Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  “Very observant,” David said, and I rolled my eyes at him. He laughed. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to her.”

  “Her?”

  “Yep,” he said simply, and as he let go of the auditorium door it thudded loudly behind us, making everyone look up. The shambolic wailing of their instruments stopped abruptly, leaving a dense silence as we started down the aisle. “It’s okay.” He leaned closer to whisper. “They’re not necessarily staring at you, Ara, more the fact that you’re walking with me.”

  “Why? What does that matter?”

  “You’re a girl.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Guess I just don’t really ever talk to girls. Willingly.”

  “Oh.” I folded my arms around myself. “Why?”

  He grinned and slipped a guiding hand through the strap of my backpack, resting it just under my shoulder blade. “I uh… I don’t like any of them.”

  “Oh.” I tried to laugh off the nerves, but nothing came out. All I could focus on was his touch against my cotton dress, so close to my skin.

  As we neared the stage, some of the kids stood up, but their eager smiles sent my shoulders to my ears.

  David nodded his greeting, keeping his hand safely on my back. “This is Ara.”

  I took a deep, shaky breath and waved, but the forced smile probably made me look more like a troll than a friendly newcomer.

  “Ah, a fellow muso.” A vertical palm appeared at my midsection, ready to shake my hand. I looked up from his thin wrist to his sandy-blond hair, then back down to his broad, honest grin, warmly inviting friendship.

  “Um, hi.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Ryan.” He shook my hand then inclined his head to a small dark-haired girl in the corner, quietly tuning her violin. “And that’s Alana.”

  “Hello.” I smiled at her, but my troll face clearly scared her back into the shadows after a quick nod my way.

  Ryan laughed, leaning closer. “She’s shy.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Anyway, that there is Fiona, and that’s Jess, Jay, Dan…” He rattled off names as I nodded and smiled at the faces, forgetting their names instantly. They should’ve been called Bob—all of them—it’d make things so much easier.

  “So?” Ryan asked. “What’s your poison?”

  I stared at him, trying to figure out what the hell he meant.

  “He means what do you play?” David added, barely masking his amusement.

  “Oh. Um. Piano?” I said, but it sounded more like a question for some reason.

  “Nice.” Ryan nodded, then pointed to the old brown upright. “Well, that’s Big Bertha. She’s old and large and always in the way—but she’s in tune.”

  “Big Bertha?” I scratched my head, looking at David.

  “We have a name for everything around here,” David said.

  Before I could laugh, a loud clap resonated around the auditorium. Everyone stopped and looked to the silhouette at the entrance. “I hear we have a new student today.”

  “Right here, sir,” Ryan said, and I was pretty sure I just shrunk about two inches.

  “Excellent.” His booming voice reached my ears with the presumption that he was a big, tall man, but as he stalked toward us he became amusingly short and round. I tightened my lips, trapping the laughter when I caught sight of his blond ponytail, tugging heavily on the few straining hairs that clung for dear life around the edges of his bald spot. Stylish. But, short as he was, he was a centimeter taller than me, just enough to be threatening as he burrowed into my soul with an accusing glare. “Miss Thompson, I presume?”

  Self-amusement turned to fear and dried my throat. I looked at Bertha, considering hiding behind her. “Yes, sir.”

  “And what will you be playing for us today, Miss Thompson?”

  “Uh. Playing?”

  “We expect a performance from all our students on the first day.” He grinned, cupping his hands as he looked around the class. And at that point, the second head I’d earlier assumed he’d have showed itself.

  Everyone in the class waited for me to respond, or maybe to run away crying. Clearly, this was the reason for David’s smirk in the library. I felt like saying, “FYI, David, you being here with me does not make this spotlight on my awkwardness okay. Not even a little bit!” But I bit my tongue instead, my eyes narrowing when David tipped his head in a slight nod. It was so obvious. He knew Mr. Grant was going to do this. Why didn’t he warn me? Then I could have made some lame excuse to run back home for the day.

  Mr. Grant stood back from his disconcerting lean, offering the piano stool. “If you please, Miss Thompson. Or do you require sheet music?”

  Groaning, I shuffled out of the straps of my backpack and went to dump it on the ground.

  “I’ll take this for you.” David grabbed it and placed it by his feet.

  “Uh, thanks,” I said, then walked over to Bertha. The weight of two options dragged me to slump a little heavier on the stool: burst into tears and run away, or play a song?

  “If you can only play Chopsticks, Miss Thompson, that will be fine,” Mr. Grant snickered, and I just wanted to pull his ponytail. Jerk. But there was no way I’d let this know-it-all music professor make me cry in front of all these kids. I was sure he’d reduced many a student to tears in the past, and it was time somebody taught him a lesson. If there was one thing I hated in this world more than anything, it was people using their talents or skills or, worse, knowledge, to make other people feel small. And that’s exactly what Mr. Grant was doing to me. And it worked.

  Everyone watched. I hesitated only a breath more, then lifted the cover and touched the very tip of one finger to the high C, too afraid to press down.

  “Ara?” David rested his elbows on the top of the piano and smiled at me. I did not smile back. “You’ll be okay. Just play.”

  My lip quivered a little, tears burning in my eyes. That little bit of control I had over my life was just about to slip away.

  Mr. Grant, standing uncomfortably close, watched me reposition my stool so I could reach the foot pedals, then he held out a stack of papers. “Your sheet music.”

  “I’ll be fine without that, thanks, Mr. Grant,” I stated calmly and politely. Really, I wanted to take them from his puny little hands and clonk him over the head. Instead, I traced the columns of black and white keys for a second, drawing a tight breath through my teeth. I wasn’t familiar with the weight of these keys or the force it would take to draw a sound from them. This piano was old, and after two months without so much as hearing a piano, I wasn’t sure I could even play anymore. This could end badly.

  “Today, Miss Thompson,” said the intolerant imp.

  David gave me a reassuring nod, leaning a little closer to watch my fingers as they found their way home.

  I looked around the room and grinned. “Has anyone here heard of the band Muse?”

  Under the cheers of the class, David nodded and sat back against the table behind him, while everyone else pulled their chairs into a neat circle around me. Even Alana moved from her desolation in the corner, and stood beside Ryan with her violin still in hand.

  “Go get ’em, Ara.” Ryan waved an encouraging fist.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, strangely feeling a little better now.

  The world disappeared for a second then. I inhaled and felt the cool of the keys under my fingertips—heavy and solid. Breathe.

  The first notes of the song filled the air, and a familiar flood of excitement rushed through my heart then flowed down my hands. The keys were heavier than the ones back home, but it only took two chords to get used to it.

  “This is called United States of Eurasia, followed by Collateral Damage,” I said.

  A few people laughed loudly and cheered.

  As I panned over the notes, feeling the long-forgotten muscles in my hands stretch, I cleared my throat and sung the words. David looked down into his lap, keeping a smile hidden as he nodded in time with the music.


  On the second verse, a violin came in out of nowhere. I looked over my shoulder and smiled at Alana, who had her eyes closed. But her accompaniment gave me a new kind of confidence, and my voice flowed, unwavering into the echo of the auditorium. It just felt so damn good to release the air from my lungs this way again, as if this was my first breath in two months.

  Everyone else in the room became a part of the performance then, keeping the beat with their hands and feet as I played. It was like a journey; a story with a beginning, middle, and end. And right where I’d have done so if it were me, the violin cut out, leaving an eerie stillness as I drew the song to an end—the high notes sorrowful, laden with a distant kind of pain that reminded me of home, of my best friend.

  With my eyes closed but open to the memories of my old school and the softly weighted keys of the baby grand piano in the music room there, my fingers played for me, allowing me to drift away to the days when life was simple. Alone, in that place, I felt the last note leave, and only silence remained, hovering like a breath held.

  I opened my eyes to David’s beautiful face.

  Beside him, Ryan stood suddenly and started clapping like a seal at a marine park.

  “Way to go, New Kid,” one of the girls said.

  “Thanks.” I smiled sheepishly, steering my eyes away from David’s soul-penetrating gaze.

  “Well”—Mr. Grant peered down his sharp nose—“I can see I have nothing much to teach you, Miss Thompson.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Grant,” Ryan said. “Dan still hasn’t gotten past open chords.”

  A boy ditched a pencil at Ryan.

  “Right.” Mr. Grant turned on his heel and walked back up the aisle. “Carry on, people. We will be working on our performance pieces for the Halloween concert.”

  My eyes stayed on the keys until the heavy door to the auditorium closed behind the two-headed beast. What was that guy’s problem?

  “Did he expect me to fail?” I asked, looking around the group.

  “He does it to everyone new.” Ryan patted my shoulder.

  “Well, thanks for the heads-up, David.” I frowned at him.

  “I figured you could handle it.” He looked at Ryan and they both laughed.

  There was no way he could’ve known that, unless he’d read my student file, which I highly doubted. I folded my arms. “So what gave you that impression—that I could handle it?”

  David stopped laughing and folded his arms, too, looking a little smug. “Your fingers, actually.”

  Slowly, I pulled them out from the fold and studied them. My nails used to be perfectly rounded atop the long, thin digits, but looked a little worn these days from being munched on so often. But he was right.

  “The hands of a pianist,” he added.

  Very observant, Mr. Know-It-All. “Fine. I’ll pay that one. But next time, a little warning, thanks.”

  “Sure. Well, in that case, maybe you should ditch History class,” he said, holding back a smile. “That guy gives really boring lectures.”

  “Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.” I rolled my eyes, not really meaning to smile as well. It was hard to be annoyed at David. He was just so sweet, and I had to hand it to him: I could handle it. I did handle it. I was grateful to Mrs. Baker now for the three hours every Tuesday and Thursday, where she would painstakingly force me to play piano until my fingers seized up and turned bone-white. Mrs. Baker was one thing I would not miss about my old life.

  “Seriously,” David whispered in my ear as the hovering crowd dissipated and went back to their projects. “There was a reason I didn’t tell you about Mr. Grant.”

  “I’m listening,” I said, shuffling over so he could sit beside me.

  “I was afraid you’d run home.”

  I would have. “I’m not that weak,” I said. “But I could’ve at least prepared myself.”

  “I’m sure.” He smiled to himself, his upper arm brushing mine as he laid his long fingers to the keys. “Heart and Soul?”

  “Huh?” I looked up at him.

  “Heart and Soul. You wanna play it?”

  “That’s a bit… simple, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mozart,” he said with a breathy laugh. “Would you prefer a more complicated duet?”

  “Can you handle it?” I asked teasingly.

  “Young lady, I can handle anything you can dish out.”

  “That, I strongly doubt.”

  * * *

  After David escorted me all the way to third-period Math class—even though he wasn’t in my class—I watched him walk away and then fell inside myself at the back of the room. There were no kids in Math from Music class and, for the most part, no one bothered to strike up a conversation. So I sat quietly and thought about David until the teacher said, “Five minutes left to finish those questions and hand them in. If you’re done already, you can leave.”

  A few students jumped up, placed their work on Miss Chester’s desk and left the room. I pushed my unfinished paper aside and reached into my bag for my map—to hopefully locate the nearest bathroom. But as I pulled my schedule and pencil case out, and looked into the empty space beneath my purse and keys, a wave of panic washed over me.

  I checked the ground, the desk, even in my pencil case. Nope. Definitely gone. But I was sure I had that map in the library.

  The familiar heat of panic flushed through my arms, rising into my cheeks as I dropped my face against my hand. When the bell screeched, I stood, packing my stuff into my bag with the speed of an old arthritic lady. As the last of the chattering dregs shuffled from the room, I herded out behind them, dumping my paper on the teacher’s desk before stepping into the corridor. The hot, damp air trickled over the balustrade from the courtyard below, wetting my lungs as I breathed it in.

  Of all the doors nestled into the brown bricks around the square lot, not one of them looked like a bathroom. And of all the kids hanging over the guardrail, tossing things to their friends on the ground floor, not one of them looked like the kind of kid I could ask for directions without them later responding to a ‘Have you met the new girl?’ with a ‘Yeah, she asked me where she could pee!’.

  I swung my bag over my shoulder, and as I looked up, my gaze met with a pair of amazing green eyes, shining out like glass marbles as the sun hit them. “Hi!”

  “Hello, Ara.” David flashed his mischievous grin. “Need a guide?”

  God, yes. “Well, I wouldn’t if someone hadn’t taken my map,” I said accusingly, then smiled back as I stood beside him.

  “Sorry. But those things are impossible to read, anyway.” He looked down at me. “You’d have gotten lost without me to show you the way.”

  “Is that so?” My playful tone drew a smile to his lips again.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  He nodded once.

  “So, are you saying I’m incapable of finding my own way?” I said.

  “No. Only that life’s easier when you have someone to guide you.”

  “Life?”

  “Er, yeah, I meant… in the context of getting from A to B.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “That was kind of awkward, wasn’t it?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I let the laughter out with a breath. He had foot-in-mouth-disease almost as bad as me. “You know, Emily warned me about you.”

  “She did?” He turned and looked forward as we started walking, his natural cool spreading calm out over my awkwardness.

  I hugged my book tightly to my chest. “Yeah, she said you had a tendency to snatch up lost lambs.”

  “Did she tell you why she thought that?” He stopped and took my math book from me, tucking it under his arm beside his books.

  I watched it for a second. “Not really. I came to my own conclusions, though.”

  “And what might they be?”

  “Well, it’s not the lost lamb thing you’re into. It’s fresh meat.”

  “Fresh meat?” He laughed nervously,
looking away.

  “Yeah. You know? A new toy—something different to play with than all the old ones.”

  David stayed quiet for a moment. “You don’t think of me like that, do you? That I am only talking to you because I want something more interesting to play with?”

  I shook my head. “I did. But, I actually think you might be a very genuinely nice guy.” I tried not to let the surprise seep out in my tone but it did anyway. “I mean, I’ve never had a guy carry my books.”

  We both looked at the books.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever carried a girl’s books. Not at this school, anyway.”

  “Oh, you didn’t grow up here?”

  He swallowed. “No.”

  “Are you new, too?”

  He turned and started walking. “No.”

  Hm. King of Elaboration. I’d noticed this a few times today, so far, but it didn’t seem like he was trying to be vague. Just… more like he wasn’t good with conversation. So I decided to push for more details. “Have you… been here long?”

  “No.”

  “Longer than a year—less than a year?”

  “About two years. Almost.”

  “And, um… so, you don’t really talk to many of the girls?”

  “No.”

  “Because you don’t really like them?”

  “Correct.”

  “Why?” I asked as we came to a stop. “Why don’t you like them?”

  David scratched his ear. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  “Because you evade so many answers.”

  His lip tugged on one corner into an almost-smile. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “So…” I twirled my hair nervously around my finger, vaguely noticing a few girls giggle as they rushed in through the door beside us. “Are you going to tell me why you don’t like the girls here?”

  “Guess I just feel, sometimes, like I’m a hundred years older than them.”

  I smiled at the way he smiled. “So you’re too mature for them?”

  “You could say that.” He stepped into me, showing no respect for my territorial bubble. The length of his entire body hovered barely a centimeter away from mine, forcing my gaze to roll upward just to meet his lovely green eyes.