Stephanie Jones on: Deception

I was lying in bed with my bear on one arm and Alex's sweatshirt in the other. My mother was snoring like usual in the bed next to me, when I got up. I went through my mother's purse looking for a phone card to call Alex, and instead, what did I find in my mother's center compartment?

A half package of cigarettes and a lighter. I held a hand to my mouth and I began to gag. In frustration, I grabbed her flight information and shredded it. Finding the biggest piece I scribbled messily the message that ran through my mind.

"You lied to me. I was so proud of you too."

I went into hysterics on the lawn in our backyard. I sobbed loudly and sat on the ground rocking back and forth holding Alex's sweatshirt close to my chest. I looked up to the sky and asked why, if there was a god, he would do this.

When he answered his phone, I asked him to 'talk a jumper off it's ledge'. He did.

She 'quit' on Christmas Eve when I was 14 as my Christmas present. It's all I wanted that year.

She was dying of lung failure before she 'stopped'.

Who knows how long she's been lying.

That bitch.