I half-glanced over my shoulder at him. He was plain and kind of quiet, like Alana, but with sandy hair. His only redeeming quality was his dazzling hazel, almost green-gray eyes. “I met him once—on my first day,” I said.
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Well, what did he say to you? Was he nice? Did he—”
“Em?” I put my hand up between us. She had somehow managed to excite herself so much she’d almost drifted onto my lap. “Why don’t you just talk to him?”
Emily ducked her head and stole a glance back at him. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“What if he doesn’t like me?”
In my mind, I flicked my hand out and whacked her across the back of the head. In the real world, I just rolled my eyes at her. Ever since she first took real notice of him at rehearsals yesterday, all she’d done was talk about what this person told her about him, or what that person said he did in Math class. But I had to agree with her when she said that, ever since she first decided he was perfect, she’d seen the world move in slow motion. See, that I understood.
“So, are you and David going out now?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’re going out tonight, remember?”
“No, dummy.” She slapped my arm. “I mean, has he asked you to be his girlfriend?”
“Do guys do that?”
Her expression said it all. “Yes, Ara. Guys ask girls out.”
“Oh. Well, no. He didn’t. He um… he said he liked holding my hand.”
“Hm. PG.”
I laughed and sat facing the front again.
“Maybe he’s just being a gentleman.” She leaned a little closer, keeping her eyes on Dad as if we were paying attention to him. “I mean, that would be very like him, Ara. He might be waiting for you to make the first move?”
I sat up in my chair. “Yeah, he does have that freaky old-world charm thing. Maybe he’s ultra-traditional.”
“It would make sense,” she offered.
I chuckled once. “Maybe I should offer him my intentions in writing.”
“Nah, I don’t think—”
“Em?” I elbowed her. “That was a joke.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Ara, you tell the worst jokes.”
“Yeah, I must get it from my dad.” I grinned as the whole class broke into laughter at one of his inadvertently humorous comments.
“No.” Emily sighed, leaning on her hand and dreamily gazing at Dad. “He’s funny. You must’ve inherited your terrible joke problem from your mom.”
My heart stopped for a beat. “Yeah. I guess I did.” And it was true. But not from the mom they all thought I grew up with.
I got my terrible joke problem from the mother I just buried.
It was kind of our little game, almost an art form: lame ‘Dad’ jokes for a girl without a dad around. I just didn’t realize until now that I was still playing it.
My chin trembled involuntarily then as I saw myself like a fresh memory, standing by a graveside, wondering how I would walk away—say goodbye to someone I’d loved my whole life.
Dad looked up suddenly, and started talking with a slight stutter as he realized that I was struggling to hold back my tears.
“Sorry, class”—he sauntered casually over to his desk and lifted a piece of paper—“just remembered I need to send a note up to the office.”
“Ooh, I’ll go Mr. T,” one of the girls said, holding her hand high in the air.
“Actually—” He scanned the room. “Edmond!” All eyes turned to look up the back, following Dad’s unusual tone. Edmond dropped his phone and sat up straight, pulling his headphones out of his ears. Dad handed me the note and whispered, “Go.”
I went, my feet carrying me swiftly to my quick exit as the lecture on why we don’t play with phones in class absconded into the empty corridor, ending as the door slammed shut behind me.
I couldn’t breathe. I dropped the fake note to the floor and felt for the wall as the hot tears blinded me. But for every one I swiped away, another took its place, and I fought to quiet my sobs, but the pain just went too deep.
“Stupid jokes.” I kicked the base of the wall. This was why I swore I’d never let my guard down, why I swore I wouldn’t try to make friends here. As soon as they found out, they’d all crowd around me in the lunchroom, using my pain to fill the boring hour. I’d seen it happen before when a girl lost her mom at my old school. I couldn’t let that happen to me.
As the tears slowed and the receding anger turned my body cold, I rolled my face upward to look at the classroom door, wishing my dad would come out to see if I was okay, if I needed a hug, because, for the first time since I lost her, that was all I really wanted. Just a hug. Just to feel like someone could hold me down—stop me from floating away.
I dropped my forehead against the wall and hugged myself, not really sure I could do this anymore.
“Ara?” Long, cool fingers slowly gripped my arms from behind. “What happened? What’s wrong?” His words were barely a whisper, but I recognized his voice right away. And he was the last person I wanted to see.
“I’m okay, David. I just…” I wiped my face, keeping my head down. “I guess being new just got to me.”
“This is not nerves or fear, Ara. This is grief.” His fingers tightened on my arms, his gently melodic tone forcing a new rise of heartache inside my chest. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t.” I sobbed, wrapping my fingers over my entire face.
“It’s okay.” He tried to turn my shaking body, but I held fast, afraid to let him see. “It’s really okay.”
“No, it’s not. Why does everyone always say that?” I asked, almost incomprehensibly. “I’m so sick of hearing that.”
“Ara. Please. Please. I’m worried about you.” His hand came forward, cupping my shoulder as he spun me gently into his chest and wrapped me up in his arms. “Please, don’t cry.”
“I’m trying not to,” I said, shielding my face in the darkness against his shirt. And he smelled so good, so real, and he was so warm. He smelled like something safe, like a person who could hold on to me if I fell. And I wanted to hold on. I wanted to wrap my arms around his waist and just hold on. But right now what I needed was to be small, closed-in. Held on to.
“Okay.” He rubbed my back and took a step, keeping me close to his chest as we walked. “Come on.”
I hiccupped in an embarrassingly high-pitched tone. “Where’re we going?”
He looked down and smiled at me. “We’re going somewhere we can be alone—talk.”
And like that, in one sentence, David hit every chord I ever wanted to hear. My heart squeezed tighter then twisted into a large, pulsing knot—a good knot—slightly weighted by dread. I wanted to be alone with him. Talk. But not about this.
Still, I went with him willingly, because even if I didn’t talk, I at least needed some fresh air.
* * *
As we hurried into the front parking lot, I glanced over my shoulder every few seconds, watching for teachers. David stayed calm though, walking with the grace of a king. We stopped by the passenger door of a shiny black car with a soft-top roof, and David pulled his keys from his back pocket.
“Is this your car?” I asked.
“No, I’m stealing it.” He jammed the key in the lock and twisted it, then laughed at me. “Yes, it’s my car, Ara.”
“How old is it?”
“Uh—” He looked at the car, then at me. “It’s a little old.”
“Classic old?”
“Kinda. It was my uncle’s.” He held the door open for me. “Hop in.”
As David shut the door, the exasperating heat closed me in right away, and the tan leather seat burned the backs of my thighs under my skirt. I lifted one leg, then the other, and wiped the sweat from under my knees, placing fabric between skin.
“You okay?” David asked, releasing the tight pressure of heat for a moment as he opened his door.
I nodded, slink
ing down lower. “I’ve never ditched school before.”
“This isn’t ditching,” he said. “Your dad will understand.”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
He smiled across at me and shook his head, sliding forward to reach into his back pocket.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Easing your conscience.” He pinned a number into his phone and pressed it to his ear, taking my hand. “Miss Apple?”
I heard her voice muffled on the other end.
“Yes, I have Ara Thompson with me. Can you let her father know she’s fine, and I’m taking her for a walk to clear her head?”
I slowly inched up in the chair, inconspicuously wiping a few dots of sweat from my upper lip.
“Yes, I’ll bring her home later. Give him my number if he wishes to check on her. Okay. Bye.” He hung up the phone and dumped it in the center console, then started the engine.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re very welcome.”
I sat back then and rubbed under my eyes where the tears had dried in the heat, making my skin stiff. Even my nose felt dry and swollen.
We sat at the exit sign for a second until the traffic passed, then David took off down the street, going slightly over the speed limit. “How long have you had your driver’s permit?”
“A while.” He looked at my forehead and frowned.
I wiped the sweat away with the back of my hand. “It’s hot today.”
“Oh, sorry, Ara. I don’t really feel the heat as much as most people. Here.” He turned on the air-conditioner. The blinding heat eased after the first blast of hot air passed and the chilly wind blew against my face. “Is that better?”
With my nose pressed to the vent, I nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
“If you get hot or cold, Ara, you really need to tell me. It’s just not something I think about.”
“Why?” I sat back in my seat and angled the vent to blast along my hairline.
He grinned. “I’m insensitive.”
“Yeah, you’re so neglectful of others’ feelings, David,” I joked.
“I know. Sometimes I lose sleep over it.” He laughed.
“Mm, I don’t know how you live with yourself.”
“Takes practice,” he said, but there was an undertone of suggestion that seemed aimed at me, like maybe he meant that it takes practice to live with yourself.
“What are you saying?”
“Regret. It takes time to live with it.” He reached across and took my hand again. “You called your mom Vicki the other day.”
I felt numb then, not just from the crying but the stupidity. “Did I?”
“Yes. And if I am good at only one thing, Ara, it’s deductive reasoning. I think I’ve known for a while now that your mom died. I just don’t know why you pretend she hasn’t.”
I rolled my face slowly toward my chest. “Because I didn’t want people to ask how she died. And I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me.”
“People only feel sorry for you when there’s a good reason, Ara. Your mom’s gone. People just want to help.”
“I know.” But I didn’t want their help. Every ache was a step toward redemption.
“Redemption?’ David said.
I looked up at him quickly. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Uh—” He looked at the road again, his face gray. “Yes. Didn’t you mean to?”
I couldn’t believe my own carelessness. “No.”
“What did you mean by that—about redemption?”
“Just that… when you do something wrong, sometimes you can make up for it.”
“By doing what?”
I blinked a few times, and the dried tears made my skin crack a little. “Suffering.”
The car slowed for a second, and then as David sat taller, his fingers tighter on the wheel, it went back up to speed.
When I flipped the visor mirror down, I gasped at the mess David had been looking at for the last five minutes. My life was over. I wiped the smudges of black mascara from under my eyes, using the remaining tears around my lashes to smooth it away without too much of a problem. But I couldn’t wipe away the blotchy patches of red under my skin that turned my nose bright pink, forming a giant rouge smudge across my face.
“I look like a clown.” My voice quivered.
“You look”—David turned my face with his fingertips—“adorable.”
Right. Adorable. I folded my arms across my chest, aimed my gaze out the window, and focused on my breathing. The passing houses and tree-lined streets were all the same around here: pretty, with that old-style Halloween kind of feel. It felt like it should be autumn and everything sort of orange and brown, with the slight hint of cinnamon in the air. But the summer had this magic little place trapped in its grasp, making everything yellow and gold, and a little wilted.
The trees thickened as we turned onto a narrow road with dirt strips on both sides, and my squinting eyes relaxed as the sun’s glare disappeared over the canopy.
“David, where’re we going?”
“Somewhere quiet, where no one can hear us.”
I laughed. “That sounded kinda creepy.”
He laughed too. “Sorry. I realized that just as I said it.”
I sat taller to take a good look at the deserted forest road. “Why should we be where no one can hear us?”
“Because you need to talk. And you won’t talk if you think someone might hear you.”
I looked away, pinching the base of my thumb with my fingertips. He was right. I did need to talk, but I didn’t want to talk to him. He had this delusion that I was some nice, sweet girl. He didn’t know the real me—the one that I was fighting not to be anymore.
“Let me guess,”—he smiled, watching the road carefully and taking the curves with a kind of precision that put my dad’s driving to shame—“you don’t wanna talk to me about it. Am I right?”
“I’m sorry.” I looked out the window. “It was nice of you to bring me out here, but I don’t—”
“I’m not going to let you go until you talk to me.”
“And what are you going to do? Torture a confession out of me?”
He tilted his head a little, keeping his eyes on the road. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Well, it won’t work. I have my reasons for not wanting to talk, David.”
“And they mean nothing to me. You’re talking. Period.”
“You can’t make me.” I folded my arms and stared ahead, biting my teeth together.
The car slowed noticeably, gravel crunching under the tires as we pulled onto the side of the road. “Ara?”
I shook my head, refusing to let those emerald eyes persuade me.
“Ara?” David said again.
Begrudgingly, I twisted my neck to look at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning his whole body to face me. “Sweetheart, you’re taking things a little too seriously. I meant no harm. Really. And the more I think about it”—he rolled back in his seat and faced the front, a cheeky grin stretching the corners of his mouth—“the more I think I might just have to kidnap you until you do talk to me.”
A small smile crept onto my lips. I pressed them together firmly to keep it hidden.
“Ara, please don’t be so moody. It’s okay to smile.”
I sighed. The ogre was obviously dominating my mood right now. I should’ve eaten more at lunch. “I know you have the best of intentions here, David. But this is really nothing to do with you.”
“I can help you,” he said after a second. “I want to help you. All the bad things, Ara, all the pain you feel”—he reached for my hand; I let him take it—“I can make it all hurt less. But you have to let me in.”
“I can’t,” I said in a breaking whisper, turning away.
“Come.”
“Where?” I looked back at him.
He opened his door, allowing the clammy air to mingle with the pleasant, artificial cool. “S
omewhere better.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m getting out in the hea—”
“Let’s go.” David appeared on my right, opening my door.
“How did you get there so fast?”
“Come on.” He grabbed my hand, leaning in to unbuckle me. “I wanna show you something.”
8
After a long and wordless trek through crunchy leaves and tall trees, we walked toward a newly decaying cedar tree, lying sidelong across the slope of the trail, making a wooden partition between us and the sudden openness of whatever was beyond. The muddy clay smell that guided us in disappeared under a damp, kind of mossy scent, spiked with the lemony fragrance of tree sap. I breathed it in with the intention of never forgetting it. This place had an amazing feel to it, and I hoped I could remember the way here, because as soon as I got my license, I’d be visiting again.
David stepped up quickly and took my hand, guiding me around the tree. “Welcome to my secret hiding place.”
Maple leaves stole my gaze upward before casting it out widely to the unspoiled body of water down a sloped bank. A grand pathway of clover blanketed the trail toward the edge of the lake, and tiny hovering bugs danced above the star-shaped foliage, making the desolate spot look busy. Even under the open sky, it still felt cool and shadowed, and kind of private here. A place not so very different from the mountain-surrounded picnic spots my dad used to take me to, but with an element of magic to it, like somehow I could believe we were the only two souls left in the world.
“David, this is beautiful.” I searched the vacant place beside me where David was a second ago, finding him leaning on a rock right by the water’s edge. “How did you find this place?”
“It’s not something you’d find on a hike.” He unhitched himself from the black rock and walked behind it, then squatted down. “No one comes out to this trail anymore.”
“Anymore?”
He stood up and presented a pillow-sized black bag with a smile. “This land is owned by my family. We closed the hiking trails to outsiders about a hundred years ago.”
“You say that like you were a part of the decision.”
“Well”—he reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a picnic rug—“it’s up to each generation to decide. I chose to keep the land private, like my uncle before me.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 13
