About the Author Autumn Collins attended The Ohio State University for four and a half years (including those infernal summer quarters) and emerged with a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in Women's Studies. She then landed a job, relevant to her degree, at McGraw-Hill Publishing, in the Middle School Science division, and has been correcting the grammar of interesting sentences about plate tectonics and supernovas for just over a year. Some of her work can be seen in such literary and online magazines as Plain Ink, Sniffy Linings, Comrades, The Absinthe Literary Review, the printed anthology Letters From the Soul, and the Sniffy 3 printed journal from the Sniffy Linings e-Press.

The girl sits nervously in the hall,
Twiddling her thumbs in the pleats of her skirt,
Afraid she’ll be found out.

She hasn’t spoken a word about it to anyone,
But surely someone was watching.
Someone saw that day.
Because someone called her here
To sit and wait,
While they whispered behind closed doors.

Mentally rehearsing,
She works out the kinks
Of the lie,
Sealing the loose ends
And creating answers
For every possible question.

She tugs at a loose curl
But stops with a jerk.
It makes her look nervous.
Concentrating on being still,
She counts the tiles on the floor.

Her stomach is sour
And she sucks it in tight
To keep it from growling,
As if it would speak her secret.
Foolish, she knows,
But takes no chances.

The dust is thick in the cracks of the bench
And she scrapes her fingernail there,
Collecting a reason to sniffle
If she should need to whip up some tears.
A pro at lying
Is something to be,
Even at nine years old.