Page 24 of Nothing But the Truth

Daphne, Daphne, Daphne.

Daphne could lie, of course she could. Daphne could do anything.

She let her mind settle into this woman she’d created over a decade before. She fit like an old glove, and Lucy’s hopes soared for the first time since she woke up ready to conquer her day.

Oliver knocked on her doorframe, and she whirled to face him, ready to declare in all her Daphne glory that his shirt was green!

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Oliver greeted.

“What?”

He came in the door and reached for her. “You should definitely sit down. You look like you’re about to collapse.” He shoved her into the chair still warm from Zeke.

“Oliver! W-what are you doing?”

As she said it, that telltale clammy rise of panic that gripped her body right before she threw up took hold of her, and the room spun.

“Are you going to puke? What did Zeke do to you?”

She held a hand to her forehead and felt it blistering with heat. “Nothing. He just told me how to become a character, so I got the idea that I’d pretend to be someone else, and maybe she’d be able to lie. I feel like I have a fever.”

“And you look like death, so this ain’t it. I think the universe is saying no.”

She went to roll her eyes but realized they’d left the plane of reason. Oliver’s theory made as much sense as anything, so she might as well take it seriously.

Hoping the truth would cure her sudden sickness, she pushed herself from the chair and announced, “I’m not pretending to be anyone else. I am me, Lucy Green.”

The nausea vanished; the fever broke. The room stopped spinning.

She locked eyes with Oliver, and they silently agreed neither of them was insane; they had been witness to something inexplicable but real.

Oliver timidly cleared his throat. “Still got time to make it to that bar?”

“I—”

An email alert sounded from her computer. She was ready to sprint to the bar if it would fix her day, but she couldn’t leave without checking anything urgent.

She rounded her desk, and that wave of nausea came hauling back—but not from an attempted lie.

An email from Jonathan stared her in the face.

“Oh god.”

“What? You look like you’re about to puke again.”

“Jonathan wants to see me in his office. Right now.”

Oliver’s mouth rounded into an O, but no sound came out.

Lucy grasped for any scenario where this development was not bad news, and she came up with precisely zero.

“Want me to come with you?” Oliver asked.

“Yes.”

He waved his hands and flushed. “Well, we both know I can’t actually do that.”

“Then why did you offer?”