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

Aunt Dessa swivels from the stove, finally making eye contact. The initials O and M dangle around her neck. After the fire, when we went back to the scene to try to salvage what remained, I remember her searching for my mother’s necklace, wanting to find the shiny gold pieces amid the piles of soot and ash.

What I wouldn’t give to talk about my mother. But I look away instead, avoiding the blow of her stare, the potential bang of her blame.

“Sometimes you remind me of her,” I venture, gazing toward her feet—sheepskin slippers. “Especially your voice.” I peek up into her face, waiting for her to say something similar, like that I have my mom’s smile, her bony fingers, or her pale ivory skin. But maybe she doesn’t see any traces of her sister in this person I’ve become.

“Too bad you’re working tonight,” she says.

“I could call out sick. Katherine would understand. We could go shopping for snacks and have a girls’ night in, just like old times.”

“Maybe some other night.” She turns her back again to stir the soup.

“Are you sure?” I persist. “It’ll probably be a slow night anyway.”

“Some other time.” She grabs a thermos and fills it with the soup, then slides the container toward me, across the counter. “For your snack break.”

I open my mouth to thank her, but she’s already turned away again, already taken her wineglass and headed into another room, further widening the gap between us.

Once outside, I lock myself in the car and start the engine. My face feels hot, like I’ve just been slapped. I grab the yoga blanket and scream into the fabric—over and over again—hating myself, hating this life.

When my lungs give way, I struggle to take a breath and look out the windows, almost expecting to have shaken the Earth, woken up the town. But the neighborhood appears just like any other day.

No one’s looking this way.

Not a single soul’s disturbed.

I log on to Jane, hoping to find Peyton, but she isn’t in the chat room. I open up my JaneBox and type her a message:

Hey, Peyton,

I’m on my way to work. I hope you’ll be on later because I’d really like to talk to you. I’m sort of having a rough time. Plus, I want to hear more about the page and the book. I’m sorry I ended our last chat early. Xo.

Love,

Terra

I click Send, feeling a smidge better. Because, though she may not be here for me in this moment, I know she will be soon.

THEN

25

I’m not sure when it was, but at some point, when the light was off, and I lay faceup with the blanket bunched beneath my head, I saw a bright ball of light hovering at the top of the well: a fiery globe that rotated around and around, illuminating the brick. I blinked a bunch of times to check that I was awake. Because this couldn’t be real.

Still, the globe remained: mesmerizing, especially as it began to grow in size, taking up the entire space of the lid. A fusion of colors swirled inside it—red, blue, green, and yellow—eventually morphing it into what appeared to be a rainbow-colored bird, the kind of mystical shape-shifting creature I’d have imagined with Charley, freshman year.

The bird lingered at the opening of the well, flapping its wings, casting bright strips of color over the dirt walls (the pictures I’d drawn of Clara and William). I raised my arms to see if the rainbow might reach my hands, but I was too far down.

Could the bird see me?

How was this even happening? It simply had to be a dream.

Slowly, the bird began to float higher. The strips of color rose too, traveling up the walls, getting farther away. I wanted to go with them and tried to sit up, but I was frozen in place, unable to move.

“Don’t go,” I tried to call, but no sound came out.

I noticed then: The bird was holding something—a sticklike object—in its claws. A fallen branch? A magical wand?

The bird hovered for several more seconds before flying away, taking all the light with it, leaving me in the dark, still paralyzed in place.

Moments later, something landed against my chest, startling me awake. I sat up, feeling something topple into my lap. I picked it up, recognizing what it was: a sparerib. Bits of charcoal encrusted the top layer of skin. I pressed the sparerib to my nose, able to smell the meat: a sweet and spicy scent. My mouth watering, I brought it to my lips, half expecting it to disappear just as magically as it’d come. But instead I tasted the rib with my tongue—so unbelievably good. I tore into it with my teeth, barely stopping to chew. Thick hunks of charred meat pushed down my throat, plodded into my esophagus.

I told myself to go slow, but I wanted more, and spent the next several minutes huddled on the ground, searching for any remaining shreds, even gnawing on the bone. I let out a mournful whine when there was nothing else left.

Would more be coming? I looked up again, suckling the bone like a popsicle stick. Did the person who took me throw it down? Was it a way to tease me? Or keep me alive? Or what if it hadn’t been a person at all? What if it were a bird that dropped it? Could the deprivation of light cause some neurological response that produces a spectrum of color? Maybe something happens to the pupil upon the elevation of blood pressure …

I had no idea.

But I had the bone: my proof.

If only I had that proof with me now.

Later, curled up against the wall with the troll doll and the fleece blanket, I told myself I wouldn’t fall asleep. I needed to keep on working, searching for more boulders. But I let my head rest down on the fairy-tale book anyway, imagining it as a pillow.

Just five minutes, I promised