The Secrets We Keep

The Fourteenth Chapter

Hayden

I'm able to jimmy the sliding door that separates the cafeteria from the outside. Once it's open, I take off at a run, trying to figure out where what just fell down landed. 

I see it soon enough. It's a lumpy pile on the walkway leading to the gardens. I put a hand to my mouth when I see something red start seeping out of it. 

"Please no," I say as I start walking toward it. "Please don't be what I think this is." Hey, maybe someone upstairs was arguing over a sack of tomatoes, and then threw it out of the window?

But that's not the case here. As I get closer, the lump becomes clearer. I see jean-clad legs and a white shirt splattered with blood. I stumble back a step. It's a girl. I don't know who it is. Upon impact, the head has split open and now there's just blood everywhere. It covers the face and just keeps spreading and spreading and spreading. 

I've seen dead bodies before. Growing up with a dad who's a detective means I've peered into a lot of files I shouldn't have. But looking at a picture of a crime scene is way different than seeing a dead person in real life. 

You can't smell pictures. As I take in a shaky breath, the smell of iron hits me straight on. It makes me gag and triggers something in my body that makes my bile rise up. I stumble back again, unable to close my eyes against what I'm seeing. 

The head is cracked open and I can't stop staring at that mess of a face. Someone just died. And all I can do is look. All the color seems to drain away until all I see is that pool of crimson blood. It keeps moving toward me until I look down and see it gaining for the bottom of my shoes. 

"Phone. Nine-one-one," I say, the words coming out stilted as I try to recall what I'm supposed to do. When you find a dead body, that's what you do. You call the police. You report what you've seen. 

My hands go to my blazer as I keep walking backward from the growing pool of blood. But as my hands dig into my empty pockets I remember I no longer have my phone. It's locked in the drawer in Mr. Johnson's classroom. 

A laugh escapes as that blood keeps coming. I raise my hands again and cover my mouth as I continue to laugh. Fuck, I'm having a nervous breakdown. "Help!" I shout, stumbling over my feet and falling over as the blood brushes up against the white part of my shoe. "Someone help me!"

My voice comes out as a scream and once I've fallen over and landed on my backside, I cover my face with my arms as if I could block out the scene I've just witnessed. But even with my eyes pressed tightly closed, I can still see that cracked and broken head. 

"Somebody please come!" I whimper as I feel something wet soak into the bottom of my plaid school skirt. It's her blood, the dead girl's blood. I'm sitting in it. 

I hear something then. It's like the sound of running feet. But even that simple sound isn't able to break me out of my shock. 

I'm shaking. I realize it when I lower my arms from my face and open my eyes. My arms shake in front of my face and when I look down to the ground, wanting to push myself up out of the blood, I see I'm sitting in a lot of it. It's stopped pooling to the edge of my skirt but my legs are covered in the stuff. Some of it's dried and it's turned my white socks a reddy-brown color. 

"Hayden!" Someone shouts as I start wiping at the blood on the bare skin of my legs. 

"No," I say, something wet sliding down my face as I start rubbing at my legs with bruising strength. "Get it off of me!" 

"Hayden!" The same voice from before calls again. It's closer now, familiar. But I don't look back to the speaker, too focused on my task. "Oh my God."