Just Let Me Lie Flat
So I, whose only ambition was to return home and collapse into a human-shaped puddle on the couch, accidentally became her polar opposite for the whole world to see.
She worked out; I stayed on the couch.
She read classic literature; I stayed on the couch.
She cooked gourmet meals; I remained firmly planted on the couch.
The internet, predictably, lost its mind.
[I feel so bad for Lisa. Imagine having a sister-in-law whos a lazy, good-for-nothing leech!]
[Ugh, get the lazy girl off the show! We just want to see Lisa and Liams sweet romance!]
[I heard she didn't even finish high school. She's a total dropout just mooching off her family!]
[That's our Lisa! A certified genius who just got accepted into the master's program at Aurelia University!]
I gave a lazy stretch and rolled over, a flicker of confusion breaking through my sleepy haze.
Aurelia University? Was that supposed to be a big deal?
And a lazy, good-for-nothing dropout?
Were they talking about me? The person who just won the International Physics Prize?
1
The day I became the internet's most hated freeloader, I was curled up on the sofa, catching up on some much-needed sleep.
My brother Liams girlfriend, the ever-so-popular Lisa, was dressed in chic athletic wear, gracefully moving through a series of stretches on a yoga mat.
As she stretched, she murmured to the nearest camera, sharing her secrets for maintaining a perfect figure. She also casually mentioned a scientific paper shed stayed up all night reading.
The live chat was flying.
[Lisa is so incredibly disciplined! Working out and reading first thing in the morning. No wonder she got into Aurelia U!]
[OMG, my queen is the best! So beautiful and so hardworking!]
[Wheres that Nina girl? Yesterday all she did was lie on the sofa. Where is she today?]
[Where else? Still sleeping, obviously. I don't know how a family like the Astors raised such a daughter. A total parasite.]
The next second, the camera panned directly to me.
I was a shapeless lump under a fluffy blanket, my hair a chaotic mess, my entire body sunk into the plush cushions. Only my eyes were visible.
The cameraman seemed to have the patience of a saint, holding a close-up on me for a full three minutes.
In those three minutes, I made exactly one movement: the living room lights were too bright, so I rolled over, turning my back to the lens.
The chat exploded.
[Is that the long-lost daughter they brought back from some backwater town? What an embarrassment to the Astor family.]
[Kick her out! Dont let her tarnish Lisas presence!]
Ugh. Annoying.
I frowned, burying my face deeper into a soft cushion, trying to block out the noise.
A glass of warm milk was placed gently on the coffee table beside me.
"Nina," my brother Liams voice was a low whisper, laced with exasperation. "We're still live. Could you at least pretend?"
I didn't move. I couldn't even be bothered to lift an eyelid.
Liam sighed, his voice dropping even lower, almost to a breath. "Mom and Dad came downstairs earlier. They looked furious. If you keep this up, they're going to lecture you again as soon as the filming stops."
I knew.
From the day I was brought back to this house, theyd never stopped being disappointed in me.
They hated that I lacked the grace of a high-society debutante. They hated my languid posture. They hated that I hadn't even finished high school, making me an embarrassment to the family name.
They adored Lisa, their perfect future daughter-in-law with her flawless smile. Lisa was a masterpiece they felt they had a hand in creating. I was the defective product that had somehow slipped through quality control.
"Look at Lisa" Liams voice was pleading now.
I finally stirred. Not to sit up, but just to lift my head from the cushion and crack open an eye.
Lisa had finished her stretches and was now sipping a freshly made kale-and-apple smoothie. Her posture was ramrod straight; even the way she drank seemed meticulously calculated for the cameras.
Noticing my gaze, she raised her glass to me from across the room, flashing a sweet, harmless smile.
The live chat erupted in another frenzy of praise for her, while simultaneously throwing more insults my way.
"Nina," Liam was still whispering in my ear. "I know you hate this, but please, just do this for me? Go wash up, get something to eat. Even just sitting up and watching TV would be better than this."
Too. Much. Effort.
Those were the only three words in my brain.
The next second, I pulled the blanket over my head, cocooning myself in complete darkness, finally shutting out the lights and sounds of the outside world.
I could feel Liam standing beside me for a long time. Finally, there was another barely audible sigh and the sound of his retreating footsteps.
The world was finally quiet. I contentedly drifted back to sleep.
2
The show was a hit.
Overnight, my brother and Lisa's reality dating series shot to the top of the trending charts.
Lisas popularity skyrocketed. She was smart; she immediately understood the secret to viral fame.
She started arranging flowers in the living room. The books she read switched from pop fiction to heavy, English-language academic tomes. She even started baking complex pastries.
Each time, she would "casually" showcase her accomplishments for the cameras, then cast a look of mixed concern and helplessness toward the lump on the sofa that was me.
Her audience ate it up. They praised her for being a multi-talented goddess and called me a useless waste of space.
I didn't care. I just found her constant activity a little noisy.
That afternoon, for once, I wasn't sleeping.
I was sitting on the rug, a notebook open on my lap, with several pages of scribbled calculations scattered across the coffee table. I was deep in thought, wrestling with a problem, so absorbed that I didn't even notice my brother sit down beside me.
"Drawing?" Liam asked.
"Mmm," I grunted, not looking up. My pen flew across the page, leaving a trail of symbols he couldn't possibly comprehend.
The soft sound of footsteps approached.
It was Lisa.
She was carrying a glass of water, that perfect smile plastered on her face as she glided toward us.
"Nina, you're so busy! Here, have some water. You haven't moved all afternoon." Her voice was sickeningly sweet.
I ignored her. My train of thought was at a critical junction.
And then, it happened.
Crash.
The glass shattered on the floor. The water instantly soaked the papers on the coffee table.
"Oh! I'm so sorry! Nina, I'm so, so sorry!"
Lisa immediately knelt, her voice catching in a sob, her eyes turning red with perfect timing. "I I didn't mean to. I was just trying to hand you the water, and I tripped Its all my fault"
She fumbled for napkins, tears streaming down her cheeks on cue. The camera zoomed in, capturing her perfectly distraught, guilt-ridden expression.
In the live chat, her fans were heartbroken for her.
[Lisa, dont cry! It was an accident!]
[It's all that Nina's fault!]
[Seriously, look at her attitude! Lisa is crying her eyes out, and she won't even move?]
They were right. I didn't move.
I was just staring down at the waterlogged, wrinkled papers.
A flash of white-hot anger shot through me, but I quickly suppressed it. Anger was a waste of energy, an inefficient use of processing power.
I reached out, carefully peeling the soaked pages off the table one by one, my movements delicate, terrified of tearing them.
Then I stood up, walked past the still-sobbing Lisa, and went to the window. I laid the papers out flat on the sill, in the spot with the best sunlight, and left them to air-dry.
The entire time, I never once looked at Lisa. I never said a single word.
My silence made her one-woman show incredibly awkward. Her sobs tapered off, leaving her with tear-streaked cheeks and a slightly comical expression.
My parents came downstairs just in time to witness the scene.
My mother frowned, pulling Lisa to her feet and dabbing at her tears with a handkerchief. "You silly girl, why are you apologizing? It's not your fault. Some people just have no manners, raised like weeds."
My father shot me a look of pure, unadulterated disappointment.
Only Liam moved to help. He knelt and cleaned up the spilled water and broken glass. Then, his gaze fell on the damp papers drying on the windowsill.
He picked up one of the pages that wasn't completely soaked. He stared at it for a long, long time.
Then he looked up at me.
His eyes were filled with a dawning, searching curiosity.
3
Lisa wasn't about to let it go.
That little "accident" had earned her sympathy, but it had also made her look clumsy. She needed to reclaim her narrative, to solidify her image as the perfect genius.
So, she brought out her tablet.
"Liam, Nina, come look at this."
She placed the tablet on the coffee table, her voice bubbling with excitement. "I was on the Aurelia University grad student forums, and people were discussing old problems from the International Physics Olympiad. I found a really interesting one. Let's try to solve it together?"
She then turned to me with a look of feigned concern. "Nina, you should join us. I know you never went to high school, so it might be a little difficult, but that's okay. I can explain it to you slowly."
Her fans in the live chat went wild.
[Wow, our Lisa is a true Aurelia scholar! The stuff she reads is on another level!]
[Is she tutoring her future sister-in-law? Lisa is too kind!]
[What could that girl possibly understand? Don't waste our Lisa's precious time.]
I was in that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness when I felt a gentle nudge.
It was my brother.
"Nina, wake up. Lisa's talking to you," he whispered.
I let out an annoyed groan, burrowing my face deeper into a throw pillow. Sleep was mankind's greatest invention. Anyone who disturbed it was my enemy.
"Nina, just take a look, please? Just one look." Lisa's cloying voice chimed in again. "This problem is really challenging. The standard solutions are all incredibly complex. They say fewer than ten people in the world solved it completely at the time."
Ugh. Fine.
I pushed myself halfway up, my hair resembling a bird's nest, and squinted at the screen.
Seeing that she finally had my attention, Lisa brightened, launching into her explanation. "You see, the key to this problem is to construct an auxiliary function, and then utilize"
"Don't bother," I cut her off.
Lisas lecture died in her throat. She stared at me, dumbfounded.
I pointed a finger at the tablet from across the coffee table. "Start with the singularity. You can solve it in three steps from there."
I paused, then added as an afterthought, "Even the committee that wrote the problem probably didn't know about that shortcut."
Lisa's face went rigid. She had no idea what I was talking about.
My brother was stunned too. He looked from me to the dense cluster of symbols on the screen, that searching look in his eyes intensifying.
"Too easy," I declared, then flopped back onto the sofa and pulled the blanket over my head. "Good for putting you to sleep, though."
The live chat fell silent.
The living room was suddenly dead quiet.
Lisas face was ashen. My brother Liam was frowning deeply. And my parents, who had been watching from the staircase, now had a new layer of angry confusion mixed in with their usual disappointment. They probably thought that on top of being lazy, I was also rude, humiliating their future daughter-in-law on national television.
Ding-dong.
The doorbell chimed, startling everyone.
All eyes turned to the door.
A moment later, the butler showed in an older man in a tweed jacket, who walked in with an urgent stride.
"Dr. Dr. Finch?" Lisa gasped, her eyes widening in shock.
The President of Aurelia University, Dr. Alistair Finch! Shed seen him once, from a distance, at a university convocation. She would never forget that face.
My parents were stunned too. They didn't know him personally, but Lisas reaction said it all. The President of Aurelia University, here, in their home! What an incredible honor!
Any lingering annoyance they felt toward me vanished in an instant. They exchanged a look of profound satisfaction with their choice of a future daughter-in-law.
"Lisa is bringing such honor to the Astor name!" my mother whispered excitedly to my father.
After a long pause, the live chat finally erupted again.
[Did I hear that right? The President of AURELIA UNIVERSITY? In person?!]
[OMG, the President himself came! Our Lisa is on another level!]
[He must have seen the show and come to commend her! Her genius reputation is now set in stone!]
Lisa had already straightened up, her face arranged into the most gracious smile. All the cameras, all the lights, were focused on the few feet of space between her and Dr. Finch. She had already rehearsed her lines in her headhow she would express her surprise, how she would humbly thank him for the recognition.
However, Dr. Finch didn't even glance at her. He walked straight past her as if she were invisible.
Lisas perfect smile froze on her face.
Dr. Finch didn't slow down. He marched directly toward the sofa, stopping right in front of me.
Then, under the shocked gaze of everyone in the room, and the millions watching at home, he bowed deeply to the disheveled heap of blankets that was me.
"Director Astor," he pleaded, his voice trembling with emotion. "I'm begging you. Please, come to our university. We need you to head our doctoral program!"
First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "306038" to read the entire book.
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