Words in the Earth

I started collecting secrets when I was just six years old.

There's a hole in my parents' yard, still, I'm sure of it, where I buried them like bones.  Hard to remember, exactly, but I occasionally threw a stone in there, a piece of string, a candy wrapper.  I'd whisper into the hole:

Never never never tell.

I'd go back inside and curl up with the fuzzy black cat Momma brought home from the ASPCA.  I'd tell her sometimes.  The cat, not Momma.  Blacky didn't speak English.  Blacky wouldn't tell.  And I had to never, ever tell.

 Blacky is gone now.  She's also buried in the back yard.  But nowhere near the secrets.  I miss her so much, still.

I get dressed every day in almost the same clothes.  Jeans.  Hoodie.  One of the t-shirts I stole from my dad's going-to-Goodwill box when I was fifteen.  These shirts mostly have logos from bands I didn't know about until I Googled them.

Google knows every secret.  But not mine.

He's on Google.  I found him last week and since then going to class has been so hard.  A nightmare.  No string in the ground, no dead cat can keep him from knowing me.  Who I am.  Where I am.  This is true in my waking dreams, anyway.  The actual truth -- I don't know.  I don't know if he is keen on Google or Yahoo or even gives a damn.

I zip up my hoodie, all the way up to my neck, over The Dead Milkmen logo. 

Outside the dorm there's a group of girls handing out flyers for a rally.  One looks me in the eye like she knows something.  I can almost hear her voice through her tight-closed smile: Sylvia, you Googled him, and we know he's real.

I never even told Momma.  And after a day, it felt like it was better in the ground.  After a week it felt like it belonged there.  And as it iced over winter after winter, I kept every single secret -- every time we did things --  there until he moved away and I could breathe except then whenever someone -- anyone -- touched me it felt like another secret.

Never never never tell.

I moved so far away from home to go to college and now it feels like the secrets are breathing down my neck, like they chased me from the hole out of my back yard and across the country.  I'm just trying to  cross the quad to get to the cafeteria.  But first, a girl hands me a piece of chalk.

"We're writing words of strength and empowerment," she says.  "For International Women's Week."

"I thought that was in March," I say. 

"It is March?" she says, voice turned up, a half-question.

"Oh."

Secrets can stop time.

I take the chalk.  It's pink and thick and the dust rolls into my hands, fills the crevices in my fingers.  I have never touched before.  I have never been touched.  If I don't say it, it isn't true.  If I whisper it to the chalk and put it in a hole in the ground, it's gone.

Never never never.

I crouch low to the ground and my hand finally stops shaking.  Finally. Just a little.  I find a place on the graying asphalt and write, big swinging letters.  My eyes are watering, but that's just the chalk dust.

"Wow," the girl says.  "Nice!"

I walk away.  I don't smile, but I breathe.  I breathe a lot.

Behind me, words in the tar: NEVER AGAIN.