Page 6 of The Truths We Burn

Tough love isn’t always popular, but it prepares you for the life you are set to lead in a town like this.

They should know better.

I know Mary wants to snap back at me, bite with some snarky remark that she hasn’t even come up with yet, but she won’t. Because as mean as she gets, she knows I can always get worse.

Because I’m Sage Donahue.

Rich bitch was pumped straight into my umbilical cord in the womb. I’m the cheer captain and everyone’s favorite sweetheart.

Man-eater.

Heartless.

I’d become everything I needed to survive the standards of Ponderosa Springs and then some.

Lizzy Flannigan and Mary Turgid have been the perfect set of friends for the world I live in. Superficial to the core, but great for projecting a certain image.

Most little girls look for friends who have similar tastes. They enjoy the same dolls or like playing dress-up, but when you are groomed to have an eye for how others perceive you, you search out those with the most to lose.

My mother taught me early that your image is everything. Your reputation here will make or break you anywhere. You do what needs to be done, no matter the consequence.

You smile, no matter what they do to you. No matter the pain that is inflicted, because no one cares.

Not even the woman who gave birth to me.

I’ve become very good at keeping my inner self hidden from those around me, only allowing them to see what I want them to, making myself just trustworthy enough that I’ve become a collector of sorts.

A connoisseur of secrets, bones buried beneath the floorboards of people’s closets. I have dirt on nearly everyone here, and they know if they cross me, it would take no time for me to shine a light on them.

In seventh grade, Lizzy came over bawling, pouring her guts out about how her dad is a massive alcoholic who spends too much extra time on his business trips, making sure to stop at all the illicit clubs on the way back. She was so red-faced, so frustrated that her mother would just sit there, knowing all of this, aware of every single indiscretion, and never mumbled a single word.

She vowed that night to never let a man disrespect her, refusing to marry someone who stomped on her like that. Which I personally don’t think is a problem because I also happen to know Lizzy isn’t into men at all.

During a drunken sleepover, while Mary was passed out, Liz felt like sharing more secrets. I respected her for being able to say it, and I hated that she knew she had to hide it. But here, she’d be crucified.

And Mary? Oh, Mary.

She’s smart as a tack, will probably be a neuroscientist one day, if she can pass the drug tests. Because the last time I checked, it’s frowned upon to have Adderall in your system when you’re not prescribed it.

The entirety of her life, she’s cared about her grades, holding her intelligence higher than anything else about her. If that was ever threatened? I felt sorry for the person doing the threatening. Freshman year, she got a C on a math test. Not a big deal for some, but to her? To her parents? It might as well have been an expulsion from school.

So when her eyes refused to stay open from the hours of studying, she found her golden ticket. Now, she disappears during free periods to meet the sketchy dealers beneath the bleachers of the football field.

We all have weights on our shoulders here, each of us lying beneath our own pendulum that sways closer and closer each time we slip up.

It’s the reason they’ll never try to dethrone me as Miss Ponderosa Springs. They’re terrified I’ll spill their secrets. Because the Sage they know will be merciless when it comes to getting what I want.

There is a power in that. Knowing everyone’s secrets, all their truths.

Even more power in knowing not a single soul knows any of mine.

The more secrets I have on everyone else, the less likely they are to find out mine. And mine are going to stay buried.

“Yeah, you’re right.” She sighs, smiling tightly. “Just a mini freak-out. It’s just nerve-racking,” She picks up her glue stick and continues to stick plastic letters to the thin white piece of cardboard, internally plotting on how to kill me somehow. “Not knowing if I’ll get into Hollow Heights.”

I scoff. “Then you go to any other Ivy League college in the country. It’s not the only one in the world, Mary.”

“You know just as well as I do you could major in janitorial activities there and come out making six figures. Getting in is everything, Sage.”