Dark Secrets

by A. M. Hudson

  “No one does. And I won’t tell them. And neither will you.” It came out as a demand, but deep down, it was a question. He held all the cards right now. If he told my dad I called my mum that night, I’m not sure Dad would ever forgive me.

  David’s soothing touch wordlessly tried to wash the pain of my scars away. He just sat there, shaking his head, making line after line over my jaw. “When did this happen? You arrived here a month ago, but your scars—they’re healed too much to have such little time pass.”

  “It was June. My dad and I stayed at a motel until my face healed enough for me to go out in public again.”

  “A motel? Didn’t you have any family to stay with?”

  “Only Mike—my best friend. But I didn’t want to see him, and we couldn’t go back to the house. Dad said it would be too painful.”

  “It would’ve. But you still should have gone back once before leaving.”

  “I did. I made him take me back there before we got on the plane, and…”

  “And?”

  As I craned my neck to look at David, he gazed down at me, the feel of his breath on my nose and lips calming me with the reality of his existence.

  “Talk to me, Ara.”

  I pictured the grey day, the cold wind and the rain making waterfalls over the windscreen as we pulled up outside my house. The lights were all out and the remainder of the daylight fought against thunderclouds for right of existence in my world. I took each shaky step up to the porch with a kind of stillness that had my dad lingering closely behind me. “It hadn’t really hit me that they were gone,” I said. “Not until I pushed the door open and looked down the hall. And…for a second, I waited, expecting, truly believing I’d see Harry crawl up to me at full speed with his little train in his hand.

  “Everything looked the same and it smelled like home, but it was empty—and so very quiet—like they weren’t there anymore. I couldn’t feel them there anymore.” I tapped my chest with an open palm, trying to push the pain back in. “The dishes were still in the sink, and the clock on the wall was still ticking—that much stayed the same. It felt strange, how, even though we weren’t there, time just kept moving without us.” I shook my head slowly, seeing that ticking hand. “It should’ve stopped, but it didn’t. That’s when I fell down. It hit me so hard. I just broke apart and cried in the doorway.

  “Dad didn’t know what to do. He ran next door to get Mrs Baker; she made me get up. She told me I had to be strong now; that childhood passes with tragedy, and the sooner I came to accept that, the easier my life would be.”

  David groaned, folding my face into his chest. “What did your dad say to that?”

  “Nothing. He just led me to my room and shut the door.” I closed my eyes and saw the dark shadows in the hallway near my room, how the absence of that warm summer sun meant the death of everything I loved. “I packed a few things, and…as I was leaving, I went to Harry’s room—to get Pappy, his monkey toy, but Dad blocked the door; he wouldn’t let me go in there.” I broke to tears so deep the words came out in hiccups.

  “Why?”

  “He said it would hurt more. He said I needed to make Harry a memory—something that didn’t feel real anymore.”

  “He was just doing what he thought was best, Ara.” David choked back tears.

  “I know.” I nodded. “But he was wrong. They all think they know what I need—but they don’t.”

  “What do you need, sweetheart?” he asked. “Tell me, and I’ll make it happen.”

  “I need to go back, David—to that night. I need to put down that goddamn phone, and if I can’t do that, I just need to die.”

  “Ara.” David grabbed both my cheeks, thrusting my face up until I looked into his eyes. “What do you think your mother would feel to hear you say that?”

  “That’s just it.” I pushed his hands away. “She wouldn’t feel anything, because she’s dead, and it’s my fault. No matter what you try to say, it’s my fault.”

  “It was no one’s fault. Get it through your head.” He grabbed me more firmly, not letting me break away this time. “You wanna blame someone, blame the truck driver, blame the tire shop who fitted used tires, but don’t blame yourself because it won’t bring them back.”

  My brow creased tightly in the middle. I grabbed his hand slowly. “Wait, I never said there was a truck.”

  David stiffened, staring ahead, his mouth hanging open a little, like he was about to say something. I retraced my story in my head.

  “David?” I sat back so I could look right into his eyes. “Tell me how you knew that?”

  “I—” He winced, scratching the back of his neck. “I kind of already knew.”

  “Did…did my dad tell you?”

  “Not everything.” He wiped his thumb over a line of tears on my cheek. “But he told me why you were here.”

  “When?” I yelled. “Why?”

  “Ara, calm down, it’s okay.” He went to pull me closer, but I pushed away as hard as I could.

  “You’re traitors—both of you.” I jumped to my feet to get as much distance from him as possible.

  “Sweetheart, don’t be upset.”

  “No. All this time. All this time, you knew. You knew and you made me talk about it. Why?”

  “Because I knew it wasn’t just their death bothering you. I knew it went deeper.” He stood up too. “Turns out I was right.”

  “So…” My eyes went wide, realisation sinking in like nausea. “So, you were spying, for my dad?”

  “Ara, no—” He extended his hand.

  “What would possibly make you want to do that, David?”

  “Ara, it wasn’t like that.” He edged closer, both hands out now.

  “When did he tell you—how long have you known?”

  “Please, just—”

  “When!” My scream echoed off the rocks and came back to haunt me with its severity.

  “When you first came here.” He walked slowly toward me, as if I were a mental patient he was going to grab at first opportunity. “He caught me during football practice, watching you on the swing, and—”

  “You were…watching me?” An eerie sensation travelled over my neck and spine, like a hand just touched my shoulder in a room that was supposed to be empty.

  “Not like you think.”

  I backed away one step at a time in unison with his. “You’re a creep.”

  He stopped walking, lowering his arms as his green eyes flooded. “I know how this sounds, Ara-Rose. But it wasn’t like that. I swear. Just, please. Listen to me.”

  I laughed, though it wasn’t out of amusement. “All this time—you’ve known about me. Even when we talked in the library?”

  He nodded.

  “Well—” I shook my head, “—I guess it makes sense now why you were so…” Friendly? Eager? Was that it? What was it with him? Did he enjoy the company of messed-up young girls? Perhaps it was a complex of his: Knight Syndrome. I felt like such an idiot. I turned and marched off to vent my anger away from anyone that could get hurt.

  “Ara?”

  “David, just leave me alone. Don’t follow me!”

  I didn’t look back; I didn’t want to know if he followed or if he turned and went back home. As far as I was concerned, hiding a secret from someone, hiding that you were playing a game with them—that you were probing to get info out of them—was a friendship-ending offense. If I never saw him again, that would even be too soon.

  The forest showed me down an alternative path to the one we came in on. Billowing grass grew up between old tire tracks, and I followed them, hoping they’d lead me into town. But my trek of rage drove me forward quickly, submerging me into an eerie surrounding, with the trail fading to thick shrubs, and at the end of it, only ugly, tangled trees and thorn-laced vines. I stopped walking. The once background sound of birds singing and leaves rustling in the wind was now unnervingly loud.

  Real smart, Ara. Go off the beaten track.

  I wandere
d over and slumped heavily onto a nearby log, hugging my arms across my body. I wasn’t sure what to be worried about out here; back home I knew there could be kangaroos around, but also knew they very rarely attacked. Here, there could be any manner of man-eating creature, and that’s without even thinking about the foxes. I really hoped they could read David’s signs on the border.

  I checked my phone; no service, and it was getting late. The gentle breeze stopped then and a cunning silence looped around me, stealing the tranquillity of the woods. Even the midges dancing in beams of light disappeared with the warmth, leaving a cold kind of concern creeping under my skin.

  I kicked a ladybug off my shoe and looked back up the slope I just walked down. There was no denying it. I was stupid to walk off like that. And I shouldn’t have yelled at David.

  I took a really long breath, lifting my shoulders all the way up, and let it out slowly, then stood up, dumping my phone in the pocket of my dress. Maybe he was waiting for me back by the lake—maybe it wasn’t too late to apologise.

  I steeled myself for a round of grovelling, but after only one step back up the hill, crashed right into the warm embrace of strong, firm arms. “Ara!”

  “David?”

  “You silly girl!” He wrapped me up almost restrictively, his fingertips pressing against my ribs. “Don’t ever run off like that again. I couldn’t find you. I was worried sick.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” I whispered into his chest.

  “Ara? You. Have. Nothing to be sorry for.”

  “But I—”

  “No.” He shook his head against the top of mine. “I won’t let you say that word anymore; not for anything.”

  I tugged a little to make him loosen his grip, then looked up at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me you knew about my mom?”

  He smiled, breathing out through his nose. “Would you have wanted me to know? Would you still have been my friend?” It was a rhetorical question; we both knew the answer.

  “So, what am I to you now? I mean, why would you still be friends with me now that you know all of this? Am I some damsel project to you or something? Do you think you can save me?”

  David shook his head. “No, Ara. It was never about that.”

  “Okay, so, what do you want from me; if my dad hasn’t sent you in as his informant, then what do you want with me?”

  “Informant?” He looked down at me. “Is that what you thought?”

  “It makes sense. From the first moment we met, you acted like we knew each other—like we were already friends. I just…I wondered why you were so interested, when, you know, I’m no super model. I don’t really have anything to offer you.”

  “You have more than you think, Ara.” He exhaled, rocking his jaw. “Okay, at the risk of sounding creepy, I’m going to tell you why I was so…overeager when you first came to school.”

  “Creepy? You weren’t stalking me, were you?”

  “Ha! No, I wasn’t. But I had seen you several times.”

  “When?”

  “The first time was about a month ago—guess it was the day you arrived. I was on the football field doing laps for practice and I passed your house—saw this sweet little thing in a yellow dress, just standing there looking up at the blue sky. And I stopped running.”

  I pictured it for a second; David on the field, me by the car, watching Dad get the suitcases from the trunk, and Vicki standing on the porch steps, covering her mouth, trying not to cry, and so badly, I knew, wanting to run out and hug me. But she didn’t. And I was glad for that, because I’d have pushed her away.

  “My first thought was how unusual it was to see a girl in a dress like that. And I just thought you looked so pretty, so innocent and…when I looked a bit closer, I realised that you looked sad. And something in me felt tight.” He touched his chest, rubbing it. “I hadn’t really felt that before.” He laughed a little; I smiled. “I just wanted to make you okay. And I hoped I’d get a chance to meet you. I knew that was Mr Thompson’s house, so I figured you were his daughter.”

  “So you asked him about me?”

  He smiled, his lips spreading wide over his teeth. “Uh, no. I didn’t have the guts. I uh—I actually set it up. I guess I set him up to have to tell me about you.”

  “How?”

  “He was running football practice one afternoon, and you were out in the backyard. I asked your dad if that girl on the swing at his house was related to him. And he told me you were his daughter. And I told him you were beautiful.”

  “Suck up.”

  He laughed. “I waited so long for you to come to school, Ara. When you finally did, and I finally saw you up close, I’m sorry—” he touched his chest, grinning, “—but, I actually couldn’t believe how beautiful you were and I—” He stopped, closing his eyes.

  “You?”

  “I instantly fell in love with you.”

  My heart stopped beating, slipping through each of my internal organs until it hit my feet.

  David laughed lightly, tucking my hair behind my ear. “You’re going to be okay, you know. We’ll get through this. Together.”

  “Together?”

  “Yeah.”

  I snuggled into his chest, wrapping my arms all the way around him. “I like the way that sounds.”

  “Me too,” he said, and in his arms I stood, with my eyes closed and the tranquillity of love keeping my heart beating, while each breath I took unlinked my soul from the binds of my shadowed past. I never wanted to go back to before. I wanted this embrace to last forever—to stay here in his arms where all of my troubles didn’t seem so absolute and the world didn’t seem so cruel. There was something about the way he held me that made me feel safe—made me realise, as wholly as I knew myself, that the empty feeling I’d suffered so long could only have been cured by this moment—by David, who came into my life as just a boy, and turned out to be a knight.

  Chapter Nine

  David closed the front door and we both looked up the dark staircase to the sound of a piano.

  “That’s weird,” I said. “We don’t even have a piano.”

  He smiled. “I’ll wait here.”

  “By yourself?”

  His smile softened. “Something tells me you might need a minute.”

  “Why?” I frowned.

  “Ara?” Dad called down from his room. “Is that you?”

  “Uh, yeah. I just came back to get changed.”

  “Come in here first, please.”

  I looked at David, who took a step back, offering the stairway. “I’ll just be a sec.”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  Each step I took felt like my last; I was sure Dad had a massive lecture waiting behind his bedroom door on why we don’t sneak out of school with strange boys, but as I pushed his door open and saw him sitting on the end of his bed, my heart felt heavy. “Dad?”

  He turned his face from the cradle of his hands. “Come in. Close the door.”

  “Where’s Vicki and Sam?”

  “Family pizza night.”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry.” I stopped. “I forgot about pizza night.”

  “It’s fine, honey.” He patted the bed; I sat down next to him.

  “Why didn’t you go, Dad?”

  He gave me a look that suggested the obvious. “My daughter ran away from school today—crying. I wanted to be here when you got home.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Dad.” I twiddled my thumbs.

  “Ara-Rose, you don’t need to be sorry.” He rubbed my back. “I’m just glad someone was there for you.”

  “Yeah.” Dad’s soft smile infected my heart, making me grin, too. “David kind of forced a deep and meaningful confession out of me.”

  Dad laughed. “So, you told him—about why you came to live here?”

  No, you did. “Yeah. We’re—he’s helping me through it.”

  Dad sighed massively and wrapped his arm all the way around my shoulder, pulling me into him for a bear-tight hug. “I’m s
o relived to hear that. And you’re all going out to Betty’s tonight, right?”

  I nodded. “If that’s…is it still okay?”

  “Of course it is, honey.” He pressed a big sloppy Dad kiss on my brow. “More than okay. I’ll even give you a later curfew. How’s that sound?”

  “Really? What time?”

  “Eleven sound fair?”

  “Yes!” I hugged him, wrapping my skinny arms all the way around his neck. “Thank you, Dad.”

  “Just happy to make you happy.” He rubbed my back, and as I pulled away, sitting beside him again, my butt landed on the remote, starting up the film he’d been watching. I went to apologise, but my eyes strayed from his smile to the TV set, stopping on the tiny dancer, gracefully billowing across the screen.

  “I’m sorry, honey.” Dad grabbed the remote and went to turn it off; I placed my hand over his.

  “Wait. I want to see.”

  He lowered the remote and I rose to my feet, walking slowly over to watch the only piece of my mother I had left.

  “Did she ever tell you about this concert?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head.

  “It was the year before she quit ballet.”

  “Before she had me?”

  “Yes.” He stood beside me. “It was Swan Lake.”

  “I know.” I smiled, watching my mother dance. “I did this one last year for our ballet recital.”

  His arm wrapped my shoulders. “I remember. You were such a beautiful dancer.”

  “I think I inherited that from Mom.”

  “Yes.” He looked at the screen. “Among other things.”

  I looked up at his watering eyes. “You miss her, too?”

  He pressed stop on the remote and the screen went black. “I always will.”

  A moment of silence passed between us. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “What for?”

  “I…I’m just sorry—about everything.”

  He looked down at me, his eyes narrowing tightly on the inner corners. “You know, honey, if there’s something you need to tell me—”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I hugged him softly, squeezing once before backing up. “I do know that.”