The Secret

Chapter 26: Give It a Rest

"NO!!!" I yell.

I lose feeling as I disassociate myself from the moment and I imagine losing my father:

"Dad!" I yell, shaking him. "Dad, wake up!"

I cry over him, in heartbreak. It's my fault that he is dying.

"Oh my god." I say, crying, as I realize this.

He looks at me with little consciousness.

"I love you, son. Get the secret contained." He says.

"What? You knew about the secret?!" I say shocked.

My imagination just went wild as I kind of daydreamed in a nightmarish way. I wake up from what I had been imagining.

"Zane!" Nelly yells, trying to get my attention.

"What is it?" I say, looking around, finally focusing.

"Your father just slipped into a coma." Nelly reveals.

"It seems to be that he is okay, though." Henry adds.

"Oh my god," I cry tears of joy.

"Can I have a second with him?" I ask.

"Sure." Henry says.

"Do you mind if I stay in here with you, Zane? We need to talk." Nelly says.

Without looking her, I answer her in a cold tone, "Fine."

Henry leaves the room as I stare at my father on the table, desperately wishing he'd wake up.

"What do you want?" I snap at Nelly.

"I want to say that I am truly sorry." Nelly says. "I don't know what got into me or why I acted that way. I just kissed Henry after not resisting temptation and I didn't think about anything. I know I'm in the wrong, especially after I excused my actions earlier but I am truly sorry and I hope you can understand that."

"You humiliated me." I snap. "You humiliated me and you expect forgiveness? Do you even hear yourself right now? Do you hear how wrong you are?"

"I," Nelly pauses as she wipes a tear away, "I don't know what to say. Obviously, I shouldn't have done that. I get it and I get your pain, I don't expect you to forgive me. I just ask that we give it some time."

"I couldn't agree more." I say.

"The question is, how much time?" She asks. "I thought about days or even weeks."

"Forever." I say as I walk out of the room. I glance back through the door window to see Nelly crying over my father's body.

I can't believe her.

"Give it a rest." I hear someone say behind me.

It's Henry.

"Give what a rest?" I ask him.

"You don't have a chance with a girl like Nelly." Henry snares.

"Excuse me?" I snap.

"Nelly is never going to like you." He smiles.

"Then explain to me why should just begged for forgiveness." I say as his smile turns to a blank face from shock.

I walk past him and remember a flashback....

It was in school and a bully approached me.

"I see you've been eyeing Nelly." The bully shouts in the lunch room cafeteria. "Well the truth is she will never like you."

Without holding back, I punch him in the face and trip him, bringing him to his knees as he kicks me in the stomach and I fall on top of him. I punch him in the face again and he throws me across the floor, getting ready to kick me until the principal walks in.

"Well well well." The principal says. "The school's bully is at it again. To my office."

I smile as the bully is taken away and he looks back at me with an angry face. No one should tell me that Nelly doesn't like me because we are best friends. Were...

In the present, I hear a scream. It sounds like Nelly.

I run to see where the scream came from and I go to where my father is. Henry lays in the floor with things broken and strayed all across the floor, seeming that there has been a fight.

"What happened?" I ask, worried, as I go to help Henry up...as much as I hate him.

"Nelly." He says.

"What about her? Did you have a fight with her?" I say.

"No." He replies. "Nelly has been kidnapped."

"Oh no." I whisper.