The Master of Lies

The Master of Lies


Toby was a normal boy, about your age, who liked playing soccer and swimming. He went to school every day with his older sister, Marione, and hung out with his friends in the afternoons, playing soccer or computer games. In fact, you could say that Toby was so usual, it was almost unusual, if it weren’t for one little thing: Toby liked to lie. He lied about everything, every day. He was so used to lying that he did it automatically, even when he didn’t need to, like when his sister asked him:
“Toby where were you just now? I was looking for you!”
Instead of telling the truth (he’d been on the toilet), Toby decided that what really happened was just way too boring, and answered:
“Well, I was going to take a bath, and was running hot water with extra bubbles into the tub, you know, when this little orange kitten came jumping through the window and landed in the water with a splash. I think it was sitting on a tree outside, and couldn’t get down, so it tried to make it to the window still. Anyway, it totally missed and sank straight to the bottom of the bathtub. All I could see were these little bubbles coming up from the bottom. I had to rescue the kitten, but I couldn’t find it under all those bubbles, and when I finally got hold of it’s tail and pulled it out, I thought it was dead. So I used the blow dryer to get rid of all the water in it’s fur, but I think the hot air scared it, because it jumped about five meters into the air, right back out of the window. Isn’t that cool, Marione? I rescued a kitten!”
Marione was very surprised. “Wow! How come so many exciting things always happen to you, Toby?” She said.
Toby just smiled to himself. “I am the master of lies.” He thought.

One day, Toby was watching his favourite TV show, Jennipher Lee, on cartoon network with his friends when his mom popped her head around the door. Toby couldn’t see much of her, because most of her was hidden behind the door, but the little bit of her face he could see didn’t look happy.
“Toby,” she said, giving him that threatening, searching, mom look, “Have you finished your homework? “
Toby didn’t hesitate: “Yes mom, of course I have! You know I’d never watch TV before I finish my homework!” His mom bought it and closed the door with a smile.
“Phew,” Toby thought, “that was close, if she knew I still have five questions to go she’d make us all stop watching and send my friends home. It’s a good thing I’m the master of lies.”
He decided that he’d finish his work after dinner, when everyone thought he was packing his things for the next day. But as it turned out, Toby had to abandon that part of the plan. There was a Simpsons marathon on that night, and his friends stayed over for much longer that he’d thought. They had dinner together, balancing their plates on their knees in front of the TV, and ended up having a food fight. When someone’s fried egg hit the TV screen and stuck there, Toby’s mom sent everyone home. Then she sent Toby straight to bed. And that was the end of that.

So next morning, when Mr. Smith asked everyone to get out their homework, Toby was in dilemma. He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, trying to look small and innocent. Mr. Smith’s eyes traveled slowly around the room, resting shortly on Josephine, who’d done her homework on lacy pink paper with little hearts and Hassan, who quickly mumbled something about “I couldn’t find a pencil.” By the time Mr. Smith had finished telling Hassan that he was going to call his parents, who were both doctors, tonight and ask them why there was not one single pencil to be found in their household, Toby wished the floor would just crack open and swallow him whole, so he could sink deeper and deeper into the ground, like in an elevator, never to be heard of again. “Open sosceles” he muttered. But nothing happened. That’s when he realized Mr. Smith’s piercing stare was now directed at him. Apparently, he’d succeeded in getting a confession out of Hassan, and judging by how the rest of the class was now staring at him and giggling, he’d just asked Toby a question.
“Sorry, what?”
“Excuse me? Tobias Thomson, are those beautifully set out mathematical equations I see, perhaps written on the inside of your hand? Or maybe you were just waiting for me to ask you personally to take out your genius mathematical findings? I’m sure they are, in fact, hidden inside your desk at this very moment?”
“Umm… no Mr. Smith,” Tobias admitted, feeling stupid “But I…”
“Well then, where is the work I set you yesterday?’
“Well Mr. Smith, it’s a long story,” Toby said, thinking fast
“I’m listening intently.”

“You see, my grandma died when I was really young, and since then my grandpa has been quite lonely. He was very sad about it all for a long time, but now he’s decided that he wants to find someone new to live with, and he’s been working out, and he’s cut his hair. We all noticed that a lot of grannies seem to like him these days. But we didn’t realize exactly what was going on ‘till yesterday afternoon, when we got a call from the hospital, saying my grandpa had broken his leg.
When we went to see him, he told us the whole story. It turns out he’s been dating three ladies at the same time, seeing them regularly and he even promised all of them that they were going to marry. He’d go out to restaurants and opera shows with them, and he really thought he had it all worked out, his life was heaven.
But what he didn’t count on was that these three grannies knew each other. One day they were all having tea together and telling each other about their new boyfriend. When they described him to each other, they realized he was the same person, I mean my grandpa is the only man alive who wears a brown suit and yellow checked tie and looks good in it, too. It wasn’t very hard to tell they were all going out with the same man. So then the grannies decided to take revenge on my grandpa, and made a plan to sabotage him.
So yesterday, when my grandpa was walking along this narrow, gloomy alley, close to his house, on his way home from the post office, he was suddenly attacked by the those grannies, who tried to beat him up using their handbags. It’s important to mention they’d packed their bags full of canned cat food first. Anyway, so my grandpa ran for it, but he slipped and fell, and broke his leg.
My mom and dad said we really had to go and see him at the hospital. I didn’t want to go! And it took so long for grandpa to tell us the whole story that by the time we got home, it was bedtime. That’s why I couldn’t finish my homework, Mr. Smith. I’m really sorry. “ He gave Mr. Smith his widest grin and thought to himself: “Bingo! That was the best story I ever came up with. But then again, I am the master of lies.”
Mr. Smith just looked at Toby for a long time. Then he said: “Listen, boy, that’s a very detailed story you’ve got there, but I’m not going to believe it until you show me a note, signed by your parents, saying you were at the hospital all afternoon. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Yes, Mr. Smith had made himself very clear. The only thing that wasn’t clear to Toby was how he was supposed to get this note from his parents. He thought about it on the bus, all the way home. By the time he’d reached his bus stop, he’d thought of a convincing story.
“Mom!” He called loudly as soon as he entered the house, “Mom! I have to go to the hospital right now!”
“What?” His mom sounded scared “Why? Who’s hurt? What happened? You’re not going anywhere before you tell me what’s going on!”
“Well mom, “ Toby began “Today in art class, we were working on our pencil colour drawings, and I got up to go and get a golden pencil colour. The pencils in our classroom are all sorted out according to their colour, and I could see that there was only one golden pencil left in the box for gold colours. And I also saw that Aisha was going for the same pencil as me. So I pushed Biamungu out of the way, because I wanted to get there before she did, and Biamungu fell. Have I told you about Biamungu? He always chews on his pencils, and even when he’s walking around, he’s got one in his mouth.
So Biamungu fell, and guess what, the pencil he was chewing on rammed itself into the roof of his mouth, he was bleeding pretty hard, and they had to take him to hospital. So I want to visit him and say sorry. I’ll be back in the evening, OK?”
Toby was planning to spend the afternoon at the mall, eating ice cream and talking to his friends. Then he was going to go back home, and get his mom to sign a note saying that he’d been at the hospital all afternoon, and that he hadn’t been able to do his homework. She would, of course, mean today and the teacher would think she meant yesterday. But Toby was sure nobody would notice. “Everybody falls for the master of lies!” he told himself triumphantly.

That evening, Tobias came back home in a really good mood. He’d met up with three of his friends and they’d had a blast, messing around the food market and CD shop. He opened the front door whistling to himself, and took off his shoes. Then he went into the living room to say hi to his parents and sister. But his sister wasn’t there, and his parents didn’t seem to be in the mood for a hearty hello. They both looked extremely serious.
“Hi, mom, hi, dad,” Toby said cautiously. Was it possible that they had found out about his lie?
“Toby, come in here and shut the door,” his dad commanded. Toby did as he was told, then sat down on the sofa next to his mom.
“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously.
“We’d like to know where you’ve been all afternoon, Tobias,” his father said calmly, but Toby could tell that he was angry.
“What do you mean?” he asked quickly, “I told mom I went to the hospital!”
“Don’t lie to me, son” his dad thundered “We called the hospital to ask how your friend Biamungu is doing, and they told us some very interesting facts. First of all, you weren’t at the hospital, and secondly, neither was he!”
“But he was!” Toby invented wildly “Maybe he left by the time you called, he wasn’t badly injured! “
“So where were you all afternoon, darling?” his mom asked.
“I was at the police station! You see, when I was on the way to hospital on my bike, I was behind this big lorry on the road. The lorry was carrying loads of big, red cheeses, and then, when the traffic lights changed from green to red and the driver had to stop really suddenly, lots of those cheeses rolled out of the back of the truck. I was buried in loads of red cheeses! I was OK, but I wanted to help the driver load some of his cheeses back into the truck, I felt so bad for him. After a few minutes, though, some policemen turned up and started asking what was going on. The driver explained, and they were going to help us put the cheeses back on board, but the lorry driver didn’t want them to help.
It was weird, I wondered why he didn’t want them to help him. Anyhow, they wouldn’t let him refuse, and one of them got onto the back of the truck to help us put the cheeses back on. But guess what mom! Then he saw that there were some things hidden under the cheese. There were all these fake bank notes hidden under there!
So they arrested the truck driver, and took me to the police station and asked me some questions. It took a long time, they wanted to know what had happened and who I am. Then they said they might put it in the newspaper, and if I mind them putting a picture of me. I said no. Then they let me go!”
“What?” Toby’s mom sounded confused. “You were taken to the police station after you got buried in big red cheeses? And they want to put a picture of you in the newspaper?”
“Yup!” Tony couldn’t suppress a giggle. “The master of lies strikes again,” he whispered to himself.
“We can’t have that!” his dad decided. “We’ll go and talk to those policemen tomorrow, and see about this.”

Toby spent the whole night trying to think of an excuse for all the lies he’d told. Being brilliant at making up stories, he soon came up with what he thought was the perfect cover up…
“Well, officer,” he told the confused policeman the following day, “the reason you haven’t heard about this is because the policemen who were asking me the questions and who discovered the fake money were detectives. They work undercover, and nobody knows that they are actually policemen. They didn’t want anyone else to know about what happened because they are still looking for the rest of the money, you see, not all of the fake money those criminals made was hidden inside that truck. If everyone knew that they had found some of the money, then that would mean that the criminals would hear, and go into hiding. So they asked me all those questions very secretly.”
“What do you mean, secretly? “ The officer looked very, very angry “I was at this police station all afternoon yesterday, and no detectives came here to ask anyone any questions. I left the station around 7 pm, witch is when I passed by the shopping mall and saw you and some other kids playing around at the food market. “
For the first time in his life, the Master of Lies didn’t know what to say. He suddenly realized there was no way of getting out of this.
“Did you know that giving false information to the police is a crime? If I decide to take you to court, your parents could go to prison or be fined for your offence!” the officer continued.
Tony felt terrible. What had he done? His parents might have to go to court because of this stupid story he’d told! How had it all gotten so serious and complicated? Suddenly remembered: it had all started with one, tiny little lie about homework.

That’s when Toby decided to tell his parents and the policeman the truth about all the lies he’d told and why.
“All I wanted was to finish watching TV with my friends!” He sniffed.
“Well telling lies is never the way to get what you want!” His mom said in a shocked voice, “Toby, lies have short legs. They can’t run very far. Sooner or later they always get discovered, and then everything is just much worse than before.”
“And whenever you lie you just have to lie again to cover it up.” The policeman added. Then he turned to Toby’s parents: “Well, I can see that your son is just a bit immature. He wasn’t planning anything bad.” And he let the family go – for that time. “Next time you won’t be as lucky.” He warned them.