He’d only asked it to get to know her better, to find commonalities. It was a simple name origin search, nothing more, a hobby he’d had for years. But her response, while feigning friendship, was to lie, which he new immediately, not because he had checked, he hadn’t, but simply because she wasn’t related to anyone else by that name. The significance of the prevarication did not hit him until much later, though he did not understand it and thought, maybe, there had been some kind of name change or something similar. In truth, he had cared for her and had not even thought to suspect her. The truth finally settled in when her other lies surfaced, vile lies, lies built to condemn him. She could not be honest, so, instead, she sought to destroy, as the past men in her life had sought to destroy her, a learned path of narcissism. 

Among much worse, she had accused him of spying on her, background checking her, which could not have been further from the truth, based upon pure paranoid fantasies conjured up by her so-called friends, who had spent their time subtly and overtly attacking him for no reason, forcing him to be the outsider. How was he supposed to behave toward that type of high school tribalism, answer that belligerent rubbish? But what really hurt him about her lie, besides her not having the clarity of mind to know that he was not what they told her, having spoken to him for months of her own accord, was how stupid it was. For, if she truly believed he was conducting invasive searches, he would have already known the answer to the question. Hence, the lie was an admission of her own guilt, her own twisted, unstable mind that she had projected onto him. Bolstered by people who gave her attention for self-delusion, she created a self-fulfilling prophecy and forced him into that box, when all he had really done was love her. 

Yet, as much as she’d demonized him, as much a she’d lied about him and accepted fanciful tales with no truth meant to asperse his character, she had refused to leave him alone. And that signified the worst lie of all. She knew it was wrong, but could not oppose their will, no matter how much it cost her. They had saddled her with garbage. They had applauded her egregious mistakes of the heart. But she could not defy them. 

And she never felt bad enough about it to take any of it back. For ignoring their desire to control her, no matter how outlandish and hypocritical the story, would have cost her their attention, and she would not sacrifice that conditional “caring,” not for friendship, not for love. So she sealed him away and thought of him no more, and she buried her own guilt with him.