Scandal: The Lies We Tell (Volume 1) Read Online Free PDF

my senior year of high school was when everything changed. You know about the Morville Massacre, or at least you think you do. Everyone in the country was glued to their televisions that day. I was inside, watching my friends die.”
       Nick reacted for the first time, the smallest of flinches. “Charley, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
       “I want to,” I said a little too urgently. “I’ve never been able to talk about it in the past, but now that I’ve started I need to finish.”
       Nick wisely topped off my glass and sat back again.
       “It was a Monday, the Monday before prom and one month before graduation.” Just saying those words took me all the way back to that day. “People were excited. About prom and about the weather. It was the first really warm day of the year. Tim was wearing his baseball jersey because his team had a game that day.
       “We were both in the lunchroom but we weren’t sitting at the same table. Tim was a couple of tables away, but close enough that I could hear him laughing. I barely noticed the first shot. It was loud in there with kids laughing and yelling and lunch trays clanging. It wasn’t until the secon d shot when someone screamed that I realized something was wrong.”
       No w that I was in the middle of it, I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. The words were coming out without any thought and the story told itself. The shooter, Ben Talbot, marching through the room weighed down with guns and ammunition. People bleeding and crying and screaming. Tim running over and shielding me, pushing me toward the exit when Ben’s back was turned.
      “I was halfway down the hall before I realized Tim wasn’t behind me. I stopped for just a second, wanting to run back for him but my body wouldn’t let me. I froze- completely locked-up by fear. The next thing I knew, a SWAT guy had thrown me over his shoulder and rushed me out of the building.”
       I was about to reach for the bottle again but noticed that we had drained it, which was probably for the best. I had already developed a decent buzz.
       “Tim was dead- shot in the back while he got me out of the room. Twenty-four other kids died that day. I was the only one that made it out of the lunchroom alive.” It had been years since I thought about any of them. Remembering Tim was emotional enough. “So that’s my story. Can we talk about something else now?”
       Nick had been looking at me with that all-too-familiar look of pity that I hated. I knew that when people heard my story, they immediately saw me as a victim, someone that had been damaged by a terrible event. I never thought of myself as a victim but rather as someone who had been witness to a tragedy. Tim and those twenty-four other kids had been victims, not me.
       “Sure.” Nick was quick to snap out of the pity-party. “Something you should know about tomorrow’s wedding. The groomsmen will be wearing kilts.”
       “All of them?” I sat up in excitement.
       “All of them.”
       “What about the groom?”
       “I’m glad you asked. Craig will not be wearing a kilt.”
       I slapped Nick’s arm. “That isn’t fair!”
       Nick laughed. “I think the groomsmen would agree with you. Unfortunately, they lost the poker game and the kilts were their punishment. Craig actually was going to wear one, too, but his lovely bride, Carrie, found out and quickly forbade it. The groomsmen are getting their revenge by not wearing anything under the kilts.”
      “I’m just glad this isn’t an o utdoor wedding. Though I suppose there could still be gusts of air in the chapel.” I shuddered at the thought of flapping kilts and exposed dangly bits.
       “And you thought this would just be another boring wedding.” Nick’s smile was contagious. In a matter of seconds he had allowed me to leave my past and rejoin the present. “I haven’t even told you about the bride’s mother