The follow is an excerpt from a manuscript entitled, White Horses. It follows the story of a woman decieving her way through New York City. Exploring the themes of identity, wealth & honesty.

I have always believed that the true measure of friendship is whether you trust someone enough not to try and manage their perception of you. With Cecilia, I found myself showing too much of my core too quickly. I caught lapses in my judgment, sometimes sneaking in true stories from my childhood simply to hear her anecdotes on what my sister is like or if I bare resemblance to my characteristics since before I could talk. When she was more than delighted she spoke through her elegant, disarming laugh. One that had seemingly perfected its pitch as it rang and bounced off expensive silver and posh bare columns in apartments long enough for her to try and chase the echo.

In her careless joy is when I almost felt a need to get on my knees and plead with Cecilia. When I was genuinely laughing with her or had almost forgotten that she really knew nothing about me. I needed Cecilia to see me as a version of the woman she had known her whole life—a person born into the same lavishness she bore but slightly jaded to the world due to cutting ties with my oppressively ostentatious wealthy family. I used certain mannerisms to seem elusive by nature but genuine towards her due to our similar spirits—something that took years to stylize. Eventually, I began being able to snap in and out of the mannerisms so well I felt like you wouldn’t be able to recognize me when I did it for a kick in the mirror.

However, during the beginning, I was a bit naïve with my charade. I hadn't yet learned what it takes to dissociate completely from the person you were. To change your name is one thing, but to have people walk arm in arm with your delusion, you must match a backstory in the cadence of your tone, your manners, and your gaze. The words I chose were pretentious, but I knew when to act aloof about certain academic words I would never encounter in this type of lifestyle. There cannot be a slip unless it is subtle enough to be explained away with a bad mood or some type of emotionality.

Sparingly but enough to notice, I felt small pangs of wanting to tell the truth. However, with Cecilia, I constantly felt my guilt bubble into my throat or smoke up, blurring my mind. She reminded me of my friends from home. She was the Merriam-Webster definition of kind. She chose to see the light in people no matter the cracks in their ethics. She stood solemnly by friends who lifted her just high enough to drop her. She let them do it again and again. She craved a sister in a room where she had hundreds of best friends. She sometimes told stories about the ways she had been disrespected or betrayed but feigned a philosophical standpoint for excusing this behavior. This, I knew, could be used to my advantage. I had known it from the moment we first spoke, a thought which floated to the surface every once in a while that I had to repress at the movies, in the middle of sharing a bottle of wine, and when I slept over.

The problem is obviously that I like Cecilia. I enjoyed her ease at callous jokes. I found her smile warm, and her impassable love of others, though a weakness, admirable. I wanted at many different moments to tell her everything because I felt she would understand. If I had to place a bet on who in this life might find empathy in my circumstance, it would be Cecilia. I wanted to cozy into her comically large bed, as I had done so many other nights, and barely be able to get my confession out as I sobbed. I never did. Mainly because in moments like these I would remember that time she scolded me for giving a homeless man a ten-dollar bill or the time she complained about her lack of clean clothes due to her cleaning lady's son having fallen ill for two days. I happened to be facing her washer and dryer unit as she told me. She then followed this up by saying, “I know I am being a brat, but I just think maybe I should keep another woman on speed dial like how Blake does?”

I knew there was a large chance that the minute Cecilia found out I came from nothing and had been lying, she would only find me interesting for one more month or so. I would become a small story to tell over dinner or worse; I would be added to her charity case rotation of breadless artists or law students. The difference between them and me is I had the background, just not the money. I knew the wine pairings and when to shut up. Which reminds me of her uncharacteristic interest in Middle East politics—something I learned about her when a man asked her to sign a petition in support of cutting our spending in Israel. They spoke feverishly at each other for five minutes, nodding their heads, and then she kept walking as if it had never occurred. I would find her reading the global section in the magazine, and I would comment on how smart she was to appease her ego. I think that her hyper fixation seemed to have helped distract her from the tedious complexities of her day; which, of course, weren’t many. She went to class and ran errands. Errands, as you already know, for the upper class are entirely made up of spending money for others to do things you do not want to do and then rewarding yourself with a beverage or a pair of jeans.

This was another thing I focused on when I felt my heart was growing in her presence. I followed my new world view, one without room for warm feelings, and I allowed myself to see her as a small part in a much bigger game. Cecilia wasn’t seeing through me, but I almost wish she had. She so genuinely believed to understand the person I was that it made it harder to continue my performance—counseling me through my scripted problems and pre-chosen love interests, giving nuances on fictional childhood stories I had written on the subway back to my apartment. I did not feel bad enough to actually stop, but I knew that I probably should have. And sometimes knowing you should feel a certain way is worse than just feeling that way at all.