pretty little lies
louisaeve
She can vaguely remember being told lies when she was younger. Can vaguely remember the fairytales they tweaked for her. They thought they were helping.
Telling stories of Snow White and how her mean stepmother became a nurturing and caring mother. Lily always liked it when later she crept into her mothers book stash and read the older versions, stories where the younger Queen, the more beautiful and powerful Snow White, cast down the wicked stepmother and made her dance a dance of irony, twirling and swirling in her beautiful gowns until she dropped dead because the shoes her dainty feet were in were iron and straight out of the fire.
And her favourite Red Riding Hood was the one where Red became the wolf, and killed her own grandmother.
People thought that telling children happily ever afters helped. They thought that telling her when she kissed a boy (and his lips would be soft and hard at the same time, they would be chapped and cracked from the wind and all the time he spent licking and biting and picking at them) and it felt magical (there were no sparks or fireworks but there was this burning and eternal fire, this need which couldn't be quenched by a simple kiss, no matte what the movies and tales said) that her world would fall apart (she felt slightly dizzy when she broke apart from him, but that was rather due to the fact that there was blood rushing through her body, before she made some excuse about studying with Marlene and Ainee and ran off) and she'd be happy (no one told her about the horrors that came after, the hours spent crying over the Ravenclaw she tutored last year, the hours of shivering at the sight of the words muggleborn and pureblood).
When you graduate high school you're supposed to be happy and excited and so eager (Lily just felt empty like a massive part of her life, a massive part of her, was over) and when you get perfect marks on your end of school tests, you're supposed to feel overjoyed (and she didn't because what was perfect marks that meant nothing) and when you get your first letter of declination over your resume, you're supposed to be happy that they thought enough of you to decline, and keep moving on, trying to find another job (she didn't, she collapsed in a heap in the corner of her room). When your parents die it's just a tragic backstory (she just screamed and screamed and screamed and raged at the world).
When your boyfriend asks you to move in with him, you're supposed to be overjoyed (and Lily just curled up on the couch and cried, because where else is she supposed to be going?) and when your sister is getting married you're supposed to be delighted with the world (she screeched and howled and got drunk and ate too many boxes of chocolate with Marlene). And when you get married it's supposed to be the best day of your life (and it was, it was, it was - James held you close and you kissed his brow and had fun like you hadn't in ages - and then you heard that the McKinnons had died and that's when you just lost it). And then when you get pregnant you're meant to be glowing, brightened with joy and the excitement of carrying new life (you cry and scream and yell and tell James what the fuck are you doing to me, what the fuck am I doing to myself, what the fuck is the world doing to us?).
And the prettiest lie of all, the sweetest, the one that everyone told her and yet ruined her life was that happily ever after one.
