Dark Secrets (75 page)

“
I know. I said I was
sorry.”

“
You don’t need to be
sorry, Ar. I do get it, okay? I really do. And I’ll let it go.
Just, please don’t let him do it to you again. Promise?”

I nodded, secretly
crossing my fingers behind my back. I wondered then, if explaining
to Mike that David’s actually a vampire might ease his disdain for
the whole biting situation—since it could’ve been worse.

When Mike laughed, I
half expected he’d read my thought, but he simply shook his head
and said, “It’s really damn good to see you, girl.”

“
Yeah. It’s kinda
weird. I feel like I’m imagining this.”

Mike reached across
and pinched me. “Feels pretty real to me.”

“
Ouch.” I rubbed my
forearm. “That hurt, you know.”

“
Grow up,” he said
with a grin.

“
Hmpf.”

“
Shall we go home?”
he asked.

“
Yeah.” My arms
dropped back down to my sides. “Sounds good.”

Mike bent and grabbed
his suitcase, then shouldered his backpack swiftly, wrapped his arm
around my neck, and we wandered slowly out to the parking bay where
I left Dad.

“
Mr Thompson. Good to
see you again.” Mike shook Dad’s hand firmly.

“
Yes, yes, it’s good
to have you here.” Dad cupped his other hand over Mike’s in the
‘double’ handshake. “We’ve been hearing a lot about you these past
few months.”

“
Really,” Mike asked in a leading tone. “
Ara
talks about
me?”

“
Yes.” Dad grinned.
“I started to wonder if you were my daughter’s only
friend.”

“
Ha!” Mike looked at
me with that cheeky, cocky grin. “I am.”

“
Are not.” I punched
him in the arm.

He leaned away,
rubbing off my pathetic effort at violence.

When we pulled into
the driveway at home, Mike turned in his seat and smiled at me.
“You never told me how beautiful this place is, Ara.”

“
It’s all right, I
guess.” I shrugged, not meeting his eyes.

Each tree had turned a
different colour with the near-autumn air, and as the leaves fell
from the branches one by one, they gathered in piles or floated
down the curve of the road, leaving a wash of yellows and reds and
oranges all over Maple Terrace. But my fairy-tale timeline meant
that for every leaf that fell away, so too did the days I had left
with David.

Sure, it was pretty,
but all that beauty was slowly and surely delivering me to
heartbreak.

“
Ara would prefer it
if they were Gum Trees, I think,” Dad said and hopped out of the
car, laughing to himself.

“
What’s up, Ara?”
Mike asked. “You sulked the whole way home.”

“
Nothing. I’m fine.”
I climbed out, too, slamming the car door behind me.

I was sure Mike
groaned to himself, but he arrived at the trunk with a smile on his
face. “I’ll take that.”

“
Boy, that’s heavy.”
Dad nearly dropped Mike’s bag as he passed it to him. “I must be
getting old.”

“
Nah. You’re not old, Mr Thompson. I’m just bloody strong,”
Mike said. “I’d have to be to keep up with
this
one.” He ruffled my
hair.

“
Hey, get off.” I
patted it back into place.

“
Please, call me
Greg, Mike—you’re like one of the family. And who knows—” Dad
winked at me, “—with the way my daughter talks about you, maybe one
day you will be.”

“
Daaa-aad.” I buried
my face in my hand.

Mike chuckled. “Not
likely, sir, unless you have another daughter I don’t know
about.”

Ouch
.

“
I have a son,” he
suggested then frowned.

“
Hm. Yeah, not really
on that side of the fence,” Mike said.

“
Well, I guess we’ll
just have to adopt you, then.” Dad patted Mike on the back as they
headed inside, leaving me, shouldering a rise of hurt, to trail
behind them.

“
When did
he
become the favourite?” I muttered under my
breath.

The warm smell of
bacon and toast wafted into the entranceway, with the sweet aroma
of sugared coffee lingering in a pleasant layer over the top. I
stepped in and closed the door, smiling at Sam as he ran upstairs
carrying—or dragging—Mike’s suitcase.

“
Sure you don’t want
me to take that, Sam?” Mike said.

“
Now, now, you just
let the boy worry about that,” Dad said, leading Mike into the
dining area. “I think I smell breakfast.”

“
I think I smell
heaven,” Mike added.

I rolled my eyes and
pushed past him and Dad to sit at the table and watch them all play
‘happy families’. Mike was such a suck-up. He knew exactly how to
get into oldies’ good books and he was holding no bars back. It was
also one of the things I really loved about him.

“
Mike, good to
finally meet you.” Vicki left her practically permanent kitchen
position to hug him. “How have you been?”

“
Good, Vicki. Really
good,” Mike said softly. “It’s nice to finally put a face to the
voice.”

Great, so Vicki had
been talking to him on the phone, too. Just bury me now.

Vicki smiled. “I’ve
made you some breakfast—figured you’d be hungry after all that
travelling.”

“
Yeah, great,” Mike
said and sat at the table next to me. “The airport food was pretty
average.”

“
So, Ara tells us
you’ve been accepted into the ah—what was that called again?” Vicki
asked, fussing over the plates.

“
Vicki,” I moaned.
“Dad’s already interrogated him. Do you have to do it
too?”

“
I don’t mind an
interrogation, Ara.” Mike elbowed me gently. “It’s uh—it’s called
the Tactical Response Group. We get to use cool guns, basically.”
He grinned at Sam as he sat down.

“
Do you get to shoot
people?” Sam asked, leaning right across the table to be in Mike’s
bubble.

“
Well,” Mike’s voice
softened, “the only place I like to shoot people is on Halo. Other
than that, we try to avoid it as much as possible. But I have a
Taser?” he offered.

“
Awesome. Hey, do you
play on Live—” Sam’s voice became background noise while the boys
talked video games and Vicki served breakfast around all the
commotion, sitting quietly down after. Without touching my food, I
leaned on my hand and listened to the sound of normal; how the
laughter, forks clinking on plates, and cups resting with a clunk
on wood could echo familiarity and content. Once upon a time, being
normal meant having a life with two parents, no grief, and no
scars. Now, normal meant I could sit in my kitchen, eat food with
my family, and at the end of my life—die.

A few months ago, I
didn’t know how much I had to be grateful for, but the hourglass of
Fate could rock and tip everything out of balance at any time. I
knew now that I had to take each breath of normal with a kind of
appreciation I never understood before, because imagining, with
David’s interpretation of eternity, if I didn’t have any of this—I
looked at Dad and Vicki, leaning closer to each other as they
laughed—I would miss it all terribly.

“
Well, Vicki—” Mike
wiped his mouth with a napkin and rested his arm on the table,
“—that was the most amazing breakfast I’ve had in a long time.
Ara’s right, you are a good cook.”

“
Ara
said that?” Vicki’s wide eyes
landed on me. I wanted to brush them off. “Well, thank you, Ara,
and thank you, Mike. I really enjoy cooking—especially for people
who eat it without
salt
.” She glared at Dad.

“
What?” Dad shrugged,
holding his hands out.

Mike laughed and
placed his napkin on the table. “Well, my mother raised me with the
strong belief that it’s considered an insult to the chef when one
puts salt on his food.”

Vicki’s smile pushed
her brows up. “See, Greg? You could stand to learn a few table
manners, yourself.”

Sam
laughed.

“
Hm, Ara?” Dad
cleared his throat, ignoring Vicki and Sam. “Why don’t you give
Mike the grand tour?”

“
I’m sure he’s seen a
house before, Dad.”

“
Not yours, though,”
Mike said, seeming to offer me the position of Tour
Guide.

“
Okay. Come on.” I
stood up, but when I reached for his hand, he quickly drew it away.
Even Dad and Vicki saw it, disguising their shock with a swift
glance at their plates, while I ate the swell of
mortification.

“
Thanks again,
Vicki.” Mike grabbed his plate and mine.

“
You’re welcome,
Mike.”

I walked off in a
huff, looking back at Mike. “Are you coming or not?”

“
Coming.” He dumped
the plates in the sink as we passed the kitchen and headed through
the arch to the forbidden formal room.

“
So, this is the
dining room…”

“
Two dining
rooms?”

“
Yeah, for all those
dinner guests Vicki entertains.” I laughed.

“
Right.” Mike nodded,
crossing his arms. I don’t think he realised I was
joking.

“
And out there is the
backyard.” I pointed beyond the windows.

“
Is that the swing?
Where you sit when you’re sad?”

“
No, it’s a
slide.”

“
Ha-ha.” He flicked
his hand out and knocked my ponytail.

“
Uh!” I held up a
finger. “No mucking about in here. You’ll hit the
chandelier.”

Mike looked up. “Hm.
Look at that. A real chandelier.”

“
It’s plastic,” I
remarked and walked on, leading him to the TV room that met back up
with the front entrance. “We watch TV in here.”

Mike stood by the
suede sofa and considered the giant LCD sitting neatly on the white
cabinet. “No drinks in the lounge,” he read the ‘house rules’
painted on the wooden wall-plaque. “No name-calling.
No…”

“
Okay.” I grabbed his
shoulders and spun him toward the door. “We all know the
rules.”

“
I don’t.” He tried
to walk back to the TV room. “I wasn’t done.”

“
You can read them
later. I wanna show you your room.”

“
Okay. But only
because I stink.” He lifted his arm and sniffed his own odour. “I
need a change of shirt.”

“
No kidding.” I
pushed his arm down.

“
Now, Sam,” Dad’s
voice absconded into the entrance.

“
Why does
she
get to stay home?” Sam said, and I imagined him pointing off
in some random direction as if pointing at me—the
‘she’.

“
Because she has a
friend who just arrived.”

“
There’s always some
excuse. It’s like she never goes to school.”

Mike rested his
forearm on the balustrade, half laughing, and looked at me. “You
never go to school, huh?”

“
Not a lot.” I kicked
up the carpet at the base of the stair.

“
How’s it been—” he
nodded toward the dining room, “—having a little
brother?”

“
Not much different
to putting up with you.”

He laughed and looked
around, his eyes taking in the stairs, then the window above the
front door, and landing back on me. “I like this. It’s a nice
house, Ara. It’s good to see the places you’ve been talking about
all your life.”

“
Well, later I’ll
show you where I landed when I broke my arm that time.”

“
Sounds good.” He
tugged on a strand of my hair, making me lower my foot from the
first step to look up at him. “I really missed ya,
girl.”

“
I know,” I said, and
my eyes moved slowly from his camel-skin boots, over the light
denim jeans and traced swerves over the ripples under his shirt,
stopping in a hold on his warm eyes. The caramel colour had always
reminded me of autumn—once my favourite season—but there would have
to be a different comparison for his eyes now that my autumn would
forever be a reminder of losing David. Maybe…

“
Ara?”

“
Hm?” His face
blurred and sharpened into focus.

“
Did you hear
anything I just said?”

“
Um—”

Mike’s shoulders
dropped and he nodded to himself. “Come on, why don’t you just show
me upstairs?”

I knew he was upset. I
didn’t want him to be upset. “No,” I said, flashing him a cheeky
grin.

“
Ara. Come on. I’m
tired. I’m not in the mood for games.”

My brow arched. “Race
you?”

And the mask cracked,
bringing warmth back to his eyes. “Ah, forget that,” he said,
taking a quick step toward me. “This is more fun.”