Are you in here?”Ī sound so feral, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end comes from the other side of the room. It slams against the wall with a startling thud as I call out, “Lavender, the game’s over. I rush back upstairs to the spare bedroom at the end of the hall that looks like it belongs to a princess, and push the door open. Panic makes everything tight, and I try to think about where else she might hide, what her other favorite places are in the house. I call her name and cross over to the closet because the door is open a crack, but it’s empty too. She told me once it’s what she feels like inside most of the time, but usually darker. Her thoughts are laid out in vibrant colors, pretty paintings, and designs that swirl and blend together. I take a deep breath to prepare myself for the overwhelming visual stimuli before I flick on the light. I spin around and head for one of the other places I might find her-the art room. River is sitting in the front row, but there’s no Lavender.

My younger brother, Dakota, is right beside her. My baby sister, Aspen, is curled up facing the movie screen, but her eyes are closed. I sprint to the media room, grip the doorjamb, and scan the seats and mats laid out on the floor where all the littles are.

I run down the hall, taking the stairs too fast and sliding down the last few on my butt. Everything she feels she puts on canvas and paper or binds together with a needle and thread.īut she’s not here, and that horrible itch under my skin grows until I want to claw myself out of my own body. Her artwork is tacked all over the walls, and her sewing machine sits in the corner, a pile of fabric on the table beside it. I move on to the next room and knock on the door before I peek inside. I check under the bed, in case Lav fell asleep while she was hiding. “Just to check.” I pad down the hall to River’s room, but he’s not in there. I push out of the chair and head for the door. “No, but she always hides under the bed, so there was no point in checking.” He rolls his eyes, annoyed with his siblings’ predictability. “Huh?” Maverick looks up from the screen. He only plays because we force him to and because Lavender likes hide-and-seek, even though she always picks the most obvious places to hide. That prickling feeling under my skin spreads, blanketing me. “Probably watching a movie with the littles,” Mav says, swiping through pictures on his phone.

“Where are Lavender and River?” I ask, passing BJ the bag of chips.

Little Lies by H. Hunting