Dark Secrets (22 page)

“
So, you’re not a
schoolgirl with a broken heart?”

“
Is that all you see
in me?”

He shook his head when
I looked at him. “You know what I see in you.”

I nodded. “And that’s
exactly what I wanted you to see—everyone to see. But I’m not nice.
I’m not sweet and I’m not this golden child that organises benefits
and listens to people talk about their day. I—” I laughed a little.
“Half the time I really don’t care what Emily thinks about the
latest books she’s reading and, most of the time, I cut her
off—talk about things
I
want to talk about.”

David laughed. “And
your honesty is one of the other things I like about
you.”

I shook my head. “But
it’s not honesty. It’s horrible. I mean, it’s not like I don’t care
about people, but, I…I never really place them first.”

He exhaled. “And you
think that makes you a bad person?”

I shrugged. “Maybe
just selfish.”

“
Okay, so maybe
you’re selfish. I still like you.”

I couldn’t help but
smile at that, but dropped it quickly. “What if…what if my
selfishness went so deep it cost someone their life?”

He rose to his knees
and shuffled closer. “Then you have to take a risk, right now—you
have to put faith in our friendship, and just know that when you
tell me what you’re going to tell me, I’m here—for you. Not for
anyone else. I don’t care about Emily or her trivial conversations
either, Ara. Not right now.” He grabbed my hand. “Right now, I’m
here with you, my little friend, and you’re going to tell me what’s
on your mind.”

I stole my hand back
and pressed both palms to my now cool cheeks, swallowing the tight
lump in the back of my throat.

“
Ara,” he said
softly, cupping his hand over mine, his fingertips resting just
beside my ear. “I can see you holding back tears.”

“
I know. But if I let
them go, I’m not sure I’ll stop.”

He clicked his tongue.
“Can I tell you something? A little story—a legend among my
people.”

I nodded, resting my
hands in my lap.

“
They say that the
tears one cries for loss are the Tears of the Broken. We call them
the Devil’s Liquid because, for each one you shed alone, you
sacrifice a piece of your soul.”

I sniffled, looking up
at him.

“
And they also say that for each tear
shared
, you give a piece of yourself
for someone else to safeguard until you’re ready to see the sun
rise again.”

“
And you…” Hot tears
doubled my vision; I blinked them out. “You want to be that
someone?”

He stared at me, his
round eyes unmoving. “Ara, I
am
that someone.”

Only a short sniffle
passed before it all fell to pieces. “She shouldn’t have been
there, David.” I covered my face, inaudible gusts of explanation
dribbling through my lips. “She should’ve been in her bed,
sleeping.”

“
Your
mom?”

I nodded into my
hands. “It was my fault.”

“
Why?”

“
It was late.” I
swallowed. “I called her to come get me. I could’ve walked home,
but—” I wedged my thumbnail between my teeth. “It was so stupid.
I’m seventeen. I’m not a child. But I was angry and all I wanted
was my mom. I just wanted to go home.”

“
So you asked her to
come get you?”

“
Made
her.”

“
And that one act
makes this your fault?”

“
Yes.”

“
Why?”

“
Because, I—” I
looked over at the lake, at the ducks splashing about, without a
care in the world. I wanted to be them; brown and ugly, but
free.

“
Keep talking,” David
ordered softly.

“
I don’t know what to
tell you,” I explained, using my hands as if to animate my words.
“The memory has, like, faded or something. It all looks like it was
filmed on some camera with this blue filter. I can’t see it all as
clearly as I did before. I just…it’s like it happened to someone
else.”

He sat down, his feet
flat to the floor on either side of my legs, our faces almost
touching. “But it didn’t. It happened to you, and I need you to
talk to me about it, Ara.”

I nodded. “It feels
silly—like, no matter how I paint the scene, you just won’t
understand—you won’t get it.”

“
Then don’t try to
make me understand. Just tell me how you feel.”

“
I feel…” I closed my
eyes for a second. “Alone. Lost. So, so empty and so full of this
incredibly strong…regret.”

“
Regret for calling
her or for what you’ve suffered?”

“
For Harry.” My voice
completely broke.

“
Who’s
Harry?”

“
My baby brother.
He…I got in the car—I shut the door and the first thing I did was
look at Harry. He was pale. He’d been sick for a week or so, and he
just smiled at me. Two teeth, all gums. So bright. So
happy.”

“
It made you feel
lighter—to see him?”

I nodded. “Yeah.
That’s…exactly.”

“
And now? How do you
feel to look back on that memory?”

I closed my hands
around my face. “Dark. Hollow. I can’t see his face anymore. It’s
like…it’s just so dark. And a part of me still feels scared—like
I’m gonna get in trouble from my mom when I get home, you know—for
all the bad decisions I made that night. But, for that one moment,
when I got in the car and she smiled at me like Harry did, I felt
like I’d made one right choice. Just one. And then…” I couldn’t say
it. I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. It
wasn’t until right then that I realised I’d never had to. My dad
broke the news to everyone, while I stood, numb and
silent.

“
Keep talking,” David
said, with the insistent tone of an adult.

“
All I remember was
pulling away from the stop sign, then feeling this incredible jolt.
Mom’s hand grabbed mine for a second, but…everything shook—like the
most violent roller coaster I’ve ever been on. My arms, my head,
everything just…” I searched for the words. “I felt pain, but it
was the rush—the speed of things I really remember. I heard Harry
crying; heard glass; heard my mom’s scream get cut off suddenly,
but that’s it. I shut my eyes, praying for it to end, and when I
opened them again, we’d stopped. The crying had stopped. The noise,
everything.

“
I didn’t even know I
was upside down until I tried to undo my seatbelt. But it was
stuck. I was stuck, and all the blood was making my head tight,
making it hard to breathe.”

“
Breathe now,” David
said, placing his palm firmly against my ribs.

I took a long breath,
releasing it slowly. “I didn’t even realise I was holding
it.”

“
I know.” He smiled
softly and pulled his hand away.

I focused on my
breathing for a second until my head stopped spinning, then looked
up at David’s incredible green eyes. “I haven’t really thought much
about the accident. I…I forgot a lot of things—things I’m
remembering now.”

“
Like
what?”

“
The silence.” My
eyes narrowed into the memory. “The way, after we stopped rolling,
it was like the world stood, staring on, completely hushed for a
moment, maybe waiting for our souls to leave the earth.”

“
And Harry? What
happened to him?”

My lips turned down
tightly, quivering. “I didn’t want to hear him cry. I didn’t want
him to be hurt—lost somewhere I couldn’t get to him. I was glad he
was quiet. But I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know it
meant…” My words flaked away as thoughts that rushed through my
head when I looked into the backseat and saw nothing came flooding
back.

“
Where was he?” David
asked.

“
He
was…gone.”

He sighed, his hand
coming up on my shoulder as he pulled me in, cradling my face
against his chest.

“
His blue beanie—the
one Mom knitted when we found out he was a boy—it was still there.
It came right off his head. It…I wanted to grab it, but I was
afraid.”

“
Of what?”

“
I don’t really know.
Maybe that I’d see blood or…maybe worse.” My voice trailed down to
a whisper on the end. “I didn't know what to do. I…no one came. I
thought people would come running, but no one came. So…I just…I
screamed. I knew it wouldn’t help, but I couldn't stop it. And
something I learned that day—” I looked up into David’s eyes. “It
doesn’t matter how loud you scream. There is no such thing as the
worst things can get. There is no rock bottom. There is only a
deep, endless pit of hell that you can fall through. You always
imagine, like the movies, that you scream and someone comes—they
come and they save you and they stop you from screaming. But…I
stopped because my throat went dry. I screamed so long—I stopped
because my body couldn't scream anymore.” My eyes filled with
tears. “Where’s the humanity in that?”

“
There is none,” he
said, drawing me into him again.

I closed my eyes and
pictured the eerie dimness of the streetlights outside the car
window, how, in the cold, the glow seemed to settle on the footpath
like fog; the endless silence broken only by the hollow ticking of
an indicator lamp—distant and lonely in the dead of night. “If it
had happened on another road—maybe where there were houses, we
would’ve…someone would’ve come sooner. But—the drive home was down
this freeway. If I’d walked, I could’ve cut through. I
could've—”

“
Shh.” He stroked my
hair. “Don’t go there, Ara. Just don’t let yourself go
there.”

I studied the pattern
of his denim jeans and the contrast of my white knee, nestled right
into the underside of his upper thigh. He was slowly moving closer
and closer, and I only felt safe and closed-in. “I never believed
in God. My mom tried to make me. I just never really
believed
. But, in that
moment, when everything was dead quiet and I couldn’t see my mom,
didn’t know where Harry was, I prayed. I leaned on my elbows to
hold my weight, clasped my hands together around all the blood and
glass, and begged God to let Harry be okay. But he…”

“
He’s okay now,
Ara.”

“
How can you say
that? Harry was my world, David. Ever since he was born, all I ever
did was talk about him, play with him…and…how can you think it’s
okay that he's dead?”

“
I didn’t say that. I
said he’s not suffering anymore.”

I looked down at my
lap, sniffling. “I didn’t mean for any of this. I didn’t mean for
them to die.”

“
Ara, of course you
didn’t, sweetheart.” He wrapped me in his arms, turning me slightly
so my shoulder rested against his chest. “Of course you
didn’t.”

“
But even still, it
was my fault, and I know I shouldn’t think like that, I really do.
But I feel like a murderer. I—” I looked back on the memory of the
empty backseat and the feeling of everything being gone. It was
like lying flat on a steel bed, having someone hit your soul with a
rubber mallet, sending it in black splatters everywhere; each piece
reaching out to something tingly, making you shake. I had no
control. I didn’t know where Harry was and couldn’t get free to
make him okay. “He was just a baby. What if he was awake? What if
he was cold and wondering why we’d left him there? What if he
wanted to go home?” I burst into tears. “Oh, David. I just wanna
take him home.”

“
My love. I wish I
could make you better. God knows, I do. But, I know, so much better
than anyone, what that feels like—to lose something precious—and
that there’s nothing I can even say.”

I nodded. “I just…how
can he be gone? I was there. I was squeezing my mom’s hand when he
was born. I was the first person to hold him. I suggested his name,
David. How could all that be gone?”

“
Sometimes, my love,
life just doesn’t make sense.”

“
I know. It’s
like…It’s like creating something; like crafting it and painting
it, then, in one stupid move, dropping it to the
ground.”

He rubbed gentle
circles over my back. “I know, but I also know that by talking to
me, you’re taking the first step toward healing.”

“
I
don’t know about that, David. I just feel like I’ve been lashed
with something big and hard, and I can’t make that go away.” I
touched my chest where it always hurt. “I tried to tell myself it
wasn’t my fault. I tried to make amends, pray for forgiveness, but
it doesn’t matter what I do. This pain, it doesn’t go. I feel
choked-up and so
damn
sorry.”

“
You know you don’t
need to be sorry, Ara. You know this wasn’t your fault.”

My face crumpled. I
truly wished I believed that. “I’ve been through every one of
Vicki’s books—trying to find a way to make sense of the guilt. And
I know all the facts. But science doesn’t measure grief, David. It
can’t, and it can’t make sense of it. In my heart—” I touched the
base of my ribs. “Way down here—I think, maybe my soul, I can’t put
the guilt away.”