Secrets She Left Behind

by Diane Chamberlain

  Gary laughed when he saw me carrying the stack of books out the door. “You’re a library gal, all right,” he said. It was such a simple thing to say, but it made me feel normal for a change, like he saw me as a nineteen-year-old girl instead of a nineteen-year-old felon.

  Today, the cart in front of me had a bunch of books with the call number 133. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the books in the library, was it just a coincidence that I had a cartful of books on psychics and life after death and talking to the dead? I got a chill up my spine looking at their covers.

  I could still remember feeling Daddy’s spirit next to me on the deck of the Sea Tender. I didn’t like thinking about it because remembering how real his visits felt to me made me feel borderline insane. So most of the time, I blocked those thoughts from my mind. Twice in prison, though, I felt like he was in my cell with me. After the first time Lizard beat the crap out of me, I took the pain pills they gave me and fell asleep on my hard-as-a-rock bed. When I woke up, he was there, sitting next to me and wiping tears from my eyes with his big hands. If someone else told me they experienced something like that, I would have said it was the meds or just a dream, but I knew it wasn’t. Which either meant Daddy was truly there or I was truly a fruitcake. The second time, though, I wasn’t drugged and I wasn’t just waking up. Instead, I was sitting at the little table in my cell, writing in my journal, and I heard him call my name, clear as day. Maggie. I turned around and there he was, standing against the bars of my cell. Smiling at me, like he always did. Then he was gone. I freaked out. Maybe I really was nuts. I thought I should write about it in my journal, but writing about it would make something concrete out of something mystical. Maybe ruin it for me. Crazy or not, I didn’t want to lose the connection I sometimes felt to him.

  I sat down on the rolling stool and flipped through some of the books. Of course, they all said it was possible to be in contact with the dead, which made me suspicious right there. I’d done it, and I still didn’t believe it.

  “Excuse me?”

  I looked up from the stool to see a girl around my age peeking around the corner of the stacks.

  “Do you work here?” she asked.

  I stood up, putting the book I’d been reading back where it belonged in the cart. “I’m a volunteer,” I said.

  “Do you know how I can look up college information?” she asked.

  It wasn’t my job to help the patrons, but I sure knew how to look up college information. That had been the story of my life during my junior year—the year before things started up with Ben.

  “Sure,” I said. “What kind of information do you need?”

  “I don’t even know where to begin.” She smiled, glancing at the stacks. She was incredibly pretty. Model kind of pretty. Really thin. She had almost jet-black hair, stick-straight to her shoulders, with long bangs above blue, blue eyes. And unlike me, she wore makeup. It looked natural, though. Just glossy nude lips and mascara and a tiny bit of eyeliner. A year in a women’s prison had not turned me into a lesbian or anything close to it, but she was one of those girls you couldn’t help staring at.

  “Are you talking about how to apply to college or finding the right ones to apply to or financial aid or—”

  “Finding the right ones,” she said.

  “Your high school probably has tons of information,” I said. “Have you talked to your guidance counselor?”

  She wrinkled her slightly freckled nose. “Damn,” she said. “Do I look like I’m still in high school?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I just figured…”

  “I’m nineteen. I just got my GED.”

  Wow. From the looks of her, I never would have guessed it. I was really curious about her now. She looked so together, like the prom queen who’d hooked up with the star football player. Why’d she drop out? Pregnant? Burned down a church? I was the wounded seeking the wounded. That had been the one and probably only comforting thing about prison. We were all wounded there.

  “Congratulations,” I said. I had my GED myself, earned behind bars. “So, okay.” I led her to the bank of computers, looking over my shoulder for Gary. I hoped I wasn’t crossing some invisible line in my volunteer job description. “You know how to use the Internet, right?”

  “Sure.”

  We sat down side by side in front of one of the computers.

  “Do you have any idea where you want to go?” I asked.

  “Well, no, actually.” She laughed. “I only just decided to get my GED a few months ago, so this is all new to me.” We were using those quiet, not-quite-whispering library voices. Hers sounded embarrassed by her ignorance. I wanted to pump up her ego a little.

  “That’s great that you got your GED,” I said.

  “My mother thinks so. Most definitely.”

  “Do you live near here?”

  “Right now I’m in a family friend’s cottage in Topsail Beach,” she said. “They’re letting me use the cottage for the fall and winter, and then I want to go to college in the spring. I actually live in Asheville, but me and my mother needed some time apart.” She laughed again. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I said, although I was happier than ever to live with my protective mother for a while. I hadn’t always felt that way, though, so I got it. “Do you want to go someplace near Asheville?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  I chewed my lip, trying to remember the Web site I’d found most helpful when I was doing my own search. I typed in a few wrong URLs before hitting the right one.

  “This site has everything,” I said, moving the cursor across the screen. “You can figure out which colleges have your major, for starters. Do you know what you want to major in?”

  “Not really,” she said again.

  “Have you been working since you left high school?” I just had to know her story.

  “Well—” she chewed her own lip like she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer “—I had this part-time job while I was in high school doing filing and answering phones for this lawyer firm. It was easy work and paid pretty good, so I thought I’d drop out of school and do it full-time. I hated school with a passion.” She rolled her eyes. “But a couple of months after I dropped out, I got laid off.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Right. I just didn’t want to go back to school. I would’ve been in with kids a year younger and everything. So I got a job at Old Navy, which was very cool, except I didn’t get along with my boss. So I left there, and—” She laughed. “This is way TMI, isn’t it?”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m just trying to see what your interests are. You know, what you might like to—”

  “To be when I grow up?” She smiled. Her teeth were a little crooked, but very white.

  I laughed. “Exactly. And you don’t have to declare a major right away, so it’s not a big deal if you don’t know now.” I was jealous. When would I get to go to college? I would have been a sophomore by now if my life hadn’t gone off track. If I hadn’t made my life go off track. Dr. Jakes was into me taking responsibility for what happened. He was irritating, but he was right. It was nobody’s fault but my own.

  “What were you good at in school?” I asked. “I mean, not just good at, but what did you get excited about?”

  “Besides guys, you mean?”

  I smiled. “Right. Besides guys.”

  She looked lost. “I don’t know. Did you actually get excited about anything in high school?”

  “I liked my psychology class,” I said.

  “So how come you’re working in a library?”

  I was going to have to learn how to answer that kind of question. No way she was getting the truth, though. I needed my cover story. Other women at the prison told me about making up a story to explain their time away from the real world. A favorite was the “I’ve been in Iraq” story, which was sure to get them sympathy. Others were more creative, like the woman who said she was going to tell people she’d been training to be an
astronaut until she developed an inner-ear problem, or the one who’d say she was a trapeze artist in a circus until she took a terrible fall. But I hadn’t given my own cover story a whole lot of thought until that moment.

  “I’m taking some time off before college, too,” I said. “I’ll probably go in a year.”

  “Why are you taking time off? You seem so into this whole—” she waved her hand toward the monitor “—this whole college scene.”

  “Just…you know.” I squirmed. “I had my fill of school for a while.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “So back to you.” I focused on the screen to avoid her eyes. “Seriously, about your interests. A law firm, maybe? You liked working there.”

  “Just because it was easy. I wasn’t all that into it.”

  “You liked Old Navy. How about retail. Marketing, maybe?”

  She wrinkled her nose again. “It was the clothes I liked. I wanted to design them. I liked helping people put together outfits. I could tell right away what they should be wearing.”

  I suddenly felt subconscious about my wrinkled tan capris and the navy blue shirt I’d owned since high school. I’d never been into clothes the way a lot of girls my age were. But I was not totally out of the loop. “Did you ever see that Project Runway show on TV?” I asked.

  Her eyes lit up. “Exactly! Oh my God, I love that show. That would be, like, my dream, to be on a show like that.”

  “Well, girl,” I said, realizing I sounded like Letitia. “There’s your passion. We need to find some schools where you can study fashion design.”

  “They have schools for that?”

  Maybe she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I liked her.

  “Of course. Schools specifically for it, and schools where you can just major in it.” I clicked on the computer screen, ran a search. “You can start here,” I said. “The thing is, some of these places are probably hard to get into. You might have to start at a community college and take some art courses. Some of them probably even have fashion courses.”

  I glanced up and saw Gary standing at the end of the computer bank, watching me. “D’you think you’re set for now?” I asked her, getting to my feet.

  “Yeah, thanks. This is great.”

  I walked over to Gary. “I’m helping her with college research,” I said. “Is that all right?”

  “Sure.” He looked pleased. “I just wanted to be sure you’re okay.”

  My mother had probably told him to baby me a little. “Just don’t let any reporters in here,” I said, “and I’ll be fine.”

  I was back to shelving books an hour later when the girl found me again.

  “I’ve gotta go,” she said. “I got a ton of info, but I’ll probably be back again Friday.”

  “You don’t have a computer where you’re staying?”

  “I have a laptop, but the cottage only has dial-up and it’s torture getting online that way.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “My name’s Jen Parker,” she said.

  “I’m Maggie.”

  “Will you be here Friday?”

  I nodded. I’d be living in the library for the next three hundred hours.

  “Great!” she said. “I’ll probably see you then.”

  I watched her walk away, her hair catching stripes of light from the fluorescents overhead, wondering if I just might be able to have a friend.

  Chapter Twenty

  Keith

  I WOKE UP AROUND ELEVEN IN THE MORNING, THE PAIN IN my left arm so bad I felt like cutting it off. The bottle of Percocet was on my nightstand and I took two of them with a swallow of water while I was still in bed. It was dark in the trailer. There was a window right above my bed, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of stretching my arm high enough to pull the blind open.

  Our trailer was always dark inside. I hated that rusty tin can. Lived in it practically my whole life. Of course, my tin can was less than a block from the ocean and not everyone who lived in a trailer park could say that. Maybe I’d surf today. Once the meds kicked in, that’s what I’d do. Out there, I could ditch my problems. First, though, I’d drive to Sneads Ferry and get my buddy there to fill my tank and then I’d get him to buy me some brew, because I wasn’t going to go through one more day without beer. For the first time ever, I could drink in my own house, whenever I wanted. Hell, if my mother had to be missing, I might as well get something good out of it.

  When I got in my car, though, the needle in the gas gauge did a tiny little jump and then just sat there below the E. It was lower than I’d ever seen it before, and I’d run on fumes plenty of times. Sneads Ferry wasn’t all that far, and maybe I could still make it, but what if I didn’t? It was midweek in late September, so there wouldn’t be that many cars on the road to begin with. I’d be stranded trying to hitch a ride with a face that’d scare off anybody who slowed down long enough to get a look at me.

  There was a gas station less than a mile from the trailer park. I was going to have to bite the bullet. A zillion people filled up their tanks every day and never caught on fire, I thought as I pulled onto the main road. A zillion people.

  There were no other cars at the pumps when I pulled into the station, but I could smell the gas already even though I hadn’t opened my car door. It wasn’t my imagination. Maybe the station had a leak going on or something. Maybe a car’d knocked one of the pumps a little off its base and no one knew about it yet.

  Whatever, I thought. Whatthefuckever. I just needed to get this over with.

  I got out of my car, then realized the tank was on the other side. Got back in. Turned the car around. Remembered to pop the door on the gas tank.

  I looked at the pump. There was this little cardboard sign taped to the display. Pay inside if using cash. Crap. I didn’t want to go inside and have to talk to somebody. Mom always took care of that. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my two last twenties, a five and three singles. I’d get ten bucks’ worth. It wouldn’t get me far, but it would have to do.

  The blond guy behind the counter in the little market was talking on his cell. He didn’t even look up when I put a twenty on the counter.

  “I want ten dollars’ worth,” I said.

  He laughed into the phone as he opened the register. “She was, like, totally wasted,” he said, putting the twenty in the drawer and pulling out a ten. “Yeah, no kidding. I wasn’t letting her in my car like that. She’d puke all over it.”

  He handed me the ten. “Thanks, man,” he said. He finally looked right at me, and his eyes bugged out. “Wow,” he said. “What happened to your face, man?”

  “Go to hell,” I said, and I headed for the door. I pulled it open and could hear him saying into his cell, “I don’t know. Guy looks like he walked into a propeller.”

  Back at the pump, I leaned against the side of my car, trying to get a grip on myself. I finally reached down and twisted off the cap on the gas tank, my hand jerking around like I was spastic or something. Walked into a propeller? I pushed the button above the cheapest gas, took down the nozzle and stuck it in the tank. All I had to do now was pull up the trigger or whatever you called it. I held my fingers on it. Just pull it up. Pull it up. Ten seconds passed. Thirty. Forty. I couldn’t do it. The gas would come out, and it would be all over for me. That’s how Maggie started the fire. Gas and diesel. Gas and diesel. One little spark and wham!

  “You havin’ trouble out here?”

  I looked toward the door of the minimart, where the blond guy stood, half in the store and half out.

  “You need some help?” he called.

  “No, I’ve got it,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut, pulled up on the trigger and waited to die.

  I was wiped out and shaky as I drove back to the trailer. I didn’t feel like surfing now. I felt like going back to bed, so that’s what I did. Crawled in. Pulled the covers up to my chin.

  Guy looks like he walked into a propeller.

  Effing son of a bitch.


  I tossed off the covers and went into my mother’s room, into the closet where she kept this box of pictures. They were mostly of me. She was always annoying me with the cheapo digital camera somebody gave her. My handsome son, she’d say. C’mon, good-lookin’. Smile for your mom. I’d sneer or turn away. Why did I do that? Why did I treat her like shit all the time?

  I went through the pictures, pulling out every one that had me in it. Old school pictures from when I was a kid. A bunch with Andy and Maggie on the beach in front of the old Sea Tender. Maggie and I looked like brother and sister for sure. Andy not so much, but Maggie and I had those giant brown eyes and dark curly hair. Then there were those school pictures from over the years. I remembered the eighth-grade picture real well. When we got that picture from the photographer, I stared at it for about an hour, thinking I was turning into a hot-looking dude. There was a picture of me with Lindsey Shallcross. We were all decked out before some dance our freshman year of high school. There was a shot of me posing next to my surfboard in my wet suit, my eyes squinty and the sour look I reserved for my mother on my face.

  I got a pair of scissors from my mother’s desk, and started to cut the pictures up. I cut them into smaller and smaller pieces until my hand was sore. I would’ve liked to burn them, but I hadn’t lit a match since the night of the fire. Instead I tossed the pictures, which looked practically like confetti by then, into the toilet and flushed it. About half the pieces went down. I flushed again. Then again. The pieces just circled the inside of the bowl, and I knew I’d screwed up.

  We had a plunger and we had a snake because my mother never wanted the expense of calling in a plumber if she could help it, so I spent the rest of the day working on the damn toilet. By late afternoon, I had the thing working again. I took a shower, thinking about maybe driving to Sneads Ferry to get my buddy to buy me some beer, but if he wasn’t working, it’d be a waste of gas. I couldn’t face the evening without a beer, though. My shoulder and arm and left hand were totally wrecked from using the plunger. I thought the Perc would work better and quicker if I took them on an empty stomach. No food for them to cut through. Just straight into the bloodstream. I popped a couple, and I was right. I fell asleep on the sofa and didn’t wake up until morning.