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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Fairy Tales & Fantasy
- Subject: Friends / Friendship
- Published: 04/23/2021
Secrets, Secrets
Born 2003, F, from Pennsylvania, United States“She cheated on the math test,” I whispered as my fingers brushed against a girl in the hall. Rockvale High School was so crowded that it was impossible not to bump shoulders with other students on your way to class. “He doesn’t really like football, and that girl ate a quart of ice cream by herself last night.”
“Oh, wow,” I gasped as I knocked into a cheerleader, turning my head to watch her swishing blonde ponytail for a few more seconds. “Lindsey Marks is pregnant.”
“McKenna, shush!” Jasmine, my best friend, hissed as we got to our lockers, which were right next to each other. I rolled my eyes as I fiddled with the stubborn combination lock, already knowing what she was going to say. “Just because you can’t control learning other peoples’ secrets doesn’t mean you have to tell me about all of them. It’s an invasion of their privacy.”
Ever since I was little, I’d had this… power. Every time I touched somebody, I would see whatever they considered to be their deepest secret. I didn’t know how I did it, I couldn’t control it, and I couldn’t turn it off. I’d had the power for as long as I could remember—when I was three, I found out our neighbor was kissing a woman other than his wife. Jasmine was the only person who’d ever believed me.
“If I don’t tell somebody, I’ll go insane, Jaz,” I explained, rolling my eyes as I dug through the messy locker for my worn copy of Hamlet. “I love knowing peoples’ secrets, but it can get a little overwhelming in my head. I wonder if Lindsey’s boyfriend knows yet.”
Jasmine sighed but smiled fondly at me as she closed her locker, brushing a brown curl out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.
I listed off more secrets to her as we walked to Mrs. Finn’s classroom, twirling a black lock of hair between my fingers. I loved the little bursts of energy I got with each new secret I learned. It was intoxicating—addicting, even—knowing how much power I had over anyone I touched. Whether I would save them, ruin them, or ignore them was completely up to me.
“Maria copied the history homework,” I said softly, watching other peoples’ memories play like a movie in my head with every touch. “Jake had a party last weekend while his parents were out of town. Cady’s got a crush on the new boy—hey, wait, when did we get a new boy?”
Jasmine laughed at my confusion and pushed the door open with her shoulder. “His name’s Devin, he was in my history class earlier.”
Immediately, I wondered what sort of secrets this new kid might be hiding.
As Jasmine and I sat next to each other at the uncomfortable metal desks, I thought aloud. “I hope he’s got a good secret. Maybe he stole something. Or he’s got a tattoo, since he’s underage.” I paused and grimaced at my next thought. “Or maybe he’s on drugs. Ooh!” I said excitedly, bouncing in my seat. “What if he killed someone?”
“McKenna!” Jasmine scolded, clearly scandalized by my joyful accusations of murder.
I shrugged, a small smile playing at the corner of my lips. “Sorry.” But I wasn’t, not really. It was easier to think about the dark secrets with a sense of humor than to let them haunt me.
I hadn’t expected to see the new boy any time soon, so I was surprised when he appeared in the doorway of Mrs. Finn’s English class, his face familiar from Cady’s memory of him. He frowned nervously and chewed his bottom lip as he looked around the room, and I noticed that the only empty seat was next to me, so I waved and pointed at the desk until he understood.
He ran a hand through his dark brown curls as he sat down, making them stick up in every direction like he’d just rolled out of bed. “Thanks. Devin Callahan.”
“No problem,” I said with a predatory grin, offering him a hand to shake—a perfect, inconspicuous way to make contact and find his deepest secret. “I’m McKenna Skylar.” What is your secret? I wondered silently as I waited for a memory that wasn’t mine to start playing in my head. Cheating on a test? An embarrassing crush? Time in juvie?
But nothing ever came. I only saw Devin watching me intently, his piercing blue eyes staring into mine like he wanted to catch a glimpse of my soul. For a split second, it was like I was looking in a mirror, watching myself instead of Devin, but it vanished before I could process what I’d seen. There was no memory. There was no secret.
There was no secret. That shouldn’t have been possible.
After holding Devin’s hand for way too long, I yanked my hand back quicker than if I’d been burned and turned to glare intently at the chalkboard as though it could give me answers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jasmine shooting me a baffled glance, and she leaned close to me, her breath hot on my ear as she whispered, “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost. Is he actually a murderer or something?”
I shook my head. It would almost have been better if Devin was a murderer—at least I’d know his secret then. “He doesn’t have a secret at all; I saw nothing.”
Her jaw dropped open, making her look like a fish, which I might have found comical if I’d been any less rattled than her. I avoided looking to my right at Devin throughout all of English class, and I was out of my seat the moment the bell rang, racing for the door to get to lunch.
By the time I got to the bright red lockers to grab my lunchbox, Jasmine was already spewing dozens of questions at me, so fast that I could barely concentrate on my combination.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t have a secret? Like, your power isn’t working? Has this ever happened before? Maybe he’s just a really innocent guy, or something?”
As soon as I had my lunchbox, I cut her off and said, “I don’t know,” hating the foreign taste of the words on my tongue. “This has never happened before. Everyone has a secret! Innocence has nothing to do with it; I get good secrets as well as bad ones, you know that. I once touched an adult whose secret was that he still slept with a teddy bear.” I waved my arms in frustration. “Devin’s got to have something, but why the hell can’t I see it? This makes no sense.”
We entered the cafeteria, and I inhaled the deceptively-delicious scent of warm bread and cooking meat (that actually tasted like soggy cardboard), and sighed. I almost didn’t hear Jasmine’s stomach growling amongst all the noisy chatter echoing off the white walls, but I saw her frown as she touched her stomach. I looked at her nervously as we sat down at our usual table.
“What did you have for breakfast this morning?” I asked, absentmindedly running a finger over the sharpie graffiti that adorned nearly every table in the school.
Jasmine bit her lip, which was enough of an answer for me, and said, “A banana.” When I groaned and dropped my head against the warm table—Rockvale High didn’t seem to know what air conditioning was—she continued, “Hey, at least I ate something this time.”
I gave a hollow laugh as I straightened back up, pulling the extra sandwich I always brought from my bag and passing it to her. “You need to eat, Jaz. Properly.”
The first time I ever touched Jasmine, in sophomore year, I saw her memories of staring at the numbers on a scale and starving herself. The next day, I’d plopped myself down next to her at lunch and handed her a sandwich, watching to make sure she ate it all. Her anorexia had definitely improved over the last two years, but there were still days I had to beg her to eat. We argued about it occasionally, but we could never stay mad for long. I understood that her eating disorder was a major struggle for her, and she knew I just wanted to keep her healthy and alive.
She reluctantly picked up the food, knowing I wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I smiled. I dug in to my own lunch, barely tasting it as I pondered the mystery of Devin Callahan.
Someone couldn’t not have a secret. My power had never malfunctioned before, not in all my eighteen years. My skin tingled with unease, and despite the stifling warmth, I felt goosebumps on my arms. For once in my life, I was as clueless as everyone else, and that vulnerability made the food in my mouth taste like sawdust. I needed to know what was going on with Devin.
I was snapped out of my thoughts by a high-pitched, hyena-like giggle from the table behind us. I couldn’t tell what the girls sitting there were saying, but I made out the word “ugly” and saw them point at Jasmine in a lousy attempt at being discreet.
Jasmine heard it too; I could tell by the way she blanched, her fingers tightening around the sandwich until it started to crumble in her hands. She dropped it onto the table and pushed it away, mumbling that she wasn’t hungry. Liar.
I leaned towards her and looped an arm over her shoulders as I whispered, “Don’t listen to them, Jaz, none of it’s true. I can make them leave you alone, if you want. I doubt Sophie would want me to tell Max that she’s been making out with his brother in the locker room.”
Jasmine flinched. “Don’t, McKenna, I mean it. That’s wrong.”
“What she’s doing—to you and Max—is wrong. I can make her stop, Jaz. I can make them all stop.”
But she shook her head. She even picked the sandwich back up and slowly started eating again, staring at me unblinkingly as she chewed. The message was clear: if I left Sophie and the other girls alone, Jasmine would eat. I surrendered, flashing the girls a final glare before finishing my own food.
Throughout the entire lunch period and the next few classes afterwards, I couldn’t get Devin—his blue eyes and lack of secrets—out of my head. I couldn’t think about anything else. What is he hiding? What’s his secret? The longer I thought about it, the more unsettled I felt.
I needed to know what Devin Callahan was hiding.
I didn’t see him again until the last class of the day, but even then, he sat on the opposite end of the room from me, closer to the windows. If I was going to talk to him, I’d have to do it in the hall, before he could leave the building.
But when the bell rang, he was the one who approached me, grabbing my arm as we meshed into the flood of students. He stared at me, his face so close I could see tiny freckles scattered across his nose.
“Uh, hi,” I said, confused by both his strange behavior and the fact that I still wasn’t picking up a secret, just that strange, mirror-like flash of my own image. I suddenly realized I had no clue how to actually go about learning his secret. It wasn’t like I could just ask him what he considered to be his deepest secret—that wouldn’t be strange at all.
He blinked and dropped my arm like he just noticed he’d been holding it in the first place. “Hi. What’s up?”
I frowned. “Uh, you grabbed me.”
Before he could respond, one of the girls who’d been making fun of Jasmine slammed into me, and I gasped as I fell, my ribs banging against the tiles. If I’d learned one thing in high school, it was that kids were merciless, and falling meant facing the stampede. Dozens of students’ ankles kicked me, and I knew I’d be bruised by the time I got to my feet, but I felt so much more.
I felt the harsh lashes of a belt on my back as Ryan Koffman’s father beat him. I felt a girl’s shame twist in my stomach as she blamed herself for her parents’ divorce. I felt Lindsey Marks’ fear over what to do about the baby she was now carrying; how she’d tell her boyfriend—or her parents. I felt the sting of a knife against a boy’s wrist, watched crimson drops appear along the angry lines he adorned his arms with. I felt a girl starve herself because she thought she was too fat, too ugly—
“Jasmine!” I cried, recognizing my best friend’s secret among all the others. “Jaz, help!”
“Did someone—McKenna!” She finally noticed me sprawled on the ground while countless teenagers walked over me. “Don’t just stand there, help me, I’m not strong enough to lift her myself!”
Two sets of arms grasped me under my arms and pulled me to my feet. My knees shook as I tried to recover from all the pain and fear I’d just experienced—where were the secrets about ice cream and teddy bears when I needed them?—and I nearly fell again, but somebody caught me and lifted me bridal-style. I probably would have been mortified if I had the energy.
Instead, I focused on breathing, counting each careful inhale as I was carried around. After a minute, a light breeze washed over me, blowing bits of hair across my face, and I blinked a few times until the world came into focus. The first thing I noticed was sunset-colored trees and the light chill of September. We went around to the side of the school, where I was laid down in the grass, and that was when I finally realized who’d been carrying me: Devin Callahan himself.
“What happened?” he asked, his blue eyes wide. He reached towards me but pulled back quickly, like he thought I’d shatter at the lightest touch.
Before Jasmine could come up with an excuse, I blurted, “I can’t see your secret. Why?”
They both turned to look at me incredulously, a suffocating silence surrounding us. I pressed a hand to my head as I sat up, leaning against the rough brick of the school walls and trying to clear my still-fuzzy head enough to remember what I was trying to say.
“Uh, McKenna?” Jasmine said, her voice higher than normal, almost hysterical. My mind suddenly cleared, and I realized what I’d just said. Devin was going to think I was crazy.
But instead of laughing or asking if I’d hit my head, he said, “Why can’t I see your secret?”
I froze, my heart fluttering wildly as I tried to comprehend what that meant. “You can do it too?” I asked softly, hardly daring to believe it. This had to be a joke.
He touched Jasmine’s arm and asked, “Has she eaten today?”, so it wasn’t a joke after all.
Then it hit me. “That’s your secret!” I yelled, making them flinch. I turned to Jasmine excitedly. “His secret is that he’s like me, that he can see secrets. I saw a flash of myself when I touched him, I saw him trying to figure out my secret!” I wrapped her in a hug, an intoxicating rush of power running through my veins now that I finally knew. But the instant I touched her, I leapt back, horrified at what I’d seen.
Her secret had changed sometime within the last minute. It wasn’t anorexia this time, it was a fear: the fear of losing me. She was afraid I would walk away with Devin and abandon her.
“Oh, Jaz,” I whispered, gently brushing the back of my fingers along her cheek and trying not to flinch as the new secret replayed in my head. I huffed. “Jasmine Sabrina Kennedy, don’t be stupid, you can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m not going anywhere, ever.”
Her posture slumped and she tugged on her long brown curls. Her voice broke as she spoke. “You said it yourself, you just need someone else to know all the secrets. Now you’ve got him; you don’t need me.”
“Maybe I don’t want him!” I said, flashing Devin an apologetic smile when I realized that probably sounded offensive. “I want you, Jaz, you’re an idiot if you don’t know that.” When she didn’t look reassured, I continued, “Besides, I think Devin and I are too similar. Secrets are addicting, aren’t they—the power you get over someone?” I asked him, and he nodded. I turned back to Jasmine, who was watching me with wide, hopeful eyes. “You keep me grounded. He’d probably just encourage me to do every bad idea that pops into my head. I’m not leaving you—ever—okay? I mean it.”
When she wrapped me in a tight hug, I sighed in relief at the secret that played in my head—hunger pangs and ever-dwindling numbers on a scale once again. No more fear that I would stop being her friend just because the new kid had the same weird power as me.
“So,” Devin said once Jasmine and I ended the hug, running a hand through his dark hair with a mischievous smirk. “What do we do now?”
I thought for a moment, chewing on my bottom lip and keeping one arm wrapped around Jasmine. We could do anything, with two of us. We could watch the world burn if we wanted.
I grinned. “We find more secrets, of course."
Secrets, Secrets(Sheridan Greer)
“She cheated on the math test,” I whispered as my fingers brushed against a girl in the hall. Rockvale High School was so crowded that it was impossible not to bump shoulders with other students on your way to class. “He doesn’t really like football, and that girl ate a quart of ice cream by herself last night.”
“Oh, wow,” I gasped as I knocked into a cheerleader, turning my head to watch her swishing blonde ponytail for a few more seconds. “Lindsey Marks is pregnant.”
“McKenna, shush!” Jasmine, my best friend, hissed as we got to our lockers, which were right next to each other. I rolled my eyes as I fiddled with the stubborn combination lock, already knowing what she was going to say. “Just because you can’t control learning other peoples’ secrets doesn’t mean you have to tell me about all of them. It’s an invasion of their privacy.”
Ever since I was little, I’d had this… power. Every time I touched somebody, I would see whatever they considered to be their deepest secret. I didn’t know how I did it, I couldn’t control it, and I couldn’t turn it off. I’d had the power for as long as I could remember—when I was three, I found out our neighbor was kissing a woman other than his wife. Jasmine was the only person who’d ever believed me.
“If I don’t tell somebody, I’ll go insane, Jaz,” I explained, rolling my eyes as I dug through the messy locker for my worn copy of Hamlet. “I love knowing peoples’ secrets, but it can get a little overwhelming in my head. I wonder if Lindsey’s boyfriend knows yet.”
Jasmine sighed but smiled fondly at me as she closed her locker, brushing a brown curl out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.
I listed off more secrets to her as we walked to Mrs. Finn’s classroom, twirling a black lock of hair between my fingers. I loved the little bursts of energy I got with each new secret I learned. It was intoxicating—addicting, even—knowing how much power I had over anyone I touched. Whether I would save them, ruin them, or ignore them was completely up to me.
“Maria copied the history homework,” I said softly, watching other peoples’ memories play like a movie in my head with every touch. “Jake had a party last weekend while his parents were out of town. Cady’s got a crush on the new boy—hey, wait, when did we get a new boy?”
Jasmine laughed at my confusion and pushed the door open with her shoulder. “His name’s Devin, he was in my history class earlier.”
Immediately, I wondered what sort of secrets this new kid might be hiding.
As Jasmine and I sat next to each other at the uncomfortable metal desks, I thought aloud. “I hope he’s got a good secret. Maybe he stole something. Or he’s got a tattoo, since he’s underage.” I paused and grimaced at my next thought. “Or maybe he’s on drugs. Ooh!” I said excitedly, bouncing in my seat. “What if he killed someone?”
“McKenna!” Jasmine scolded, clearly scandalized by my joyful accusations of murder.
I shrugged, a small smile playing at the corner of my lips. “Sorry.” But I wasn’t, not really. It was easier to think about the dark secrets with a sense of humor than to let them haunt me.
I hadn’t expected to see the new boy any time soon, so I was surprised when he appeared in the doorway of Mrs. Finn’s English class, his face familiar from Cady’s memory of him. He frowned nervously and chewed his bottom lip as he looked around the room, and I noticed that the only empty seat was next to me, so I waved and pointed at the desk until he understood.
He ran a hand through his dark brown curls as he sat down, making them stick up in every direction like he’d just rolled out of bed. “Thanks. Devin Callahan.”
“No problem,” I said with a predatory grin, offering him a hand to shake—a perfect, inconspicuous way to make contact and find his deepest secret. “I’m McKenna Skylar.” What is your secret? I wondered silently as I waited for a memory that wasn’t mine to start playing in my head. Cheating on a test? An embarrassing crush? Time in juvie?
But nothing ever came. I only saw Devin watching me intently, his piercing blue eyes staring into mine like he wanted to catch a glimpse of my soul. For a split second, it was like I was looking in a mirror, watching myself instead of Devin, but it vanished before I could process what I’d seen. There was no memory. There was no secret.
There was no secret. That shouldn’t have been possible.
After holding Devin’s hand for way too long, I yanked my hand back quicker than if I’d been burned and turned to glare intently at the chalkboard as though it could give me answers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jasmine shooting me a baffled glance, and she leaned close to me, her breath hot on my ear as she whispered, “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost. Is he actually a murderer or something?”
I shook my head. It would almost have been better if Devin was a murderer—at least I’d know his secret then. “He doesn’t have a secret at all; I saw nothing.”
Her jaw dropped open, making her look like a fish, which I might have found comical if I’d been any less rattled than her. I avoided looking to my right at Devin throughout all of English class, and I was out of my seat the moment the bell rang, racing for the door to get to lunch.
By the time I got to the bright red lockers to grab my lunchbox, Jasmine was already spewing dozens of questions at me, so fast that I could barely concentrate on my combination.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t have a secret? Like, your power isn’t working? Has this ever happened before? Maybe he’s just a really innocent guy, or something?”
As soon as I had my lunchbox, I cut her off and said, “I don’t know,” hating the foreign taste of the words on my tongue. “This has never happened before. Everyone has a secret! Innocence has nothing to do with it; I get good secrets as well as bad ones, you know that. I once touched an adult whose secret was that he still slept with a teddy bear.” I waved my arms in frustration. “Devin’s got to have something, but why the hell can’t I see it? This makes no sense.”
We entered the cafeteria, and I inhaled the deceptively-delicious scent of warm bread and cooking meat (that actually tasted like soggy cardboard), and sighed. I almost didn’t hear Jasmine’s stomach growling amongst all the noisy chatter echoing off the white walls, but I saw her frown as she touched her stomach. I looked at her nervously as we sat down at our usual table.
“What did you have for breakfast this morning?” I asked, absentmindedly running a finger over the sharpie graffiti that adorned nearly every table in the school.
Jasmine bit her lip, which was enough of an answer for me, and said, “A banana.” When I groaned and dropped my head against the warm table—Rockvale High didn’t seem to know what air conditioning was—she continued, “Hey, at least I ate something this time.”
I gave a hollow laugh as I straightened back up, pulling the extra sandwich I always brought from my bag and passing it to her. “You need to eat, Jaz. Properly.”
The first time I ever touched Jasmine, in sophomore year, I saw her memories of staring at the numbers on a scale and starving herself. The next day, I’d plopped myself down next to her at lunch and handed her a sandwich, watching to make sure she ate it all. Her anorexia had definitely improved over the last two years, but there were still days I had to beg her to eat. We argued about it occasionally, but we could never stay mad for long. I understood that her eating disorder was a major struggle for her, and she knew I just wanted to keep her healthy and alive.
She reluctantly picked up the food, knowing I wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I smiled. I dug in to my own lunch, barely tasting it as I pondered the mystery of Devin Callahan.
Someone couldn’t not have a secret. My power had never malfunctioned before, not in all my eighteen years. My skin tingled with unease, and despite the stifling warmth, I felt goosebumps on my arms. For once in my life, I was as clueless as everyone else, and that vulnerability made the food in my mouth taste like sawdust. I needed to know what was going on with Devin.
I was snapped out of my thoughts by a high-pitched, hyena-like giggle from the table behind us. I couldn’t tell what the girls sitting there were saying, but I made out the word “ugly” and saw them point at Jasmine in a lousy attempt at being discreet.
Jasmine heard it too; I could tell by the way she blanched, her fingers tightening around the sandwich until it started to crumble in her hands. She dropped it onto the table and pushed it away, mumbling that she wasn’t hungry. Liar.
I leaned towards her and looped an arm over her shoulders as I whispered, “Don’t listen to them, Jaz, none of it’s true. I can make them leave you alone, if you want. I doubt Sophie would want me to tell Max that she’s been making out with his brother in the locker room.”
Jasmine flinched. “Don’t, McKenna, I mean it. That’s wrong.”
“What she’s doing—to you and Max—is wrong. I can make her stop, Jaz. I can make them all stop.”
But she shook her head. She even picked the sandwich back up and slowly started eating again, staring at me unblinkingly as she chewed. The message was clear: if I left Sophie and the other girls alone, Jasmine would eat. I surrendered, flashing the girls a final glare before finishing my own food.
Throughout the entire lunch period and the next few classes afterwards, I couldn’t get Devin—his blue eyes and lack of secrets—out of my head. I couldn’t think about anything else. What is he hiding? What’s his secret? The longer I thought about it, the more unsettled I felt.
I needed to know what Devin Callahan was hiding.
I didn’t see him again until the last class of the day, but even then, he sat on the opposite end of the room from me, closer to the windows. If I was going to talk to him, I’d have to do it in the hall, before he could leave the building.
But when the bell rang, he was the one who approached me, grabbing my arm as we meshed into the flood of students. He stared at me, his face so close I could see tiny freckles scattered across his nose.
“Uh, hi,” I said, confused by both his strange behavior and the fact that I still wasn’t picking up a secret, just that strange, mirror-like flash of my own image. I suddenly realized I had no clue how to actually go about learning his secret. It wasn’t like I could just ask him what he considered to be his deepest secret—that wouldn’t be strange at all.
He blinked and dropped my arm like he just noticed he’d been holding it in the first place. “Hi. What’s up?”
I frowned. “Uh, you grabbed me.”
Before he could respond, one of the girls who’d been making fun of Jasmine slammed into me, and I gasped as I fell, my ribs banging against the tiles. If I’d learned one thing in high school, it was that kids were merciless, and falling meant facing the stampede. Dozens of students’ ankles kicked me, and I knew I’d be bruised by the time I got to my feet, but I felt so much more.
I felt the harsh lashes of a belt on my back as Ryan Koffman’s father beat him. I felt a girl’s shame twist in my stomach as she blamed herself for her parents’ divorce. I felt Lindsey Marks’ fear over what to do about the baby she was now carrying; how she’d tell her boyfriend—or her parents. I felt the sting of a knife against a boy’s wrist, watched crimson drops appear along the angry lines he adorned his arms with. I felt a girl starve herself because she thought she was too fat, too ugly—
“Jasmine!” I cried, recognizing my best friend’s secret among all the others. “Jaz, help!”
“Did someone—McKenna!” She finally noticed me sprawled on the ground while countless teenagers walked over me. “Don’t just stand there, help me, I’m not strong enough to lift her myself!”
Two sets of arms grasped me under my arms and pulled me to my feet. My knees shook as I tried to recover from all the pain and fear I’d just experienced—where were the secrets about ice cream and teddy bears when I needed them?—and I nearly fell again, but somebody caught me and lifted me bridal-style. I probably would have been mortified if I had the energy.
Instead, I focused on breathing, counting each careful inhale as I was carried around. After a minute, a light breeze washed over me, blowing bits of hair across my face, and I blinked a few times until the world came into focus. The first thing I noticed was sunset-colored trees and the light chill of September. We went around to the side of the school, where I was laid down in the grass, and that was when I finally realized who’d been carrying me: Devin Callahan himself.
“What happened?” he asked, his blue eyes wide. He reached towards me but pulled back quickly, like he thought I’d shatter at the lightest touch.
Before Jasmine could come up with an excuse, I blurted, “I can’t see your secret. Why?”
They both turned to look at me incredulously, a suffocating silence surrounding us. I pressed a hand to my head as I sat up, leaning against the rough brick of the school walls and trying to clear my still-fuzzy head enough to remember what I was trying to say.
“Uh, McKenna?” Jasmine said, her voice higher than normal, almost hysterical. My mind suddenly cleared, and I realized what I’d just said. Devin was going to think I was crazy.
But instead of laughing or asking if I’d hit my head, he said, “Why can’t I see your secret?”
I froze, my heart fluttering wildly as I tried to comprehend what that meant. “You can do it too?” I asked softly, hardly daring to believe it. This had to be a joke.
He touched Jasmine’s arm and asked, “Has she eaten today?”, so it wasn’t a joke after all.
Then it hit me. “That’s your secret!” I yelled, making them flinch. I turned to Jasmine excitedly. “His secret is that he’s like me, that he can see secrets. I saw a flash of myself when I touched him, I saw him trying to figure out my secret!” I wrapped her in a hug, an intoxicating rush of power running through my veins now that I finally knew. But the instant I touched her, I leapt back, horrified at what I’d seen.
Her secret had changed sometime within the last minute. It wasn’t anorexia this time, it was a fear: the fear of losing me. She was afraid I would walk away with Devin and abandon her.
“Oh, Jaz,” I whispered, gently brushing the back of my fingers along her cheek and trying not to flinch as the new secret replayed in my head. I huffed. “Jasmine Sabrina Kennedy, don’t be stupid, you can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m not going anywhere, ever.”
Her posture slumped and she tugged on her long brown curls. Her voice broke as she spoke. “You said it yourself, you just need someone else to know all the secrets. Now you’ve got him; you don’t need me.”
“Maybe I don’t want him!” I said, flashing Devin an apologetic smile when I realized that probably sounded offensive. “I want you, Jaz, you’re an idiot if you don’t know that.” When she didn’t look reassured, I continued, “Besides, I think Devin and I are too similar. Secrets are addicting, aren’t they—the power you get over someone?” I asked him, and he nodded. I turned back to Jasmine, who was watching me with wide, hopeful eyes. “You keep me grounded. He’d probably just encourage me to do every bad idea that pops into my head. I’m not leaving you—ever—okay? I mean it.”
When she wrapped me in a tight hug, I sighed in relief at the secret that played in my head—hunger pangs and ever-dwindling numbers on a scale once again. No more fear that I would stop being her friend just because the new kid had the same weird power as me.
“So,” Devin said once Jasmine and I ended the hug, running a hand through his dark hair with a mischievous smirk. “What do we do now?”
I thought for a moment, chewing on my bottom lip and keeping one arm wrapped around Jasmine. We could do anything, with two of us. We could watch the world burn if we wanted.
I grinned. “We find more secrets, of course."
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Gail Moore
04/23/2021Awesome, Fantastic,
imagine having a power like that. I am thinking I wouldn't want to know.
Well written piece :-)
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