BONUS MATERIAL – DEADLY LITTLE SECRET
BY LAURIE FARIA STOLARZ
CONFIDENTIAL CONFESSIONS:
RANDOM EXCERPTS FROM BEN’S PRIVATE BLOG
7/15 – 12:04 a.m.
Homework assignment from my shrink
By Ben Carter
Some days are worse than others. Like her birthday. And new year’s eve. The anniversary of our first date.
And the anniversary of her death.
I’ll remind myself of what happened, and completely lose my focus. I’ll think about how much time has passed, and about all the things that Julie’s missing by not being here.
Because of me.
Some nights before I settle down to sleep, I’ll replay the incident over in my mind, asking myself if there was anything I could’ve done differently, aside from not being there at all.
Julie and I had gone hiking through the woods that day. We used to love hiking together – finding new trails, being on our own, packing a picnic, and searching for lost objects.
But today things were different. They felt different. I could tell Julie wasn’t happy.
“Do you want to sit for a while?” I pointed to an alcove of trees and a couple rock slabs.
“No,” she said, a full four feet in front of me. “Let’s just keep moving.”
I tried to make her laugh by pretending to trip. I tried offering her a hand over some rocks, and asking about the school play she was in. But she just kept giving me one- or two-word answers: “Be careful.”; “No thanks.”; “Good.”
I guess you could say I could sense she’d been pulling away. For the two weeks that lead up to the incident, she wasn’t calling me as much as she used to. She was no longer stopping by my locker before classes either. In school, I’d ask her if everything was okay at home, alright with her friends, if something had been bothering her. But her response was always the same: “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Once we’d reached the edge of a cliff, there was nowhere else to go. But down.
And Julie finally had to face me.
“What going on?” I asked.
She seemed so uncomfortable, gazing down at her feet. “I don’t quite know how to say this. I mean, I really care about you. I just think we should take a break for a little while.”
“What?” I asked, sure I must have heard her wrong.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “You’re, like, the sweetest boy I’ve ever known. It’s just…I don’t know. I think we work better as friends.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s just it…you never do anything wrong. You’re like the perfect boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I said, completely shell-shocked. My whole body shook and I could feel my face heat up. “Then why?”
She shrugged again and let out a smirk, which absolutely crushed me. Because while she was in a smirking frame of mind, I was on the brink of tears.
“Don’t do this,” I whispered, the words got caught in my throat. In the same moment I flashed back to the night I told her I loved her – on the beach, sometime after midnight, in front of a campfire while we were toasting marshmallows.
Julie had told me she loved me back. And I’d honestly thought we’d be together forever.
“I really think we work better as friends,” she said again, removing the necklace I’d bought her. It was a horse pendant on a silver chain, because she’d been into riding. She tried to give it back to me, but I honestly couldn’t take it.
“No,” I told her, insisting that she keep it.
“I can’t,” Julie whispered, finally slipping the chain into my jacket pocket. “It wouldn’t be right.” She reached out to take my hands, telling me how much I meant to her, but that this was the way things had to be. And then something really weird happened. I sensed that she wasn’t being honest with me – that she was seeing someone else.
“Who is it?” I whispered, knowing it was true. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
Julie didn’t deny it either, trying to tell me that the end of our relationship had absolutely nothing to do with the other guy.
“Who is it?” I repeated.
“It doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “It’s not about him. It’s about us…and the fact that we don’t work anymore.”
I gripped her hands harder, and the image of her and my best friend kissing flashed across my mind. I closed my eyes and saw Julie the moment the kiss broke. Her face was beaming. Her rounded cheeks were pink. She looked just as happy as she had that night on Valentine’s Day.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling me back into the present.
I looked down at our hands, knowing somehow that it was because I was touching her that I was able to sense she’d been lying, and that they’d been together.
And so I clenched even harder, taking her arm, telling myself that this all had to be part of some big mistake. I mean, Julie would never do that. She’d never betray me that way…with my best friend.
“What are you doing?” She took a step back, trying to break my grip on her arm. There was a startled expression on her face, which startled me too.
But unfortunately it didn’t stop me.
I remember how my forearms ached. My fingers had turned cold and numb, rigid against her skin as I pictured her and my best friend kissing at the beach, by the pond, and on this very trail.
A moment later, Julie let out a scream that took me off guard, allowing her to wriggle free of my grasp. She was just inches from the cliff’s edge now.
I shouted her name, and lunged at her to try and pull her back, fearing she’d fall.
Still scared of me, she took another step away to avoid my touch. Her body tumbled backward. Her head landed down hard against a pointed rock.
“No!” I screamed. My throat burned raw.
She was silent now. Blood trickled from her head. Her eyes had a vacant, faraway stare. And her lips were slightly parted, as if questioning what’d just happened.
I climbed down the side of the cliff to try and help her. My eyes stung and my chest ached. I angled her neck upward, and tried to breathe into her mouth. “No,” I cried over and over again, fumbling to dial 9-1-1.
But she was already gone.
That was my first experience with psychometry.
My shrink told me to write this all down – that recording it someplace safe would help suck the power right out of the incident. Frankly, I think that’s a load of BS. I think incidents like this are resilient to power-suckage. And writing it all down only affirms that for me.
9/29 – 2:40 p.m.
Homeschool is an absolute drag. It’s not like I’m not doing well. I’m actually doing much better than I ever did in regular high school. It’s just that I miss my old life. I miss hanging out with all my friends in the cafeteria, and switching classes with everybody else, and even Senor Selinski’s stupid jokes about his pet Chihuahua Chi-chi. It’s amazing what you take for granted. My friends won’t even talk to me now. And I refuse to talk to my former best friend. I ended up confronting him about what I sensed – what I’d envisioned when I touched Julie on the hike that day. Like her, he didn’t deny it. He just assumed I’d gotten so enraged by the news that I threw her over the cliff.
Which obviously isn’t true.
Julie was my first crush, my first kiss, my first slow dance in the school gymnasium, and the first person that I ever told I loved (aside from family). I’d never intentionally do anything to hurt her.
And it haunts me to know that I hurt her at all.
11/5 – 9:40 p.m.
I’ve tried avoiding touching people altogether – as weird as that sounds. Yesterday when my mom introduced me to an old friend of hers from high school, I made sure my arms were full so I couldn’t shake the lady’s hand. I also give myself a lot of personal space, opting for the lone chair in the living room, rather than the sofa; showering when my parents aren’t home to avoid bumping into them in the hallway; and taking most of my meals in my room.
Luckily, this touch thing doesn’t seem to be as reliable on things as it is on people. I can’t imagine if it was.
I looked up my symptoms online, and found that I have something called psychometry: the ability to sense stuff through touch. I want to do more research on it. I want to see if I can get it to go away.
12/1 – 10:05 p.m.
This touch power is getting stronger it seems. A few days ago at dinner, my mom and I reached for the same piece of bread. My hand accidentally landed on hers, and right away I sensed that she and my dad were having more problems. I pictured the two of them arguing on the back porch so I wouldn’t hear. And I saw my dad take off his wedding ring right in front of her.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing it today.
Things between them just haven’t been the same since the accident.
2/17 – 3:31 p.m.
My mom talked me into taking a Tai Kwon Do class today. I agreed, because I heard it’s supposed to help keep you focused – the whole mind-body connection thing. Plus, this particular instructor doesn’t believe in sparring – at least not in the first couple years. Instead, he stresses the importance of developing your own inner and outer strength. And so we did a bunch of foundational stuff – stances, kicks, balancing exercises, proper breathing technique, etc., etc. We ended with meditation, which was a little weird. Still, I think I’m going to like this class. My mom was more than happy to sign me up. To see that I was interested in something outside the house.
My parents have no idea about my psychometric powers. When I tried to tell my mom, she suggested I pay the shrink another visit. My dad and I barely talk at all anymore. Every time I see his face, I see how disappointed he looks, and I’m reminded of what happened.
4/15 – 3:30 p.m.
My Spanish tutor says I should go abroad. It’s actually not such a bad idea. I’d love to get away for a while, where nobody knows me. My mom’s wants me to get away too. She suggested that I go stay with my aunt for a while, and enroll at the high school out there. My aunt lives a couple hours away, where I doubt anyone would know me. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I mean, as tempting as it is to have a somewhat normal life again, the thought of accidentally touching someone and sensing something I shouldn’t…and possibly hurting that person is a risk far greater than I’m willing to take. At least for now.
6/20 – 9:30 p.m.
I took the train in to Boston to visit my cousin. There was a girl sitting across from me on the subway. She had to have been around my age – no more than 16. She was focused downward, into her lap, but I could still see that her eye was black, as if someone had hit her. The corner of her mouth had been bleeding too. I kept looking at her, hoping to make eye-contact. I wasn’t sure what I’d do or say if she actually gazed up at me, but somehow I wanted to make thing better.
Part of me wishes I could’ve touched her – to know what’d happened and who had done that. But it was like she wanted to be invisible, because she never looked upward, not even for a second. Instead, as soon as we reached her stop, she scurried out the door with arms folded over her stomach as if that hurt too. It’s been a few days since that happened, and I can’t stop wondering if I made the right decision. Or if maybe I should’ve helped.
8/2 – 1:12 a.m.
I made the mistake of going into town with my dad today. It was mother’s idea and I wanted to make her happy. My dad wanted to make her happy too, which is why he finally caved and let me tag along. I overheard them arguing again about me last night.
On our way in to the bakery, some lady pointed at me and shook her head. The guy she was with mumbled something about how my dad must feel having raised a killer for a son. My dad didn’t say anything, just turned around and left, without even buying the loaf of bread my mom had asked for.
I hate my life here. My parents had nothing to do with the accident. People have no right to point the finger at them.
9/22 – 8:15 p.m.
The whole thing was totally messed up, and I have the markings to prove it. Sometimes when I’m getting dressed or changing my clothes, I’ll look down at my inner thigh and wonder what the hell I was thinking.
But then I’ll see Camelia. I’ll see the way she looks at me – her eyes lit up, her face practically glowing – and I’m actually glad I did it. Because the way she looks at me is exactly how I feel whenever she walks into a room.
It happened like this. It’d been about a year of reclusiveness for me. A year since my ex-girlfriend Julie’s accidental death. And a year since I’d dropped out of public high school to hole myself up in my room.
I still didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to go anywhere. Or do anything. Or allow myself to have a normal life. I guess you could say I was still punishing myself for the accident.
My parents knew it too. While my mother wanted me to try public school again – to give up on home-schooling and get out with real, live people – I could barely even stand do be with myself.
One day when my mother was having a chat with me about how she’d met my dad, she looked down at her wedding band and told me how she’d always known that he was her soul mate. I remember rolling my eyes, but still listening as she got all weepy and emotional, describing how they’d met in front of the post office in town, how he’d helped her up when she’d slipped on some ice. And how she knew from the moment she touched him – that they were meant to be together.
She said she wished the same for me one day, but that she’d feared my hermit status would render me alone forever.
Later that day, when she’d taken off all her jewelry to go for a swim, I went into her bedroom and saw her wedding band sitting on the bedside table. I took it. I touched it. I ran my fingers over the white-gold braiding and my father’s inscription on the underside – to Gabriella, with love, for eternity. I know it sounds crazy, but I got this weird sensation of wholeness, of connectedness.
Of my own soul mate.
I closed my eyes and felt my insides swell up like a balloon on the verge of bursting, somehow knowing that she was out there somewhere…waiting for me too.
As if that wasn’t messed up enough, all that night I couldn’t get the image of a chameleon out of my head. I struggled with its symbolism and what it could mean. Thoughts of change, color, and adaptation crossed my mind, but nothing seemed to make much sense.
Weeks later, with the image still haunting me, I had it tattooed to my upper left thigh, hoping its permanence might help me understand it more. The chameleon tattoo spans about four inches in length. It has green and yellow stripes, points down its back, and ironically, though maybe not so coincidentally, its tail curls into the letter C.
Aside from the artist who did it, I’ve never shown the tattoo to anyone. Not even Camelia. Not even when she told me the story of her name – how her mother named her after a chameleon because of its keen survival instincts.
I remember that day vividly. We were sitting in front of the school, looking out over the Tree Hugger Society’s designated garden, and I had to hold myself in check so she wouldn’t see how startled I was. I could literally feel the color drain from my face and a series of chills run down my back. But I pretended like the story was no big deal, because I didn’t want to get too close. Or reveal too much.
Since then, I’ve wanted to tell her about my tattoo at least a dozen times. But then I’ll remind myself of my past, that a very real and horrible thing happened the last time I got close to anyone. And that Camelia deserves someone way less complicated than me.
10/12 – 4:10 p.m.
I wrote am e-mail to Camelia, but didn’t send it. This is what I said:
Dear Camelia,
I don’t expect you to understand why I’ve left. And it kills me to know that I’ve hurt you. But hurting your heart seems the far less damaging than hurting you physically.
At least in the long run it does.
I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me. You made me feel that someone like me could actually have a normal relationship again. But I’m so not sure I can. I’m not so sure that someone who can sense things the way I do should ever be in a relationship with anyone.
I never told you this, but that time at the park, when we had that picnic…I could sense how scared you were of me. That it was your secret attraction to all-things-dangerous that made you want to kiss me. It was that lethal attraction that I knew would get you in trouble one day.
And so I ended things before it did.
You may not even know this, but saving your life also saved mine. It helped me to see myself in a whole new way – through your eyes – rather than just as the monster that everyone’s made me out to be.
Everyone, including myself.
I know you’ll never read this e-mail. Writing it is just my lame attempt at closure – something my therapist might have suggested if I was still actually seeing her.
I hope you’ll find your own form of closure. I hope one day we may even be able to be friends. Until that time comes, please know how much I care about you. That leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. And that you’re never far from my thoughts.
Love,
Ben