Author’s Note: Okay, so this is what I’ve been working on lately. I needed 10 pages of my best writing, so I figured I’d do something with Honesty (because nothing else I had was particularly amazing), and this is what came of it. Props to Jenina and Maj here on FP, and my friend Nobu. Thanks, all!

Oh, and I need to have this finished with any and all changes by Friday, so if you feel like reviewing with suggestions that’d be wonderful. Honestly, if by the grace of God I win the prize for this competition (NCTE), it will be largely due to all the help I’ve gotten from you guys. I love you all.

In All Honesty

"It's not fair!" Livy screamed. She threw a piece of the broken doll at her sister. It hit the wall and bounced to the floor, where it shattered.

Honesty stayed silent. Livy, I'm sorry, she wanted to say. She wanted to hug her, to tell her, You're right, Liv, it isn't fair, but I'll make it all better.

But what could she do? Maggie shouldn't have broken the doll. The two girls shouldn't have to share a room. Eight-year-old Livy should have privacy. The doll should be whole. Nothing was the way it should be, and it wasn't fair.

But, inconvenient as it was, this was as good as it got. Honesty wouldn’t mind some privacy of her own, but nine people in a small creaky house was guaranteed to be uncomfortable. For that matter, combining two families under any roof was awkward. But hard times called for sacrifice, and until things changed for the better little Maggie, her brothers, and their mother were there to stay.

So Honesty said nothing. Nothing she could say would fix anything, no matter how hard she wished on shooting stars.

"It's not fair," Livy whispered, and Honesty could only shake her head hopelessly. Livy was right. It really wasn't.

Livy turned and ran up the stairs, her feet hammering the floor, and Honesty jumped as a picture tumbled off the mantle behind her. When she saw which frame had fallen, Honesty closed her eyes in pain. "Damn it, Jack," she whispered. "What do I do?"

She knew without turning it over exactly which picture it was. It was the faded old snapshot of her godfather at her baptism, the one where Jack looked so solemn and proud and was holding back a smile. "You had leather lungs," Jack had told her once. "I was trying not to laugh, but all I could think was 'Atta girl.'"

She picked it up. The glass had cracked, and half was left on the floor next to shards of Livy's porcelain doll. Honesty left the slivers where they fell. She looked at the familiar picture, searching for answers in her godfather’s face.

Honesty stared at him. "Jack," she whispered. "Where are you?"

Jack and his wife had been friends with Honesty's parents since their college days. After graduation they kept in touch, even though Jack and Marcy moved away, and Marcy made sure to visit at least twice a year. But Jack usually had to stay home with their children, so his visits were less frequent—and more precious.

Honesty turned and walked up the stairs, holding the frame to her chest. She walked down the hall, past Livy's closed door, and opened the door to the thin ladder that led up to the attic. It was cold and dusty and the bare hanging bulb tended to come on and off at odd intervals, but it was the only place in the house that was ever truly quiet.

Honesty turned on the light and sat down next to a box full of old picture albums. She pulled a large grey one out from the bottom of the stack. The light flickered off, but she ignored it. She flipped to the first page, and there was Jack.

He was holding her up in the air, tossing and catching her over and over again, and her wide silly grin was matched only by his own. Honesty had been four; the game had sprung up spontaneously from her overflowing energy and his incessant playfulness. Her mother had taken the picture, and a moment after the flash went off Honesty accidentally kicked over a lamp. It shattered, the shade twisting out of shape, and the cord pulled out of the wall with a quick spark.

“Honesty!” her mother snapped, dropping the camera.

“I’m sorry!” she yelped, immediately beginning to cry.

Her mother fumed for a while, but Jack had only smiled and wiped away her guilty tears. “It was my fault, Marie,” he told her mother. Then he went and got a broom. “It’s okay, sweetpea,” he said to Honesty. “We can make a mosaic with the glass! Your mama would like that, wouldn’t she?”

Honesty giggled. She nodded.

“Will you hold the dustpan for me?” Jack asked. And just like that, everything was okay.

Above her, the bulb flicked on again.

Jack was good at that, making problems go away. A few pages later she saw another picture, this one with a slightly-older Honesty splashing Jack in the city pool. Like the last, a photographed smile covered a day full of tears. It was the day before she was to start kindergarten, and Honesty had been terrified.

Even at six, she knew better than to tell her parents she had any hesitations about school. Her mother was a retired English teacher, and her father was a professor of literature at the local private college. They would have been horrified, or so it seemed to her. But she knew she could trust her godfather, her hero.

Jack had taken one look at her and crouched down to her level. “Honesty, what’s wrong?” he asked.

She had bit her lip nervously. Then she leaned forward, on tiptoe, and whispered in his ear. “I’m scared,” she said, and promptly burst into tears.

Jack had calmed her down and taken her seriously. He took time to understand her fears, and then in his typical silly fashion he cheered her up. As always, he made her smile with gentle, jolly teasing and a few nonsensical games. When she stopped crying, they walked hand-in-hand to the swimming pool and played the afternoon away. At the end of the last summer day, all she could think about was how much she adored him. “Jack,” six-year-old Honesty confided, “I think you’re my best friend.”

Seventeen-year-old Honesty turned the page. There was the picture of her sitting in the tulip bed, her hair in pigtails, as she whispered in his ear. Honesty had to laugh. She remembered that day; it had been the first day of spring and she was seven, and Jack hadn’t visited for nearly a year. She had immediately cornered him to drag him off to the garden, where she told him all her secrets. She didn’t remember what the secrets were, but they had been both crucial and completely unimportant. And Jack had listened closely, as if he treasured every word. He was her confidant, and it may have been the only job he ever took seriously. As always, he shared in her joy and relieved any pain. He was her mentor, her best friend, her hero. She pinned all her hopes and dreams and happiness on him.

The bulb flickered and went out.

“When I get big,” she had told Marcy once, “I’m gonna marry somebody just like Jack.”

To her credit, Marcy had refrained from chuckling. She bit her lip for a moment and hid a smile. Then she nodded solemnly and said, “I think that’s a very good idea.” Except, seventeen-year-old Honesty mused, there really was no one else like Jack.

A few pages later, she came across her favorite photograph. Again, it was of her and Jack. More accurately, of their backs. They were sitting on a porch swing, his arm around her shoulders, and it looked as if they were watching the sunset. They weren’t. Jack was mending her first-ever broken heart, and Honesty was remembering the broken lamp of years ago. Jack was good at mending things, or at least turning them into something better. Together they were watching Livy, who was not yet three, as she sat in the grass with only a pull-up on and dug her hands in the dirt.

The light trembled and came on.

“Life was easier when I was little,” ten-year-old Honesty had said quietly. They watched as Livy delightedly threw dirt in the air and watched it rain down again.

Jack had nodded and pulled her close. “You’re right,” he said. “But it’s not all pain and heartbreak.”

She looked at him. “Promise?”

He met her eyes. “Yes,” he said soberly. “The pain never goes away, but there’s joy too. Lots of it.”

And that was that. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and together they spent the evening watching Livy uproot daisies. Childhood was easier. But as long as she had Jack, she knew she would make it through. That was the last picture with Jack, because it was his last visit.

The next picture was of Honesty in an awkward navy suit because she didn’t own any funereal black. In the light of the bare, unsteady, dancing sixty-watt bulb, her solemn expression made her look like a character from an old silent movie––something film noir, without a happy ending. Jack had been hit by a car barely a year after his visit. He died in the hospital, without getting to say goodbye to Marcy or his children. That, Honesty thought, was the most unfair part of all.

The light turned off.

She looked closer at the photograph. There had been a change between this one and the last. Suddenly she wasn’t a kid any more, and the photograph showed it: She was long-legged with sharp wit and disdain and elbows that knocked everything over. But in the picture the almost-teenager in her uncomfortable blue mourning dress was covered in mud. No other children had been there, not even Jack’s, and Honesty saw no reason to have her head patted and her face pinched at by well-meaning old harpies. Livy kept wandering around looking for Jack, because she saw Marcy there, so Honesty took her outside and explained everything as best she could while making mud pies.

The bulb jerked a bit and gave off a wavering light. Honesty sighed.

Childhood really was easier, Honesty remembered thinking. Livy had smiled and put a violet on top of her sister’s mud pie. “Here go!” she had chirped. “A flower, for Jack.” She looked at her sister. “Jack likes flowers. Right? Like the flowers inside. Ever’body likes flowers.” She patted it contentedly into the pie. And Honesty had thought she might never be able to look at flowers the same way again.

Years passed. Honesty tried to live by all the things Jack had taught her, but she still felt heartbroken and lost. “Where’s the joy, Jack?” seventeen-year-old Honesty whispered. “You promised me joy.” For the hundredth time, the light went out.

Honesty glared up at it in annoyance. Then she sighed, her anger and lungs deflating at equal speeds. She didn’t have enough energy to be angry, not even at a lightbulb. She flipped the page and it fluttered on again, weakly.

It was her twelfth birthday, a few weeks later. God in heaven, she had hated that day. Even in the picture, she wasn’t smiling. She gave the camera a cold glare. Honesty hadn’t smiled much since the funeral, but on her birthday she was absolutely livid. Her parents were trying too hard, with lots of people she barely liked and gifts she knew were expensive and a fancy store-bought cake. They were either trying to cheer her up or buy her happiness, and either way it was too much. Jack wouldn’t have. Never. He’d have done something quiet and astonishing and and so perfectly Jack. He would have known exactly what she needed; he would have understood; he would have done a better job. Jack always did. That was the beginning of the end of whatever ease she once had with her parents.

Three years later, Honesty stood stiff and indifferent on the high school stage. It was her sophomore year, and she had won a prestigious academic award. She was emotionless, her face entirely taken up by dark eyes and harsh angles, looking above the crowd as her name was called. Her father had snapped the picture, and for once he had caught her quiet, distant disgust.

“Honesty,” he had asked her afterwards, “aren’t you happy?”

Her mother had smiled and laughed. “Of course she’s happy! Look at this, she won the most prestigious award the school gives out, and she’s only a sophomore! Who wouldn’t be happy?”

No. No, she wasn’t happy. Jack had told her she would succeed in every part of life, that she could go to the moon and back, and others seemed to think she had. But it certainly didn’t feel like it. Jack had told her he would be very proud. Standing on that stage, staring out above everyone, she found that hard to believe. There was little virtue in being the best of the worst. Honesty hated her boring, small-minded, pointless little school. The only reward she saw for her hard work was that it burnt off frustration. Yes, she’d won a ridiculous wooden plaque, but what good did that do? Wasn’t success supposed to involve happiness? Honesty wasn’t happy. With Jack, she always had been, but she wasn’t any more. Where had all her happiness gone?

The bulb fluttered and went out.

Honesty sighed and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was not going to cry. Not today. She was too tired for tears. There was too much worth crying about, and if she started now she might never stop. She flipped to the back of the album. There was one more picture, taken just a few weeks before. It was of Honesty, on the senior class trip, glaring at––Jack?

No. It was Sam, the carbon copy of his father. He looked so much like Jack, but he behaved so differently. He was going to be the death of her, Honesty thought. She looked at him and saw the person she’d always adored. Then he opened his mouth, and he was so arrogant and self-absorbed it hurt. He was seductive, insensitive, occasionally even cruel.

She had been angry at him to begin with, the day they went on the class trip to the city. He had been up to his typical antics, being impossibly disrespectful to his mother––who Honesty adored––and tipping an imaginary hat and winking at Honesty when she stared at him in disbelief. How could any son of Jack’s be so...provocative? How could he treat his mother with so little respect? Marcy was a good mother, fairly attentive and visibly loving towards her children. Five-year-old Maggie and the middle child, Isaac, both turned out pleasant. It was only Sam who was so impossible.

The day only got worse as it continued. Sam took every opportunity to whisper tempting improprieties in her ear, and damn him but she couldn’t resist. He seemed to fully enjoy the hold he had over her; she wished she could shove him into a fountain and tell him off, but somehow she never quite managed to shake off the sound of his voice and the feel of his breath against her ear.

And she couldn’t escape. He’d been living in her house for the past three months, along with Marcy and his siblings, ever since Marcy lost her job. There was nowhere she could go that he couldn’t follow, and nothing she said or did affected him in any way. But Lord, he had every imaginable hold over her. What defense did she have when one look at him melted her heart and one word from him shattered it into millions of pieces?

Honesty sighed. How had Jack spawned this wretched boy? What the devil was the matter with Sam?

The attic door opened, and after a moment a familiar head appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Dinner time,” Sam said coolly.

Speak of the devil. “How did you know where I was?” Honesty asked softly, looking at the ceiling. After a moment she glanced over at him, and he shrugged. Sam always knew.

He turned to make his way back down the ladder. Honesty picked up the frame beside her. She looked at his father, then at Sam. Their eyes were different, she noticed. Jack’s were wider, and he had a freckle right in the middle of the deep crows-foot by his left eye that formed whenever he smiled. Sam’s eyes were more blue than green, and unlike his father’s wide, frequent grins Sam’s smiles were rare and seemed almost fake, as if their purpose was more to provoke than for joy itself. Jack’s smiles had always been real.

He wasn’t Jack.

Sam wasn’t Jack. There was no Jack any more. She had been looking for Jack since she was eleven years old, and she finally had to accept it: There was no Jack.

The light flicked on. It burned strongly.

“You’re not Jack,” Honesty said suddenly.

Sam stopped. “Thanks for noticing,” he said evenly. “Took you a while. I’ll chalk it up to poor eyesight.”

There was no Jack. Honesty started to cry, and Sam turned back. And for a moment, they met eyes and understood.

I miss him, her eyes said.

I do too, his eyes whispered back.

She nodded. “Spaghetti?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said, and he left.

Honesty looked down at the picture of Jack in the broken-glass frame. Then she put it in the box with all the other pictures. She loved Jack. She would always love Jack, but he was gone. It was time to let him become a memory, not an epic hero. No one could compare to him, and she wasn’t going to find him. She had to stop searching.

Honesty stood up and brushed away her tears. The sudden motion knocked down the still-lit hanging bulb, and it shattered. Honesty could only stare at it. A part of her wanted to dissolve into tears and cry all over again, but she had cried enough. Staring at the shards of glass, Honesty spoke aloud to Jack for the last time.

“I’ll miss you.”

She left the glass where it lay.