The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel Read online

  "Well yeah, you'd hope."

  "I would, definitely."

  "It's a thing," I say, determined to explain. I have no chance with this girl but that doesn't mean I have to be okay with her thinking I'm the kind of weirdo who goes around throwing babies into swimming pools. "My brother probably knows all about it. Swimming is supposed to be a thing we're born knowing how to do, but if you don't get in the water early enough you learn to be afraid of it."

  Amber blows smoke into the wind. It comes back and makes her blink fast. "I don't think that's true," she says. "You hear of little children drowning all the time. Sometimes in like three inches of water. They were going to drain the pool one time and I remember thinking that if you really want to drown yourself, you can easily do it in your own bathtub."

  I feel like I shouldn't be hearing this but I don't know what to say. She curls her feet up on the seat and leans back against the mosaic.

  "Doesn't have to be the Death of Marat," she says. "Just takes a pill. Maybe a drink. Doze off in the water and it's Goodnight Vienna. Wasn't that was how Whitney Houston died?"

  "I think so. I don't really think much about things like that."

  "I know," she says. "I shouldn't either. But then I am crazy. You probably know all about that, right?"

  I can't stop thinking about that picture. The inside of her thigh was white as bone and gave me the same ugly shock as it does when you click on something and find yourself looking at crime-scene photos or gore. Like something hardwired inside your head makes you look away. Wrong. Bad. You don't want to look at that girl like that; her goddamn guts are hanging out.

  "I wouldn't know anything about that," I say.

  She pulls the ribbon out of her hair and gathers it back to retie it. Her neck is pure white, but then I see a patch of red at the back, like a fresh scar or scorch mark - I can't tell. When she looks back up at me her gaze is cool, almost cold. I can see her old man in her eyes - the Hollywood hard man. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Everyone knows. It's all over the internet."

  I shake my head. "I don't pay attention to that kind of thing," I tell her.

  Amber grinds out her cigarette on the wall. She doesn't smile. "Maybe you should," she says. Her eyes are dry but there's this final note in the way she says it. When she walks away I see the scar at the base of her neck, the size of a rose and nearly as red.

  Shit. Gone again.

  That night I catch Jo in his den. He lurks most times in the cubbyhole beneath the stairs, watching magic videos on YouTube and grunting at passers by. Lately he's been on a ghost kick - lots and lots of those dumb shows where people switch on the night-vision cameras and run around old buildings deliberately scaring the crap out of each other.

  He pulls off his headphones and hits pause. There's a girl on screen - green-gray from the cameras, her mouth frozen in mid-scream, her eyes with that spooky, reflective glow. "I don't know how you can sit there in the dark and watch all this shit," I say. "Doesn't it freak you out?"

  Jo shrugs.

  "If ghosts were real, I guess."

  "What happened to the ghosts of the Manson family or who-the-fuck-ever up at Wonderland?"

  "Collapsed under the weight of evidence," says Jo. "It was more 'I want to believe' than anything else. Do you know they've made fourteen seasons of this show and have yet to turn up a single piece of evidence that can't be explained away by perfectly mundane causes? Either ghosts are super, super shy or it's all bullshit."

  "What about the holy ghost? Is that bullshit?"

  "Sure it is," he says. "You honestly believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and came back to life? Cause I don't."

  "Shh. Don't let Pops hear you say that. You'll break his heart."

  "What? He's going to be shocked to discover I don't still believe in Santa too? I'm a grown-up, Jaime. I'm too fucking old for this shit." He says this like he was forty-five and not seventeen. Everyone says my little brother is an 'old-soul' but in some respects I guess he still has a lot of growing up to do.

  "Okay," I say. "Hypothetical, right?"

  "Right."

  "Say you met this girl."

  "Uh huh."

  "And you like her. Not like-like. Maybe not yet. But you could see it going that way."

  He leans back in his computer chair and folds his arms.

  "With you so far."

  "So she says she's got a complicated past, right? And then she says you should look it up on the internet if you really want to know."

  "Complicated?" He arches his eyebrows at me for a moment and then his eyes widen. "Holy fucking shitballs - is she a porn star?"

  "No! No - God no. At least, I don't think so."

  "It's a sex tape," says Jo. "It's gotta be a sex tape. It's always a sex tape. Do you think she got peed on like Kim Kardashian?"

  "Don't be gross. I'll tell Pops what you said and he'll wash your goddamn mouth out."

  "And yours besides, bro. You do like her. And it is like-like. Don't deny it. Else you wouldn't be clutching your pearls at the thought of her being used as a public latrine."

  What is with these kids today?

  "Jo, if you're not clutching your pearls at the thought of anyone being used as a public latrine then you need to get the hell off the internet for a while. When did you get so disgusting?"

  "Sometime around puberty. Same as everyone else." He pops open the top of another Red Bull and sighs. "Look, you obviously want to look this chick up or you wouldn't be asking me."

  "I don't. It's hypothetical, remember?"

  He snorts.

  "Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago. If you're gonna do it, do it. All I'm asking is that if Emily from the CYO has a porno sideline, I'm gonna need a URL. And a password."

  I smack him lightly around the back of the head. "If Beca had her way, that girl would be your sister-in-law."

  "I know, bro. That's what makes it so nasty."

  He's no help. I go back up to my room and open my laptop. Amber. Amber Rose, Amber Room. I know that if I type G after the space it will probably autocomplete to Amber Gillespie and then I'll know everything, won't I? Everything she said I should know. But do I really want to find out this way? She's not a goldfish in a bowl. She's not public property. She's a human being.

  I turn off the computer. My decision is made. Maybe I'll tell her, maybe I won't. Part of me is kind of mad at her, but it's hard to stay mad at someone who seems so broken, even if her eyes do say differently.

  Chapter Five

  Amber

  Dr. Stahl is wearing higher heels today. I wonder if she's trying to impress my Dad. She wouldn't be the first; probably won't be the last either.

  I wish I had the nerve to see her in the living area, then she wouldn't have to fold herself up in a pink-striped boudoir chair, but that's the nature of mental illness. It robs you of everything, even your manners. She asks me how I'm doing and I answer honestly - better. I'm doing better.

  "I talked to someone," I say. I have to tell, to make it real somehow, but even as I'm saying it I realize it's a mistake. She can't know everything.

  "Online," I explain. Yes, that works.

  "And how was that?" asks Dr. Stahl, her voice soft and neutral as only a psychiatrist's can be. Maybe there's a special class they all have to graduate, where they learn to make their voice so low you sometimes wonder if it's real or just the voice in your head.

  "Um...it was...good. It was the first conversation I'd had about something other than...you know. Everything."

  "And how did that feel?"

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Freeing, I guess. Like one day things could be normal again."

  She crosses her legs. I'm sure that chair hurts her back but she doesn't let on. Doesn't complain. What must she think of me, whining up a storm every time I see her?

  "Can you talk to your father in that way?" she asks.

  I snort like a teenager.

  "Excuse me? Have you met him?"

  Dr. Stahl smiles a
nd I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

  "Fair point," she says. The old me would have run her mouth off, complained about him giving yet another lecture on the extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger or the lifecycle of the Giant Sequoia or whatever it is that's grabbed his brief attention today. But I don't want to see her reaction. I don't think I could handle it if I thought she was using me to get to him. I realize that I've come to trust her and I want to peddle back on my white lie, tell her the truth about talking to Jimmy.

  "You've opened the drapes," she says, nodding out towards the pool patio. "That's progress."

  I've never quite managed to shake the feeling that she's gifted with some extraordinary insight - like she's more than just a psychiatrist. Like she's some kind of human polygraph - I don't know. She can't know that I keep the drapes open in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. I don't know how far patient confidentiality goes in a case like mine.

  So I shrug. "My pot plants were all dying," I say, pointing out the yellowing spider plant on a bracket near the window.

  "Plants aren't the only thing that need light, Amber. It's good to get some vitamin D."

  "I guess. One step at a time, you know?"

  "Absolutely. This is big - just opening the drapes like that. You see? Last week was just a plateau. We're moving again."

  'We' are. We're right back where we started, or that's what she'll say if she knows the truth.

  ***

  I close the drapes again. He's not coming back. At least, he shouldn't.

  Dad comes back from Prague with an abscess in his tooth. He didn't trust a Czech dentist to give him a double root canal, so he loaded up on painkillers and in-flight cocktails and flew all the way back to LA. It's so Hollywood of him that in different circumstances I would have laughed, but it's kind of depressing to know that this town can soften even his South London soul.

  "Issues, issues, issues," Everglade used to say. "Plastic surgery, bush-league humping and lots and lots of whining - that's Hollywood, babycakes. Is it any wonder my mommy turned into a monster?"

  And here I sit with the curtains drawn, the very embodiment of it all - a skin graft itching on my neck, an ache where his dick used to go and a pile of imaginary problems. Sometimes I dream about him. It always happens the same way and in the same place. We're lying on a bed together. It's hot and the fan is going - there's no air-con, it's too cheap a motel for that. He's spooned around me. We're both naked but I'm cool where my skin touches his - like he's turning to ice inside. He says the same thing every time.

  "Amber, you have to wake up. Wake up."

  And then I do and everything is fucked.

  My Dad comes into my room, minus a pre-molar.

  "Couldn't save it," he says. "I think I'm gonna get a gold one instead. What do you reckon?"

  "Mm. Sounds good."

  He sits down on the end of my bed and sighs. I know he's not here to gross me out with tales of the dentist.

  "Amber, how long are you gonna do this, baby?"

  "I'm not doing anything," I say, my back already up. He's always had a way of needling me. Maybe he doesn't know that it's the very thing that eats at me day and night - am I doing this to myself? - but we're too alike. He must know.

  But he's a saint. Everyone says so. He plays the bad guy but off-screen he's everyone's favorite. The macho Brit who lost both wife and baby when she bled out from an ectopic pregnancy. He never remarried, after all those years. He still loved her. And it's true - he does. So why should I get over it? He didn't. I guess dwelling in the past is picturesque, if you're a man.

  He sighs again. His shoulders look larger than life.

  "Have you talked to Dr. Stahl?"

  "Of course. I do nothing but talk to Dr. Stahl."

  "You know what I mean," he says, twisting round to look at me. "You're closing the curtains again. It's one step forward, two steps back. Is she not working for you anymore? Do you want to try a different doctor?"

  "I have a headache," I say. I sound whiny even to myself. "Can't I even close the drapes without everyone putting me on suicide watch?" If I told him the truth there would be a shitstorm. Jimmy would lose his job. My Dad's butted heads with Dr. Stahl before but I know they'd agree on one thing - no boys. No way.

  The silence swells to fill the room. I curl myself into a tighter ball on the bed. My Dad sniffs.

  "I'm sorry," he says, with the air of someone about to unload a painful confession. "I really am. I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you. And I'm sorry it happened. All of it. But it did, and under the circumstances it could have been a whole lot worse, couldn't it?"

  I nod. I don't want to cry but there's an irresistible ache in my throat. I want to say I'm sorry too - and that he did protect me. And yes, it could have been worse. The scar on the back of my neck itches and my sinuses burn.

  "There's nothing you can do to change it," he says. "It happened. All you can do now is learn to move past it."

  I could laugh - has he any idea how California he sounds right now? The laugh turns into a sort of snort-choke-sob thing and I scramble for the box of tissues on the nightstand. I sit up and he squeezes me tight in his big arms, reminding me of the times when we used to sit like this after Mom died. Just sitting or lying together and crying and crying - he was supposed to be the grown-up and he was supposed to tell me everything was okay, but that was the age I learned that even adults had some hurts that nothing could fix.

  When I look in his face again I see his eyes are red around the rims.

  "Will you promise me something?" he says.

  "Sure, Daddy. Anything."

  "If it's not working out with Dr. Stahl, you'll tell me, won't you?"

  "Of course I will. I promise."

  "Good. Because you can't go on like this, poppet. You're twenty-one. You can't spend your life locked away like Miss Havisham."

  I nod again and wipe my eyes. My lips feel soft and blubbery. My head aches. We both know he's not coming back. Ever.

  "I have bad days," I say. "This is one of them. That's all. Some days I'm better."

  "I know baby. I know." He brushes my hair back from my face. "Just...maybe think about getting out around the house a bit more. You're safe here. You know that. Get some air. Get some vitamin D."

  "I'll try. I promise."

  It's a get out clause and I know it. I promise to try. When he's gone I look up vitamin D on the internet. Maybe I can get supplements. There's a website that says all you need to get your required intake is twenty minutes of sunshine each day - no sunblock and as little clothes as possible. Wouldn't that give Jimmy a treat? Lie out there in nothing but a pair of Ray-Bans and watch his eyes light up like pinwheels. When he looks at me I feel that kind of light-headed, half-terrified feeling I used to feel when I was maybe fifteen, whenever I caught a man staring at me. I'd be breathless with the new, precipitous sense of my own power. And scared. So scared that it might overtake me completely.

  Maybe I should up my dose of anti-depressants. It's been getting worse lately, and it was lust that got me into this mess in the first place.

  I open the drapes and go outside for a smoke. He's not out there, which is just as well because I've seen the way he looks at me. I could have him. The thought is like a rebel flag and I can't get it out of my head. Just a word or a look of understanding and he could be inside me. It's been so long I don't even know if my vibrator still has batteries in it.

  When he rounds the corner he looks so much like a rabbit in the headlights that I wonder if he can see inside of my head.

  "Hey," he says.

  "Hi." He moves around to the wide edge of the pool. His hips are amazingly small - I've never really noticed them, until I started thinking about having them between my thighs. God, what the hell is wrong with me? The moment it occurs to me that Daddy would disapprove I suddenly start wanting it. Could I be much more of a brat?

  "How are you?" he says.

  "I'm...good. I think."

  "Cool."
He starts walking - just making his rounds. No. Not today. Please stay with me today. I practically throw myself in his path.

  He frowns, confused. His eyebrows are soft little black smudges, too arched to be really manly. They match his beautiful long, girlish eyelashes, but his jaw is square and his chin strong. It's hot and his shirt is partly unbuttoned, revealing a smooth pair of collarbones.

  "Are you okay?" he says. "You need some more smokes?"

  "No," I say. "Are you mad at me?"

  Jimmy sighs.

  "No. I'm...confused, I guess. You push me away and then you ask me if I'm mad at you. It's a weird way to behave if you want to make friends."

  Friends. Do I have any of those left? I don't think so.

  "I'm sorry," I say. "It's complicated. You know about that, right?"

  He shifts his weight on one foot and gives me a long, steady look. His eyes are so brown they're almost black.

  "I don't," he says. "I decided - I'm not going to look you up on the internet. If you want to tell me you'll tell me. If you don't, you don't. Until then it's none of my business."

  At once I'm ashamed of myself, but that doesn't stop me.

  "Thank you," I say, and stretch up to kiss his cheek. It's not fair of me; I know he likes he more than he should. I guess old habits die hard. Justin always said that deep down I was kind of a bitch.

  Chapter Six

  Amber

  I never expected to see him again, even after I chose to study in San Diego. He was more of a phantom than a person, good ju-ju, some glimpse of the possibilities ahead of me. I was still only dimly aware that sex was even amongst those possibilities; Everglade had shucked off her virginity at fifteen and was already jaded, so I was careful to cultivate the same ennui whenever we were together. In private I hugged the memory of his kiss to my heart, knowing it was stupid, that I was stupid to believe in something as dumb and flowery as love at first sight.

  Maybe second sight. And lust, definitely.

  It was the second day of orientation. I was trying to decide between Drama and English, while Everglade had perched on the side of a fountain and was already engrossed in the schedule for her Women’s Studies Elective.