I couldn’t see faces, they were always hidden by the masks.  Occasionally, there would be people whose faces I could almost see, but it was really rare.  It was usually only ever babies or small children.  I could even see my own mask when I looked in the mirror.  

Everyone could see me, but I could never see anyone else.  The masks seemed to never disappear.  They hadn’t always been there.  I remember waking up one day and asking everyone why they had masks on.  They would look at me like I was crazy.

Lemm stood out though.  His mask was unusual.  Everyone’s masks had colors.  The colors represented their truths.  Or better yet, how well they could hide them.  Most people had somewhere around 30 or 40 colors on their mask.  Lemm’s had hundreds.  His mask was the one that scared me the most. 

I remember seeing an 8th grader with a mask that had as many colors as Lemm’s once.  Everyone used to love her.  One day they found her holding a bloody knife in front of her parents’ bodies.

I avoided Lemm most days but sometimes he and his gang would throw crumpled paper at me and call me a psycho.  I didn’t think much of it usually.  Once I told them to shut up and he said, “No psycho, I’ll stop when you stop staring at people’s faces.”  I always walked the long way after that.  

Lemm terrified me more than anything.  He was the one who could hide his life better than most people could walk.  

I was never the person Lemm was.  He was always the one with all the friends.  The one who went to all the parties.  The one who raised his hand at every question the teacher asked.  

I was always the person in the background.  The person who sat alone at lunch.  The person who never left their house.  The one who always sat in the back of the class, quietly listening.

Lemm

Herrah was always the one in the background.  She was always the one staring.  She was always the one who had no one.

She was the one who saw through me.  She never said anything though, and never talked to anyone about it either.  I knew I was the main character of this story I had made.  Herrah was the only one who knew about the character that hid behind.  

I hated her.  She was never anyone.  No one ever talked to her.  I was the one everyone loved.  When we were children, I remember playing with her in the Park.  We would run around and she seemed like the prettiest, nicest, most awesome girl I’d ever met.  

Now, it’s as if she had a mask on.  It felt like the last time anyone ever truly saw her, was years ago.  The day she saw the masks; it was the day that led to me becoming what I am.

Herrah

The Next Day

Lemm told everyone about how perfect he was.  I never understood how he hid his truths.  His mask wasn’t like everyone else’s.  Their masks were normal, they all covered their faces and weren’t like his.  

He walked up to me today and asked, “what’d you get on math?”  I told him what I got; when I asked him the same question he lied.  I saw his mask grow.  No one else’s mask did that.  It was like the mask didn’t have any more colors to use, so instead, it grew.  Terrified, I nodded and quickly left.  Afraid of him realizing that I knew.

Lemm

Herrah knew what the others didn’t.  I saw that day how she looked at my bag after I lied.  She knew it somehow.  I didn’t understand how.

I knew it but I refused to believe it.  I was drowning in the lies I had told.  I was drowning in the lies I had to back up.  I wasn’t what I had said.  I was nothing but a liar.  And my brain refused to let me tell the truth.  The wall I had built around myself was collapsing.  I was going to lose all my friends, the people I’d spent most of my life with, and somehow, Herrah was the only one who knew it.  

The day she started ranting about the masks.  She caught my lie.  I didn’t know how, it was like all the other lies she’d never caught before.  She told the entire class the truth.  From that day on I began to despise her.  It was like she thought she was better than me.  

From that day on.  I lied about everything.  If, in reality, I got a 100, I would say I got a 0.  If I got a 0, I got a 100.  If I sat home playing video games all day, I was outside exercising and reading.  If I was outside exercising and reading, I sat home playing video games all day.  If I never told the truth, my lies were the truth, no one could ever tell the difference.

 Herrah

I saw it that day.  

The day Lemm told the truth to everyone.  The day he said that he wasn’t smart, and he wasn’t perfect.  

When he walked up to his gang and, as far as I knew, everyone he knew.  His mask seemed to shrink.  I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me so I continued on with what I was doing.  Then as he started to let go of his lies.  As he started to uncover the truths, for not only them, but also himself.  The colors seemed to leave.  The mask retreated more and more that day.  And when he was done, I saw a face for the first time.  Only for a moment though.  Because as soon as his mask disappeared; his body crumpled into ash.  I never figured out why he crumpled to ash that day.  It was as if when his lies, and his friendships left, so did he.  Few ever tell the whole truth, I guess when he did, he found out why the others don’t.