by C. C. Bolick
SECRETS
RETURN
Leftover Girl Book 2
C.C. Bolick
SECRETS RETURN
Copyright © 2017 by C.C. Bolick
Dirt Road Books
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-1-946-08902-1
Cover Design by Tacal Designs
Edited by EbookEditingPro
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
From the Author
Stuck
Comatose
The Painful Truth
Another Tosh
Secrets Discovered
New Friends
Bloody Hands
Reality Check
More Trouble
Choices
Return to The Past
More Secrets
Home Again
The Party
The Reasons Why
Nowhere to Run
One More Goodbye
Pade
Acknowledgements
About the Author
From the Author
If you are reading this book, hopefully it’s because you enjoyed Leftover Girl, or at least found yourself wanting to continue the story of Jes Delaney. If you haven’t read Leftover Girl, please consider diving into that book first. While I try to relate previous events as much as possible, I hate to weigh the story down with what’s already happened, especially when there’s so much fun stuff to come.
I’m thankful to everyone who has read Leftover Girl and I enjoy all of the interaction with readers. When I wrote this book, I always planned for it to be a series, but I wasn’t sure if anyone beyond my circle of friends and family would want to read more (and I wasn’t always sure about them). I decided to release the book and see what happened. To my surprise, people started buying it, for which I am grateful.
As people who know me will say, I don’t write to get rich. Writing is the way I deal with stress from my job. Creating stories makes me happy. I have no expectations of ever quitting the day job (which I find rewarding despite the stress). The only thing I’d like to know is if people connect with and enjoy my stories. After reading this book, please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
Please visit my website www.ccbolick.com and leave feedback anytime. I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say. The third book in this series should be ready in May of 2017.
I sincerely hope you enjoy reading Secrets Return as much as I enjoyed writing it.
C.C. Bolick
For Mazie,
Because she always believed
And I loved her dearly
Stuck
I stared at my bedroom door. One thought plagued my mind, same as it had every day for the last five months. Focus, I had to focus. I closed my eyes and wrapped my mind around the doorknob, imagining my fingers on the curved metal, turning until a click sounded and the door slid open.
Opening my eyes, I sighed and sank lower in the bed. The door hadn’t moved.
A gentle tapping sounded against the door and I jumped. “Rachelle called again,” Mom said from the other side.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“Jes, you need to get out of this room.”
Straightening against the headboard, I closed the book in my hands and shoved it under my pillow. My mind had drifted often in the months since Chase left, but I wasn’t successful at finding my power then either. I was tired of waiting for him to return with the proof he promised, the secrets of my past I already knew to be true. Maybe not all of it, but I remembered standing on the platform as if it happened only the night before. Tears still bit at my eyes as I pictured his head sinking below the dark water.
I took a breath, forcing my voice to a safer place. “Wednesday was the last day of school. There’s no reason to leave my room now.”
“Your friends are having a party at the lake. Rachelle has called eight times in the last two days.”
“I have no friends,” I said and looked out the window. Clouds were boiling with the summer heat, threatening a hundred degrees of misery for our Alabama town, although a full week remained in May. Credence had to be one of the hottest places I’d ever called home.
“Jessica Delaney,” Mom said as she opened the door. “You will get out of that bed and quit moping about.”
“What does it matter? Who cares if I spend the entire summer in bed?”
“I care.” She sat on the edge of my bed and I tensed as she took my hand.
“You have to care about me. Isn’t that like the first commandment of being a mom?”
“It’s more than that, Jes. Your father and I are worried you’ve become, well, disconnected. From school, from friends, from us. You remembering was never important enough to cut off the world.”
Me remembering was everything. It was how I’d make things right with Chase. I pictured his face that last night at the mall, after insisting I wasn’t the girl he’d been searching for. I’d screamed for him to leave, but his pain felt like a knife in my own back.
If only I could tell someone. “Dad said the doctors would help me, but no one can help me. I’m just as broken as when we came to Credence. Maybe if we’d stayed in Atlanta…”
“Don’t say that,” she said and pulled my head to hers. “You grew so much over those first months, and when you figured out the truth about the Naples, I couldn’t have been prouder of the way you reacted.”
“You should have told me the truth.” After five months, the betrayal I felt from their lies still burned as it had on my birthday. No, Jessica Naples’ birthday. Mom and Dad adopted me at five; I’d always known. But they didn’t have to lie and say the Naples were my real parents. For eleven years, I thought those people abandoned me, and now I knew they didn’t hang around because I wasn’t their real daughter. No one but them seemed to know what happened to the real Jessica Naples.
Mom pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Learning the truth on your own made it real.”
“Yeah, that’s what Dad keeps saying.” But I didn’t learn it on my own. Chase showed me the truth, made it real. Yes, I’d finally remembered the night I lost him all those years ago, but if he hadn’t told me, the spaceship in my head would have been dismissed as a dream. I wouldn’t know we were from another planet or that I’d been lost in New York, not a ‘four-year-old runaway’ as the papers said.
“You should call Rachelle,” Mom said.
How could I get out of going to the party? Maybe my old fear would save me this time, since it always seemed to work against me before. “You’d really drop me off next to a huge body of water? After the way Dad freaked out when he found me at Angel’s party last fall?” Angel’s place had been close enough to the river for her backyard to include a dock.
She pulled away. “Are you still afraid of water?”
Lie, I told myself. But seeing the concern in Mom’s eyes, I couldn’t. “No.”
“Then I’ll take you to the party. Rachelle has been a good friend these last few months.”
Strange how much could change in five months. Now my parents acted as if I’d never been afraid of water, when last fall they acted as if my trip to the little creek in the woods behind our house with Bailey was worse than the day I skipped school. I looked at my hands as guilt clashed with rage. “Rachelle is not the friend I need.”
“I know,” Mom said, patting my hand. “Bailey should be back sometime this summer.”
Should? Like she and Pade should have come back for spring break? Y
es, my best friend who hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone in more than a month. Bailey was Mom’s niece and had been the best friend I’d always wanted, until she left to live with her dad in Colorado. Pade had gone too—but his departure gnawed at my heart in a different way. I’d turned down his offer to stay for me. I pictured his eyes, filled with hurt after my words, but I could never tell Mom about my feelings for Pade. Not when he was her nephew.
Mom had no idea I wasn’t worried about Bailey. Jealous maybe, but I worried about Chase. I shuddered to think where he might be or who might be keeping him from returning.
Mom leaned closer. “I know how you must feel.”
I smiled at the ridiculous words. No way could she ever understand.
* * * * *
Later that night, after my annoying twin brothers went to bed, I tiptoed down the hall and into the bathroom. Gently, I clicked the lock and flipped on the light above the mirror. Staring at my brown eyes, I took out both contacts, dropping each into an empty spot in the holder.
From my pocket, I pulled out the pair of glasses Chase gave me as a birthday gift. The blue-gray metal gleamed in my hands as I raised the pink lenses over my nose. Since the gift was our secret, I’d made sure no one ever saw me wearing the glasses. Behind the lenses were blue eyes.
The same blue eyes as my brother. If only I could see Chase again.
I grabbed the thickest towel from the shelf above the toilet and spread the plush beige along the bottom of the tub like a blanket. Climbing in the tub, I stretched out my legs and opened the book in my hands. Removing the green bookmark, I settled with an arm to each side of the tub and leaned my head back.
It was going to be a long night.
* * * * *
Lake Credence teased us through the trees along the paved trail. The entire lake covered more than twenty acres, according to Mom, and ran alongside the road in several spots. We passed a campground and two pavilions before topping the hill leading down to the lake’s sandy beach area. Mom pulled up near the bathhouse, but didn’t turn off the van.
“Got everything?” she asked as I climbed out. “Your sunscreen?”
“Put some on this morning,” I said and grabbed my bag.
“With all this sun, you’ll need another coat.” Mom stared at me, but didn’t shift the van into gear. “Are you okay?”
I thought of Pade, always asking the same annoying question, and smiled. “No, but if you’d feel better staying, you’re welcome to spend the day embarrassing me in front of all my friends.”
Smiling at the mention of friends, she slid on her sunglasses. “What happened to that daughter of mine who used to worry so much about what everyone else thought?”
“Jes,” Rachelle called from across the parking lot.
“Rachelle’s mom is bringing you home, right?” Mom asked.
We’d only had this discussion ten times. “Yes.”
“Be careful,” she said. Her window rose before Rachelle reached my side. The van circled around the parked cars and disappeared down the stone drive.
“I thought you bailed on me again.” Rachelle pointed to my bag. “You better have a swimsuit in there.”
“Mom took me shopping last night.”
“About time you got out. Come on, you can change in the bathhouse.”
Inside the bathhouse, I pulled on the swimsuit, a one-piece mixture of blues and greens. Rachelle, in a bikini that hugged every curve, stood just outside the curtain. What would she think of the skirt that hid my hips completely? If only she knew I’d never owned a bathing suit before last night.
“Oh no,” I said, rummaging through my bag.
“What is it?” she asked.
My heart beat fast, almost too fast as I pushed aside the curtain and poured the bag out on the counter between two sinks.
“Girl, you’re freaking me out.”
“I forgot my sunscreen.”
Rachelle laughed. “Is that all?” She pulled a can from her bag. “You can use some of mine.”
I read the label and cringed—SPF 15. The mixture was like water compared to the tube Dad always gave me, but it would have to be enough. I sprayed every inch from my ears to my feet and then started the stream again.
“Easy,” she said. “I didn’t say you could use it all.”
“I might need it all,” I said, but she only laughed again.
I drew a breath when I saw the water, dazzled by a thousand tiny sun rays. The lake spread to the edge of sight, fading as it reached the sky.
“Waterfall,” Rachelle said as she followed my gaze.
Dozens of our classmates took turns diving from two boards on a high-rise platform halfway across the lake. Others tossed a volleyball over a net that stretched across the sandy beach. The only person missing was Tosh, not counting the three people I thought of every time I opened my eyes in the morning. I waded into the water behind Rachelle, but never felt an ounce of fear. Chase would most definitely have been freaking out.
For one afternoon, I waded through the laughter and fun, talking to everyone from Credence High who cared to open their mouth. After those first tense minutes, I didn’t think about the sunscreen. I didn’t think about the secrets no one surrounding me could know. I didn’t think about Chase, or Bailey, or even Pade, and thankfully no one mentioned their names. It was like being in Arkansas, at the farmhouse before Dad got sick. Before we had to rush to Atlanta. For years we moved, north in the summer and south in the winter, each time getting closer…to Alabama. Mom’s perfect hometown.
I looked around for Rachelle, spotting her under a tree far from the beach, knees hugged against her chest. Her head rested on her knees.
“Hey,” I said and crossed my legs beside her.
“Now isn’t the best time,” she said.
I froze, stunned by the cruelty in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
We sat in silence. Her body shook next to me, barely at first and then in all-out spasms. I put an arm around her shoulders but she jerked away.
“I told you…” she said, but the words dissolved into a sob. Rachelle leaned into my embrace.
People laughed around us. The volleyball bounced at our feet and a girl ran by chasing it, never looking down. Rachelle moaned half-words and apologies, but she wasn’t making anything up to me. I doubt if she knew I was there.
“You shouldn’t like me,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t be my friend.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said, cringing at how much I sounded like my parents.
She threw her phone at the sand. “I hurt someone.”
“We’ve all done that.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve hurt someone and I can’t take it back.”
“Angel?”
Rachelle beat her palm against her head. “Angel is stuck on Skip. This is worse.”
“Someone from school?”
“Someone I met at the bowling alley, right after Christmas. We talked online every day. I never told you about her.”
My stomach churned. “Can’t you apologize?”
“My friend…she killed herself last night. I…I just heard.”
“Oh my god,” I whispered and pulled away. “What happened?”
“She…I can’t talk about it. She wouldn’t want me to say.”
Her tears fell again, this time not as full-body sobs, but as a gentle stream of pain that would never cease. I pulled her head to my chest, hugging her as the moisture fell on my arms and legs.
The sun drifted closer to the trees. People faded from the beach and the water became a sheet of glass.
She wiped her nose with her arm. “Have you ever thought of…you know…”
“Killing myself?” I stared at the bathhouse. Skip Greene laughed as he and Angel walked up the hill to the parking lot, neither noticing our lonely tree. “The night after Lisa died, I almost tried.”
Rachelle gripped my arm. “Are you serious?”
“I took one of Mom’s kitchen knives and held i
t to my wrist.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking of Mom’s face when she found me.”
“I never imagined you…” She sighed. “I’m glad you didn’t do it.”
“Yeah,” I said with a small laugh, “me too.”
“Did you ever think about it again?”
“Never. After that night, I was glad I didn’t go through with it.” I thought of Chase, of our day at the lake when I learned of his power. Our birthday. “The next day was one of the best I can remember.”
“When I first read the message, I thought about it. But my mom has planned a trip to Washington D.C. this week. We’re going to see my real mother, and there’s so much I’ve got to say to her first.”
“Then wait a week before you decide,” I said. “Think about it for seven days. Dad’s taking us to the aquarium on Saturday, but we’ll talk on Sunday. Just you and me, all day.”
“Promise?” she asked weakly.
“I’m not saying it’s okay to kill yourself, because it’s not. But I’m not going to sit here and act like I never thought of it myself. Promise me you won’t do anything crazy before Sunday.”
Rachelle nodded and rose to her feet. “I’m sure Mom’s waiting in the parking lot.”
The car ride home felt longer than any trip I’d made with my parents in our crisscross of moves. It wasn’t what Rachelle had said that bothered me, or what I admitted to almost doing. Rolling my window down, I took a deep breath as the air fanned my cheeks.
“Jes,” Rachelle said, “Mom’s got the air on.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just so hot in here.
Rachelle and her mom laughed. “It’s not hot in here,” Rachelle said, handing me her compact. “It’s just you. You’re sunburned.”
I stared at my face in the tiny mirror. Mom and Dad were going to kill me.
