Dark Secrets (7 page)

“
What does it matter
if they tell everyone?” He slowly turned around, holding his arms
out wide.

I looked into the
sunny courtyard below, leaning my elbows over the cold, metal bar.
“Well, do you want people thinking you like
me
?”

“
Ara.” He appeared
beside me, and as he wrapped his fingers over the railing, our
elbows touched. “What would be so wrong about liking
you?”

I shook my head,
refusing to point out the obvious.

“
You’re a very sweet girl. And you don't deserve to be the
entity of other people’s cruelty. I would rather they told the
whole school I was kissing you in the corridor than to have them
talk about you like
that
.” He pointed back to the
bathroom.

“
You heard that?”
Everything suspended in slow motion around me. “How
did—”

“
Bathrooms echo,
Ara.”

It felt like a hot-air
balloon had just been let off in my face. I bit my quivering lip
tightly. “I can’t believe you heard that.”

“
Don’t worry about it.” David gently grabbed my wrist and
started walking, dragging me along behind him. “They’re not nice
people. I’m just sorry that of all the girls you had to run into in
there, it was
those
two.”

“
Well, thank you—” I
stopped and pulled my arm from his grip, “—for standing up for me.
No one’s…ever done that before.”

“
Really?” He looked
amazed, or maybe mortified.

“
I never needed it.”
I reached down and picked up my bag as an excuse to avoid eye
contact. “Thick skin and quick wit were kind of a requirement at an
all girls’ school. But…I guess I just lost my nerve.”

“
You shouldn’t
have
to stand up for yourself, Ara. People should mind
their tongues.” David softened a bit then, quickly bending to grab
our books off the floor by his feet. “And for the record, mon amie,
despite what those girls just said—” He took a step closer, “—I
think you are
very
pretty.”

Yep, that did it.
Cheeks hot; heart tumbling down the stairwell; lust-meter at
fifty.
“So, you—you speak
French?”

“
Seulement quand je parle avec mon coeur.”
David started walking, but I caught a glimpse of
a smile as he turned, shouldering his bag.

“
What does that
mean?” I asked.

“
Google
it.”

A second passed before
I forced myself to run after him. “I will, you know—look it
up.”

He just stared ahead,
his dimpled smile making my heart race as we walked in
silence.

Chapter
Three

The bell tolled before
we even made it to the cafeteria. David smiled gently and jerked
his head in the other direction. “Come on, your next class is this
way.”

“
How do you know
that?” I asked, running after him.

“
I read your
schedule, remember?”

“
Yeah, but, how did
you retain all that info? I can’t even remember what classes I
actually signed up for.”

David said nothing,
just smiled—a kind of secret smile—as we headed back up the stairs,
past a waving carrot-top girl.

“
Um, hi,” I muttered,
returning the wave.

“
That’s Ellie.” David
leaned in. “She’s in our music class.”

“
Oh, okay.” I looked
back down the stairwell at her just as she glanced up to gush over
David. “She likes you.”

“
No, she doesn't.
She’s just…I don't know.” He shrugged once. “I think they all
suffer from a ‘desire the unattainable’ disease around
here.”

“
Oh, so you think
you’re too good for them?” I challenged playfully.

He fanned the collar
of his shirt, humour lighting the smugness on his face. “I
don't
think
I am.
I
know
I
am.”

I laughed. “So…you’ve
never dated
any
of the girls—ever?”

“
No. And I don’t plan
to.”

“
Oh,” I said, falling
suddenly through the earth.

David’s head whipped
up as he came to an abrupt halt. “Um—I, uh—I really didn’t mean it
like that. I—”

“
Dave? Ditching
class, man?” the same jock from earlier said, slapping David on the
shoulder again.

“
Hey, you know the
code, bro.” David grinned, pointing down the hall at
him.

“
Ditch school; ditch
life,” they both said, and laughed.

As soon as the boy
disappeared around the corner, so did David’s smile.
“I—”

“
I need my books.” I
pointed to them.

He gently drew them
from the stack and placed them in my waiting hand.

“
Thanks.”

We stood looking at
each other for a moment, surrounded by the sound of a teacher’s
voice talking about today’s lesson in history.

“
So, this is your
class,” David said.

“
I figured.” I smiled
softly, but my heart was completely broken. “Well,
thanks.”

“
Hey, Ara.” He
grabbed my arm. I looked up from his hand to his lovely green eyes.
He let go. “When I said I don’t plan to date, I wasn’t talking
about y—”

“
It’s okay, David,
you don’t owe me an explanation.” I tried to grin. “I only just met
you, after all. And I hadn’t placed myself in that category,
anyway.”

David’s jaw set stiff,
his eyes fixing on the ground.

“
So, I’ll see ya
later?” I said, slowly backing in through the doorway.

“
Ah,” the teacher said. “Ladies and gentlemen, we
finally
have a new
student.”

I turned away from
David, leaving our conversation before his response, but felt
better suddenly seeing a familiar face in the room. “Hi, Dad,” I
whispered so no one else would hear, then stole a quick glance at
the now empty corridor.

“
Attention please.”
Dad’s voice rose above the chatter. Everyone hushed. “This is
Ara-Rose. I’m sure some of you have already met her—”

“
Actually—” I
cringed. “It’s just Ara.”

He looked sideways at
me for a second. “Okay, this is
just
Ara
.”

“
Nice to meet you,
Just
Ara
,” someone called from the back of the
room, and a low hum of laughter erupted over the entire
class.

“
Settle down,
Maverick,” Dad said sternly.

“
Thanks a lot, Dad,”
I said under my breath.

“
Uh, Emily?” he
called to a girl in the front row of the raised, auditorium-style
seating.

Without hesitation,
the same girl I met this morning, with her swinging ponytail,
bounded over. “Yes, Mr Thompson?”

“
You’ve met Ara?” Dad
aimed his thumb at me.

“
Yes, sir.” She added
a little too much ‘cutesy’ to that eyelash batting, and my mouth
fell open. She totally had a crush on my dad.

“
Right. I want you to
help—” he looked at me as he passed some papers to Emily. “Just
Ara?”

“
Ara’s
fine,” I said. Hint,
hint.

“
Help Ara get up to
date with our lessons, please?”

“
Sure thing, Mr
Thompson.” Emily grabbed my hand and dragged me to sit next to
her—right in the front—right where Dad would be able to see my
every move.

“
Um, do you always
sit here?” I asked, plonking down.

“
Yup. I can see the
teacher better.” She watched Dad walk across the room and push the
antique gramophone, normally in our attic, out of the
way.

“
Why would that be a
good thing?”

“
Are you kidding me?”
She motioned her open palm to my dad. “Look at him.”

Uh-oh.
“Um, Emily—”

“
Isn’t he cute?” she
continued. “Don’t you think he looks just like Harrison Ford—but,
like, Indiana Jones Harrison Ford?”

I glanced at my dad,
my nose crinkling as I took notice of his greying, light-brown hair
and the creases he’d get around his kind eyes when he smiled. I
guess he did sort of look like Indiana Jones. “Emily,” I whispered
again.

“
Yeah.” She sighed,
dreamily gazing up at him.

There was no easy way
around it. I had to tell her before she embarrassed herself
further. “He’s…my dad.”

She spun around so
quickly that I jumped. “You are kidding me. Oh my God, Ara. Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“
I’m so sorry, I
just, I didn’t realise you were—”

“
We
are
so
having a
sleepover at your house.” She practically jumped in her seat. “I’ve
had a crush on Mr Thompson for, like—” she flipped her head to one
side, “—two years.”

My tongue pushed into
the side of my cheek. I really did not expect that. I thought she
might be a little humiliated at the least, but I guess it was
better this way. “Two years, huh?”

“
Yup. It’s why I take
History.”

“
That’s…disturbing.”

“
Not really.” She
shrugged, gnawing the tip of her pen. “You could look at it as
though your dad is inspiring my education.”

I wondered if
he’d
feel the same way.
Instead of rolling my eyes at her, I turned my head back to watch
Dad writing the words ‘Religious History’ on the board.

“
Oh, come now, it’ll
be fun and you know it,” he announced to the groaners around the
room, then turned back to write on the board again.

Emily leaned in. “He’s
right,” she whispered. “He always makes boring topics
fun.”

“
I know.” I smiled to
myself. “He even used to do all the voices of characters when he’d
read to me.”

“
He does that in
class—” Emily laughed, “—when he reads direct from text books.
Sometimes he puts on different accents.”

As I went to laugh, my
eyes darted quickly from my dad to a boy beside me, who jolted
forward in his seat, a scrunched-up piece of paper bouncing off his
desk, landing on his schoolbag a second later. He spun around,
presenting his middle finger to the boys up the back, while my dad
remained oblivious, glancing from a textbook to the
whiteboard.

“
What a loser,” one
of the boys said.

I turned away and
leaned closer to Emily. “Do they know that by making that L sign on
their own heads, they’re technically making
themselves
look like
losers?”

She rolled her eyes.
“They are losers.”

I let out a small
laugh.

In the seat across
from me, the boy scrunched up a sheet of paper, hiding it under his
desk, keeping his eyes on my dad the whole time. I looked back at
the jocks, who watched the kid with an amused kind of interest,
until they broke formation suddenly, launching to their feet as he
sent a paper cannon into enemy territory.

“
Oh, crap.” Emily
covered her head with her notepad, smiling. “He just started a
war.”

I went to duck too,
but Dad started in with something about Greek gods, forcing a
cease-fire; the jocks sat down, and the boy knocked the ammo into
his open backpack.

“
Looks like they’ll
live to fight another day,” I said.

“
No,” Emily whispered
under my dad’s lecture. “It’ll just be a lunch-room
continuation.”

“
Great. Food
fight?”

She shrugged.
“Probably.”

“
Will David be in
that?”

It was a simple
enough question, but my newfound affections rested too thickly in
the undertone. She turned to me quickly, grinning, and before she
could say
Oh, my God, you like
him
, I said, “So, does my dad know you
have a crush on him?”

“
No way.” She leaned
back, her eyes wide. “I would be so humiliated.”

I scratched my temple,
wondering how admitting it to his daughter was any less
humiliating.

“
So, how was the library, with
David
?” She kind of sung his
name.

I froze, wondering
which parts of my amazing morning I should leave out. “It was okay.
He seems nice.” I nodded casually, but Emily’s smile
grew.

“
You like
him.”

I cleared my throat,
repositioning my chair. “I think he’s...a nice...kid.”

She scoffed in the
back of her throat. And I knew, from the look on her face, exactly
what she was about to say. “You
so
do like him.”