Joanna Jacobs was just walking out of her room. Sylvia Vaughn glanced at Joanna nervously, then shook her head. "No, I didn't get into a fight. I really just fell. I was taking a shower at my classmate's house and I slipped in the bathroom. The corner of my mouth hit the edge of her bathtub, and I bit it with my own teeth. That's why it looks like this. I didn't want my classmate to feel bad, so I came home early."
'Only now did Sylvia Vaughn truly understand what it meant to cover one lie with many others.'
'If she hadn't lied to her family about staying overnight at a classmate's house, and had instead just said she was going on a date with a boy, maybe her father would have stopped her. If she couldn't have gone out, that nightmarish incident wouldn't have happened. And if that hadn't happened, she wouldn't need to lie again now to deceive her family.'
'Thinking about it, maybe it really was all her fault in the end. She shouldn't have lied.'
