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

sorry about SugarRush. After you left the convo, the Jane police stepped in, as did many of us. We all love you immensely, especially me. I hope to chat with you soon. I’m also happy to sleep in a chat room again if you want the company.

Xoxo,

Terra

I hit send. But still I don’t feel better. I stay logged on, in case Peyton comes back, then click the Hulu app to watch another episode of Summer’s Story—not exactly my favorite (a series about a girl named Summer whose mother abandons her at a camp commune). But I know watching the episode will make Peyton happy, and so I do.

NOW

20

I wake up later, feeling a hollowness inside my heart, an absence so heavy that it presses against my ribs and makes it hard to breathe.

The door is closed.

The windows are locked.

I reach for my laptop, at the foot of my bed, to check if Peyton is logged on to chat. She didn’t come back on last night—not through four full episodes of Summer’s Story. It doesn’t appear she’s on now either, and I have no new messages in my JaneBox.

Now what?

I grab my bottle of maple syrup and hold on tight, trying to think of a safer time, like Dr. Mary used to advise, like the visit to Story Land with my parents when I was six or seven, when Mom pulled a packet of maple syrup from her bag and drizzled it over her fries. The woman at the table beside us was so inspired, she asked Mom for an extra packet so that she could try it too. The memory helps, but it isn’t enough. My chest still feels tight. My insides won’t stop racing. And I’ve already taken my meds.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling this way, I’m not even sure what causes it. A thought? An image? A nightmare I don’t remember? I gaze up at my bulletin board over my desk—at the photo of Felix and me, posing at the Emo relay race in potato sacks, sophomore year. I miss his superpower ability to inject me with me a much-needed dose of reality when the thoughts inside my brain would spiral me out of control.

“What am I going to do without you?” I asked him shortly before he left for college.

Felix was the one person who hadn’t called me a liar, who’d never seemed to care what everybody else was saying.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s all going to work out for you too. You’ll finish school, check that box, and get on with your life. What do you want to do? Where do you want to be?”

The questions were too big. “Do you know those answers for yourself?”

“I know that I don’t want to be here, in this microscopic town, with only one flavor. I want to do stuff, make a difference, not get held back by old ghosts. That’s your problem too. Everybody in this town knows you. You need to get the hell out of Dodge and start fresh.” His eyes were fired with excitement, as if there wasn’t a single doubt he was going to do something great.

I open up my phone and search for his name. Is it crazy to think he might want to talk to me too? I press his number anyway, desperate to hear him call me Terra-saurus, to slip back into the way things were before, when we’d debate about stuff like longest-lasting gum flavor and fizziest seltzer brand.

Felix picks up on the fourth ring. The screen looks dark; there’s just a sliver of his face. “Terra Train?” His other nickname for me.

“Hey.” I fake a smile.

“Did somebody die?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s five thirty in the morning. Has someone been hurt? Stabbed? Killed? Has there been a national catastrophe?” He sits up farther, enabling me to see that he’s still in bed, that the light’s turned off.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “I forgot you had a roommate.”

“What does a roommate have to do with calling me at the ass crack of dawn?”

The question is a direct hit, straight to my heart. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “Nothing’s wrong. I just haven’t talked to you in a bit. We can catch up another time.”

“No, wait.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m up now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.” He yawns.

“It’s nothing, really. I just woke up in a panic. I was going to go online, but then I remembered our pact, and how you used to be the person that I called in a panic.”

“Remember that?” He smiles. “Night chats, little sleep, red eyes in the morning, and caffeine shots just to get through the day … And even then … Recall the time I started ugly-snoring in group, complete with bobblehead and a vibrating tongue.”

“Just as Morgan was confessing to having suicide fantasies.”

“Good times.” He laughs. “It feels like a lifetime ago now.”

“It’s only been months.”

“And speaking of Emo,” he segues, “how’s it going there? Does Ms. Strazinski still bleach her leg hair behind the desk?”

“I’m finishing up online, remember?”

“Right.” Another yawn. “Online is better. You can sleep in as late as you like.”

“And some days I don’t even need to get out of bed at all. It’s not necessarily a plus.”

“Speak for yourself. I had no choice but to register for two eight a.m. classes. Talk about bobbleheads and bloodshot eyes.”

“I should let you go.”

“Not yet. It’s good to hear from you. How’s everything else going?”

“Everything else?”

“Yeah, are you feeling better about stuff?”

“Are you talking about the fire?”

“No. I’m talking about all that drama from last year.”

“When I was taken, you mean?”

“Okay.”

Not okay. My heart forms a crack.

“Are things becoming clearer?” he continues, making the crack worse—longer, deeper; it spider veins to my gut.

“Hey, you know who goes here?” he asks, steering the conversation again. “Remember Hannah Cahill? From Emo?”

“Of course, I remember.” Hannah Blowing-Kisses Cahill, from the grocery store parking lot. Hannah, who wrapped her arms around me and told me to call her for anything, but then who hung up on