The Last Secret You'll Ever Keep by Laurie Stolarz (summer reads txt) 📕

Was he leaning into the well, over the opening? Looking down at me? Was that his arm? Was he dangling something?

I closed my stinging-stabbing eyes. When I opened them again, I noticed almost instantly: A blanket sat at my feet—a gray fleece square, about four feet long and wide. Where had it come from? When had it gotten there? While I’d been sleeping? Or just now?

“Let me out!” I tried to shout.

When nothing happened and no one answered, I slid the storybook toward me, across the ground, suspecting a message might be hidden among the pages. I searched the cover for the author’s name, but it didn’t list one. No name was included on the spine or in the interior pages either.

I flipped the book open, my fingers fumbling, the pages sticking. The illustration showed the girl from the front cover, with the braided hair and the long blue dress, leaning over a chicken coop. The book tells the story of Clara, a girl who lives on a farm and goes to a one-room school. Clara wishes to be invited to a classmate’s twelfth birthday party, as all the other girls were. She soon meets William, a troll-like character and the minder of the magical Wishy Water Well, who says he can help her wish come true.

I turned another page just as a banging noise startled my heart.

A gun?

A firework?

I stood up. Was it possible the police had finally come?

“I’m down here!” I screamed as best I could, over and over again, jumping up and down, slapping against the walls, pounding with my fists …

Finally, I tossed the book upward, picturing it popping up from the top of the well. But I couldn’t tell if the book was hitting part of the roof or soaring into the air.

Was no one seeing it?

Nothing was happening, even when I yelled some more, screaming myself sick. Before I knew it, I was hacking up. Bile burned the back of my throat. I sank to the ground and curled into a ball with my cheek resting against the blanket. The stench of my puke—like week-old garbage that’d been baked in the sun—made my stomach churn. Meanwhile, hot, bubbling tears ran from my eyes. I directed them into my mouth, hoping to coat my throat, desperate to escape back to sleep.

NOW

13

Days later, in my room, unable to sleep, I grab my art book and start to draw yet another sketch of the guy who took me. I still picture him hovered over my bed. That’s how I described him too—at the police station, to the sketch artist. But the final product looked far too generic, especially with his masked face and dark clothing; there was nothing distinguishable.

Except those eyes.

I’ve spent countless hours working on them, experimenting with various mediums, trying to get the right shade of blue—not like the sky, or the sea, or any of my pastels. His is a custom color. The closest I’ve come to achieving it is by mixing acrylics—teal, royal blue, and white—and even then … It’s not quite right, not nearly brilliant enough.

Using colored pencils this time, I shade in the chest. It’s too wide in my sketch, but that’s how it felt—wide like a wall. His forehead was wide too, or maybe that was just the mask, and his chin appeared pointed. In my mind, I imagine a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and smallish ears. But that’s part of the problem: what my mind envisions, the place where creativity intersects reality. What did he truly look like beneath that mask?

How tall was he really?

How big were his hands?

“Did you see his eyebrows?” the sketch artist asked. “Did any of his hair peek out? Could you tell if the outline of his ear hit above or below the line of his nose?”

I really didn’t know. “I wish I could remember.”

“I’m almost surprised you don’t picture him as more of a monster,” Winnie-the-group-leader told me once. Because obviously monsters don’t come in disguise. Obviously, they’re as clear and cliché as those in storybooks and movies. And so, I played along, telling her about his serpent tongue, his clawlike hands, and his icy stare, further affirming what she already believed—it was all in my head, all concocted by me.

The ironic part: I kind of wanted to believe that too. When people tell you long enough that your story can’t possibly be true, that it’s the result of post-traumatic stress because your parents died and you don’t know how to survive, it feels less isolating to agree, especially when those people are the “sane” ones: the police, the investigators, the doctors, the therapists …

There was no physical evidence.

They checked me out.

I opened myself up.

“No fingerprints.”

“No signs of forced entry.”

“No DNA.”

“No water well within a twenty-mile radius of Hayberry Park.”

There was no broken glass in my bedroom either; the tumbler of water I’d set by my bed that night—that I’d reached for in self-defense—was still fully intact; still sitting, half-empty, on my night table.

“Are you sure you picked it up and threw it at the guy?” my aunt asked me. “You heard the glass shatter?”

Did I? Could I really be sure?

Believing everyone else’s stories—their versions of what happened—would make my life so much easier. So what if I’d had a brief bout of temporary insanity?

Of delusional delirium?

Of post-traumatic dissociation?

Of whatever else they were calling it today?

Big deal.

The only problem: There was no bout. I did get taken. “Why else would I get panic attacks just going to bed at night?”

“Why wouldn’t you get them?” Dr. Mary asked, sitting across from me on her “safe and sound” sofa. “Don’t forget: Five years ago, you went to bed and woke up to a fire that took both of your parents. You lived, while both of them died … I’d almost be surprised if you didn’t experience the occasional panic attack.”

“Okay, but how about the fairy-tale book? My mind wouldn’t have just conjured that up.”

“Or wouldn’t it have? Think about it.