Fourteen by C.M. Smith (short story to read .txt) 📕

turned and looked in the mirror and placed my palms on my stomach. I spread my hands, stretching my skin until it was flat, and turned sideways. My stomach was falsely flat now, but my butt still stuck out more than what was considered “ideal” for a teenage girl. My arms were flabby as well, and I wore long-sleeved shirts no matter what the weather, just to cover them up. My thighs were thick and at eighteen years old, I had cellulite regardless how much I ran. The only decently thin part of my body was my calves. I did this every time I took a shower, imagining how I’d look if I were skinny. It only made me feel disappointed, disgusted with myself, and upset. Today, I just didn’t care. Today, I accepted that I looked like this, and while I wouldn’t be a beauty queen at any point in my life, this was me. Right now, that was enough.

I dropped my hands from my stomach and turned from the mirror, leaning down and testing the water temperature before I pulled on the lever and hopped in.

Afterward, I stepped out, grabbed a towel from the cabinet underneath the sink, and wrapped it around me. I grabbed my clothes from the floor and kicked my shoes out into the hallway as I walked into my bedroom. Tossing my clothes into the wicker basket by my closet, I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and long-sleeved back shirt. With a towel, I dried my hair, ran my brush through it, and walked downstairs in time to hear a knock at the door.

Pulling at the ends of my shirt, I took a deep breath to prepare myself and pulled open the door. His hair was wet, either from sweat or a shower, and he was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn to school—a white t-shirt, black zip-up hoodie, and a pair of dark blue jeans.

“Hi.” He shifted his book bag on his shoulder and looked down at his feet.

“Hi,” I said, stepping out of the way and letting him in.

I closed the door, skirted around him and started toward the kitchen.

“We can work in here, I guess,” I said, snatching my bag from the floor, walking into the kitchen, and setting it in a chair before going over to the refrigerator. “Would you like anything to drink?”

“What do you have?”

I looked behind me to see that he was standing at the table, his bag on the floor and his hands resting on the chair he stood behind.

“Water, iced tea, and soda.”

“Water.”

I closed the refrigerator after grabbing a bottle of iced tea for myself. I placed his drink in front of him, moved my book bag from the chair, and sat down. I set my iced tea down and unzipped my bag, grabbing my human physiology textbook and notebook and setting it on the table.

“We need at least ten volunteers,” I said, flipping open my notebook and handing him the project information. “Since I don’t know ten people, I guess that’s your job.”

“You know ten people, Arianna,” he said, grabbing the paper and reading over it.

“Would any of them be willing to help me out?” I asked dryly, looking up at him and tilting my head to the side.

He looked at me over the edge of the paper, his eyes trailing back to the words in front of him.

“I was thinking that we should try it out on each other first.” I played with the edges of my notebook, keeping my eyes on the middle of the table. “So that we know what we’re looking for.”

“All right,” he agreed. “We have to write a paper, too. Right?”

“Yes. I can do that if you’ll get the volunteers.”

“I can handle the responsibility of writing a paper, Arianna.”

He glared at me, and I instinctively slid down in my seat.

“I’m just trying to make this easier for you. The less you have to deal with me, the better, right?” I said with a voice laced with sarcasm as I gave him a fake smile that bordered on a sneer.

“It’s a joint project,” he said through his teeth. “I’m capable of doing more than finding fucking volunteers for this shit.”

I held my hands up in mock surrender and feigned innocence. “Geez. Didn’t mean to offend. Sor-ry.”

“We can split the paper,” he said, snapping the pages down on the table. “We’ll work on it together.”

He bent over to open his bag, pulling out a notebook and a pen of his own. He flipped it open to a blank page and tapped his pen on it. I did the same, pulling a pen out from my bag and immediately drew the chart that I’d seen on the webpage.

The whole idea of this type of lie detector test had to do with the way the body reacted when someone was lying. For example, when people lied, they usually tensed up, their facial expression changed, their voice changed in pitch and their entire body stiffened. When people told the truth, they were more relaxed and easygoing. The website had said to make a chart with three truths on one side and three lies on the other. One person had to hold out his arm while the other pushed down on it as he told either a lie or the truth, and it was the asker’s job to watch for the rest of the signs. The way the body reacted determined whether the person was telling the truth or not.

“Do you want to go first?” I asked keeping my eyes centered on the page as I wrote what I liked.

Running. Classical music. Reading.

“I guess so.”

I wrote my dislikes in the second column.

High school. Mosquitoes. Sun.

I looked up to see that he was writing things down as well, briefly wondering what he most disliked about his life. He seemed to have everything.

“Done,” he said, setting the pen down on his notebook and looking over at me.

We both stood.

“We should do this on the