Chapter 3: Heart of Stone

Bent but Never Broken

Waking up to the silence of the house was a first, and I realized that I had left Spencer and Clayton to get ready for school on their own, as Teresa wouldn’t help them with anything. There was fear at first as I thought of how Spencer wouldn’t have me there to help him out. I jumped out of bed, looking around and realizing suddenly that I was in Tom’s little house.

Looking at my clock, I saw that it was early morning and my alarm hadn’t rung, so I turned it off knowing that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. I sat on the edge of my bed, listening to the silence. Not that I didn’t know before, but silence was the loudest sound, and it made me want to hear something other than nothing. I missed hearing the words of my family as we spoke about nothing.

There was a point in time, long ago when I had been told that silence was louder than any words, and I had never forgotten it because I knew that it was true. I had been told by Trevor, and in the silence of his death I learned that it spoke much louder.

My thoughts came, so I didn’t lie down to sleep the minutes away. I thought about Teresa and how I had left her. I remembered how I would have become a younger version of her had it not been for Trevor. I missed him, missed my best friend more than anything else in the world and there was nothing I could do to bring him back.

Some days, I missed him more than others. There were times I could be standing in a crowd of people and still feel all alone. That was the worst way to miss someone, the worst way to be alone. It was when I knew that there were people but I couldn’t open to them. I missed him most then, because he was the only one who had ever really cared about me enough to give up everything in his life to save mine. And there was nothing I could do to give it back to him, nothing I could give back what I had taken.

And I was sorry, had more regrets about my life than anyone could ever understand, for I knew that I had been wrong, knew that some day it would come back like a boomerang that would never leave its everlasting circle. It would never lose momentum, lose the speed and clarity of which it came back.

I looked at the scars upon my wrists, white lines that marked the memories of my past. They were history, locking emotions outside but leaving traces as they did. Sometimes I did want to be released from the present, but I knew better than that and I knew that I couldn’t go back to who I once was. I didn’t want to change, for who I had become was a better person.

The time finally came when I heard stirring in the other room, and so I rose from my seated place on the bed to greet another day with a renewed hope. It was hope, was something that had not been crushed yet. It was there, still a little piece of it which held me onto the world.

I had learned, had been told by Trevor, that if all hope had been lost, there was nothing worth living for. He had also showed me hope, and what it was like to see things further than in the moment. He gave me hope for the future and that kept me alive, reminded me every time that I wanted to quit, there was something more to come, for better or for worse, it would all come to pass.

Nothing had changed when I finally got up the next morning. I was still as tired as I had been when I went to sleep and the house was still as quiet as it had been the evening before. My dreamed played back over and over again like a video. It refused to fade away and be gone. The silence lasted through breakfast and almost the entire morning before Tom finally spoke.

“Do you kids think you could walk to school today?” He asked us. His voice sounded awkward and strange, like he was guilty of something. I didn’t understand the strange tone that now filled his voice. It was almost as if he had a secret that I shouldn’t know about. I heard the way his voice changed while he was speaking, as if he were avoiding something.

I nodded in his direction. I didn’t want to see the look that was in his eyes and why he had secrets but on the complete other hand, I wanted to know why he was hiding stuff at all, especially from me. “What about taking Clayton to daycare? We could take him there but it will be a lot harder than just getting a ride.” I still didn’t look up at him as I put the last of my books in my back-pack.

The secret that my father had been trying so hard to avoid from before that point in time spilled over in his voice. “Oh right.” The secret was upon the floor like Clayton’s breakfast had been that morning and I finally found out the answer to the question I had been searching for. The answer was Ava Jay. She was what my father had been hiding from me and his secret was why she hated me.

I tried to grasp why she would hate me but couldn’t quite get my mind around it. Maybe I should have just moved back in with Teresa and forgotten that I had even tried to live with my dad. I couldn’t understand why Tom had hidden the fact that he might like Ava. It wasn’t that bad to like someone.

I tried to forget about the whole ordeal when Spencer and I left the small house to begin our trek to school. We walked, hardly speaking to each other for most of the journey. It only took around fifteen minutes before we arrived at Spencer’s school. I had to continue on to the Easthunt High School.

I attempted to find my way to my new locker even though I still had no idea where it was located in the entire school. I eventually was found by Caleb who led me to my locker without question. I didn’t know how he knew where my locker was but he did and showed me to it.

I was lost within the school and I had no idea where any of my classes were because of the block rotation. I didn’t even know what class I was supposed to have until Caleb asked me. I had been searching the map of the school and my block rotation sheet trying to figure out which class was mine until I heard his calming voice asking me.

“What class do you have?” Caleb asked me. He had a sceptical look on his face as if it would be impossible to get lost in a school like this. The school I had gone to in the big city had been ten times the size and I had only ever gotten lost once. I didn’t understand myself at all.

The one time I had gotten lost turned out to be one of the best days of my life but it hurt to think back to it. It was the day I had met Trevor and he had showed me back to where I was supposed to go. We had become friends quickly, even though we hung out in different crowds. He invited me to hang out with him and he had shown me how to escape my cravings.

I remembered Trevor’s smile, the way his eyes lit up and the way he would speak so softly to me when I was feeling down. I blamed myself for what happened to him. Some called it suicide but there was only one word I applied to how I felt; murder.

That was what I considered it; that was what it was. It was my fault that he had taken his own life, mine and mine alone. There was no way to make it not so, no way to change the past and bring him back. There was nothing I wouldn’t give to change what had happened. I could do nothing to make it better, nothing to make it what it once had been.

“I’m not exactly sure what class I have.” I sighed and looked up at him. His expression was humorous and he laughed at me. I smiled sadly, my mind still on Trevor though I spoke of class directions. “You probably know…”

He continued to laugh and nodded at me. “Yes, I do. You have art over on the other end of the school. Just follow this hallway down to the end and voila.” He smiled at me once more before turning to leave.

“What class do you have?” I asked him as he began to walk away. His gate was oddly paced, his right foot moving easily, his left being left to follow at a quicker speed.

“Aviation,” He called back with a glance over his shoulder. He smiled, moving onwards towards his classroom. I could hear the joy in his voice as he walked away.

I followed Caleb’s directions down to the very last step and found the art room I was looking for. I wasn’t too surprised that I had gotten the right room though because it was fairly simple where I had to go to get where I needed to be. Mr. Oulds made the directions on what we had to do fairly simple so we worked away quietly throughout the whole class.

The art class I had been transferred into had just begun working with acrylic paints. I had done a bit of the section in Las Vegas but if I remembered correctly, I had spent most of my time during that class in the in-school room. I couldn’t even remember what I had gotten suspended for but I remembered it had something to do with Jason David and his posy.

Everything seemed to have something to do with Jason David. I was fairly certain that he was the reason I got suspended most of the time. He would plug in his big innocent smile and every single teacher would look past him and see me standing there, guilty as charged, protecting Spencer.

I doodled quietly in my corner of the large table that sat in the center of the room and by the time class was over I had drawn a pair of golden-brown eyes that sparkled like a million little diamonds. A story that I had read in a single pair of eyes the day before smiled at me in the eyes that I had doodled upon the white page. The story was different though; my story was directed at me and the story I had read the previous day was directed to miss all-too-graceful.

Aimee Grace was sitting beside me throughout the entire class and only turned to me just as the bell was about to ring. “Oh, my goodness!” She exclaimed as she looked at the two glittering eyes that stared up at me. “That is such an amazing picture. Where did you learn to paint?”

I smiled at her praise yet felt embarrassed as other people from the class began to look and stare at me. “I, um…” My voice failed me for the first time since I had moved to the small town. “Well, I took some art classes back home…or umm…I mean back in the big city.” My sentence was jumbled as I found words that made no sense in the sentence I was trying to form. “And yeah…”

I couldn’t have been more grateful when the bell rang and I was officially permitted to escape the stares of my fellow students from the art class in which I had been transferred into. I ditched them as soon as the bell sounded and made my way back down the hall to where my locker was located. I didn’t even need to look to see who it was waiting for me. Caleb smiled when he saw me and I couldn’t help but smile back.

I sighed, making my first complaint of the day. “What is it with the people in this town?” I opened my locker and ditched the picture into my locker. I grabbed my books for math and closed my locker once again. “It’s like I’m some celebrity and it’s really starting to get on my nerves.”

I heard Caleb laugh and I sighed, only exasperated by his reaction. “What happened?” The smile in his voice only angered me further.

I glared up at him. “Aimee Grace and everyone in art class were just staring at me and everything. Just because of the stupid picture I drew.” My glare faded as I continued to look up at him. He had blue eyes and blonde hair that was much like Ava Jay’s hair. He was tall and well built with the nerdy buzz-cut.

“Oh,” he laughed again. “So, what class do you have next?” He looked at the schedule that managed to have stayed in my hand while I continually got lost around the school.

I looked down at it and studied it. I didn’t know which class I had so I pulled a random class off of the list. “P.E. but I think that’s after math, which I have next.”

He nodded as if I had become a genius overnight. “Exactly!” He gave me a smile that reminded me that I might actually be smarter than I look. “I have French,” He told me without me having to ask. A dark expression filled his face and I wondered silently what might be so bad about French. “With Kyle Ryder,” I immediately understood why he disliked that class. I supposed not many of the guys liked Kyle. “He won’t be there though,” Caleb sighed thankfully, as if that was the greatest thing in the world.

“Why won’t he be there?” I asked, unsure how my new friend would know where Kyle would and wouldn’t be. I found it odd that he kept track of it, but didn’t ask why he would. It didn’t bother me at all.

“He’s got tutoring or something stupid like that.” He laughed as if helping out younger students was a bad thing. I tried to join him but landed the flight unsuccessfully. Caleb pointed me in the right direction afterwards and I followed his words until I found the class I needed to be in. It was precisely where I needed to be and I entered the class just as the bell rang.

Mr. Munroe glared darkly at me so I quickly took the seat he had pointed me to the day before and opened my books to the page we had left off on. I had finished my homework early the previous night, having nothing to do but sit in silence or take care of Clayton. I hoped that my teachers would see me differently if I continued to hand homework in on the correct dates. Maybe they would even come to like me, though it was that theory in which I had many doubts.

Class dragged on. Even though Levi Carter, one of the guys I had met the previous day, sat beside me, it still was one of the most boring classes that I had ever experienced. All of my teachers back at my old school were young and energetic; comparatively, in Easthunt they were mostly old gray idiots who had been teaching the same stuff for twenty-five plus years. There was only one teacher who hadn’t been teaching at the E.H.S. for that amount of time and that just happened to be my favourite teacher; Mrs. Mettlock. She had only been teaching for around ten years and just moved to the small town a few years previous.

Kyle Ryder was in my math class. That was probably the class he would be tutoring in. He didn’t talk to me and as much as I wanted him to, he continued to ignore me except for the one single welcoming smile that he had given me on the previous day while we were in the cafeteria. He and Allison Jay worked together on everything. They were partners for all the assignments; even the teachers had learned to pare them together in the team projects. I didn’t know why but they did and it made me even angrier because they would get to know only each other and no one else would know who they were personally.

I only assumed that Kyle was really nice because of the one single smile that he had given me on my first day at this school. That was the one moment that I dared to try and remember about my first day of school. Everything else I tried to block out because getting stared at wasn’t really one of my favourite things to do on a daily basis. It was still happening, though not quite as much as it had before.

I did a lot of assuming on my spare time or when I was bored. I wasn’t even sure why I bothered making a future in my mind. I had decided on something the previous night though. It was something I had to find out no matter what the consequence was.

“Ash,” I heard a voice saying to me outside of my own mind, “Ashley,” Allison Jay was standing in front of me with Kyle. “Kyle, I think there’s something wrong with her.” She smiled up at Kyle, a worried little tug at the corner of her lips.

I felt my chest ache and could not find it in myself to deny that the pain was caused by the close proximity between Kyle and me, the way he stood only a few footsteps from me. It was a certain steady ache that beat with the pulse of my blood and I didn’t notice it at first. It was a subconscious hurt, steady and strong.

It had been years since I felt pain in my chest. Trevor had made me hurt in a different way though. He made regret what I had done and he made me change my path. He was the one person on the face of the planet that could make me do anything. He was the only person on the face of the planet that I had cared about, but that was only at the time and it changed into me caring about my brothers and my mother. He made me care about my future.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” I looked up at them, standing together so perfectly. A smile hardly made it passed my lips but it was through and upon my face.

“Hi Ash,” said Allison, “I’m Allison Jay and this is my best friend, Kyle Ryder.” She told me. It was a matter of fact statement, as if I didn’t already know. “We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves yesterday with all of the other people and everything so we thought we would talk to you today.” I couldn’t get past the fact of how real her smile looked. I couldn’t even determine if it was fake, and I could have sworn that I was a professional at deciphering smiles.

There was also something about her that reminded me of Tom and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was her eyes or the kind way she spoke but something did, and it bothered me that I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Nice meeting you,” I told them both. I smiled and began turning back to my math work when I heard Kyle speaking in his velvety angel’s voice.

“Pleasure meeting you too, Ash,” he said. It wasn’t just his smile or his eyes or even the way he could make me want to die; it was the way he looked at me, the way his golden-brown eyes glinted brightly.

It was then that Allison turned to leave. She walked slowly back to their table at the opposite end of the room and I was left dumbfounded that she had even spoken to me. I couldn’t believe that after all of my assumptions about Allison that she had actually been kind enough to introduce herself to me.

Kyle remained behind to lead me through what the class had been doing for the last few weeks and I caught myself up with what we were going to be doing in the next few weeks. “We’re working on exponential growth. You see, it occurs when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function's current value. In the case of a discrete domain of definition with equal intervals it is also called geometric growth or geometric decay.” He smiled, his brown eyes glittering brilliantly. “So, how do you like our town so far?”

I glanced up at him, smiling back. “It’s...” My voice trailed off as I searched for the words to place into the sentence. “It’s...” Again, the inability to find the right words handicapped me in speech. I tried once more, “It’s nice.” Grinning sheepishly, I felt heat rising in my cheeks. I had just tried to say something more about this town and all I could come up with was nice.

“Doesn’t really have much but it is home, right?” He looked at me and gave me a little smile, smaller than the first time I had seen him standing in the foyer. “Home sweet home,” he laughed. “Why did you move here?”

“I...” my voice evaded me.

“I don’t mean to pry or anything,” he told me quickly, “I’m just curious why you would want to come here from someplace as amazing as a big city. There’s not much here, not much anywhere around here.”

I nodded, understanding. I sat for a moment, thinking about what to say. There was no simple way to explain it. There was no way to get around telling him about my mother, if I did choose to tell him. I couldn’t cut out the information about my past and who I had been. “It’s complicated to explain,” I said simply.

He nodded, as if understanding some unsaid bit of speech that he had read in my expression. “We’ve got some time,” he said, gesturing to the clock.

Unsure, I didn’t know if I wanted to tell him about who I really was. I knew that I would leave out the details about the drugs but include most of who my mother was. I could easily blame her for my decision to move. I knew, my heart knew, that eventually I would tell him the whole truth and that there was nothing I could hide from him. “My mother wasn’t a very good parent and for as long as I can remember, she was never around. She left me to raise my younger brothers and I guess I just got tired of doing it alone, tired of being the only responsible one. So I decided to move.”

“Mr. Ryder,” a voice said, “I expect you, as a peer tutor, to explain this to Miss. Logan, not get in a distracted conversation with her about why she moved, though I’m sure that would be an interesting conversation.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Monroe. I’ll just finish explaining this then,” He told the teacher with a winning smile. “I’ll just...” his voice trailed off and he turned back to me. Mr. Killian headed off in the other direction back to the front of the class and Kyle held back a laugh.

“Anyways,” He continued explaining it and I listened to the sound of his voice, memorizing the way it sounded and how beautiful it was. He continued on, not even noticing my lack of interest in the subject. When I finally understood the concept, he left to help more students.

Kyle moved on to the next person to help and it was then that I sat back and waited for the remainder of the class to pass by. It passed ever so slowly but pass it did. When it was over, I didn’t want to ditch and go to my locker; I wanted to stay behind and talk to Kyle some more. I wanted to ask him if he could help me, even though I knew the subject like the back of my hand, so to speak. I didn’t though and I went to my locker, finally remembering where it was. I dumped my books and figured that I had P.E. next. I didn’t have any gym clothes yet so I waited to see if Caleb would have any.

He showed up in what seemed like no time at all with his own books still in his hands. “Hey, you weren’t waiting for me were you?” he asked me though the expression on his face looked hopeful.

I laughed and nodded hopelessly. I had been waiting for him. “Do you have extra gym strip?” I asked him pointlessly, realizing that none of his gym clothes would work for me anyways; his clothes would fit me.

His head began to shake before the words were out of his mouth. “No, sorry, but you could probably ask Emilee Abigail or someone else. I’m sure no one would really mind lending you something.”

I didn’t remember who Emilee Abigail was at first but then it came back to me after I searched through all of the faces that I had in my mind from the previous day. I didn’t need instructions on how to get to the gym so I headed off in the correct direction and found it with no difficulties.

Emilee did happen to have some extra clothes I could borrow for P.E. so I used them and hoped that I could gain some of the teachers respect. Ms. Dueland was a harsh teacher and made us jog all the way down to the arena and back again. In my old life, the only running my old school did was for games. We were actually being forced to run with no purpose in the small town. Maybe it was just for fitness purposes instead of fun.

The classes passed more quickly as I began to recognize some of the faces of people who were in my classes. Most of them were slightly repetitious so I learned their names quickly.

I went in a small group at lunch which included Emilee, the ‘ee’ girls, Levi Carter, and Caleb Oliver. There was a small pizza place at the bottom of the hill where the junior high and the high school students usually went for lunch. It was across the highway and many of the students ran across.

I wanted to talk to Kyle more, as our conversation had been cut slightly short by the interruption of Mr. Munroe. I still fit into the group and involved myself in their conversation though I was very much distracted.

I didn’t see him as much as I wanted to. As long as the temptation was there, I would force myself to ignore it. Sometimes, I would catch my head turning that way and snap it back to face the conversation. Every few minutes I would catch myself looking his direction and look away again. Even when I was listening to the mild discussion in my own group, I would find my eyes searching for his.

I had seen his eyes in my dreams and I saw the way he smiled. It was complicated to explain the way his eyes lit up when his eyes lit up when he was happy. He was beautiful.

I loved the way he made me hurt inside. I loved the pain and how he made my heart bleed. He made even pain a glorious experience. Without him, it would be just another expressionless feeling but he made it into something more; an ache.

My heart beet faster and it raced. Of all the people I had ever known, ever met, ever seen, he was the one who made everything. I wanted to let him know how my heart hurt to see him.

We made it to the cross walk at the highway and I watched student after student j-walk the highway but it didn’t bother me. They all made it safely and easily. I was waiting for the light to change when it happened, and I saw Caleb go running out, trying to beat the cars, trying to impress me.

There were not words except one; fear. Fear was what the feeling could only be described as and it bubbled up inside me. I could not push it down, could not get away from it. There was the screeching of tires and the honking of the horn and I looked to see my friend flying through the air, right over top of the car.

I could write about things in stories, write and laugh like nothing was wrong but when I was out there, watching one of my friends bleeding on the road, it was no joke. There was no way to laugh it off, erase the ending and restart. I couldn’t erase the memories that came back with torturous clarity. It wasn’t like a movie I could turn off – the scene kept coming back, whether I had closed my mind to it or not.

I was there, blood on my hands and no matter how much I tried to stop its flow, it kept coming through the cracks in my fingers. It was sticky, the smell overwhelming. It was in my head, the feeling of panic overtaking me but I kept my cool.

“Don’t die, just don’t die,” I whispered. I held on tight, trying my best to save a life. I couldn’t stop it though. I couldn’t make the blood stop flowing and so it seeped through my fingers.

Like a whisper on the wind, Caleb was gone and suddenly all that remained was the memory, the good times and the bad. The strongest and most recent, in my arms, his broken body was cradled lightly. And he was gone.

Why was it that everyone who had ever mattered to me ended up dead? I had lost my best friend, and then I lost Caleb. I did not understand why it always happened to me, did not understand the reasons I was the one who lost my friends. The world was a better place without me, and I should never have moved to Easthunt. Caleb never would have felt the need to show off and he still would have been alive. He would have seen another day to show off to someone else, but it would not have been another death on my conscience.

Closed eyes, blood everywhere, it was no story, no joke, the ending could not be rewritten and my friend could not come back. I never thought it would happen until it did, and then it hit hard. There was the pain, the worry, and it was infinite. There was no way to escape it, no way to deny that it was not there. It was a memory, scarred into my mind for eternity. My hands shook. Thoughts were inconsistent. Every breath hurt like a thousand needles and the memory replayed, over and over like a sad movie. It wasn’t a movie but reality that kept coming back. Torturous, it returned. Escape, there was none. I could not escape reality. I was cold, freezing, yet no matter how high the temperature went, I still shivered, I still shook. I could not control it, for I searched for that which I could not have. It was an incurable hurt that scarred my very being, cut me to the core. I would give my life for his, to bring him back, to die in his place. I could not though, and so I was lost within reality, locked with chains that held me inescapably.

The police came, and the ambulances. They came and tore me away from the sidewalk where Caleb’s broken body lay bleeding on the road. Tears filled my eyes and I was pulled under by the darkness and blur of events that happened after words.

I had no recollection of what happened, just the memory of the blood and the way the car had smashed into him. I could not see, could not feel except for the feeling of the ice in the memory as it washed over me again. It was like living in a nightmare – another nightmare that I could not get away from.

Days passed, no escape from the questions that they asked, no way to get away from the reality. Time passed though, slipped away when it did not matter to me anymore. The minutes fell from the clock, passed and disappeared into history.

Soon enough, it stopped mattering and the questions faded. It became something that didn’t matter, just another small detail in my life. I couldn’t remember the last time something good had happened, couldn’t remember being happy without having it destroyed by something. I lost again.

As the days began to pass, I learned where all of my classes were and how to get there. I met more people and made more friends. The teachers began to be nicer to me but still there still were some persistent teacher who refused to give up their stance. I often laughed at that fact, assuming that they had a bet with other teachers that I would still turn out to be a bad student.

The down side of becoming comfortable with the school was that Kyle Ryder had stopped helping me in my subjects. It wasn’t a sudden stop; it was gradual. He almost let the other people who had become my friends take over the jobs he had been doing. I tried not to care about the fact that I had slowly been losing my chance of him liking me the way I liked him.

The truth was honestly a completely different story. I did like him far too much and I did care that he didn’t like me back.

Like the stone that lay in my chest, it was hard to break a heart that has been shattered a million times over. In a small box once lay a golden heart, untouched by pain or torture; all that it knew was love and life. Things changed and scar by scar that heart turned to stone, unable to care anymore. My wrists bled to know that I was still alive, and the pain was there reminding me of the truth. Every once in a while, someone would find an untouched spot but in the end they would destroy that rare piece of love. It would send small cracks into the center of the stone until I was hardly being held together.

One person held that fragile heart in his hands and he could do one of two things with it; make it or break it. One slip and that heart of gold would be lost forever, unsalvageable in its break for all that would remain was dust. Comparatively, if he held it just right the heart would mend and maybe even find love again. I knew that it was already too late for me, for Kyle who held my heart did not know. He would let it fall and I would die, my heart too shattered to care that it was the end. I would be forever broken, the dust upon the floor left to be cleaned up by someone who cared. So the floor would be left not swept, the dust to remain, my heart uncared for. He would never know for I wouldn't be around to tell. I would just be, a body with not soul, a heart with no beat, a lung with no air. I would be nothing without his love, nothing without him.

Some days, I felt as alone as a snowflake in summertime. If there was anyone who could save me, it was and always would be Kyle. He was my light in the darkness, my day in the night, my air in the water, my hope when everything else had faded. When I fell and couldn't pull myself up, he could get me back to my feet by just existing. He was my awake when I was asleep and my sleep when I was awake. He was the one person who I let into my heart, the one who, if he looked, could find my darkest secrets. From his smile, his words, he saved my life. Day by day, I struggled to know whether I would be brave enough to take my own life but each time, I thought of him, knowing that I would die without him, yet still unable to live without him. I found myself unable to carry out the deed. My wrists had bled, tears of crimson, scars of white, and a soul that could not heal. Dreams were no cure when morning inevitably came. Euphoria was only a temporary thing as he took my heart with him when we were apart. Wished, questioned, why me? And no answer came. I lay in wait, Kyle's existence holding me to the world, his presence, however rare, the line that tethered me to life. Was it love? I had wondered, without him I felt alone when I was standing in a crowd; with him I felt pain as the heart I had given to him broke. Somehow I found myself smiling awkwardly though I could not breathe.

I looked down the hallway, my eyes searching for a person that I had not seen in a while. It was a subconscious action and I could not control it except to let them find him. He would disappear, his gorgeous eyes stunningly beautiful as he faded into the crowd.

I looked, every day just another search to see him smile the way I had the first time I saw him. There was no escape, no way to figure out how to get him out of my mind. He was branded there, held in the confines from which I could not let him escape, would not let him escape. I shouldn’t have let him in the way I did but once he was there, I didn’t want to let him out. I wanted to be open with him, tell him about my past, who I had been and what I had done but a fear inside believed that he wouldn’t accept me if he knew the truth.

And so the words went unspoken, my secrets hidden beneath the black cape that shadowed my past. They stayed there, unable to be let out, my unwillingness holding down the sun until the secrets found a better place to hide.

None could ever find out about who I was and the teachers could never even have it hinted at. I moved away from Teresa to escape the fight, not to find more of it in a smaller picture. It could never be learned or else it would spread like a wildfire, burning everything that got in its path and I would stand at the end, my history unravelling like a long scroll for everyone to read, to find out about, though that was what I had been trying to hid for many years.

I could not, would not, let that happen. It was my dark secret and I would never let anyone find it out, find me out. A darkened flower, delicate and beautiful, there was no way I would ever let out the truth.