BONUS MATERIAL – DEADLY LITTLE SECRET
BY LAURIE FARIA STOLARZ
CONFIDENTIAL CONFESSIONS:
RANDOM EXCERPTS FROM BEN’S PRIVATE BLOG
7/15 – 12:04 a.m.
Homework assignment from my shrink
By Ben Carter
Some days are worse than others. Like her birthday. And new year’s eve. The anniversary of our first date.
And the anniversary of her death.
I’ll remind myself of what happened, and completely lose my focus. I’ll think about how much time has passed, and about all the things that Julie’s missing by not being here.
Because of me.
Some nights before I settle down to sleep, I’ll replay the incident over in my mind, asking myself if there was anything I could’ve done differently, aside from not being there at all.
Julie and I had gone hiking through the woods that day. We used to love hiking together – finding new trails, being on our own, packing a picnic, and searching for lost objects.
But today things were different. They felt different. I could tell Julie wasn’t happy.
“Do you want to sit for a while?” I pointed to an alcove of trees and a couple rock slabs.
“No,” she said, a full four feet in front of me. “Let’s just keep moving.”
I tried to make her laugh by pretending to trip. I tried offering her a hand over some rocks, and asking about the school play she was in. But she just kept giving me one- or two-word answers: “Be careful.”; “No thanks.”; “Good.”
I guess you could say I could sense she’d been pulling away. For the two weeks that lead up to the incident, she wasn’t calling me as much as she used to. She was no longer stopping by my locker before classes either. In school, I’d ask her if everything was okay at home, alright with her friends, if something had been bothering her. But her response was always the same: “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Once we’d reached the edge of a cliff, there was nowhere else to go. But down.
And Julie finally had to face me.
“What going on?” I asked.
She seemed so uncomfortable, gazing down at her feet. “I don’t quite know how to say this. I mean, I really care about you. I just think we should take a break for a little while.”
“What?” I asked, sure I must have heard her wrong.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “You’re, like, the sweetest boy I’ve ever known. It’s just…I don’t know. I think we work better as friends.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s just it…you never do anything wrong. You’re like the perfect boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I said, completely shell-shocked. My whole body shook and I could feel my face heat up. “Then why?”
She shrugged again and let out a smirk, which absolutely crushed me. Because while she was in a smirking frame of mind, I was on the brink of tears.
