Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  “So, I hear Mr. Thompson gave an unusual lecture today?” David asked Emily.

  “Oh my God, yes.” She sunk into her knees, moving her hands around as she recounted the lesson. A few other kids joined in, adding their own theories on what my dad was aiming to teach us, and I just stood there watching David—watching the way he interacted with the others. When he noticed, he sent a soft smile my way, the crescent-shaped dimple above his lip showing; the one that only showed with that certain kind of smile. And that certain kind of smile made me think about the moment I fell into his arms back there. Except, this time, I owned the moment, because it was all in my head, so I imagined he’d sweep me off my feet and prop me against the wall, drawing my legs up and all the way around his hips. My lips would finally be on his, and his hands would sneak up my skirt, forcing a sharp intake of breath in me when he pulled my underwear across and…

  “Earth to Ara?” Emily waved a hand through the cloud of my fantasy.

  I snapped back to the reality of a noisy corridor. “Huh?”

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  Ice rained through me. “Did I phase out again?”

  David cleared his throat, growing seemingly taller as he slowly rolled his shoulders back.

  “Uh, yeah. Just a bit,” Emily said.

  “David?” I looked right into his emerald eyes, seeing them turn almost black.

  “I uh… I have to go.” He wiped a hand across his mouth, holding dead still for a breath, then he stalked off into the crowd.

  “What happened?” I asked Emily. “Where’s he going?”

  She just stared at me blankly. “What were you thinking about just then?”

  The ice rain melted as my bones turned to lava. “Uh. Nothing PG, that’s for sure.”

  She cackled. “Yeah, I guessed that much.”

  My shoulders dropped. “Was it that obvious?”

  She smirked. “Have you ever looked at your face when you do that—when you disappear like that?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s funny. You just… your eyes drift off to the ceiling, and your lips just sit apart like you’re waiting for someone to kiss them.” She tried to hold back her laughter, but it shook her whole body. “Except, this time, you were looking right at David, chewing your lip, kind of blushing at the same time. I think”—she pointed to my chin—“I think you need to wipe the drool off.”

  “Stop that.” I brushed her hand away. “God, I can’t believe I let my imagination run away with me like that.”

  “Why not? I do it all the time.”

  “Because, unlike normal people, my face gives away my every thought, and I just happened to be in front of the star of my fantasy.”

  She hugged her books, looking down the corridor after David. “Maybe next time just do it with a book in your hand so people think you’re reading something juicy.”

  “Good idea,” I said, groaning. “Do you think David’s upset with me?”

  “Upset?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he wants to be friends, right? So if I like him more than he likes me, that ruins it for both of us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Emily laughed, pointing to where he’d disappeared. “Ara, that’s not David upset.”

  “So, that’s… offended?”

  “No way, not unless he’s gay. And judging from how his fists just clenched up and his whole body went all rigid, I would guess he is definitely not gay.”

  “So why did he run away?”

  She started walking. “He does that. I think he really likes you. And if he got the vibe I got coming off you, then he walked away because you made him feel something.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I hoped she wasn’t being rude, implying I made him… you know, feel something.

  “I mean, David doesn’t really do emotions. The few times I’ve ever seen him close to feeling anything, he takes off.”

  “Why?”

  She just shrugged again. She seemed to pass everything off with that move.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m just glad he can’t read minds, or he might never come back.”

  * * *

  Sam caught up and babbled about his day while I nodded and smiled and drifted in and out of consciousness, my mind on my own day—on the fact that David never came back to school after I practically jumped him in the corridor. But I fell back to attention with the hot sun bearing down, the smell of topsoil and wet grass all around me, when I heard the word David. “Huh?”

  “Yeah, you and David Knight. My friend Steve said he heard from Trav that you slapped David in the hallway at school today.”

  “What?” I practically yelped, my steps coming to a halt.

  “Yeah, they say he left school in a real hurry—tires screeching and all.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s a grape turning into a sultana, Sam.”

  He stared at me, blinking.

  “I mean, it’s gossip. David left school today because he was sick.” Sickened by my desire to fornicate with him.

  “Oh yeah? Well, I saw you two on the stairs this morning. He was standing real close to you. Rumor has it you guys are an item.”

  “Nope. Nothing going on there.”

  “Nothing going on… yet?” He grinned.

  I chuckled quietly. “It’s not like that, Sam. We’re just friends.”

  “Do you like him?”

  I smirked. If I so much as hinted on the truth, the whole school would know by first period tomorrow. “No. I really don’t. I mean, he’s cute and we have a lot of fun together, but he’s not really my type.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “Yeah. And what’s it to anyone else, anyway? How does what two seniors get up to become news to Freshies?”

  Sam just laughed lightly. “Very little goes on in that school, Ara. Star football player quits the team this year then starts talking to a girl after notoriously dismissing every advance so far. People are wondering if you’ve got a golden vagi—”

  “Whoa!” I held my hands up. “What a horrid thing to say.”

  He rolled his eyes. “So there’s nothing going on with you and lover-boy?”

  “God, no,” I said, flooding with fury.

  “Liar.”

  “Sam, look at me.” I motioned to my scarred face. “I’m damaged, on the inside and out. I’m never going to be anyone’s girlfriend.”

  He went quiet until we reached the driveway. “Hey, Ara?”

  “Yes?”

  “When we get in, can you peel me one of those apple snakes I saw you do the other day?”

  “You saw that?”

  He nodded.

  “Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll even teach you how to do them.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thanks, short-stuff.” He wrapped his arm over my shoulder as we jumped the creaky bottom step and ran to the top of the porch.

  * * *

  With homework pushed down on my list of priorities for today, and with a playlist of ‘David’ songs an hour long, I kicked off my shoes and went outside to my rope swing to try and forget everything. Including David.

  Yellow leaves rained to the ground, falling from the old tree as the weight of each sway drew a low creak from its branches, reminding me I was growing up and that, soon, this swing would be a thing of my past.

  My light-blue dress wavered around my knees in the gentle breeze, sweet with the diluted fragrance of frangipanis. I felt better just breathing again. But from here, I could see the school parking lot, which only brought back the memory of my embarrassing eat-the-cute-guy-in-the-corridor display, making me hold that newfound breath.

  When my head dizzied from the movement, I sunk my toes into the slightly moist soil and grabbed my guitar. The stranger I saw in my mirror every morning glared back from its glossy surface. I ran my fingers over her face then gently along the strings, making a dull, tuneless song as I thought back to when I first saw this guitar. It had been on display in the music
store window, and I fell in love with it immediately. How was it so uncomplicated to love an inanimate object, yet when it came to a boy, a girl would fall all over herself to hide her true feelings?

  Well, unless she was me. Then the truth would come out in embarrassing displays… in corridors… at school.

  I dropped my head into my hand, replaying that whole phasing out thing for the hundredth time.

  But what was the point? Really? I mean, it wasn’t like I could take it back by reliving it. So I squared my shoulders and twisted the pegs on the neck of the guitar, then strummed a soft A-minor; the first chord my mom played on this when she bought it for me. And a song formed from there, taking me through my David playlist until I realized my stupid brain was thinking about him again.

  “Drat!” I stopped dead in the middle of a verse.

  “Please, don’t stop on my account.”

  “David?” I spun slightly to look back at him. “Where did you come from?”

  “Seriously? Do I have to give you the birds and bees talk?” His fingers circled the ropes of the swing just above my head.

  “Funny,” I said sarcastically, but in truth, I actually did think it was funny.

  “I uh… I went back to get my books from my locker and saw you sitting here,” he said. “I hope it’s okay I dropped by.”

  “It’s more than okay,” I said, lifting my feet as he gently pushed the swing.

  “Hey, uh—” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I left like that at school today.”

  “David, don’t you apologize. I was the one who—”

  “Ara, you did nothing wrong.”

  I planted my feet, stopping the motion of the swing, then laid my guitar on the grass. “What do you mean? Emily tells me I practically licked you.”

  “Licked me?” David laughed, settling onto the ground right in front of my legs, his knees up, arms flopped loosely over them.

  “Yeah, the whole… phasing out thing.”

  “Oh, that.” He dusted his hand off on his jeans, leaning back on it after. “Sorry, I never even noticed that. I mean, I knew you phased out, but it was actually your strawberry shampoo that reminded me I had something to do.”

  “My shampoo?” I raised a brow.

  “Yeah.” He grinned, his white teeth showing.

  “O…kay.”

  “So, what were you thinking? In the hallway?” His eyes searched mine for a moment, an incredibly suggestive grin warming them.

  I looked away, feeling almost naked. “Just that…” I like you! I like you and want you to like me so bad it kills me! It. Kills. Me! “Just that it’d been a long time since I was in anybody’s arms.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I shrugged. “Guess I just don’t really like to be touched anymore.”

  “Why not anymore?”

  I rubbed my chin, kind of wiping off my scars.

  “Don’t do that,” he said, rising onto his knees.

  “Don’t do what?”

  He pulled my hand down from my face. “You can’t rub them away.”

  I studied the grass under my bare feet.

  “Ara, look at me,” he asked softly, tilting my chin to lift my gaze. “Why do you hide your face so often?”

  “Because it’s hideous.”

  His eyes lit up, shimmering like a green marble held up to the sun. “Hideous?”

  “Okay, maybe not hideous. But—” I couldn’t bring myself to ask how he could possibly even look at my scars.

  “Can I say something?” he asked.

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on his.

  He reached out and brushed his fingertips so slowly over my face that all the fine hairs down my spine stood up. “These scars you despise so much, Ara, they’re not what you think they are.”

  I held on as long as I could, but I just couldn’t let him touch them anymore. I gently pulled his hand away and turned my face.

  He sat back down on the ground. “I know you think everyone can see them, but that’s not true. It’s only up close that I’ve ever noticed, and I have not once ever thought you were hideous, Ara. Not ever.”

  I rubbed my jaw into my shoulder, seeing a flash of memory—of waking with tiny cuts and slivers of glass in my face. “I don’t see how you can say that.”

  “That’s because you don’t know how beautiful you are.”

  I smiled at my feet, afraid to look up, afraid to see sarcasm in his eyes. And as if it came out of nowhere, a hand slowly appeared under my gaze, moving cautiously toward mine. It stopped just above my fingertips, as hesitant as a tough question, making sure it was okay to be there. I tensed from my ankles to my knees, feeling my heartbeat surround everything in my world. It all could’ve turned to ash under my feet—the ground, the swing, the day, the future—and I would’ve remained oblivious to it, because even the suggestion of touching him, of holding his hand, closed off everything else that could possibly matter.

  “May I?” he asked.

  I tried to say yes, but only a squeak came past my lips.

  David’s cheeks lifted with a soft grin. He turned his hand, sliding his fingertips under mine, and then pulled me down gently to the grass in front of him.

  “You might wanna take a breath, Ara,” he said with a laugh.

  I took a deep one and, though daylight remained, all around me night enclosed my world—tunneling my vision to the only thing in the universe worth looking at. I smoothed my thumb over his, feeling myself lean closer, our eyes locked so intensely that if we were any nearer the colors would’ve blended.

  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, holding my hand with a kind of gentility that made me feel precious.

  But I wasn’t okay. Not anymore. I was lost, fallen completely into some feeling I wasn’t ready for. Somehow, our fingers fit so perfectly together, like they were created only for this purpose. I was the lock and he was the only key. How would I possibly be okay, ever again?

  “No. I’m not okay,” I said softly.

  “Let me tell you something.” David edged a little closer. “And I say this as your friend, Ara.”

  I braced myself.

  He brushed my ponytail over my shoulder, the softness of his touch sending a shiver down my neck. “Your scars make no difference to the way I see you. I know you’re afraid that you aren’t good enough for me, but how could I ever look past those eyes long enough to see scars?”

  I half-smiled, rolling my face downward. “Why are you always so nice to me?”

  His fingers tightened on mine. Behind me, the swing stirred gently in the breeze, and the golden glow of sunset surrounded the sky in a blanket of soft pink-and-purple clouds, making his eyes dark and shadowed. “Because I like you.”

  “Why do you like me?”

  “Because you’re funny, cute, sweet, smart—”

  I scoffed at that one.

  He smiled. “Believe it or not, you’re actually quite witty and, from what I can tell after this short period of time, I have a lot more in common with you than any other girl I’ve ever spoken to.”

  “Not hard since you never talk to girls.”

  He shook his head, smiling as he ran his fingers down my ponytail again. “I feel a connection to you, Ara—one I’ve not felt before.”

  “Connection?”

  “I”—he smiled, looking past me for a second—“I think we roll on the same wavelength, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, feeling enlightened by the prospect. He’d put the feeling so perfectly into words. “I think I know exactly what you mean.”

  “You wanna know something else, pretty girl?”

  “Only if I’m going to like what you have to say.”

  His serious eyes warmed, a wide smile showing his teeth again. “I kinda like holding your hand.”

  On that note, I had to agree completely.

  7

  The rain had left a chill that made my toes cold under the strappy shoes. I hugged my arms across my chest, making myself small
as I passed a group of obviously drunk boys.

  “Hey.” One of them broke from the cluster.

  “Oh, hey.” I waved, relieved it was only Mark from school.

  “What you doin’ out this late, Ara-Rose?” he said, but kind of kept walking past me.

  “Just headed home.”

  “You want a ride?” He motioned behind him to his group of drunken mates.

  “Nah. I’m gonna call my mom.”

  “Okay.” He nodded and turned back, jumping into the huddle as I headed for the corner store, where the only payphone still in existence resided. The flickering light beamed down on me inside the booth, making my skin almost blue. I picked up the receiver with two fingers and held it just beside my face, not touching my cheek, then dialed reverse charges. It picked up in two rings.

  “Mom?”

  “Ara-Rose?” she sounded groggy and confused.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Um—” My lip quivered. “Can you come get me?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m at a payphone.” I burst into tears. “Can you please just come get me?”

  “What happened? Why are you crying?” Her voice became clear with panic as she threw a dozen questions at me.

  “I had a fight with Mike.”

  “Mike? What were you doing at Mike’s? I thought you were at Kate’s.”

  “I was, Mom. Okay. I don’t wanna talk about it. Can you just come get me?”

  “Ara-Rose. It’s the middle of the night. I just got Harry down again, and he’s—”

  “Mom!” I yelled down the line, holding the grotty phone in a tighter grip. “It’s three in the morning. I’m cold and tired and—”

  “Ara, just…” She let out a breath. “Hang up, okay. I’ll call Mike. He can come—”

  “No, Mom. Don’t. Please don’t. I don’t wanna see him ever again.”

  “Why, honey, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” I practically screamed, my tears coming out in streams. “Just come get me.”

  “Harry’s sick, Ara.” She went quiet, as though waiting for me to see reason. “He shouldn’t go out at this time of night. You know I care about you and, quite frankly, I’m terrified of the fact that I don’t know where you are. I’m guessing you’re on a payphone, aren’t you?”