Two Can Keep a Secret

Throughout the course of our lives we have to learn to do a lot of different things. We learn the basics like walking, talking, reading and writing from a very young age, knowing that these tools are the stepping stones that will allow us to navigate this new world on our own. These tools will help us stay safe inside the lines, and out of danger as long as we use them correctly; by accepting the rules that have been laid out for us by previous generations, and living according to those rules. More often than not, however, we slip outside of these lines and find ourselves on the outside. However brief our venture beyond the lines may have been, punishment for disobeying will soon follow. Luckily there is another basic skill that we acquire in life, and although the age in which we master this skill may vary, it remains an inevitability. This skill is mostly acquired through instinct and self preservation. In the end, no matter how noble a creature you are or how honest there will come a time after you’ve ventured beyond the proverbial line, that you too will learn the importance of keeping a secret. I’ve only truly mastered this skill a year ago, on my eighteenth birthday, along with two of my closest friends. I’ve always known that some stories should never be told,however, I have not yet learned what to do while stuck in a crossroad, where the forbidden stories become the only ones worth telling...

I remember feeling relief as the story progressed and spread out onto the page as I begun typing. I did it without having to think about it; the words simply rolled out from the tips of my fingers like bowling balls, all in line with a strike. After I had finished dotting my I’s and crossing the T’s, I knew that I had just written a confession, and that no amount of name changing would change this. I also knew that it was not my confession to make, but as I sat there mulling over the exposed wounds repelling off my computer screen, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I had just written my ticket onto the free University express train. How could I, after working a nine hour shift at the diner, after coming home to the sight of what was left of my father passed out on the front lawn, after enduring yet another screaming match over the envelopes of overdue bills that kept piling on the coffee table?.

The answer: I couldn’t ignore it. So I counted to three before I unfolded the only story I had worth telling and sent the email to Chapters, sealing our fate.

Three weeks later I received the news. I had won the Chapters’ scholarship, three years of tuition for any degree I wanted. Not only would I be going to varsity, but my story has been chosen for their yearly analogue publication and it will be sold in all of their stores. To say that I was out of my mind with excitement would be an understatement. I felt a wave of accomplishment wash over me; like I was a helium balloon that had been tethered to a rock, and out of nowhere whatever kept me on the ground snapped and I drifted towards the clouds. Suddenly I had a future to look forward to. The first person I wanted to tell was my best friend, Holly. I ran out the diner to the back, where I knew she would be. She was just about to take another drag from her cigarette when I burst through the back door. “Woah, what’s the hurry Jess?” she asked as I ran towards her.

“Guess who’s going to varsity next year?” I blurted while simultaneously pinning her to the wall in a hug.

“What? You Bitch, you won the competition, didn’t you?” Holly announced, clearly a little shocked, but then she just hugged me again, and we both started crying and laughing, while still clinging to each other. We stood there for a while, until the forgotten cigarette had burned out on the ground,before she spoke again. “I’m so proud of you, Jess! I told you they would love the story about the stalker chick, didn’t I?”

It was only then, when she stared at me happily with tear stained cheeks and inquiring eyes that I realised what all this really meant. She can never know, no one we knew could ever read that story. “Yeah, you did. I probably owe you now, huh?” I scoffed as I forced a smile and lightly punched her on the arm, before we turned back and made our way into the diner.

For a while I had been a balloon among the clouds, but I knew all too well that what goes up…eventually had to come down.

The next few weeks went by in a blur as I awaited the book that held my story, and the stories of a dozen others to be mailed to me. All the while I had been bombarded with questions by everyone who heard about the scholarship. I dodged them simply by feigning a lack of importance, telling everyone that I must have won by default, on account of all the other stories being poorly written, and that the only important thing was that I had won. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t fooling anyone and the questions kept coming at me, like daggers to a dartboard. Statistically, one of them was bound to hit me in the face.

The next time I saw Holly, I thought it would be her fist that would be the one connecting with my jaw. I was sitting in my room when I heard her knocking on the front door. The knocking got louder and more urgent the longer it took me to get to the door, even though I kept yelling that I was on my way. When I finally opened it, Holly was standing in front of me, seething. She had black eyeliner running down her face, her cheeks were blood red and her whole body was quivering. It took me a second to spot the black book she had clenched in her fist, but the moment I did I knew that I was undeniably screwed. 

“How did you get that?” I asked, but the words sounded gibberish, even to my own ears. I was trembling now too.

“How could you do this?” Holly finally spoke, and as she did my heart broke. She could never have seen this coming, I thought. I was her friend; her best friend, and I betrayed her without even giving her a heads up.

“I didn’t think I’d win,Hol.” I started again, but she cut me off and stormed passed me into the house.

“You fucking liar, you knew you’d win you just didn’t care, did you?As long as you were getting out of here, to hell with the rest of us, right!”. Holly’s eyes bored into my skull, and I swore I could almost see the phantom wounds from that night peeling away her skin, but maybe it was just me and my wounds that were reflecting off of her.

“Of course I care, Holly!” I screeched, “But I can’t stay here anymore. My world is falling apart, and I can feel myself being sucked down with it. Keeping your secret is killing me, can’t you see that?”

 Holly’s eyes widened in disbelief “My secret, Jess? Are you fucking kidding me? I read that in your little distorted reality earlier, but I didn’t think you actually believed that it was entirely my fault! It was you, Jess, don’t you remember?” Her voice was breaking now but her eyes were still dead, as if she was letting it all play out in front of her,forcing it all to come back to me. As she started talking again, flashes from that night made its way to the surface of my subconscious, roaring as it went, tearing into my brain. “It was your birthday, Jess, why else would we be fucking camping? You made me and Libby go because it was your eighteenth!” Holly’s breath came out as little short gasps and her eyes started watering again. “I didn’t want to do the stupid mushrooms, so I smoked my bong instead. We were all high, Jess, but you were out of your mind; saying stuff about being from the planet Luna. You called yourself a queen!”

“No!” I shouted, finally finding my words. “That’s ridiculous, I read that book! You’re making this up!”

“Yes, you read those books, Jess, but you never told me what happens in them, so how could I be making this up?“ Holly was genuinely crying now, her face distorting as she spoke, but she wouldn’t stop; she was living it all over again. “You said that you were Queen Luna and Libby was Cinder, so she played along as you ordered her around; it was funny. We were having fun...but then Libby didn’t want to be Cinder anymore. She was tired, but you kept calling her Cinder. You barked a few more orders but when she wouldn’t do what you said, you picked up that fucking rock and hit her over the head! Even after she went down, you kept hitting her over the head, screaming that you were the queen, over and over again.”

“No, no, you’re wrong! You’re the one who killed her! I saw you covered in blood, with her on your lap when I woke up that morning. I went to bed when you were lying outside looking at the stars, and when I woke up she was dead, and you did it!” I was screaming by now, but the voice that came out sounded nothing like me. It was animal, something wild and wounded.

 My whole body was shaking, and I was breathing heavily. It felt like my lungs were starting to collapse. She was lying. She had to be lying. I was the one protecting her! Only as I listened to what she was saying, the flashes erupted all over again. I remember how horrified Libby had been when I lifted the rock off of the ground and swung it at her face, the ear piercing howl that erupted from Holly’s chest when Libby hit the ground and my own blood covered hands holding the rock as I pounded away at her cracking skull.

“I kept your secret, Jess, but I will not let you drag me down with you.” Holly’s words vibrated down my spine, unclenching my body from the position I had been locked in. I couldn’t look at her.

“Are you turning me in?” I asked, with my eyes still nailed to the ground.

“You gave me no choice. You practically confessed on my behalf to a murder I didn’t even commit!”

“Then I don’t have much of a choice either, Hol” I whispered, and with those final words I hurled myself across the room and knocked her down. My hands searched hastily for the edges of her neck and before I knew it I had my fingers curled around it. I closed my eyes as her nails dug into my flesh and her legs started flailing around me. I pushed down the sob that was threatening to escape through my gritted teeth and forced the mangled sounds coming from her throat out of my mind. I couldn’t let her give me up now. Not after the competition. I was finally getting out of here and I will not be coming back. After a while her flailing legs subsided and her struggling fingers started to retreat. I opened my eyes and looked down towards the lifeless body that I now held between my fingers and let go…

The next part had been easy enough, we had done this before. Leisurely I made my way back to the site where it started a year ago with Holly’s body rolled up in our carpet in my car’s trunk. It was eerie how no one even gave me a second look as I drove through town. I realize that no one could have known,but I did know and I was responsible. Only that didn’t stop me from judging them.

By the time I arrived at the lake the sun was setting, my shift started in an hour I thought and imagined what I would say when asked where Holly was and it was like de-ja-vu because I remember imagining the same thing after we dumped Libby’s body a year ago. I wondered If my answer would be as efficient as it had been in the past and gently slipped Holly’s body into the river before I counted to three again and started to practice as I had that night. “I don’t know, I do not know, I haven’t seen her…”