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Table of Contents

Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.
—Jean de La Fontaine, French poet (1621–1695)

 

 

M
addy Carmichael pushed the rusty-red 1964 Mustang's accelerator to the floor, the instant surge of speed charging through her veins like an unexpected bolt of lightning under a clear-blue Florida sky. Hot tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she made the familiar turn onto the main road. She should've stayed home. Her dream from three nights ago still haunted her,
taunted
her.

She was naked and standing in the middle of the gymnasium while her entire class examined her. A nightmare she wanted to forget, yet it wasn't all that far from what she'd just experienced. Actually, the dream was much better.

Just hours earlier, she'd slipped into the beautiful, emerald gown she'd purchased on sale at Belk's department store last week. The main reason she'd bought the gown, other than the sale price, was that the dress had pockets. Pockets solved the problem of not having a date to carry her evening bag.

As she swiped at the tears flowing down her cheeks, she remembered how she had ignored the nagging sensation of foreboding she felt as she finished hemming her dress for tonight's prom.

She had purchased a wrist corsage just this morning at Fiona's Floral Designs. Cheap white carnations dipped in teal, with teal ribbons, three shades lighter than the gown for contrast, streaming from her wrist to her elbow. She'd smiled at her image in the small mirror she'd hung inside her closet door. At that moment, she had promised herself to put all negative thoughts aside. Just for tonight. Tomorrow, she knew, real life would come rushing back at the speed of a hurricane, and her real life was rarely pretty.

Tonight was special. Tonight was her senior prom. Her last year of high school. The beginning of a new, and better, way of life. She had prayed for this daily since she'd been old enough to pray.

She had a bit of savings from her various after-school jobs; the usual babysitting; cashiering Wednesday nights at All Bright Cleaners; waitressing three nights a week at Tony's BBQ Pit. Every Sunday, after the last morning service, she helped Pastor Royer gather the hymnals and any debris the parishioners or their children had left behind. For this she was paid a flat twenty dollars. Many times she'd refused the pastor's offering, but finally she'd relented after he had insisted rather harshly that it would be stupid of her to refuse. This embarrassed her, but she'd learned long ago that pride truly wasn't as tasty as a hot meal. With a great deal of reluctance, she had accepted these acts of charitable kindness whenever they were offered.

She shared a small trailer on the edge of town, within smelling distance of the local tomato-canning factory, with her mother, Lenore, and twin brother, Marcus. Marcus, the golden boy. The boy all the girls wanted to lay claim to. The boy with the golden eyes. When she was younger, Maddy often wondered why their eyes didn't match since they were twins. Once she'd asked her mother about this, and her reply had been a lightning-fast slap to her face. She never asked again. In fact, she rarely saw her mother. Though Lenore shared the beaten-down trailer with her and Marcus on occasion, it was rare for her mother to make an appearance. As long as her man of the moment had a place where she could spend her days in a drunken stupor and her nights with him, and as long as he was willing to provide her with enough money for her daily intake of booze and whatever drug she currently craved, she stayed away.

Her mother's reputation caused Maddy a great deal of humiliation. She'd learned to ignore the wry comments and the suggestive glances from the group of guys Marcus hung with at school. Maddy wanted to shout to the world that she was not like her mother, that she worked very hard to pay the rent on the dumpy tin box she called home. She worked even harder to keep her grades up. Hoping for a scholarship that had yet to materialize at this late date, Maddy still studied in her spare time, which there wasn't much of these days. She was determined to have a better life.

In six weeks, both she and Marcus would graduate. As far as she knew, Marcus's plans were to attend Florida State on a football scholarship. His grades were horrible, but everyone knew that didn't matter as long as you could handle yourself on the football field. Marcus excelled at the sport. He also excelled at being a jerk. Maddy was sure the latter wouldn't help him one little bit, if, or rather when, he received the expected scholarship. Some of the not-so-cool guys didn't like him. Brett Lynch, her best friend since seventh grade, said that a lot of the guys made fun of Marcus behind his back. Thought he was all grit minus a brain. Maddy secretly agreed but didn't say so. He was her brother. Her twin, if that counted as extra points. She supposed she owed him at least a touch of familial loyalty, even though he'd just totally and completely ruined her life.

Unable to hold back any longer, she screamed silently in the car, her tears rivering from her eyes in big, angry splashes on the bodice of her prom dress, making the emerald color appear black. Blinking back another round of tears, Maddy sniffed, and without taking her eyes off the dark dirt road, reached inside her clutch purse on the passenger's seat, feeling around for the wad of tissues she'd stuck inside right before she left the house. She remembered thinking, as she had crammed them in her bag, that perhaps tonight wasn't going to be special, and she might end up crying. She had intended to leave the bag on the seat of the car until she returned after the prom was over. She just knew she was going to cry all the way home. Just knew it.

She blotted her eyes, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. She blew into the tissue she held in her free hand, then rolled down her window and tossed the used tissue out, not caring that she was littering. The warm air hit her like a blast furnace. She hated Florida, hated the heat, the humidity, the crazy wildlife she always seemed to come upon. Just last week, she'd been trapped inside the trailer by a coyote that had refused to leave until she called 911 and the city sent a trapper out in hopes of catching the creature. Already, her neighbor had lost three cats and one small dog. Yes, she thought as she rolled the window up, she couldn't wait to leave this place. Maybe she would move to Alaska, someplace cold. A place where they had four seasons. Not hot, hotter, and hottest. Why her mother had ever brought them to this state remained a mystery to this day.

Maddy would bet her savings it had something to do with a man, possibly her father, but he, too, remained a mystery. Her mother had refused to talk about him the one time she'd been brave enough to bring up the subject.

Her thoughts were all over the place. Anything to avoid thinking about what had just sent her running out of the gymnasium to her beat-up Mustang. She hated Marcus and his perverted gang of thugs right now; more than anything, she wished someone would beat him within an inch of his life so he would never, ever play football again. At the very least, she prayed that someone would knock some sense into him. But right now, this very second, she could not care less if they killed her brother. Truly, she wished they'd beat his brains out. Only, in light of what she'd just gone through, that would be a kindness. Way too kind.

Maddy made the wide turn onto Carroll Road, which was really just a large group of curves surrounded by groves of orange trees, but the road was narrow and unsafe. Blinking back yet another round of angry tears, she slowed down to thirty miles per hour, knowing this road was as dangerous as ever, even more so tonight since it was prom. Lots of booze, weed, and coke had been passed around earlier. Most of her classmates were idiots and wouldn't stop to think about drinking and racing around in their cars after prom. At least Marcus didn't have a car. That was almost a blessing. Almost, because she still hated him. Any emotions for Marcus were wasted as far as she was concerned. Her big, tough football player brother who'd laughed at her, humiliated her as his friends, and possibly he, too, had ruined her for life. He'd set her up for the right price to anyone willing to pay. He was a bully. And a coward. A worthless human piece of flesh.

Her mother should have aborted him, but then she wouldn't be here either, but she could still wish. And now she wished that he would die. Not necessarily by her hand but by someone else's hand. She wouldn't shed a tear, either. She rather thought she'd probably dance a jig on top of his grave.

Hands clenched, knuckles white and tight as they gripped the steering wheel, Maddy mentally replayed what she could recall of the nightmare she'd just escaped. She should do something, but she wasn't sure what that something was. She needed to pay attention to her driving.

She needed to think.

Crime.
Her brother and his group of friends had just committed a terrible crime against her. They would
not
get away with this. She went through the events of the evening again. From beginning to end, mentally naming her suspects. Ricky Rourke, the leader. Dennis Wilderman, Ricky's cousin and best friend, who did whatever Ricky asked of him. Kevin Marsden, recently voted most likely to succeed, a superior student and football player. Troy Bowers, another top football player, but as dumb as Marcus, maybe even more so. And, of course, there was Marcus. Her brother. Her
twin
.

When, how, and most of all
why
had they planned this? To humiliate her? Nothing else to do on prom night? The money? None of it made sense. There was no excuse for the criminal acts they had committed against her.

Her mind returned to the beginning of prom. The evening had started out better than she'd anticipated.

Entering the gymnasium alone on prom night hadn't been nearly as much of a nightmare as she'd imagined. In fact, if anything, several of the popular kids greeted her. Karen Clark, captain of the cheerleading squad, and Karen's best friend and cocaptain, Elizabeth Mirro, with their boyfriends, Randall Harris and Andrew “Big Andy” Wiley, who stood six-foot-seven, had smiled at her as she stepped inside the glittery gymnasium. They were the cool group that everyone wanted to be a part of. She returned their wave, a slight smile on her face.

Tiny white lights strung from the ceiling created a glow above the polished floor. Card tables with gold paper tablecloths were placed in a U shape around the gymnasium floor. In the center of each table was a small vase with a single gardenia that Maddy knew had been donated by Karen Clark's grandmother, whose gardening skills were known throughout the county.

Their theme song, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” by Elton John, played in the background. It was one of her favorite songs. When she learned this was to be the theme song for senior prom, she took it as a sign of good things to come.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

After returning hellos to Karen and Elizabeth and their current loves, she saw Brett and his girlfriend, Carla, serving themselves from a punch bowl that was most likely spiked with rum. She'd heard talk of this just yesterday. Making her way across the gym, she saw that Brett was watching her. She gave him a quick wave, then hurried over to the table with the punch.

He held out a paper cup full of cherry-red punch. As she reached for the cup, she stuffed her small clutch, which she had decided to bring with her at the last second, into her pocket. She smiled.
Perfect
, she thought.

“Before you ask, yes, it's spiked. Vodka. It's gross, but it was all they could come up with,” Brett explained. Maddy and Brett had been friends since seventh grade. He'd been a bit stumped with a math assignment. Mrs. Crawford, their math teacher, had suggested Maddy tutor him, and they'd been best friends since. Brett, too, had a screwed-up family, so he never questioned why Maddy and Marcus lived virtually on their own with no supervision or anyone to answer to.

Maddy accepted the paper cup of punch, took a sip, then grimaced at the bitter taste. She observed the group hitting the dance floor for the first fast song of the night. Cyndi Lauper's “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blared from the speakers onstage.

The senior class had wanted to hire a band, but their fund-raising projects hadn't produced enough cash, so they'd settled for a local disc jockey to play popular songs throughout the evening. She thought this was better because the music sounded as it should, not some half-baked band trying its best to mimic the latest tunes.

Maddy watched several of her classmates, all decked out in their best finery, as they swirled and swayed to the music blaring from the giant speakers onstage.

“You want to dance?” Brett asked.

She laughed, tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder. “No, I do not. You and Carla should, though.”

Maddy knew Brett was trying to make her feel comfortable, but at this point, she was okay. She was actually enjoying watching the couples dance. “Go on,” she urged Brett. “This is your last prom.”

Carla, petite, with gorgeous wavy black hair and eyes to match, looped her arm through Brett's. “Maddy's right. We're at the end of the road here, and I don't want to miss a single mile of it. Come on.”

Carla led Brett to the center of the gymnasium. The girly sound of Cyndi Lauper was replaced with the slow, soft music of Luther Vandross's “Always and Forever.” The couples danced as close to each other as they could without being admonished. Too close, and the chaperones were instructed to remove the couple from the dance floor. Maddy watched with a touch of sadness. Here she was at her senior prom and about to turn eighteen and graduate in a few weeks, and she'd never had a real date. So much of her free time was spent studying and working. And trying to survive. A normal social life was something she'd often dreamed about, but her lifestyle forced her to be a realist. It was not going to happen for her. Marcus, yes. His only interests were football and girls, in that order. He'd never bothered to look for a part-time job because most of his free time was spent on the football field or with whoever happened to be his girl of the week. Where he got all the money he threw around—and she'd seen him do this more than once—remained a mystery to her. It was possible their mother supplied him with funds. She'd made it very clear from as far back as she could remember that Marcus truly was her golden boy. Eyes and all.