The rules of lying

When you gotta lie it’s better to lie for real. Like use the truth, you know? She makes an o with pink lips and pops pink gum out between two fingers, smooshes it between two magazine pages. Her eyebrows are bolts of concentration, but her eyes are casual and distant as napping cats. So, if someone asks questions, the answers are right there and I don’t have to make up stories and look guilty. I’m Lucy Trujillo and I’m looking for stuff for my little sister’s birthday. I just found out I’m pregnant. I have money from a car crash that I want to spend. It’s true, but it’s true for someone else, and if they ask I’ll tell them someone else’s life, not mine. It’s like I become everything I know about other people, I’m anything anyone’s ever said to me. I’m the history of the whole world or something, lying, but really I’m inside it, getting whatever I want and going wherever anybody else could go. She shrugs, stands, tosses the magazine back onto the rack. The two cats awaken, hungry.