The Secrets We Keep by Leaver Trisha

Author:Leaver, Trisha [Leaver, Trisha]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780374300487
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

22

Josh waited until Kim was gone, then waited a bit longer before he spoke. “You okay?”

“Yeah … sorry about that,” I said, waving in the direction of the door Kim had sulked through. “I shouldn’t have been mean to her. It was wrong.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He took a step closer and repeated his question slowly. “Are. You. Okay?”

“Yes … no … I mean…” I wavered, unsure of how to answer. My shoulder no longer ached, and most of my bruises had faded to a pale yellow. My left wrist was still in a cast, and I had a red line above my right eye where they’d stitched my skin together. But other than that, I was fine.

Physically anyway.

“I’m good.”

Josh nodded but didn’t move, rather, shifted the weight of his backpack to his other shoulder and continued to watch me.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“Your sister … Ella used to sit here,” he said as he dropped his backpack to the floor and nudged my feet so he could climb up onto the sill next to me. He picked up the notebook I’d been drawing in, instinctively flipping to the back cover as he took in my drawing and compared it to the living, breathing version sitting next to him.

“Not bad,” he said as he tucked it into his own bag. “The shading is a bit off, but my guess is, you’re out of practice.”

Jerk! The shading was nearly perfect. I went to call him out but stopped myself short and played along. “Yup, about four years. I haven’t picked up a drawing pencil since junior high. That was Ella’s thing, not mine.”

He shook his head as if daring me to continue. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

“You think you know everything about Ella?”

“I know I do. In fact, whenever she was upset about something or was trying to hide, this is where she’d go.”

I cursed silently to myself. I’d known that. That was probably why I was sitting here. It was safe. Familiar.

“So what?” I said, aiming for indifference. “My sister and I had a lot in common. We were twins. Identical twins.”

Josh chuckled at that, the who-are-you-trying-to-kid sound that used to make me smile. Now it irritated the crap out of me. “Not since I’ve known you. Different friends. Different classes. Different everything. Same DNA, I guess, but that’s about it.”

He pulled me away from the wall I was leaning against, his eyes staring at the beige cinder block behind me. I followed his line of sight, knowing what I’d find.

“She drew that, you know,” he said as he inched closer to me to get a better look at the drawing I’d sketched on the wall our freshman year. “The first day I met her, the day you introduced me to her, I found her sitting here drawing on the wall after school. I think she’d been crying, although she insisted she wasn’t. Blamed her red eyes on allergies, I think.”

I heard the humor in his voice as he recalled the excuse I’d fed him.

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