Dark Secrets (36 page)

“
David, this is so
beautiful.”

He cupped my chin,
pressing the tip of his nose to mine. “I know.”

The heat stole my
breath then, so humid and wet, but the distance of David’s lips to
mine, just enough to slip a finger between, made the air hotter,
thicker, scented sweetly with the taste of his honey breath blowing
against my tongue every time I breathed him in. I couldn’t do it
anymore. I had to let myself imagine the way his kiss would
feel.

Then, the dream left
my thoughts and touched reality. David’s lips skimmed across the
surface of mine, so softly, so hesitantly, coming to rest just in
front of my mouth as he breathed for the both of us.

The world stopped.
Every sound, every brush of air disappeared until only he and I
existed.

His fingers tightened
on the small of my back, my dress lifting a little in his closed
fist, then he pressed my spine, sweeping me onto my toes until our
faces aligned—lips finally touching. He kissed me deeply, drawing a
breath so full it stole mine. I felt the wet soil and grass beneath
my toes, the sweat trickling down my back, soaking into my dress,
felt everything as if this one moment brought me to life, lit
everything in stark contrast—making it real, me real, him real, the
world, somehow, a place I never thought existed.

He broke away for a
single moment and slipped both hands along the sides of my face,
pressing our lips together again after, hungrily catching my bottom
lip against his, drawing it in, breaking only to release and drink
it in again.

I had to open my
eyes—to savour this moment forever—but while the kiss felt like a
reality so stark it couldn’t possibly become just a memory, when I
looked up and the golden beams of sunlight shone through the cloud
of butterflies, it felt more like a dream. This had to be a
dream.

With his hands pressed
firmly to my cheeks, he gently drew my face away, smoothing his
thumb over the moisture of his kiss. “Are you happy here?” he
whispered.

“
Yes, but it’s only
for the moment.” I closed my eyes, resting both hands on his
shoulders. “You’ll be gone soon. And I won’t be happy
anymore.”

“
You
will
forget about me one day,” he said in his soft, deep voice. “I
promise you that.”

I shook my head. “No,
David, I’ll never forget
you
. I’ll love you for the rest of
my life.”

One corner of his
mouth quirked up. “That, my love, is what I’m afraid of. Because
I…will love
you
…until the end of time.” He wrapped his fingers around my
wrist, drawing my hand down until it rested over his heart, then,
with his other hand, pressed my face into his chest
again.

We stood together in
our timeless embrace and watched the miracle of life swarm around
us for a while. But all it did to feel him so close was make me
fall so much deeper in love with him—so much that I was sure I’d
die when he went away.

Chapter
Thirteen

My fork scraped the
plate where the absence of a potato mound left the ceramic bare.
Even though I’d managed to create something worthy of special
mention in Art Weekly Magazine, I couldn’t lift the heavy weight
I’d carried to the dinner table with me. I was losing David. He’d
be gone by winter and there was nothing I could do about it; not
even a magical first kiss could save our
happily ever after
.

Our dreamy afternoon
was followed by an intensely silent drive home, with me trying so
hard not to burst into a snivelling, needy teenage girl, and when I
walked through the front door, slammed it and readied myself to run
upstairs and sob my heart out, Vicki called on me to help with
dinner, forcing me to swallow my grief like a hard wedge of
cheese.

“
Ara?”

I looked up from my
plate. “Hm?”

“
How was practice
this afternoon?” Dad asked.

“
Practice?”

“
With David? The
reason you left class today.”

“
Oh, um, good. I’m
gonna perform a piece of music from a movie.”

“
You mean
going to
, not gonna,” Dad added sternly.

I shrugged.

“
And you have your
friends coming over this weekend, don’t you? Emily and Alana?”
Vicki asked, taking the salt from Dad.

I nodded.

“
How’s your mythology
paper coming along?” Dad asked.

“
Good.” But it wasn’t
good, though—I hadn’t even started it.

They all sat silently
then, the feel of their stares burning into my face until Sam
started laughing.

Dad looked at him with
a raised brow. “Something funny, son?”

“
Ara’s in love,” he
teased.

I sat up straight,
scowling at him. “I am not.”

“
Yes, you are. You wanna marry
David
.” He laughed, poking his
fingers in the air at me.

My cheeks went really
hot. Dad looked at Vicki and a smile crept up under her lips. “I
think you’re right, Sam.” She pointed to my face. “I’ve seen that
look before.”

Okay, Dad, time to
step in—stand up for your only daughter
.
But Dad broke into laughter, too.

Traitor
.

“
I’m sorry, honey.”
He wiped his napkin across his mouth. “But I think your brother may
be right.”

“
I wondered why you
were suddenly so eager to go to school.” Vicki covered her smile
with her hand.

“
Well, I guess we’d
better have young David over for dinner—discuss the dowry,” Dad
joked.

“
Dad?” I whined,
hiding my face in my hands.

“
So, he’s taking you
to the Fall Masquerade, then?” Dad asked.

I looked up. “The
what?”

“
Oh, yeah.” Vicki
heaped a spoonful of potato salad onto her plate. “Ara’s never been
to a masquerade, has she?”

Dad’s eyes lit up.
“No, she hasn’t. Well, this’ll be exciting then.”

“
Wait, what’s the
Fall Masquerade?” I asked, confused.

“
Every year, during
fall, the town holds a masquerade for seniors—like a school ball,
but for the whole town,” Sam said. “You have to wear a mask and a
giant dress—totally lame.”

“
And you know what that means?” Vicki squeaked. “We get to
go
shopping
.”

“
Well, David hasn’t
asked me yet.” And likely wouldn’t be here. “When is
it?”

“
They’ll put posters
up soon. It’s usually held in early autumn,” Dad added.

I smiled, thinking
about the last ball I went to, which wasn't really a ball at all;
it was an end of year formal, and my ‘date’ was my best friend,
whom my mum actually had to
pay
to take me, because he thought wearing a penguin
suit was an indication that you wanted to mate with an arctic bird.
And since he didn’t want to mate with me, he’d told my mum, it was
going to cost her. We had fun, though, Mike and I, but the
formal
was no
masquerade.

Then, almost as if Dad
read my mind, he asked, “When’s Mike coming?”

“
Oh, um, his
interview is next Monday, so he’ll be here on the Tuesday some
time.”

“
How does
David
feel about that?” Vicki asked in an evocative,
feather-ruffling tone.

My shoulders dropped.
“David? Why would
he
care about my best friend coming to stay?”

Vicki’s expression
suggested the obvious; she didn’t even have to speak.

My lip curled. “David
doesn’t see it like that. He knows Mike’s my friend.”

“
Well, we’ll just
see, won’t we?” She rolled her head to the side. “Ara, sometimes a
girl as young as you can misinterpret things, see them as more
innocent than they really are. Mike’s a fully-grown man—” She
placed the salad back on the table, “—maybe he feels differently
about you than you do about him.”

Dad just sat there,
saying nothing. My mouth hung open a little; I couldn’t believe he
didn’t correct her. Betrayal. Again.

I threw my napkin down
and stood up. “Mike and I are friends. That’s all it’s ever
been!”

“
Ara, sit back down.
Vicki knows that,” Dad said.

“
No, Dad! I’m tired of it. Just because Mike’s a boy and I’m a
girl?” I pointed to my chest. “Don’t you guys get it? Don’t you
understand what
David
means to me?”

“
Honey, you’ve known
him for a week,” Dad reminded me.

“
Yeah, and that was
enough to make me fall in love with him,” I retorted. “But
seventeen years didn’t work for Mike? So what’s gonna change
now?”

“
She’s got a point.”
Sam shrugged.

I looked at Dad and he
looked at Vicki. “Ara, you’re so young. This thing with David—it’s
just an infatuation. You can’t know what love is yet,” she
said.

“
How can you say
that?” I leaned forward slightly. “You don’t know what I feel. None
of you do.”

“
Honey, you can’t
feel that kind of love at your age.”

“
How would
you
know? I’m sorry, are you the all experienced love gurus
because you’ve both had a failed marriage?” I waved my hands around
at the word
gurus
, then dropped them to my hips. “So, just because I’m under
eighteen, means I don’t know how to feel?”

“
We’re just saying
that love is complicated,” Dad said and held his hand up to Vicki,
quietening her. “It takes a long time to figure it—”

“
Don’t tell me I don’t know my own heart. ’Cause I can tell
you, I do—and it hurts.” My voice broke under the strain of tears.
“It hurts all the time, Dad. It hurts for Mum and Harry and Mike.
And I loved them. And I love you—” the tears burst past the strain,
“—so, you can’t tell me I don’t know what love is, because I think,
of all the people in this room, I’m the most qualified to say
what
my
heart is
capable of.”

Dad’s jaw fell open
and Vicki looked at her salad. Sam hovered between standing and
sitting.

“
Well, Ara—” Vicki
placed her fork on her plate and folded her fingers in front of her
chin, “—do you feel better now you’ve effectively displayed your
maturity in front of your fourteen-year-old brother?”

My arms fell to my
sides. I just couldn’t believe it. I’d had enough—just about all a
girl could take. I watched them all—waiting for me to respond. But
I had no response. Of
course
I didn’t feel better. What a stupid question to
ask. “How you
think
I feel, Vicki?” My chair fell over and hit the wall as I
pushed it out with the backs of my legs and ran from the
room.

“
Let her go,” Dad
said calmly as I thudded up the stairs, holding my forearm across
the ache in my gut. I couldn’t stop it; it all wanted to come
out—all the fear, the heartbreak, the grief. I knew too well what I
felt for David; knew no one could understand it; knew it was crazy.
And I knew, if losing everyone I loved so far hadn’t killed me,
loving David would.

I slammed my bedroom
door unintentionally hard, sending vibrations through the house,
making my open window rattle. Then, with a wailing breath, slid
down the door and sat on the ground, hugging my knees to my
chest—making myself as small as possible. I couldn’t
breathe—couldn’t even find a good enough reason to breathe. I
wanted to go home. Just wanted to go back and make it all okay
again. But I couldn’t, and I was so tired of losing people—so tired
of hurting to the point where crying just seemed pointless. It
never helped. Tears or none, nothing ever changed. I just wished I
could figure out what horrid crime I committed in a past life and
atone for it, so maybe this life wouldn’t suck so much.

Outside, the sunlight
turned orange and the soft yellow glow that filled my room earlier
slipped away with an empty blackness. My nose went cold and my
cheeks numb and, after a while, an eerie rumble of thunder growled
as a flash of white scorched the sky for a split second, then
disappeared.

I stayed motionless in
my nightmare life, listening to the quiet patter of rainfall that
crept into my world under the cover of night—afraid to move, afraid
to cry anymore in case the brooding storm should find me
here.

The familiar sound of
doors being locked into place and lights flicked off around the
house filled the wordless evening with noise. My parents’ footsteps
thudded up the stairs and, while the lighter ones continued down
the hall, the heavy ones stopped by my door. I sunk my face into
crossed arms, holding my breath.
Please
don’t come in, Dad.