ds_flashfiction | Mendacity Challenge & Flashfic debut (Reply)

So this is my flashfiction and DS debut. Actually I have a drabble I wrote for something else out there, I'm saving it in case the right theme ever comes up. Thanks to

the_star_fish and

rainbow_goddess for betaing this.

Clocking in at 283 words and untitled

Frannie hates running into old friends. She hates the small talk, the questions. She hates talking about her brother. They always say the same thing:

We haven’t seen you. We haven’t seen Ray. We heard he moved out, was there trouble? Is he seeing someone?

She hates their questions and she gives her answers quick and to the point. She’s started being rude.

He’s busy with work. There’s no trouble. No, no, he’s not seeing anyone. Look, he’s an adult. Adults live on their own. Okay?

Now she has a reputation for being rude, people have started asking Ma or Maria:

What happened to Frannie, she used to be such a nice girl.

Frannie accepts it, she’s not a nice girl anymore. How can she be a nice girl? She lives in the middle of a web of lies.

Which she hates.

Sometimes she gets so mad because no one seems to take the undercover business seriously. Ray chases after his ex-wife---Stella, not Angie. Ray’s parents come to the station—-his Dad, not Ma. She hates that everyone at the station seems to know that Ray Kowalski is playing at being her brother. Frannie worries that one day the men out where ever Ray is--because no one has told her where he is--will figure out that her brother is playing at being someone else.

She hates worrying about what she’ll do if Lt. Welsh calls her in his office, not to complain about her clothes or filing but, to tell her Ray is dead.

All of the lying and worrying and she knows that she would never be able to look at Ray Kowalski and say, “I don’t blame you.”