I Leave Secrets

I left destruction, ruin. Chaos in my wake, tormenting innocents. They knew they would never be free of it. Neither would I.

It started with a boy. He showed me a world full of new passion and enthrallment. I would give anything to have that back, to have him back.

To those of you who are already sighing woefully, wondering why I had spun yet another tale of love; I haven’t. The story I have composed foretells of pain, torment, and loss. Of a girl finding her way back to what once was lost.

“Kara?” My teacher, Mrs. Enright, asked robotically. She was a thin, pencil-like woman with sharp features and mournful eyes. I had always wanted to know about her, why she was always so sad. What had happened to her to leave her barely able to function?

I sighed and cautiously lifted my face from my sticky palm. I begrudgingly stood up and took my detention slip—yet again—for falling asleep in her class. I counted back to the beginning of the year and determined that it was the eighteenth time I had fallen asleep in her tedious class.

You could hardly blame me. The subject of math was something no teenager enjoyed. Unless they were extremely smart and terrifically good of course. Good. That was something I was not. I felt my lashes brush against my cheek.

All of my life I had ruined everyone else’s lives. Whisked from one home to another; I was a burden. My mind focused back on that car accident. The bright white of headlights when they crashed into our car, throwing me into the front seat and my parents through the windshield.

I was a burden ever since. I made it as hard as possible for someone to keep me. I threw fits, I failed school. I chose not to love anyone that took me in and cared for me, never once noticing what I did to them.

I pushed away everyone who loved me so I didn’t get hurt again. My heart was ice.

I schlepped into the principal’s office for the fourth time that week. The stout, balding man gave me a pathetic half-smile and ushered me into the little waiting area. He didn’t have time for me today, or he just didn’t want to deal with me. I shrugged. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

My eyes scanned the small room. From the floral carpet to the rotting wallpaper, the room screamed ‘help me!’ A potted plant stood lonesome in the corner. It was a wilting lilac and I instantly snickered. What kind of principal keeps a lilac in his office? Next to it was my chair. I started toward it, only to realize halfway that someone occupied my usual space.

“No way,” I murmured softly.

Jack Moiri was lounging on my chair, reading my boring magazine. He gave me a sexy smirk and his eyes said “bite me, this is my spot now!” He was the school all-star. He was good at everything. Plays, sports, writing, academics and singing. I envied him with a passion, but I never let on to it. I suspected everyone envied him.

He wasn’t just amazing at everything and had a winning personality, but he was gorgeous to boot. He had toned limbs that were very tan. His sandy hair and eccentric green eyes ensnared my thoughts and I had to turn shift my attention elsewhere.

I didn’t realize that I fell in love with him that day, only for us to be torn apart.

We ended up chatting, and he eventually asked me out. Me! The freaky girl with shimmering black hair that was styled over her eyes and was way too thin to be beautiful. The girl that nobody noticed and who didn’t try at anything.

So of course I told him no. I mean, I was me and he was him. He was perfect in every way, and I was not. It had to have been a trick, a ruse. But when he started showing up outside me newest house with flowers and candy, I realized that he was serious.

So we began spending time together. He drew me bit by bit out my protective shell. He even convinced me to get into a car once. I knew that I was falling for him, hard. That I shouldn’t have let him get to me. But I couldn’t help it. He showed me how to live again.

One day, I saw him scribbling furiously in a notebook. I gave him a lazy kiss on the cheek, but he hardly seemed to notice. Annoyed, I pulled the journal from his hands and read what he was doing. He didn’t seem angry when I picked up a pencil and started finishing what he was writing.

I discovered my talent. A passion burned within me to write. I spent more of my time doing that, writing books and poems and short stories. He gave back to me my life. I hadn’t realized how empty I was and how much I was truly hurting inside until he showed me writing. Until I took it all out on my paper.


One day, we were holding hands by the pier. He said he would be back quickly and held my gaze. He told me he loved me always. I never told him that I loved him back. But I should have. I was too preoccupied writing. Too preoccupied to warn him about the drunk driver behind him.

How fitting, that everything I had ever loved was taken from me by vehicles?

I no longer leave chaos in my wake. I leave secrets. I don’t write. I don’t love. I don’t cause trouble. Most people wondered what happened to me when they saw the empty girl milling about. I had lost myself, and Jack helped me find me again. But when I had my life and love back, I stored it away. Never again to pull it from it’s dusty shelf and be happy again.