Deep Dark Secrets (The Spiritwalkers Book 1)

by Sarra Cannon

  “I’ll hold you to it,” she said.

  “Bye, and thank you.”

  I clicked off just as I pulled into the gas station. I’d dodged that bullet for now, but I knew that later tonight or tomorrow at school, Nicole was going to push me to tell her where I’d been. I needed to think up another good lie to get through that conversation, because if she found out I was with Jordan, that was just going to lead to a lot more questions there was no way I could answer.

  I threw my Jeep into park and jumped out. I ran inside, found the maps display and quickly grabbed one of each. I didn’t even have time to look at them. I’d sort it all out when I got home.

  Which, of course, meant that it was the perfect time for me to run into my ex and his new girlfriend at the counter.

  “Hey, Marayah,” Troy said.

  Lena quickly snaked her arm around my ex-boyfriend’s waist, letting me know in no uncertain terms that he was hers now. There was also a touch of fear in her eyes, and I wondered if she had somehow felt the shadow wrap around her boot last Friday.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, finding a smile somewhere deep inside and flashing it at them. “Romantic date night at the gas station?”

  Lena’s smile faltered, which only brightened my own.

  “We were just stopping in for a few snacks,” Lena said. “We’ve been over at my place working up quite the appetite, if you know what I mean.”

  Ewww. I hadn’t anticipated a blatant sex reference here in the middle of the QuickStop, but there it was.

  “Oh, I know all about that,” I said. “Don’t I, Troy?”

  It was a lie, of course, since the most we ever did was some over-the-shirt making out in his parents’ basement, but it was worth it just to see him squirm.

  “Sorry, but I’m in a rush,” I said. “You don’t mind if I squeeze in front of you, do you?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I just plopped the maps down on the counter and took out my debit card.

  “Going hiking?” Lena asked. “I never pegged you for the outdoorsy type.”

  “Well, a lot of things have changed, haven’t they?” I asked. I couldn’t help but glance at Troy when I said that. I didn’t miss him. I really didn’t. I was moving on.

  But for just a second, our eyes met, and I knew he felt it too. Loss so deep that it ached.

  It wasn’t that I wanted him back. It was more that I wanted it all back. I wanted Hailey back, and I most definitely wanted my life back the way it used to be before this evil demon or whatever it was apparently started screwing with it.

  “That’ll be twenty-six fifty,” the guy behind the counter said.

  I quickly swiped my card, entered my pin, and grabbed the maps before he had a chance to throw them into one of those plastic bags. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

  “Well, nice seeing you both,” I said. “Enjoy your snacks.”

  I practically ran from the store, not wanting to think about what I’d lost. What was gone was gone forever. It was time to start figuring out how to move forward. Still, I should have asked Lena if she knew where Hailey had gone running last summer. They used to run together at least two or three times a week.

  I thought about going back inside, but right now, I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a pencil than have to face them again.

  By the time I made it home, it was just turning seven. I stepped in the door at seven-o-two.

  “I’m home,” I shouted from the bottom of the stairs as I lugged my backpack up to my room.

  “Wait, I haven’t seen you all day,” Mom said. She rushed from the kitchen and followed me up the stairs. “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  I dropped everything onto my bed and slid my backpack over the maps so she wouldn’t see them. I didn’t need her asking me about them right now. I wished she would just lay off for a while.

  I felt the familiar darkness of anger boiling inside of me, and I took a deep breath to calm it before it took control.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize you wanted me to,” I said. “Nicole said you called while I was in the bathroom, but she didn’t say you wanted me to call back. Did you need something?”

  Mom sighed and shook her head. “I was just worried about you and wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

  “I was fine, Mom. I don’t need you checking up on me every half hour.”

  “Don’t get sassy with me, young lady,” she said. “You have no idea what it was like—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I have no idea what it was like for you guys when I was in the hospital and you weren’t even sure if I was going to wake up,” I said. “I get it. I really do. But I need you to understand that I’m awake now and everything is okay. If you really want me to get back to normal, you’ve got to give me some space. I can’t live like this anymore.”

  Mom clapped her hand to her chest, tears filling her dark eyes.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked. “Marayah, if you’re thinking about hurting yourself, you’ve got to promise me you’ll talk to us or your therapist first.”

  I wanted to scream. I was sick and tired of having every single thing that came out of my mouth analyzed under the microscope of suicide and addiction.

  But getting angry was dangerous right now.

  I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. It had been one hell of an afternoon, and I just wanted to be left alone.

  “I’m not thinking of hurting myself, okay? I’m just trying to get back to my normal life, and it’s really hard when I feel like you’re watching my every move and wanting me home all the time,” I said. “I would really appreciate it if you let up on this rule about me being home right after school. It’s my senior year, and I’d really like to enjoy it as much as possible. I want to spend time with my friends without having you checking up on me all the time.”

  A tear fell across her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away.

  “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m trying. I really am.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She stepped forward and threw her arms around me. Her tears soaked into my shirt, which only made me feel guilty. I hadn’t meant to snap at her like that, but the woman was driving me crazy.

  I hugged her back and waited for her to stop crying before I pulled away.

  “If you really think you’re ready to have a little bit more freedom, I guess we can go back to some of our old rules,” she said. “You will still need to bring Kimi home every afternoon after school, because I don’t want her to have to ride the bus. But after that your time is your own until dinner at six.”

  I bit the inside of my lip to keep from arguing. The old rules used to be that I had to be home by eleven on a weeknight and one on the weekends, but six was still better than nothing.

  “What about the weekends?” I asked.

  She made a face. “I’ll need to discuss that with your father,” she said. “For the time being, I really don’t want you going to any parties. You understand.”

  No, I didn’t understand, but I was starting to. And the truth was so much darker and more horrible than she could imagine.

  “For how long?” I asked. Surely they weren’t going to say I couldn’t go to a single party my senior year of high school.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess we’ll see how your appointment goes on Friday afternoon. We’ll see what Dr. Millner thinks about how you’re doing and go from there. We all just want what’s best for you, honey.”

  I didn’t doubt she believed that was true. What I doubted was whether any of them had the slightest clue what was best for me right now. They really wanted what was best for them.

  “Okay,” I said. “I need to finish my homework and get some rest. It’s been a long day.”

  “Did you get anything to eat at Nicole’s?” she asked. “I saved you a plate from dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs with your favorite garlic bread.”

  My stomach rumbled, but I needed time alone to
process everything that happened this afternoon. And I wanted to start looking through the maps to start marking the trails I knew Hailey sometimes ran.

  I almost lied to her and said I’d already eaten, but I decided maybe I’d done enough lying for one day.

  “I’d love some dinner,” I said.

  Mom smiled and put her arm around me as we walked out of the room and down the stairs. The maps would have to wait.

  33

  Right All Along

  I looked for Jordan at school the next day, hoping to see him every time I turned a corner. Besides homeroom, we didn’t have any classes together, and he hadn’t been there this morning. I searched for him in the hallway between classes. I lingered near his locker, but he never appeared.

  Since I knew we had the same lunch period, that was my last big hope. If he wasn’t there, that meant he wasn’t at school today, either. I’d forgotten to ask him why he’d been out one day last week, too.

  The truth was, I still didn’t know that much about him. Other than the truth about being a Spiritwalker and about his brother, he hadn’t told me anything else about his family or where he’d come from. I had a feeling his cover story about taking care of an ailing grandmother was a big fat lie.

  I wasn’t even sure exactly how old he was.

  I entered the lunchroom at eleven-thirty, my stomach full of knots. Nicole babbled on about some concert she just had to get tickets to, but I was only halfway paying attention and hoping she wouldn’t notice.

  “Hello? Earth to Marayah,” she said, tapping my forehead. “Are you even listening to a word I’m saying?”

  I sighed.

  She noticed.

  “Sorry, I’ve been a little bit distracted lately.”

  “A little bit?” she asked. “First, you bail on our project last weekend. Then, you lie to your parents and I have to cover for you. You refuse to tell me what you were doing all afternoon yesterday. Now, you’re walking around like a zombie, completely ignoring me.”

  I winced. I wasn’t being a very good friend these days.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said as we sat down at our usual table near the windows. “It’s just that my mom is driving me crazy. She’s hovering over me all the time and being so strict, she won’t even let me out of the house most of the time. It’s stressful.”

  “But you did get out of the house yesterday,” she said. “Where were you, anyway? You still haven’t told me.”

  I breathed in through my nose. I really didn’t need this third-degree right now. And I didn’t need my one good friend judging me for spending time with a guy she thought was a drug dealer.

  I reached for the best lie I could think of. Half-lie, really.

  “You promise you won’t tell anyone?” I asked, leaning forward across the table.

  She looked around, a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. Everyone loved a good secret.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said.

  “I went back to the bridge,” I said softly.

  Her eyes widened, and she didn’t take a breath for a full ten seconds. “The bridge?” she asked. “Alone? Why would you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just been really hard not remembering what happened that night. I thought if I could go back out there for a little while, I might be able to remember something.”

  She cleared her throat and pushed her corn around her plate with her fork. “And did you?”

  “No, not really,” I said.

  “Not really isn’t a no,” she said, her eyes now locked on my face. She looked scared for me. It was similar to the way my mother looked at me sometimes, like I was fragile and one tiny memory might break me forever.

  “No, then. I didn’t really remember anything important,” I said. I couldn’t very well tell her about the dark, shadowy figure. She wouldn’t have believed me, anyway.

  She let out a breath. “Well, maybe it’s better that you don’t,” she said. “Maybe it would just upset you. Maybe it’s better if you just try to move on.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I mumbled. “Everyone in my life keeps judging me based on what they think I did that night. They all seem to think I was some suicidal drug addict, but you’ve known me forever. Have you ever seen me high on drugs?”

  “I know it wasn’t normally like you to get messed up, but you were totally out of it when you guys left the party,” she said. “You both were.”

  She inhaled sharply, as if she’d just realized what she’d let slip. When I first asked her about it, she’d told me she didn’t remember seeing us at the party that night.

  “You never told me you saw us before we left the party,” I said, my heartbeat suddenly racing. “You specifically said you didn’t remember seeing me at the party much that night. You told me you didn’t even know we’d left until you heard about the accident. Were you lying?”

  She closed her eyes and set her fork down.

  “Nicole, you have to tell me what you remember. The truth this time.”

  “Look, I didn’t want to tell you, because I know you’ve been hell-bent on insisting that you guys weren’t doing drugs,” she said. “I didn’t want to make this any harder on you than it already is.”

  “The hard part of this whole thing is that I can’t remember what really happened,” I said. “If you know something, you need to tell me.”

  My hands were shaking, so I clasped them together and set them in my lap. I couldn’t believe my one friend in all of this had lied to me about something so important.

  “Maybe we should talk about this later,” she said, glancing around at the crowded cafeteria.

  “No, I want to talk about it now,” I said. “What do you remember from that night?”

  “Most of us showed up at the party that night around seven,” she said, finally. “You guys both got there a little bit late. I’m not sure where you were before you got there, but Hailey was already buzzing on something. Her eyes were all red and she kept laughing at everything like it was the most hysterical thing on the planet.”

  I listened, not wanting to believe a word she was saying. I could hear the judgment in Nicole’s voice, but I did my best to listen for clues about what happened.

  If Hailey was high, it wasn’t her fault. I knew that now.

  “You seemed like you were annoyed with her,” Nicole said. “I tried to talk to you, convince you to have a drink or something and just chill out and have a good time, but you said you didn’t want to relax. I think you were mad at her for being messed up. I know you don’t remember it, but Hailey had been doing a lot of reckless things that summer.”

  “Like what?” I asked. A vision of the symbols in the back of her closet flashed through my mind.

  “Like getting drunk and hanging out with some of the college guys from Springfield,” she said. “She was acting different all summer. You really don’t remember any of that?”

  I shook my head. All I could remember were long summer days at the public pool and going to the movies a couple of times. I didn’t remember her being reckless or different at all.

  “You followed her around most of the night, and I lost track of you guys for a while,” she said. “There were a lot of people there. Pretty much our entire class, plus a bunch of the seniors. The whole place was crowded.”

  “But you said I was messed up when we left,” I said. “What did you mean by that?”

  “Well, I didn’t see you guys again until about eleven that night,” she said. “I’d been dancing out by the pool with Michael, and I’d come in to get another drink when I ran into Hailey in the kitchen. I asked her where you were and if you were doing okay.”

  Nicole hesitated, a sour look on her face.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  “She said that you’d been a real downer all summer, but that she’d slipped something into your drink and you were finally learning how to have a little fun for a change.”

  I swear my hear
t stopped beating for a full minute. What Nicole was saying was unbelievable. There was no way the Hailey I’d known and loved all my life would have intentionally drugged me like that.

  Hot tears welled up in my eyes.

  She was being controlled by someone else. Some kind of dark force. That was the only explanation.

  Hailey probably had no idea what was happening to her, and from her note, I could tell that she’d been terrified. She said she couldn’t control herself, anymore.

  But if Nicole was telling the truth, that meant the doctors and the police had been right all along. We really did both have drugs and alcohol running through our systems that night. Drugs my best friend had purposely slipped into my drink.

  All along, I’d believed it had to be some kind of mistake. I’d thought that it was possible someone had slipped something to us that we didn’t know about, but never in my wildest dreams had I thought Hailey was capable of doing something like that to me.

  I couldn’t breathe. It was like my lungs were blocked somehow, and I could only draw air into my throat. The entire room went fuzzy, and I blinked furiously, trying to make it all come back into focus.

  “Marayah, are you okay?” she asked, reaching over the table to grab my arm.

  The moment she touched me, the room began to spin. Darkness grew at the edge of my vision and the whole world caved in on itself.

  I tried to answer her, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Nicole shouted for help as I fell, the darkness finally taking over.

  34

  I Don’t See Why It’s Important

  I woke up to find about a hundred people standing over me, staring at me as if I was some kind of freak.

  “Give her some space,” Mrs. Calloway, the school nurse said. She placed a cold cloth on my forehead. “Marayah, you had a little fainting episode, but you’re okay. Can you hear me? How are you feeling?”

  I tried to answer, but my words came out garbled.

  “Okay, everyone back to your seats or get to class,” Mr. Dixon said. No one dared argue or disobey him. Everyone scattered immediately. Only he, Mrs. Calloway, and Nicole stood by my side, staring down at me.