The Story of Emily, Part 1.

There was a girl who was far too young for adult concepts, but children start remarkably early, nowadays.

Emily was shy. She had been shuffled through three different schools – one per grade. Eight years old and going into the third grade, her only friends (or so it seemed) were the make-believe ones she’d constructed. She was imaginative, and clever; she would write out her daydreams by hand, every night, in a journal she hid under her mattress. When it would fill up, she’d ask for a new one, and over time she had filled so many that her mattress was a good inch higher than it should be.

She came from a busy family; a mother who worked full-time, to put food on the table. A father who was nearly absentee, a volunteer teacher running classes down at the community center or hosting various clubs in their home. An older sister who, at thirteen, was starting to find her rebellious streak. A younger brother, at five, just entering kindergarten, and not dealing very well with the separation anxiety.

Regardless, Emily was not a lonely girl. She found all the company she needed in her own mind, as neglected children are wont to do, and found that she preferred their imaginary company to what real children provided.

The warfare among children was more conniving and brutal than one might expect – unless, of course, the reader lived it, and can recall it with clarity. Emily learned that the playground was a place of fragile allegiances. There was a fairly even divide between packs of friends, with stragglers that went between immature cliques. Emily, as ‘the quiet one’, was one of those stragglers. Girls who were friends one day would be ex-friends the next, and Emily would spend her recess going back and forth, conveying messages.

Dutiful, unassuming, and all but invisible. The perfect child spy.

She blended, and while nothing stayed secret for very long, with children, Emily was privy to everything. And, alongside her daydreams, she would write down the things she’d learned in her journal. As time wore on and she moved on from grade to grade, she became more involved with real people…and more involved with their secrets. Soon, her diaries were filled with nothing but gossip.

It was around that time that Emily began to lie.