Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  I looked down at my plate. We’d all been given a scoop of macaroni and cheese with chopped-up hot dog mixed in it. The whole concoction was dusted with crushed potato chips. There were no vegetables or fruit accompanying the meal, only the one half a cup of Kool-Aid to drink. It wasn’t a shock that the food had been taken, but all the same, I hadn’t been the one to do it.

  “Mrs. Bobbie has a special diet from her doctor, hon,” Mr. Al said. “She gets sick if she don’t take in enough calories.” His face was kind under the floppy blond wings of hair, but I had a hard time believing what he was saying. I’d never heard of a sickness like that.

  “I didn’t take it,” I said.

  Mrs. Bobbie made a sound like Of course you did. She’d been doing this long enough to know better, I guessed. She knew how foster kids were.

  Chantal piped up. “I’ll check our room.”

  “Now, hold on.” Mr. Al put out a hand, but Mrs. Bobbie shook her head at him. Chantal scooted back her chair, ran out of the room, and, in an astonishingly short amount of time, returned with three small boxes of yogurt-covered raisins. She laid them on the table in a neat row and I stared at them, openmouthed.

  “She ripped a hole in the mattress and stuffed them up inside,” she announced, then turned to see my reaction.

  My face heated and my eyes watered. I hadn’t done that. I didn’t know there was a hole in my mattress. Chantal would, though. She sure would. That bitch!

  Mrs. Bobbie regarded me, her lips pursed. “Where’s the rest of it, Daphne? There was more.”

  “No, there’s not. I don’t know. I didn’t take those raisins.” My voice shook.

  But there was the evidence lined up beside my plate, three tiny red boxes. I looked at Mr. Al, hoping for some sort of help, but he glanced over at Chantal.

  “Let’s eat up, girls,” he said and hunkered over his plate of hot-dog mac and cheese. He didn’t look at me again.

  Later, after Mr. Al and Mrs. Bobbie had settled in front of the evening news and we were cleaning the kitchen, the Super Tramps crowded around me at the sink. They were so close, their scent enveloped me. It was sweet, some kind of cotton-candy perfume I didn’t recognize.

  “What did you do with the rest of Mrs. Bobbie’s food?” Omega said. “If you tell us, we’ll share it with you.”

  “I don’t know.” I stole a glance at Chantal, who was flicking crumbs off the table with a dishtowel, spraying them across the floor I’d just swept. “I didn’t take it.”

  They stared at me blankly for a few more awful seconds, then ordered Chantal and me to finish the kitchen for them. Then they all trooped upstairs to their room.

  “Homework, ladies!” I heard Mrs. Bobbie shout after them from the TV room, and a door slammed above us in response. Chantal went back to flicking crumbs from the table instead of coming to help me at the sink. I turned back to the suds without a word.

  After lights out, I waited patiently for Chantal to finish kicking my bunk. When she finally quit and I heard her breathing deepen, I climbed down the ladder and tiptoed down the hall. I tapped on the Super Tramps’ door as loudly as I dared and immediately it swung open. Tré in a T-shirt, her hair in short braids, stood before me. A pink light glowed behind her. I could see the other two girls were awake too, propped on their elbows, heads close where they’d pushed their beds together. That cotton-candy smell enveloped me again. I really liked it.

  “What?” Tré said. Her fingers were splayed out on the door, nails slick with wet black polish.

  “I think I know where the food is,” I said.

  Her eyes widened and she flashed a delighted smile down at me. I thought suddenly how pretty she looked with her hair pulled back. Her skin was porcelain, and her legs were long and toned. I wondered why her mom and dad had given her away. And why nobody had adopted her. Suddenly, Omega appeared in the doorway and, shoving Tré aside, propped her hip against the frame. She was wearing a T-shirt too, but she’d cut the sleeves and neck out of hers and it showed the ribs of her sternum. The rise of small breasts.

  “Where?” was all she said.

  I told her about the overturned canoe. After which, she clicked the door shut in my face.

  In the morning, after our breakfast of cornflakes, there was a flurry of gathering backpacks and jackets and shoes. I didn’t have any of the above, so I walked out to where the white bus waited to take us to school. Someone plucked at my shirt. I turned. It was Omega.

  “Hold out your hand.” I did, and she dropped into it two Chips Ahoy cookies. “Don’t fucking eat ’em where anyone can see. You have to be alone in the girls’ bathroom. Alone, locked in a stall. Okay?”

  I nodded, curling my fingers around the crumbly cookies. My stomach growled as I imagined them melting in my mouth. The sharp, sweet tang of the chocolate chips in the crevices of my molars.

  “You know where the clubhouse is, right?” Omega said.

  I squinted up into the piercing morning sun, up at her gorgeous face. Her lashes were coated with mascara and lined with a thick black sweep. Her mouth glowed fuchsia. She looked like a girl that should be on TV.

  “Chantal showed me,” I said.

  She pursed her pillowy lips. “I should’ve known she’d sneak. I bet she lied and said that we let her come in, didn’t she?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to give the wrong answer and ruin my chances.

  “Because we don’t let her in,” Omega said. “And we never will.”

  I smiled.

  Omega did too. “You wanna know why? She’s a disgusting piece of shit. She’s trash. Her parents killed each other, did you know that? Her mother shot her father in the face, and then shot herself in the face, right in front of Chantal.”

  My throat went dry.

  “You know what she did after that? She ordered pizza and watched a movie. I’m not even kidding.”

  I waited. There was more, I could tell from the gleam in Omega’s eyes.

  “Has she thrown up yet in your bedroom?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Well, she will. She has these fits and throws up everywhere. And we don’t want her getting sick in our clubhouse. Having one of her fits and upchucking all over the place like that demon-possessed girl in The Exorcist.”

  I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, but I nodded. Omega studied me with narrow eyes. I wondered how she got her eyeliner to wing perfectly like that on both sides.

  “We got something better than cookies in the clubhouse, if you’re cool,” she said. She had a devilish tone in her voice. “After school, okay, little Daphne-Doodle-Do? You come to the clubhouse and hang out with us.” She reached out and tweaked my left nipple and the shock of it, the sting, actually made my eyes water. “Titty twister!” she shouted over her shoulder. I didn’t say anything. My newly budded breast burned.

  I watched her saunter away, her hips swaying in her tight, low-slung jeans. Her deputies running to flank her as they approached the bus. They were a force to be reckoned with, the Super Tramps. And I was going to be one of them.

  When I got to school, I scooted into the girls’ bathroom, counted the cookies one more time for good measure, then threw them in the trash. I brushed the crumbs from my palms, as something warm and strong surged through me. It was a new sensation, one that made me feel ten feet tall. I didn’t need cookies. And I wasn’t going to be a fat fuck anymore. Omega had given me a gift. And it had made me into someone completely different.

  It was the new Daphne.

  And she could withstand a million earthquakes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Glenys and I parted, I felt raw and skittish—sandblasted from the inside out from talking about the ranch. That was probably why I forgot my plan to retrieve the knife from the barn and return it to Luca’s kitchen.

  After I’d finished, Glenys asked if I would tell her the end of the story. Before weighing the consequences, I agreed, promising to meet her at two thi
rty the next afternoon on the brow of the mountain.

  She’d taken my hand once again, before we parted. “I know it may sound strange to you, but hearing your story makes me feel like I’m not so alone.”

  “That doesn’t say much for Dr. Cerny’s therapy.”

  “It’s different with him.” She pressed her lips together. “Hard to explain. I feel like you and I understand each other in a way that a man like Matthew Cerny never could.” She studied my face. “I’m thankful for your friendship, Daphne. And I’m glad we met.” She hugged me before I knew it was happening. “See you soon.”

  Talking to Glenys had felt as natural as the turning of the leaves, but now, back at the house, I was wondering why I’d been so quick to agree to meeting her again. What she’d said about therapy made sense—I did feel lighter after talking to her—but I couldn’t say that I was ready to completely let go of all of my story. The truth was, I didn’t know this woman, and there was no guarantee she could be trusted to keep my secret. If it even still needed to be kept.

  On my way down the first-floor hall, I heard Cerny lumbering up the back stairs to his suite. He called down to Luca that he was not to be disturbed, and I paused.

  His office was empty. Possibly unlocked.

  I waited, listening for the door of his suite to close. When I finally heard the distant click, I hurried toward the office. I tried the door, and it opened. Cerny probably didn’t intend to be away for long. Maybe he’d only gone upstairs to use the bathroom—at any rate, I would have to be quick. If there were any files on Heath, this might be my only opportunity to learn something.

  The office was bright and spacious, spanning the length of the side of the house and glassed in, just like our room. It was furnished with a desk, a couple of squishy chairs, and, no surprise, one sleek black leather couch. A few Mark Rothko–esque paintings hanging on the brick wall and a couple of giant palm trees. I turned to the fully packed bookcase. Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Ainsworth, Jung—familiar names from the intro-level psych class I’d taken in school. There were other books too, of a darker sort. Marx and Kipling, Hitler and Machiavelli.

  Such a tasteful room for spilling your nastiest secrets.

  Cerny’s elegant marquetry inlaid desk was bare except for a sleek desktop computer, a black landline phone, and a tablet—an iPad, just like mine. Did the doctor keep his files on the iPad instead of on yellow pads? There were no file cabinets in the room. But he had to keep the personality assessments somewhere. All the interviews and the surveillance videos had to be kept somewhere too. When the avalanche of VHS cassettes fell on me up in the attic, I hadn’t noticed any tapes labeled Beck/Amos, even though, honestly, I hadn’t taken the time to really look. But surely he didn’t store them that way, not in this day and age.

  I edged around the desk and swiped the screen of the tablet. The lock screen lit up. I sat and opened the one narrow desk drawer, revealing a mountain of envelopes and papers, sticky notes, and receipts. I bit my lip and plunged a hand into the pile, feeling around, and drew out a stack of business cards bound with a rubber band. A couple were Cerny’s, a few from a caterer, a lawyer, a limousine service. But it was the one at the bottom of the stack that stopped me.

  JESSICA KYUNG, INVESTIGATOR

  GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF EXAMINERS OF PSYCHOLOGISTS

  I mentally calculated how much time I had before Cerny returned, then decided to chance it. I lifted the phone receiver and tapped in the number on the card.

  “Jessica Kyung,” a woman said in a brusque voice—so quickly, in fact, that I had to gather myself.

  “Hi, Jessica,” I stammered. “I was just, ah . . . vetting a particular therapist, and I wondered if you could verify his status with the board.”

  “I’m sorry, we don’t discuss individual cases with the public. Who is this again?”

  “I’d rather not tell you my name, if that’s okay.”

  “It is.” She hesitated. “There is a license-verification database I can direct you to, if you’d like.”

  “I don’t really have access to a computer where I am. And I think you might’ve met with him, at one point. Maybe given him your card?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really not—”

  “It’s Matthew Cerny.”

  There was a long silence, then she spoke again, her voice low. “I don’t mean to push, but it would really help if I knew your name.”

  I cleared my throat. Time was running out, and I needed to wrap this up. “My name is Daphne Amos. I’m staying at Baskens Institute, in Dunfree, with my fiancé, for the week. I just want to know—is there any reason I should question Matthew Cerny’s ability to treat him?”

  “Look,” she said evenly, “if you have any questions or concerns about a particular doctor, any licensed doctor in the state of Georgia, I would encourage you to go to our site. Since you aren’t near a computer, I can tell you that Dr. Matthew Cerny is a licensed psychologist, currently in good standing, in the state of Georgia.”

  “Okay.”

  “But . . .” She went quiet, and I glanced toward the door. Even if Cerny’s bowels were knotted tighter than a Boy Scout’s rope, the clock was running down.

  “How about I just hang on to your card?” I suggested and she cleared her throat.

  “Yes. Why don’t you do that.”

  I hung up and tucked the card in my pocket. On the desk, the iPad screen had gone black, a reflection of my face staring out at me. Everything could be right here, right in front of me. A recording of my fiancé telling someone all the things he didn’t want to share with me. That he didn’t feel safe telling me. The real reason for his nightmares. His secrets. His obsessions.

  And possibly some professional dirt on Cerny.

  I swiped the home screen again. Tentatively tapped out a guess: C-E-R-N. The screen vibrated its rejection. I tried again, another miss, and again. Still nothing. I heard a noise then, the sound of the door banging against the wall. I clicked off the iPad and stepped away from the desk, back into the center of the room, just as Dr. Cerny entered. His sleeves were rolled up, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He smiled when he saw me.

  “Daphne. What an unexpected surprise. Unexpected, but not unwelcome. What brings you here?”

  I arranged my face into a careful neutral. “I was looking for Heath.”

  “I imagine he’s gone back up to your room. For lunch. Isn’t it about that time?” He was moving toward me. His dad-smell filled the room: sweat, aftershave, wood chips. “You look well. Full of light and vitality and fresh air. The sun, the moon, the stars. What have you been doing with yourself, Daphne, while we damaged souls toil away in here, attempting to reclaim our sanity?”

  “Wandering, I guess. Walking through the woods.”

  “Pulling a Robert Frost, eh?” He went to the desk. Swiped the iPad. Tapped it a few times. “You go up the mountain or down to the creek today?”

  “To the creek.”

  “Good choice. Tell me, has Heath confided in you any more about our sessions?”

  “No, not after the thing about his parents.”

  “Interesting.” He leaned back in his chair. “You know, most people think the key to a successful relationship is communication. But it’s not. Communication doesn’t have some sort of magical ability to solve problems.” He laced his fingers and observed me. “Problems don’t disappear—most of them, anyway. Heath is who he is and you are who you are. Talking about it won’t change a thing.”

  “Then why did we come here? And, might I mention, write you a giant check?”

  He chuckled. “What Heath’s doing with me isn’t talking, not exactly. It’s more like a recalibration.” He leaned back. “The trick to constructing an unassailable relationship is to embrace the unsolvable. You ever heard of the wild problem?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s from the field of algebra. The wild problem is an unsolvable equation or concept involving classification and graphs and something called a quiver
, which I’m not even going to begin to pretend I can explain. The point is, there are unsolvable problems that even the most brilliant among us can’t resolve. They’re in math but also science, philosophy, and art. Everywhere. So why, then, is it that we can’t accept unsolvable problems in human psychology? You can talk about your disagreements with the person that you love until your throats are raw. But it won’t change anything. And it won’t ensure a happily-ever-after.”

  “But you want Heath to share his wild problem with you,” I said. “That seems like a contradiction.”

  “It’s part of the process I lead my patients through. Jung called it bringing the shadow to the conscious self, an essential part of achieving wholeness. One can’t deal with a problem they can’t articulate. But after that, after you see it for what it is, you must decide how you want to handle it. You can talk and talk about it, circling it endlessly, throwing thousands of dollars down the drain. Or . . .”

  I leaned forward. “Or what?”

  He mirrored my position, inclining his body toward me. His voice was barely louder than a whisper. “You can pull it close, wrap your arms around it, embrace the anathema you’ve been led to believe by all the experts and book peddlers and TED Talkers that you should erase.”

  A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead, and the intensity in his eyes sent a wave of prickles over my skin.

  “You do this—you embrace the darkness, the treasure of the shadow—until the lines between you and it dissolve and it becomes an ally. Perhaps even an asset.”

  The room stilled, and I remembered a rainy Sunday afternoon, several months back. Heath and I were home, and we’d been lying on the floor, watching some action movie I couldn’t even remember now. It had played in the background, a soundtrack of tire squeals and gunshots, as we made love.

  Afterward, when he had looked at me, I’d felt that I knew, at last, what it was to be understood and loved—not in spite of who I was, but because of it. In that moment, that hard, hidden vein of metal in me that I’d prayed no one would discover had been exposed. It had been a strange sensation, terrifying but exhilarating, being broken open like that. It felt a lot like standing on the edge of the sheerest cliff in the world.