A Life of Lies

How I learned to channel my imaginative mind

Art by Sage Nenyue | VOX Staff

By Sage Nenyue | VOX Staff

I was only 5 years old when I discovered my special ability. While other boys and girls were pretending they could fly, I realized I could do that and more. They could only imagine doing the fantastic; I made the fantastic a reality through lying.

I was a learned liar and loved it. My lies knew no bounds and I certainly was not about to stop. However, a bad experience put a cork in my plans to be an accomplished liar. I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss the old life, the pretenses, the falsities, the flat-out bold-faced lies. But I have a better life now and I plan to keep it that way.

My Great Powers
I stumbled upon lying by accident – and found I was a natural.
As a child, I discovered that in order to get what I wanted from the parental units, I had to please them. Often, that meant telling them the things they wanted to hear. I taught myself to lie when I realized lies had the power to please.

For example, when I got old enough to do my homework unsupervised, I could say I had finished it in school. Truthfully, I would only do a portion of it so that when asked for proof, I could deliver. I could easily say what people wanted to hear and get an easy path.
If I wanted to go outside, I might have asked my aunt; if she said no, I would try my mother and grandmother. If everyone said no, I might just sneak out. To me, lying was creativity plus a bit of logic, reasoning and common sense.

If I could lie to the adults around me and get what I wanted, surely I could lie to a bunch of schoolyard peers. If I told Anne someone wanted to see her, she would leave the swing set empty for me. I once told a classmate that his mother was just beyond the school gate and around the corner, just so I could see him try to sneak past the elderly security guard.

My Great Achievements
Now that you know the nature of my powers, you might also like to know that I accented my powers. I could make myself appear to be this or that with the spin of a few sentences. This put a bit of strain on me, sure, but it was bearable because it bought me freedom. And it was the ultimate freedom – or so I thought.

I could go unnoticed in class one day when the teacher was calling for us, and I could be the star pupil the next. I could blend into the nerdy scene when I wanted to talk futuristic gadgets, and I could stand even with the “in” crowd. Of course, it was hard at times. I sometimes appeared too smart when I was supposed to be in I-don’t-care-about-anything mode; or maybe I would be too into the looks of the robo-weapons when I was supposed to be all about the mechanics.

But worse than the stress they caused me, my lies sometimes hurt others. One of my lies got a kid to defend my honor in the schoolyard and get hurt really badly. When someone said something that I took as threatening, I lied to the poor boy and made it seem as if the mean-spirited words were directed at him. You can probably guess that he ambushed the other kid, and they both suffered injuries (facial bruises and bloody noses) that could have been avoided had I not been around. That might be the one time I felt guilty immediately after a lie.

Nevertheless, I continued to lie. The power it gave me and the challenge of talking my way out of trouble were a constant thrill.

One day, in fourth grade, I was going to miss field day as punishment for not doing my homework. Anxious to go outside, I lied to a teacher holding me hostage, telling her that another teacher said I could go out to field day. Apparently, I didn’t weave my web well, for she went to the other teacher to verify. When caught between the two teachers in the hallway, I managed to persuade the teacher I was lying about to remember telling me that I could go out. I was outside within five minutes.

Powers Broken; True Powers Revealed
Like Lord Voldemort, I was at the height of my powers when I made a stupid mistake.
It happened one morning during middle school on the playground. I had a feeling that a girl named Selena* had been seeing through my created realities. One day I saw her pointing across the playground to a boy named Timothy*. All I could do was talk rapidly and try to make her fall victim to the same lie she was attempting to pull Timothy from.

Then a glimmer of hope! I’d made her hesitate with a promise of a week of servitude: homework-copying privileges and all-you-can-cheat buffets! For a split second, our eyes met. We saw into each others’ souls – hers hazel and mine brown. I was certain that she’d begun to believe the lie. But then a rebellious spark appeared in Selena’s eye and she planted herself to the ground, yelling declarations of my lying ways for all to hear. One lie saw me making Timothy believe he was adopted into his family after being dropped off by aliens.

It had finally happened: hearing my lies exposed nearly obliterated me. The exposure was not horrible to anyone else; most took it as a joke. But still, I was shaken inside. Suddenly, I could feel the mistrust that I’d been creating about me.

The weird part was that no one else felt it. My victims, who’d never known of my darker deeds, repelled the suspicion they should have been feeling and continued to trust me. But I had changed: I had learned to mistrust myself.

The little of me left was weak, with only a shred of power. I have not had to use it since – or rather I chose not to. The scars are still there, though. I feel them whenever I am near lying. It’s a great reminder of how close to death I was – or perceived myself to be.

I died because the lies I told were the lies I became. The lies had lives of their own, and when strung together, they were my life.

I have a gift. My powers are not simply making people believe lies, or even weaving a world of untruths. My true power is simply to imagine.

Sort of like Catwoman (though considerably less woman than she), I got off the path of self-serving indulgences and now use my creativity for the betterment of mankind. I channel my powers through pen and paper and turn my raw imaginative energy into stories.

Sage is a senior at Tech High School.

*Names were changed.