Amson, 17, "The Liar"

"Talk?" Tora dropped her pencil. "You've got our damn house phone number."

I stammered, for some reason unable to tell her the truth. With her irritable mood, it didn't seem appropriate to bring up something like a party, but not telling her wasn't doing me any help, either. She grew more impatient by the second, and seeing that she'd dropped her pencil completely, I wasn't just on thin ice.

I was sitting in the frigid waters brought from her stare alone.

Still, through her glasses, her eyes glistened, only further ignited by the flames of her fury. An amber-red iris with ginger lashes that flared outward, wild yet still orderly and clean, looked directly into my lifeless, white iris, devoid of any color or uniqueness. Despite her rowdy-rough personality, her looks were nothing to scoff at. Still, I was about as powerless as her father with that pretty mug trained on me. She was unrelenting; it would take some time to calm her down.

"Can you just answer my question, Amson, so I can get back to what I was doing?" She growled. "I don't get why this is so difficult, like pulling teeth."

"I--uhh..." I hesitated, my eyes slowly moving to her desk. "W-What are you working on?"

Tora rested her chin onto her palm, her elbow holding the weight of her head. Her expression changed to that of exhaustion. It seemed she'd given up on her questioning for now.

"So, that's how it's going to be..." She released her legs from the confines of her white t-shirt, finally allowing her feet to touch the ground. "Work. The same work that we touched on the other day."

I finally let myself lean forward, relieved from the pressure of her anger.

"You're stuck." I assumed. "Did you need some help?"

"I'm fine doing this myself." She insisted. "Thanks for the offer, though."

Her attention returned to the desk, and just like that, the conversation dissolved into the air, only the spiraling fan above us making any discernable noise. There was no noise from downstairs or of the three triplets, just feelings of a cold chill where our conversation had been.

I looked at her as she wrote, this time careful not to seem like I was staring. Knowing that she was working on schoolwork made me a bit curious; I thought we'd gone over just about everything there was to have for the week and then some. She seemed so engrossed by the tip of her pencil, as if I'd vanished from the room, and something compelled me to stand, making my way toward her from behind.

I made careful not to interrupt her concentration, and I watched over her shoulder for a while, analyzing what she wrote and looking for any mistakes I could find. At a glance, she seemed to be doing fine. She had a flow going, and her strokes were confident, though her handwriting might've said otherwise.

Still, I noticed her crippling flaw. Although her decay formulas were just as I told her, she made silly mistakes as she progressed with each problem, effecting the answers she found drastically from what they should have been. Mistakes such as forgetting which way to round or not reading the questions thoroughly enough are commonplace even for those who understand the material much more deeply than I do. She just was a bit too negligent.

The errors were much less her fault, yet very much her own.

Though I wanted to interrupt, I stayed my hand, watching as she completed the page in it's entirety. She was determined to flip the page, but that was the opportune time to interject, gently placing the page back into place from behind what she could see. As you could've guessed, that jolted her out of her concentration, and she looked back at me, as irritated as she started.

I carefully interrupted before she could jab at me, making clear my intentions.

"You're retaining the shit I taught you, but you've got to slow down." I suggested, only making her angrier.

"You're telling me I've been doing this shit day in and day out and it's still not good enough?" She looked at me with glossy eyes. "Give me a fucking break!"

That expression stopped me dead for a moment, a crucially crippling moment of hesitation. I got closer than I should have, something within me forcing the words to leave the depths of my chest.

"What's wrong, Tora." I pried. "Did something happen?"

"What, so suddenly you care?" She snarled, her anger festering behind those eyes. "Since when have you started giving a fuck about anyone but yourself?!"

She lashed at me, clawing me at the cheek and pushing me backward. I fell back into her bed, holding my face and wincing in pain. She subtly followed my descent, her hand outreached but unable to touch me. She'd jumped out of her chair as if trying to catch me, but as soon as she'd leapt, she crumbled, falling to her knees in sorrow.

I opened my eyes again, and seeing her state, I forgot about the pain, coming to her aid as fresh blood ran down my cheek.

"I-I'm so sorry." She whimpered, quickly turning to a pitiful squeal. "I'm so sorry!"

I sat there, frantically looking around her for any physical wounds yet found none. I couldn't understand where the pain came from, and stumped, I couldn't find the words to help her either. I was just there, observing the attack of a vicious assailant from within her mind. Something ate at her from the inside, and I was ill-equipped to help at all.

For some reason, something sat within the pit of my chest as I, again, noticed how pitiful I was. It was as if looking at myself from the outside, and there, I saw a monster, looming over Tora's broken form. I backed away from her, leaving her there to suffer, prioritizing myself exactly as she said.

"No..." I muttered, nearly toppling over my own legs.

Both of them were right about me. With this face, I could never truly look at anyone. All I'd ever see was a mirror, a constant reminder of my deformed mind. I was everything, and as everything, I would make sure no one uncovered the veil of the liar, my only comfort in this horrible world.