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

layer of dirt, revealing a smooth rock. I outlined the rock with my finger, pressing into the earth, trying to deepen the perimeter around the rock’s surface. The water helped. But it wasn’t until I was knuckle-deep that the rock started to loosen and I was able to pry it free, leaving a crevice.

How many more crevices could I make?

The spotlight blinked a bunch of times. Was it shorting out? Or was the battery dying? I snatched the rubber troll and huddled against the wall with my wet baby blanket, waiting for something to happen.

But nothing did.

Until the light went out again.

After I got back from the well, I told Dr. Mary about the William doll.

“Did it scare you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It turned out to be a comfort, like the water-well book.”

“And yet you didn’t bring either item home with you.” Dr. Mary tapped her chin as though in thought. “And the troll was a doll or action figure, you said?”

“Maybe, but it could also have been a squishy. You know … For stress relief … Like the Panic Pete doll Sally used to carry around. Remember her?”

“Sally had a toy troll too?”

“It was a Panic Pete doll,” I said as if the distinction even mattered.

“A doll that provides both comfort and relief…” She grinned. “How lucky that one practically dropped into your lap during a very dark time. You had a blanket in the well too. A baby blanket … It doesn’t get more comforting than that now, does it?”

“I didn’t make it up. The doll was there. William,” I said to be clear. “He was the minder of the Wishy Water Well, the character from the storybook … The troll who collected all the well coins and made people’s wishes come true.”

“You know what’s amazing, Terra? The mind. It has a remarkable way of manifesting exactly what we need at very dark times.”

In other words, to her, the troll wasn’t real; my mind had created it as a way to self-soothe. She continued to explain, but everything else she said went unheard; it was just words in the air, passing over the invisible grave I’d made where hope and trust had died.

NOW

22

The following morning, in my room, with a hand mirror clipped to the side of my easel, I dip my paintbrush into a glob of glue and paint the hair of my self-portrait: long, wavy strokes over the golden-brown color. My laptop is open. People are chatting away on Jane. But not Peyton. Where is she?

Into a mixing bowl, I’ve added equal parts dirt and soot. I sprinkle a handful of the mixture onto the glue. I need to get the face as well—to make dirty cheeks and soot-encrusted eyes. But first I want to finish the mouth. I take my lit candle from its dish and let the hot liquid wax drip onto the lips, imagining words that hurt—burning truth, brutal honesty, all the things I no longer feel safe enough to say.

“Hello, hello…” My aunt knocks on my open bedroom door. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

Calling me?

“I’m home for the day.” She flashes me her swollen knuckles. “This is what nine hours of drawing blood and administering IVs will do.”

She looks toward my pillow. Mom’s sweater covers it. For a second, I think she might ask me about it, that we might talk about my mother.

“What’s going on here?” she asks instead, nodding to my laptop, to the feed of conversation climbing up the screen.

“It inspires me.” I could probably say anything.

She doesn’t question it, just continues to look around. Her focus lands on my basket of rubber trolls; it’s filled with squishies, key chains, cat toys, ornaments—all the items I’ve collected in my quest to find the same troll as the one in the well (with or without the painted-on suit). The things in my basket come close, but there’s something off about each of them (the color, the size, the shape, the feel…).

“Did you eat?” she asks.

“Yes.” Though I didn’t have much of an appetite. I forced down some yogurt earlier; it’s burning like lava in my stomach now.

“Okay, good. So, I’m going to go for a run, then I’m going to sleep. Do you need anything?”

She’s already dressed in her running clothes. Her hair is pulled back. If I don’t answer, will she even “hear” me?

Her eyes zero in on the doorknob on my night table. She knows what it is. She was there when I salvaged it from the debris. She’s also seen me toting it around the house, stuffing it into my bag, and turning it in the air as though in an invisible door. But she’s never asked why—why I keep it, what it symbolizes.

“Is everything okay?” I hold my breath, half hoping she’ll ask me now.

Instead, she asks if I really need to have six fire extinguishers in my room. “I thought I moved these out of here,” she says.

“You did, but I got them back.” Lugged them up from the corner of the basement.

“Really? Even though we have perfectly good smoke detectors that I test every six months? And even though I don’t smoke and barely cook? There’s no fireplace or wood-burning stove, no funky lights or heat-generating blankets…”

“Still. I need them,” I tell her.

Aunt Dessa comes a little closer, nodding to my canvas. “What are you working on?”

“Not what, who.”

She makes a face like she’s looking at a monster. “Not anyone I want to bump into late at night, that’s who.”

I gaze back in the mirror, almost surprised she doesn’t see the resemblance: my light brown eyes, my dimpled chin and hollow cheeks.

“Before I forget,” she continues, “I met someone, a woman at the hospital who does hypnotherapy. She helps people who have false memories.”

“False memories?”

“She works specifically with trauma victims. She said that sometimes the brain creates stories as a coping device. It’s all so fascinating … the brain’s ability to preserve and protect. Anyway, when I heard the word stories, I perked