Pants on Fire

I remember it like it was yesterday. We lived in the Boondocks out in Berlin in this little cabin so basically the only fun we had was spending time with each other. That day it was my older brother, Lucas, and me. My mom had a friend over named Jen. Jen had been her friend for basically our whole lives. Now we had water behind our house, it was kind of a Brackish type of water, but we had a little John boat we would take out sometimes. That day it was sunny and beautiful. My mama and Jen decided to go out on the boat and leave me and Lucas at the house. Now before I get into it, I want to clarify that I was about eleven years old, and Lucas was 12. We weren't too happy that she left us instead of letting us ride so we made a unilateral decision to take her new car for a drive. She had just got this car a few months before. It was a fire red Mustang with a matte black strip down the side. I remember looking through the house for her keys and when we found them, we were both thinking "this will show her". We ran out of the house giggling like two wild hyenas and Lucas told me to get in the driver's seat. I hopped up in there and took in my surrounding for a moment. I had never even been in the driver's seat of a car, so I didn't really know what to do. We fastened our seatbelts and giggled amongst ourselves. Lucas told me to reverse the car and start backing out of the driveway. Even though I didn't know exactly what he meant, I nervously began to do just that. I shifted the car into reverse and slowly let off the break and the car began to roll slowly backwards as we laughed. Even though we were going about 4 miles an hour it felt like we were flying. We were basking in that adrenaline when all of a sudden we heard the loud scraping of metal. I hit the brakes instantly and we both looked at each other in horror. In a panic, I quickly put the car back in drive and parked the car back where my mom had it parked before we decided to go GTA on her vehicle. We sat there silently for a moment and then we both got out. As soon as Lucas got out, I could see pure devastation on his face. I braced myself and walked over to the passenger side of the car. I couldn't believe my eyes and a sinking feeling of regret consumed my body as I realized we hit something on the passenger side. By something I mean a wooden pole. Now like I said before, it FELT like we were flying but in reality, we had only traveled about 200 ft before the light pole ripped that matte black stripe off. We both stared at it for a few moments, saying nothing at all. Then my brain began to race with all the possible outcomes we would face when she got home and saw this. I knew that my mom did not often even look at the passenger side because she was always the driver so I figured she wouldn't see it for a while. That day we made a pact to never speak of this again. And on the day that Mom potentially discovered it we would lie and deny. The guilt ate us up for weeks, but we remembered out pact and never mentioned it. One day my mother and I were walking out of Sally's Beauty Supply when she caught a glimpse of the passenger side. "OH MY GOD!" she said. Instantly my heart sank down to my socks, but I knew I had to put on the best poker face. "OH MY GOD!" I said, to seem just as surprised as her. "SOMEBODY HIT MY CAR AND DIDN'T EVEN STOP WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!" she exclaimed. My heart began to float out of my socks back up into my chest because it seemed that our sibling joyride would go down in history unnoticed. That lasted a few moments before I heard her dialing up her phone to call the police to report a hit and run. Now my heart sank so low it slipped right over my socks, off my shoes and onto the black pavement of the parking lot. I was panicking but still keeping my poker face. The cops arrived and she told them we had been in Sally's for only 20 minutes and whoever was parked next to her must have scraped the black stripe off as that backed out. I sat in the car while all of this went down feeling terrible for what we had done and even more terrible that my one lie had taken us this far. Although I was feeling the guilt I knew if I told her the truth my punishment would be so much worse. I never knew my one lie would unravel into all of this mess. Mom finished up with her report and returned to the car. She was upset and I was upset too. When we returned home, I softly told my brother what had happened. We debated on coming clean but as I said before, we knew the punishment would only be worse now that we waited. So, we again agreed that our pact would remain a secret we would take to the grave and 12 years later it still remains just that. I was always told that when you tell one little white lie it turns into a web of lies. I never understood it until that day. Even the smallest little white lie creates a web because we have to continue lying to maintain the original lie we told. Since then, I literally cannot tell a lie. Not even a small one. The guilt still eats me up and my pants are still singed from being on fire.

Written by CateTheGr8