Deadly Little Secret.

by Laurie Faria Stolarz.

For my mother, who gave me the creativity to write, and for MaryKay, who showed me I could

1.

I could have died three months ago.

Ever since, things haven't quite been the same for me.

It happened on the last day of school. I was walking across the parking lot by the gym when my earring slipped off-a hammered sterling-silver hoop with a clasp that never seemed to fit quite right. But the pair was my favorite, given to me by my mother just months before, on my sixteenth birthday.

I squatted down to search the pavement. Everything that happened next sped by in what felt like a three-second blur: Gloria Beckham's car peeling across the parking lot in my direction. Me, sort of frozen there, on hands and knees, a.s.suming the car would come to a sudden halt when she saw me.

It didn't.

It kept racing toward me, toward the two hockey nets that Todd McCaffrey had left in the middle of the lot while he went in to fetch more equipment. At some point, I heard Todd's voice yell out, "Stop!" Then the car plowed into the hockey nets at a speed high enough to crush them beneath the grill.

And it didn't stop there. The car continued toward me without missing a beat.

I imagine that my heart sped up, that my adrenaline did that hormonal-pumping thing it does when it's trying to brace you for what happens next. But what happened next I could never have prepared myself for.

Being shoved out of the way.

My shoulders slamming against the curb with enough force to cover my back in bruises and scabs for the next several weeks.

The burning of my skin as my shirt lifted up and the small of my back sc.r.a.ped against the pavement, tearing off two layers of skin.

And the peculiar way he touched me.

"Are you okay?" the mystery boy asked.

I opened my mouth to say something-to ask him what happened, to see about Gloria, to find out who he was.

But then: "Shhh . . . don't try and talk," he whispered.

The truth is I couldn't couldn't talk. It felt like my chest had broken open, like someone had cracked me in two and stolen my breath. talk. It felt like my chest had broken open, like someone had cracked me in two and stolen my breath.

"Blink once if you're okay," he continued, "twice if you need to go to the hospital."

I blinked once, but I honestly didn't want to. I didn't want to stop looking at him for even one solitary moment-the sharp angles of his face; his dark gray eyes, flecked with gold; and those pale pink lips pressed together with concern-despite how inappropriate the moment was for gawking.

He glanced over his shoulder in search of Todd, who had gone to help Gloria.

"I called nine-one-one!" Todd shouted out.

The boy, probably a year or two older than I was, turned his focus back to me. His shoulders, broad and strong under his navy blue T-shirt, hovered right above my chest. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" His face was so close I could smell his skin-a mixture of sugar and sweat.

I nodded and let out a breath, relieved that my lungs were still working. "How's Gloria?" I mouthed; no sound came out.

He looked toward her car again. It had finally come to a stop halfway up the gra.s.sy hill that ran along the side of the school.

The boy, noticing our closeness maybe, sat back on his heels then and ran his fingers through his perfectly rumpled dark hair.

And then he touched me.

His hand rested on my stomach, almost by accident I think, because the gesture seemed to startle him even more than it startled me. He stared at me with new intensity, his eyes wide and urgent, his lips slightly parted.

"What is it?" I asked, noticing the scar on his forearm-a narrow gash that branched off in two directions, like a broken tree limb.

Instead of answering, he pressed his palm harder against me and closed his eyes. His wrist grazed the bare skin right above my navel, where my sweater was still pulled up.

It nearly made me lose my breath all over again.

A moment later an ambulance came zooming into the lot, the siren blaring, the lights flashing bright red and white, and the boy backed away, just like that.

He crawled free of me, darted over to his motorcycle. Hopped on. Revved up the engine. And then sped away.

Before I could even ask him his name.

Before I could thank him for saving my life.

2.

The first time I saw her I knew-long and twisty caramel-blond hair, curvy hips, and lips the color of fire.

She was talking that first time-in a group of faceless girls. I was there, too- standing a good distance back. Watching her.

I wondered what she was all about-if her cheeks were naturally seash.e.l.l pink, or if she was embarra.s.sed or maybe wearing makeup.

I watched her lips as they pouted, then stretched wide when she laughed. It made me laugh, too. I couldn't stop watching her, imagining the way her mouth would move when she said my name, or told me she loved me, or came at me with a kiss.

And so, I made a silent vow to myself that day. I would find out about her cheeks, and the way her kisses would taste. I would find out everything, because I simply had to know. I had to have her. I still do. And one day, very soon, I will.

3.

It's been three months since the accident, and while my burns, blisters, and bruises have all healed, there's a piece that still feels broken. And, no, it's not my heart or anything sentimental like that. I'm not one of those overly emotional damsels in distress, eagerly awaiting her prince to come and save her. A little closure, please, is all I ask-the opportunity to see that boy just one more time-to tell him "thank you," to ask him what he was doing there in the first place.

And to find out why he touched me like that.

"A little frustrated, are we?" Kimmie asks, noticing the oomph with which I wedge out my clay.

It's C-Block pottery cla.s.s, and I'm working the air pockets from my mound of sticky redness by thwacking, plopping, and kneading it against the table.

"Personally, I'm surprised you haven't cracked completely," she continues.

"Don't you have some clay to wedge?" I ask her.

"Don't you have some life to get?"

I ignore her comment and proceed to remind her that unwedged clay means a sculpture that's bound to be blown to bits in the kiln.

"Maybe I like bits."

"Do you like slime? Because that's what your piece is starting to look like." I pa.s.s her a sponge for the excess water.

"Honestly, Camelia, your control-freakish ways are starting to get a little old. You really should should get out more." get out more."

Kimmie and I have been friends since kindergarten- through who-can-blow-the-bigger-Hubba-Bubba-bubblegum contests to the time in the eighth grade when Jim Konarski spun the bottle and I had to kiss him. For the record, I still get c.r.a.p about missing his lips entirely and accidentally tonguing his left nostril.

"I'm fine," I a.s.sure her.

She takes a moment to look me over-from my unruly dirty-blond locks and giraffe-like neck to my self-declared lack of style. Today: a long-sleeved T, dark-washed jeans, and a pair of black ballet flats-exactly what the mannequin at the Gap was wearing.

"Fine?" she says, working her mound of clay into what appears to be an anatomically correct man: pecs, package, and all. "Miss I Spend My Sat.u.r.day Nights Playing Makeover with My Nine-Year-Old Neighbor?" she says, working her mound of clay into what appears to be an anatomically correct man: pecs, package, and all. "Miss I Spend My Sat.u.r.day Nights Playing Makeover with My Nine-Year-Old Neighbor?"

"For your information, that only happened once, and her mom was having a Mary Kay party."

"Whatever," she says, lowering her voice.

Pottery may well be a fairly laid-back cla.s.s, rulewise, but Ms. Mazur still insists on our speaking in hushed tones, for the sake of artistic concentration.

"Quick, one to ten, John Kenneally," she whispers.

"I refuse to play this game with you."

"Come on," she prods. "It's a brand-new year, we're juniors now, and word is he's available. Personally, I'd give him at least an eight-point-five for style, a seven for looks, and a nine for personality. The boy's a freakin' riot."

"Sorry to break this to you, but I'm not interested in John Kenneally."

"Then who, Snow White?"

I shake my head, still thinking about the boy from the parking lot-that sugary smell, those dark gray eyes.

And the way he touched me.

After the accident, after Gloria Beckham's full recovery-turns out she went into diabetic shock (hence her confusing the accelerator for the brake and whipping through the parking lot at a speed high enough to score her jail time in some states)-I scoured the school yearbooks, searching for the boy's ident.i.ty.

Without any luck.

I pause a moment in my clay-wedging and reach down to touch the area below my navel, somehow still able to feel his fingers there.

"Okay, that's it!" Kimmie declares. "You really need to get yourself a man."

"Oh, please," I say, pretending just to be straightening out the front of my ap.r.o.n. I run my fingers over a seam. "I wasn't doing anything scandalous."

"That's probably more hand action than you've gotten all year, isn't it? Forget it; I don't want to know. Here," she says, thrusting her verging-on-obscene clay man in front of me. "Say h.e.l.lo to Seymour. He's not perfect, but it's the best I can do on such short notice."

4.

At lunch, Kimmie and I claim a much coveted spot on the uppercla.s.smen side of the cafeteria-only two tables from the soda machines and just a sandwich crust's throw from the exit doors. A total score for midlisters like us-and one we intend to keep for the entire year.

Sitting with us is our friend Wes. We kind of adopted him during our freshman year, when the poor boy showed up at a Halloween dance dressed as a six-foot-long wiener. A couple of the lacrosse players thought it'd be funny to swipe his bun, making him look borderline offensive. Wes squawked to the chaperones. The lacrosse players got detentions. And that was how our good friend Wes earned the nickname of Wesley, the Oscar Mayer Whiner.

"Nice hair," Wes smirks, eyeing Kimmie's new pixie cut. She recently dyed it jet black and had more than sixteen inches hacked off for Locks of Love.

"For your information, it goes with my style."

"Oh, yeah, and what's that? Goth girl gone wrong?"

"Vintage vamp," she explains, gesturing to her outfit: a polka-dot dress circa 1960, combat boots, and a frilly red scarf. Thick black rings of Maybelline outline her pale blue eyes. "Laugh now, but it won't be so funny when I'm a rich and famous fashion designer with my own makeover show."

"Wait, will that makeover be for you?" Wes asks, pushing his gla.s.ses up on the bridge of his nose.

"Back off," I say, threatening him with a forkful of mac 'n' cheese, aimed and ready to launch at his mousse-infested brown hair.

"You'll never do it," he dares. "Just think about the mess that could leave on the table."