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Back Love and Other Lies Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Imagine a girl
  4. Prologue
  5. The Foreigner
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. The Skeptic
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. The Spectator
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. The Assassin
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-One
  40. Thirty-Two
  41. Thirty-Three
  42. Thirty-Four
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. Thirty-Nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. The Hunter
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Imagine a girl
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. About the Author
  60. Also by Ben McPherson
  61. About the Publisher

“If it’s about me being a fascist, Mum, I’m really not.”

“No one believes for a moment that you’re a fascist.”

“Dad does. I’m going to play Battle Royale.”

Elsa watched as Vee sloped from the room. She turned to me. “Well, at least we know it wasn’t Licia.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard, that Elsa could not possibly mean what she had said. But her eyes told me I had not misheard.

“You seriously thought it could be Licia on those sites?” I said.

“I’m relieved it wasn’t. Vee’s so smart and so cynical. She’ll figure out the problems with what those men believe. With Licia I would be truly concerned. She is too easily overwhelmed by other people’s arguments. She’s so out of place in the modern world.”

“Licia’s not one of life’s losers, Elsa.”

“Really? I’m not sure that’s how she feels about herself, Cal. The modern world is cruel to the unexceptional and the unbeautiful.”

“She’s both beautiful and exceptional.”

Elsa was looking at me candidly. She raised an eyebrow.

“Fine,” I said. “She’s a doer, not a thinker.”

“She has twenty-three followers on Instagram. That tells you how the world sees her, Cal.”

We had tried to push Licia toward rebellion, but she had remained dutiful and devoted. She helped about the house; she carried out the trash and washed the dishes and did her homework, always diligent, always slow. She completed not only her own chores but Vee’s too, singing all the while, though Vee would not let Licia near her schoolwork.

When Licia first began to attend a house church, in the northern D.C. suburbs, we wondered if she was growing away from us. But if anything it made her more devoted. She would come into my study while I was working, empty my wastepaper from the basket, then ask if there was anything she could do to make my life easier, if her attitude was all it could be.

“At her age, I was lying to my parents and hanging with the bands at the Rockefeller,” Elsa said.

“And we should be glad she isn’t living your life.”

Licia only ever fought with Vee, and every time it was Vee who provoked her. Little Vee, to whom everything came so easily, who at fourteen knew so much more about the world than her older sister. “C-minus,” she would whisper into Licia’s ear. “D-plus.” And Licia’s eyes would fill with furious tears, and she would fly at her sister, and tear at her, and Vee would give as good as she got.

Ten minutes later they would be the best of friends again.

Sixteen