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    Truth and Other Lies
    Truth and Other Lies
    Truth and Other Lies
    Ebook137 pages2 hours

    Truth and Other Lies

    By Foxglove Lee

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever wanted to get noticed? Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you worked or how hard you tried, nobody in the entire world cared what you did? Well, what if someone famous—and we’re talking Oprah-famous, here—noticed you for the one thing you wish you could hide? For your one big secret...

    That’s exactly what happens to 18-year-old Kenneth McIntyre when television guru Prahna Mehta hails his self-published novel as the next bestseller. Little do his new fans know Truth and Other Lies wasn’t written by Kenny at all... and it isn’t fiction. Kenny’s been keeping secrets for years. Sometimes he feels like he’s lying to everybody he loves.

    When Kenny gets swept into stardom, how will he hide the secrets he’s kept for years? And, if his lies are exposed, will anyone stay by his side?

    14+ for sexuality, language, adult situations, alternative MMF relationship

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEvernight Teen
    Release dateAug 10, 2014
    ISBN9781771309066
    Truth and Other Lies
    Author

    Foxglove Lee

    Foxglove’s fiction has been called SPECTACULAR by Rainbow Reviews and UNFORGETTABLE by USA Today!Foxglove Lee is a former aspiring Broadway Baby who now writes fiction for children, teens and young adults. She tries not to be too theatrical, but her characters often take over. Her debut novel, Tiffany and Tiger’s Eye, is set in the 80s and features an evil doll!

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      Book preview

      Truth and Other Lies - Foxglove Lee

      Published by Evernight Teen at Smashwords

      www.evernightteen.com

      Copyright© 2014 Foxglove Lee

      ISBN: 978-1-77130-906-6

      Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

      Editor: Melissa Hosack

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

      This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      TRUTH AND OTHER LIES

      Foxglove Lee

      Copyright © 2014

      Chapter One

      Hospitals are the worst.

      Why would anybody want to die in a place like this? Turquoise walls, the sharp scent of urine and peroxide, machines making clicking noises and nurses who might as well be machines themselves? Major fail. Everybody should have the option to die like that old dude in Soylent Green— surrounded by their favorite images, in a room filled with great music. That’s how Kenny would rather go.

      That’s how Millie should get to go, too. Instead, she was trapped inside these four walls, pretty much confined to bed. She always said she felt like a prisoner. Kenny would do anything to see his best friend up and living life, but with every dark week that passed, it became clearer in his mind that Millie’s only freedom would come in death.

      And she wasn’t even twenty years old.

      Who brought the cactus? Kenny asked.

      Oh. Millie looked exhausted, like it took all her strength just to turn toward the window. When her eyes fixed on the plant, a familiar little grin grew across her lips. I don’t know.

      You don’t know? Kenny struggled to keep himself from touching the prickers just to see if they were sharp enough to draw blood. Maybe it was zoomed in by aliens while you were asleep.

      She shot him a sleepy smirk. It’s from that girl, June, from school.

      The girl who always wore, like, vintage pin-up dresses?

      Millie’s pasty complexion flushed. Yeah, that’s her.

      Millie, don’t tell me you’ve got a girlfriend! Kenny picked up the cactus and teased her with it. Kiss me, Millie. Marry me! Make sweet love to me!

      You are such a turd. Millie scratched around the icky-looking infusion site on her arm. Doesn’t it figure? A pretty girl finally shows some interest and here’s me on my deathbed. Why couldn’t she have noticed I was alive before we graduated?

      Kenny’s heart slumped. Why did she have to say things like deathbed? How did she even know you were in the hospital? I thought we were keeping tight-lipped about it.

      Millie raised a fine black eyebrow. Ask your mother.

      Has she been blabbing? I’ll kill her.

      You probably shouldn’t do that, Millie teased. Mostly because I love your mom more than I love my own mom.

      I know. Most people probably wouldn’t understand, but Kenny did.

      June works in the supermarket near your house, and your mom recognized her.

      Well, that girl is hard to miss. Kenny had to admit, June was a knock-out. In fact, if you ever get tired of her, send her my way.

      Yeah, right.

      I’ll give you a million dollars.

      Millie laughed. You don’t have a million dollars. Anyway, your mom only said something because she figured June and I were friends. Don’t be so hard on her, okay?

      Kenny nodded. He knew how lucky he was to have the kind of mom who would take his best friend into their home when her parents kicked her out. Mom didn’t care that Millie was queer—all she cared about was that there was a fifteen-year-old girl who had nowhere to go, and she could provide a room, three meals a day, and most importantly, unconditional love.

      So, if Kenny’s mom was so open and accepting, why couldn’t he come out to her? Millie came out to homophobic parents three years ago, and he couldn’t even admit he was queer now, at eighteen? What a wimp.

      Kenny’s stomach clenched the way it always did when he thought about coming out to his mother. He turned his attention back to Millie’s life instead. Is June really your girlfriend?

      Rolling her eyes, Millie said, Yeah right. Don’t I wish? She just came by because your mom told her I was dying.

      You’re not dying, Mill. Kenny set the spikey plant back on the windowsill. It’s not funny when you say things like that.

      She regarded him gently from across the room, and she smiled like the Mona Lisa. He always wanted to talk about stuff, and she always didn’t. Millie was a very private person, especially when it came to her health. She probably told Kenny more than she told anyone else, and she barely told him anything.

      He changed the subject, trying to keep things light. Cactuses are bad feng shui, you know.

      Are they?

      You should know. You’re Chinese.

      Not according to my parents. China has officially disowned me. Her laughter turned into a coughing fit, and when Kenny poured her a glass of water, she grabbed it from him, gratefully. See what happens when I talk about my family? I swear to God they put a curse on me. Every time I even think about them, I take one step closer to death.

      That might just be the cancer, Kenny said, trying to be funny.

      That was a fail, judging by his best friend’s non-reaction.

      Maybe cactuses really are bad luck, Millie said, filling the silence.

      Kenny didn’t know how to respond. Is it cactuses or cacti? What’s the plural?

      You tell me, writer-boy. Suddenly, Millie’s eyes lit up and she pointed to the laptop sitting at the foot of her hospital bed. I just remembered—I have a surprise for you. You’re never gonna believe it, never in a million years.

      Believe what? Kenny hadn’t seen his best friend this happy since… well, he really couldn’t remember when.

      He passed her the computer, and she opened it eagerly, like a child. Kenny, oh my God, I don’t even know how to tell you. It’s been killing me, keeping this a secret. How should I tell you?

      I don’t know, he said. Had she somehow earned back the $1,247 he’d loaned her to buy that computer? That would be a nice surprise. Just come right out and tell me.

      Okay. She covered her face with both hands, like she was too excited to see the world. Then she stole them away, looked Kenny straight in the eye, and said, I wrote a novel!

      All the blood drained from his body. She did what? His muscles went slack, and he fell into the one chair in the room.

      I told you you’d never believe it! Millie giggled like a pixie. "A novel! A whole entire novel! It’s all your fault, you know. I mean, your Cosmic Journey series is so cool, and you’re always talking about how easy it is to self-publish your stuff on Mastadon, so one day I was just like, Okay, I’m totally gonna do this. And I did!"

      Wow. Kenny’s head pounded. He felt dizzy, like he was dreaming. Millie had finished a novel before him? But he was the writer. He was…

      And I want you to be the first to read it, Millie said. I want you to be my editor. I mean, it’s probably terrible, but you’re such a good writer that you can fix any problems. Right?

      How could he possibly respond when jealousy was eating him alive? He’d wanted to be a writer since he was five years old. For as long as he knew Millie, she’d never shown any interest in the craft. She’d always been an avid reader, but was that really all it took? She just sat down, started typing, and wrote an entire novel?

      Well, how long is it? Kenny asked.

      Millie looked at her computer. One hundred and twenty thousand words, give or take a few hundred.

      One hundred and twenty thousand? Kenny blurted. None of the stories in my series are even ten thousand words, and those take me ages to write.

      When Millie looked up at him, her big brown eyes widened to the extreme. She looked like a sickly bunny rabbit, begging for just a little scrap of lettuce. That’s when guilt took over. His best friend in the world had just asked him—on her deathbed!—to read her book, and all he could think about was himself? What a jerk!

      When did you have the time to write a book? Kenny asked.

      She held her hands up, pointing around the hospital room. What else am I going to do in here?

      In here? But you’ve been in less than a month, and I thought you said you’ve been sleeping all day.

      Mostly, yeah, but when I’m not sleeping, and when I feel good enough, I write. She clapped her hands. And now it’s done. Want to read it? I’ll email it to you.

      The angel and the devil on Kenny’s shoulders battled it out. When did you finish writing?

      Just this morning, and then June stopped by and I totally forgot because… I mean, honestly, June is gorgeous.

      Yeah… Kenny’s brain raced like a hamster on a wheel. So, you mean you just wrote it and you haven’t even revised it yet?

      She sat straight up in bed, batting her lashes. Revised it?

      Well, yeah. Before I send my Cosmic Journey stories to Mr. Cochran, I give it a few days, then I read them over and make sure there are no plot holes or inconsistencies. I clean up the manuscript as much as I can even before I show it to an editor.

      Oh, I don’t need to do that, Millie said with a dismissive chuckle. "I already know it’s

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