The Secret (Magnolia Grove #4) - SERIES COMPLETE

Chapter 6 - {Holden}

EIGHT AND A HALF YEARS AGO

THERE'S THIS LOOKOUT that's right outside of Magnolia Grove. It's a local hangout for kids. Jumping off will plunge you into a hot spring with a waterfall splashing in the distance. It's beautiful. Violet loved this place. She'd ask me to drop her off up here. As I sit here on the hood of my car and watch the water do its thing, never ending, always being replenished with more, I shake my head. She was meeting Wells Fucking Spencer up here. I was just too caught up in my own crap to notice. And I couldn't wait to get her out of my car, out of my way, out of my life for a few minutes. I swallow and let the tears I hold back when I'm around other people fall down my cheeks. There's no one here. It's just me.

Because I skipped class for the first time today.

Fuck the perfect attendance.

Fuck school.

Fuck everyone.

It was like a blanket of plastic had been thrown over me, trapping me, suffocating me. I couldn't pass Cammie one more time in the hall and have her look at me like today was going to be the day I change my mind.

It's not my decision. It's her father's. And if I tell her that, one of two things will happen: she won't believe me and any hope I had that maybe we could get through anything together would come crashing down the way it did in that hospital conference room or she'll believe me, be naïve enough to think we can take on the world at sixteen, and eventually end up resenting me for the wedge I put between her and her father. Blood's thicker than water.

Lying back on the hood, I stare at the sky. There's not a cloud to be found for miles. Rays from the sun highlight thick bands in the atmosphere. Glancing back at the water, I compare the two. The rush of the water is soothing. The rays of the sun, even though it's cooler because it's winter, are soothing. Even though there's a serenity to the falls and the spring, it's tumultuous. The sun seems quiet, constant, and dependable. It shows up every day. But all it takes is staring at it for a second to be burned. If I jump into this spring, I could suck in a bunch of water and never come back up. That'd probably take a little longer than a second, but I bet I could do it. Would anyone care?

Six months ago today, my biggest worry in the world was whether I should drive despite being on restriction or walk to the pool to be with Cammie, Brody, Amie, and Eddie. That was it. Well, and the confusion that comes from falling for your best friend—worrying about screwing it up to hell and back—and then losing her forever.

Typical high school shit.

By the end of that hot summer day, the friendship was pretty well ruined without me ever getting to taste her, to hold her in my arms the way I wanted, to follow through with my promise to check on her at the hospital.

Instead, I made more promises. Just not to her. To Vi, my dying sister. The one who'd told me over and over things weren't what they seemed, that she didn't have an eating disorder. But despite that, I'd been on the Internet, searched her symptoms. She was a classic case. For that and for cancer.

Letting the rays of the sun beat down on me, I yearn for the intense heat it causes, the scorching of my skin. I want to be branded by them. For what, I don't know. It's just like we were the same. I used to be constant, dependable, always showed up.

But that's the day that started the slow burn to sending my life up in flames. It's as if I looked at the sun too long, and it set me on fire. Continuously, yet gradually, the flames have whipped at my soul. They're burning me alive from the inside out. Every day is agonizing hell where I replay all the events over and over, wondering what I could have done to have forged a different outcome.