*Double update this week, folks! Did you read chapter eight first??*

*****

"Three things keep me alive: eyeliner, acting, and the possibility of escape."

It wasn't like Amalia was the only high school kid in history to play up the 'disaffected youth' angle in her photo caption, but the fact that she had chosen those three particular things shocked me in three different ways.

For one, she wasn't kidding about the eyeliner. There was so much of it, and so black, that she was barely recognizable. It wasn't even Goth so much as a mask, like those costumes hidden in the back of her pantry. Her hair was black, too. Pitch black. Dyed that way, obviously, and cut into a blunt bob with sharp bangs that covered her eyebrows, adding to the dramatic effect of the makeup.

I knew she'd been an actress, of course, but I didn't realize how much it had meant to her. My mom had always dismissed it as one of a series of personalities Amalia had briefly tried on and then discarded.

But it was "the possibility of escape" that really made me do a double-take. After all, that had been the only thing that had gotten me through school as well—my dream apartment, bead curtain in the doorframe and fire-red bathroom. That is, until I had remembered that all of those dreams were just fading memories of Sage and John's Portland apartment.

As I flipped through more of Amalia's yearbook, I couldn't help but admit to myself that part of my fascination with her was how much she looked like Mom. I hadn't talked to my mother since I had joined this reality the year before. I didn't know what to say to her. I knew she remembered our past. Having traveled back in time three years ago to start the decade over with John, she remembered everything that had happened before.

She remembered the years of staying in our house after Robbie's accident, even though she was dying to go find him. She remembered how awkward the two of us had been, each resenting each other in our own ways. She remembered the last thing she said to me: You are my warrior.

But did she think of me now? Did she miss me sometimes, when the moon came out and the night grew long? Did she remember the day I stayed home sick from school and we watched The Princess Bride, snuggling under a blanket, when I was eight years old?

I turned the page in Amalia's book, looking for more evidence of who she and Mom had been back in those days. But I knew I wouldn't see Mom in these pages. She'd only been thirteen at the time, not yet at the high school.

It wasn't until I got to the extra-curricular pages at the end, however, that the buzzing thoughts in my head subsided and were replaced with a very clear, very precise silence.

There was Amalia, acting on a stage, deep in an emotion. She was wearing a Southern Belle costume, her hair in a tasteful chignon, her eyeliner gone. She was crying. "I'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothin' special," read the caption. "Steel Magnolias, spring production."

And below that, another quote. "How do you feel about your acting coach?" was the prompt question, written in cursive at the top. "She's my mentor," Amalia had answered. "I honestly don't know if I'd be alive without her. I feel like I owe her everything."

The picture that accompanied the page, in blazing color, was Amalia with her head resting on Elaheh Farghasian's shoulder, a beaming smile of pure love on her glowing face.

"I only met her a couple of times," she had told me.

So Amalia and my mother had something else in common then: you couldn't believe a word either one of them said.

*

The pool was nearly empty when I plunged into it the following morning before dawn. And though my body was still stiff from a restless night, my eyes aching for more sleep, and my homework not yet finished, I knew I needed the cool water to think clearly.

Why did people lie? I asked myself as my sore arms worked out their kinks and found their way over my head. A breast stroke. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three again.

I opened my eyes underwater, my goggles exaggerating every undulation of the pool floor—its straight lines wobbling below me like Medusa's hair, my heart beating steadily, and the morning sun just peeking through the overhead glass panels.

Why did people lie?

I reached the end of the pool, turned around, and started again.

Self-preservation. That was the obvious answer. You lie because you think the truth would be worse. Or because no one would believe you.

My mother lied about knowing what happened to Robbie, about the train portal. She had to, or so she thought. Who would have believed her? A suburban Cassandra screaming nonsense about her dead son.

Down World makes us all into liars in the end, though. Kieren, leaving me for Stephanie because it was easier than looking me in the eye every day and knowing I saw his true self: a scared little boy who had dared his friend to stand in front of an approaching train.

We lie to start over. We lie to be clean.

It's why Adam left me. To start over, to be clean. To live a life he didn't have to hide.

Amalia could slip on a costume, change her makeup, and tell herself she was free to go anywhere in the world. And maybe she was. Maybe she stopped thinking about those rotting books and those tattered costumes buried in her house a long time ago.

Elaheh Farghasian is not who she says she is.

Are any of us?

And me? Was I being honest with myself now? Was I clean?

I stopped in the middle of the pool, dog paddling and trying to catch my breath. I pushed up my goggles and saw the worried face of the lifeguard, a handsome young Asian man who I had noticed here before. He must have seen something he didn't like in my eyes, or in the fact that I had stopped mid-lap, because before I knew it he was in the water and leading me to the ledge.

"Just breathe," he said once he had gotten me sitting up with my feet dangling in the pool.

"Sorry," I muttered through choppy breath.

"Don't be sorry. You all right?"

"I don't know what happened."

"You've been going for an hour. You ran out of steam."

"What?" I asked, for some reason feeling like the more I breathed, the less oxygen I was finding. I looked up and realized that the sun was now fully shining through those overhead windows.

He waved to another lifeguard who was climbing up to the red chair, apparently starting his shift. "Come on," he said to me with a friendly slap on the back. "Let's get you some water."

A few minutes later, I was wrapped up in my towel, sitting in the small office with a Styrofoam cup of water in my hand. A surge of embarrassment finally made its way to my brain and, inevitably, my face.

"I've seen you before," said the lifeguard as he pulled up a chair near me with his own identical cup.

"Yeah, I've been trying to swim most mornings."

"No, I mean in class."

I looked up, trying to place him, and realizing as I did so that I hadn't spoken to anyone from class outside of my small study group yet this semester, though we were almost a month into it. "I'm sorry," I said, though I wasn't sure what for. "Which—"

"Futurism. Professor Sanchez."

"Right," I said, nodding my head stupidly as though I remembered him.

"I'm Jin," he said with a warm smile.

"Marina. Thank you for helping me back there. I'm kind of embarrassed."

"Why?"

"I'm usually a good swimmer." I could feel myself growing warm under the towel.

"Well, you were doing great until the grand finale." He was clearly having a little fun with me, and at least I had the presence of mind to smile. "Do you drink coffee?"

I must've blinked in confusion for a moment at the sudden change in the conversation's direction. I looked around for a coffeemaker. "Um, if you've got some made, I guess."

"No, they don't have any here. Meet me in front in fifteen. I'll take you for coffee."

"Okay," I answered, simply because I couldn't think of any other appropriate response. I stood up next to him, feeling somehow that we should shake hands on the deal. But he turned and headed for the men's locker room, and so I put down my cup and headed to the women's, trying to figure out what just happened.

It took me at least a minute in the shower before I decided that this was probably a date—the closest thing I'd had to one in a year. Is this what normal people did? I honestly couldn't remember. I dried my hair, put on an extra coating of ChapStick, and headed to the front to meet him.

****

Okay, I LOVE reading your theories on where things are going!

Thoughts on Amalia lying? And about Jin? Thank you for VOTING AND COMMENTING! It really helps me get a feel for how these new chapters are being received. XO, Rebecca