The night my older sister came home after she got pulled over she told me the whole story; how she didn’t have her lights on, how the cop asked her to take a breathalyzer test, and she did, blowing zero. She just forgot to turn her lights on. As soon as she finished her story in detail, she sighed to go down and tell our mother.

“You’re going to tell Mom?” I asked her in stunned disbelief. “Why would you do that?”

“Why not?” she answered in innocence, cocking her head to the side. “I didn’t get a ticket. I’m not in trouble.”

“Exactly, so why would she need to know,” I pointed out clearly not understanding why my sister would put this incident out there for a lecture on how lucky she was, how she won’t be that lucky next time. I hated those lectures with such a passion.

“Bridget,” my sister said using the tone of voice that always made me feel like I was eight years old again. Even the look in her eyes made me feel like I was twelve years younger than her, instead of just two. “It’s always better to tell them the truth. Don’t you know that yet?”

No, I didn’t know that. And I still don’t know that. I don’t lie to my mom because I want to keep secrets but because I want to protect her. I don’t want her to be scare for me, or worry about me. I want her to think that I never have the pressure of being a teen. I want her to think that my biggest worry at the time is what college I ‘m going to. And she does.

I don’t tell my mother that on my homecoming night, I was invited to a party. Not just the pin the tail on the donkey type of party, or even the spin the bottle type. No, you know what kind of party I was invited to. The kind of party where there are games like beer pong and quarters being played on the dinning room table. The kind where there are people go into rooms upstairs and lock the doors for hours and come out later dirty and smelly and nine months later, they get a surprise. The kind where guilt seeps through my pores just imagining the look on my mother’s face if she knew I was there in that dirty, beer reeking kitchen. I don’t want her here, not even in my mind. I don’t tell her that I didn’t go, that I went back to a friends house instead, to play Guitar Hero, instead, till three in the morning and then went to sleep. No drugs, no sex, no alcohol, just video games, pizza, and Faygo Red Pop.

I don’t tell my mother that I know what weed smells, that I have been there while friends bake away in a closed garage for hours on hot summer afternoons. My friends sit around talk about absolutely nothing, laughing about things that are not funny and I sit there too laughing and talking, but completely sober. I don’t tell my mother that I don’t smoke because it smells bad and it makes you act like a moron. I don’t tell her that I drive them home to, so that the don’t get pulled over or in a accident.