhao

Author:Katie Zhao
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526654878
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Campus life and Game Day continued as though nothing had happened. Pretty much nothing had the power to stop football around here. By late afternoon, Chris still hadn’t returned. Feeling helpless, I threw myself into my studies to avoid having to listen to my own thoughts and fears.

In the evening, I ignored the ruckus of post-football parties in favor of shutting myself inside the Thatcher Graduate Library. I had some serious work to do for class.

The stone steps led up to a high Gothic revival building with rose windows and decorative panels that gave it the appearance of a Victorian castle. I recalled from my orientation tour that it was one of the oldest buildings on campus.

The inside was designed as a cathedral nave, giving it a church-like appearance. Speaking any louder than a whisper would cause echoes and earn death glares from the librarians, so the graduate library wasn’t the ideal meeting spot for group homework. It was the perfect place to cut off distractions, though.

I headed straight up to the tenth floor where there were fewer students and tucked myself up in a corner behind stacks of old books to finish my reading, losing myself in the words of scholars from centuries ago. Before I knew it, my whole Saturday had passed in a blur of Homer’s The Odyssey and Wu Cheng En’s Monkey: Folk Novel of China. I’d read both before—The Odyssey my junior year of high school, and Monkey in Chinese school. They were vastly different texts in terms of themes, settings, and characters, but both featured journeys. The Odyssey was about Odysseus’s back home, whereas Monkey was about the monk Xuan Zang’s journey out West to seek out the Buddhist scriptures.

I was so lost in the stories that, for a brief moment in time, I forgot everything else that was going on in my life.

When I finally finished my reading, darkness had fallen outside the glass windows. I wrapped my windbreaker around me more tightly and picked up my pace as I headed for the library exit. The sound of raised voices caused me to turn toward a crowd of people exiting the library. One of the brown-haired girls at the back of the crowd bent down to tie her shoes, and I realized that the brilliant red streak in her hair looked very familiar. It only took me a few seconds to pinpoint why.

“Jane!” I blurted out without thinking. I hadn’t expected to run into Jane at all. Didn’t she say she lived super far from Central Campus?

Jane continued tying her shoes as I walked up to her, not giving any indication that she’d heard me. My footsteps faltered. Maybe I’d been wrong. But, no—this girl looked exactly like Jane, though her hair was longer than in her Friend Me photos, which made sense given that some time must’ve passed since she’d had those photos done.

“Jane?”

She finally glanced up at me, but her expression was blank. Her green eyes, though, gave me the confirmation I needed.

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