Secret > Secret

The Game Changer

It was Mamma Mia rehearsal. Everyone was having a lot of fun rehearsing Lay All Your Love On Me, except Meredith and Brian.

"So you're telling me that this whole long song is just them coming onto each other, and then they don't even kiss. The boys just grab his ass and drag him off?"

"Yes, Brian, essentially." Matt was annoyed.

"Jesus Christ, Matt."

Matt raised an eyebrow. "You saved this until the week before performing?"

Brian shrugged, like, fair point, and went back over to continue rehearsing.

Lauren was glad she wasn't in this scene. It gave her time to read the letter over and over again.

Her life had just changed in every way possible.

The bump she was now hiding by wearing longer and more flowing clothing every day would be obvious if she wore one tight dress, and if it weren't for Joe and Traci - who, it turns out, was in the costume department - there would be not only a scandalous play, but a scandalous lead and a scandalous secret.

She was accepted.

She had been accepted into the college of her dreams. Early acceptance.

If she took it, she left in three weeks.

No one found out about the baby. No one found out who the father was. No one found out.

She would leave, telling her closest friends and family only, and she would leave a mystery behind her the likes of which the small town had never seen before.

She told her parents, who were supportive and happy, and then she told them about the baby. They disapproved, but they supported her, and she felt okay.

She told Joe, who gave her a massive hug and told her he'd miss her and he wanted her to do it, to take the chance, and that he still wanted to know but that he trusted her, and she felt happy and sad at the same time.

She told Julia, swearing her to absolute secrecy and biting back the story of the pregnancy, and Julia, luckily not pregnant after all and just panicky, said she'd miss her.

It was opening night and as Meredith stood alone, three letters clutched in her hands, Lauren smoothed her costume, and Julia winked at her across the stage.

"I have a dream..."

Lauren felt a lump in her throat when she began to sing. She could see this song describing her, with a child she hadn't intended to have but that's how fate worked, she supposed. When she and Meredith sang together, she felt a tear slip out.

"Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture, and save it from the funny tricks of time. Slipping through my fingers..."

When she finished the song, watching Meredith stand against the backdrop of the hill, she could feel the tears slipping out of her eyes.

"Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning. Waving goodbye, with an absentminded smile..."

When Joey stops her and she sings 'The Winner Takes It All', she really is sobbing - and maybe it's just the stupid pregnancy hormones and maybe it's the undeniable guilt of this secret and maybe it's that she knows she won't get the happy ending their characters get with him.

Or maybe it's the way he's looking at her, concerned and caring.

Except it can't be.

It can't be because he doesn't care about her; he can't care about anyone if he was willing to fuck his best friend's girlfriend. It can't be because she hasn't ever done anything worthy of someone looking at her with so much in their eyes.

It can't be because she's leaving, and she'll never see him ever again.

It can't hurt this much to just look at someone, and it can't hurt this much.

It hurts, so, so, much, and she doesn't even know why.

So when he takes her face in his hands and presses their lips together because she can't move, she tastes the salt of the tears on her lips, and she snaps back to character because of how awfully weak it is that she couldn't even kiss him for a moment, when it's a play, and that's all it is.

And then it's over.

Everything is over.

And when she tugs her lips up in a smile that becomes genuine as she takes her bow, watching people rise from their seats for her, Lauren Lopez, a girl who has made fatal mistakes, she realises that there can be forgiveness.

You can atone for your sins, and although this whole thing has screwed any belief that if God exists, he is good in any way, she doesn't feel like she's on a one-way ride to hell any more.

She doesn't feel like she's going to heaven, of course - she is lying every day and especially to the person who should know the truth - but she feels like she might be going somewhere in the middle.

The play's set in Greece, and she likes their version of the afterlife a little better.

Elysium, the greatest place, reserved for heroes - the Fields of Punishment - Tartarus beneath - for sinners and monsters - and between them, Asphodel. Millions of miles of nothing but floating spirits with no memories, and there's no fighting against your fate - the god ruling it all, the place deeper and darker with stories than any other - Hades.

Hades is the lone god, left by his brothers to rule beneath the earth watching over a kingdom of lives lost.

And when Lauren looks back over the town, alone in her car, she feels a slight sense of vertigo at the mere thought of the earth opening up beneath her as it did for Persephone, and then she feels like the lone god.

And then she brushes her stomach, and she remembers she is not alone any longer.

And then she's gone.

Wow.

So, this is the end.

A lot has happened with this story - I started it ages ago, it was the first proper story I published, and when I look back at it I really want to change those first few chapters, but, so it goes.

I'm working on a sequel set five years later, and I'll update when I have it to a standard I like - and I really want to thank you if you're still reading it. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of, but it is a story I've now finished.

AGAIN, THANK YOU.