Secrets give a person power over those who have been left in the dark. They give a person control, but they almost always erode trust. At times, I wished for the days before the truth was revealed. But once secrets are out in the open, one can never go back. When I think back now to how all of these secrets started unfolding, I realize that my first days at school had been so different from any other. I should have known that things were only going to get worse.

But on the first day of my sophomore year, all I could think of was how excited I was to be back amongst my friends after a summer spent apart. That morning I ran across the street waving at Ray, the crossing guard who had been a consistent presence since Kindergarten. He had always been old, hair curling out his ears, and with thick tufts of gray sticking out of his leather aviator hat. His brown grin had the hallmark of years of coffee stains. He asked, “Where’s Charlie today?”

“He slept in.” I smiled.

“Aye, summer is a hard one to get over.” He raised his coffee cup at me in a gesture of solidarity.

He had no idea just how true that was. My summer was certainly a hard one to get over, but not for the reason he suggested.

I sidestepped teenagers slamming their parents’ car doors and rushed across the school grounds. If I had anything of my mother’s, it was her long legs. I did not get her graceful stride though. I meandered awkwardly through clusters of congregating students as I headed toward the cafeteria building.

The cafeteria was also the school auditorium, and most significantly, it was the place where I found belonging. My friends and I would sit and eat breakfast together, often hearing distant trumpets and other racket coming from the adjoining band hall.

As I hit the sidewalk leading up to the building, I shuffled through band students and then stood just shy of the doorway a moment. I slid my long black hair back behind my ears. I had been dying it since 8th grade. This past summer the stylist added a layer of green near the nape of my neck. The green peeked out from under my black hair when I wore it down but was far more noticeable when I tossed my hair up in a ponytail. The piercing green color brought out hints of green from my own hazel eyes. Truth be known, I envied my mom’s long raven hair. It suited her. I was born with a mop of white hair, but it changed quickly to a dull brown. It was like my body wanted to ensure I was the most boring person possible. I spent a good deal of time both fighting and loving my mundane existence.

I took another moment to flatten my hair to keep the Texas humidity from causing immediate humiliation. Guaranteeing that my hair was in order was just one small way of making sure I limited the forms of embarrassment I could experience on my first day back at school. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and finally pulled open the heavy metal door. I stepped into the cafeteria where a few dozen high schoolers huddled together. There were times that the room would hit me with chatter and laughter so loud that I’d want to retreat, but I’d choose imminent suffocation to be near my friends.

Ms. Patty greeted me in the lunch line with her typical warmth and a big hug. She chattered away to me about her summer spent baking and visiting family members. Ms. Patty, a grandmotherly type who worked in the cafeteria, was kind to everyone. But, for some reason, she was always especially nice to me. Her hair was a dark gray with a few beautiful streaks of silver, softly wound up into a loose bun that she covered with a hairnet. She usually wore crisp button-up shirts and wonderfully unique aprons. My mom had such a fondness for her that she even got her an apron last year for Christmas. It had light pink peonies on it. Ms. Patty always wore a brooch on her blouse, and she was wearing my favorite, a sparkly black rose. It paired very nicely with her black apron that was covered in a sea of white dots. It was pretty funny that she and I adored each other the way we did. My style was a pretty stark contrast to the 50’s housewife look that Ms. Patty preferred.

After Ms. Patty finished up her stories and gave me another hug, I took a tray and ran it along the horizontal bars, picking up fresh fruit, milk, and muffins for breakfast. After I exited the line, I scanned the crowd for my friends. I spotted them, sitting at our usual table. The weight lifted from my chest as I crossed the cafeteria.

Chloe was showing off a set of tarot cards to Emery at the table. Emery looked up at me with her beautiful blue-green eyes and freckles that matched her dark blonde hair. While her hair was pulled into a ponytail, the humidity had caused her shorter hairs to curl wildly around her face.

Emery exclaimed, “Kally! I’m so glad you’re here. I hope you’ve packed your bag because we are headed on a tangent.” She laughed infectiously and glanced at Chloe with obvious accusation. Chloe rolled her dark brown eyes and adjusted her quirky floral glasses and resumed what must have been a full-blown saga about the history of tarot cards. I was so glad I missed it, but then again, I had really, really missed this.

The summer had been so long with everyone doing their own thing this year. Chloe was a camp counselor to at-risk youth. Emery had spent much of her summer traveling with her parents, working at the city pool, and helping with little league. Charlie and his brother worked on their uncle’s farm in a rural area about an hour from Austin, and Aiden worked for his grandfather’s business. Sure, we all texted a lot, but being with them every day was what I needed.        

I sat down at the table, grinning, and listened to the tail end of the tarot card chronicle before asking if they’d seen Charlie or Aiden yet.

Emery responded, “I haven’t seen either of them yet, but Aiden has been hanging out with the football guys more this summer, so it’s very possible Aiden’s over there.” She gestured to the jock table behind her. Emery could have easily sat with them. She played volleyball, basketball, ran track, played lacrosse, softball, you name it. Emery probably could have fit in anywhere, yet she chose us.

Emery rummaged a bit in her backpack before glancing at me with blatant amusement. “Wait. Why are you asking me about Charlie? He’s your best friend, and you live next door to him! How the heck do you not know where he is?”

“I haven’t seen him since he got back. He texted late last night saying that he was sleeping in today. I figured he’d be here by now though. I’m sure he’s…,” I started to respond before Chloe interrupted.

“Hey, Charlie.”

Charlie sat down beside me and slid off his backpack. He leaned into my shoulder with his briefly and smiled. “Don’t listen to Kal. She left me hanging this morning,” he said playfully.

“Well, hello there. Who is this?” Emery said with arched eyebrows and in a light and flirty tone, clearly pointing out Charlie’s dramatically different appearance.

Charlie had come back hot. It was like he’d forgotten our pact: stay homely and under the radar forever. I mean, good for him. He’d evidently added a good bit of muscle, and the sun was very kind to him. I didn’t get those kinds of favors from the sun. I was either pasty white or beet red; there was no in-between.

“Charlie, you got tall this summer,” Emery continued with a hint of jealousy. She was nothing more than 5 foot 4 and needed every inch she could get before basketball season.

“Yeah. I, uh, had a good s-summer. I think I am about 6 foot 1 now.” He grinned.

His tanned skin made his teeth whiter and his light blonde hair even blonder. I rolled my eyes in an attempt to hide my own gawking. As I turned, I suddenly realized there were dozens of eyes looking our way—all female eyes. Well, almost all female eyes. All looking at our table. Right at Charlie.

Not okay. That was definitely not in the plan. Charlie and I had really, legitimately decided we would stay pretty low-key in high school and just skim by. The less you are noticed, the better. That had certainly worked out well for us our freshman year. He had finally made progress in speech therapy for his stuttering. The teasing had mostly stopped for him, and honestly, I’d rather go unnoticed myself.

Charlie looked over at me and saw my new nose-piercing, complete with a green ball stud to match the bottom layers of my hair. “Hey. Cool stud.”

A couple of the football players walked by just in time to hear that and stopped. “Thanks for noticing there, Charlie boy. You are quite the stud yourself, Ch-Ch-Ch-Charlie,” Brock Hammer said before slapping him on the back and walking off laughing.

Amber Iverson, the most popular girl in our school, walked up and grabbed Brock’s arm. She glared directly at me. I never understood Amber’s intense animosity toward me. She had been hateful the past few years, and I had no idea why I had been singled out by her. Every waking moment of high school, you had to be wildly aware of your back: who had it and who was stabbing it. Amber was most certainly stabbing mine any time she could. But at that moment, she was the least of my concerns. My eyes fixed on Brock.

I felt my face grow hot as my heart raced and my fists balled up around the edges of my backpack. “Go to hell, Brock!”

Brock spun in my direction, but Charlie stood quickly to meet him. The sound of his chair scraping across the floor sent all eyes on us. With Charlie’s sudden growth spurt, they were now eye to eye and chest to chest. Charlie didn’t move an inch. Emery’s voice was about all I could hear, a bit high-pitched, trying to get them to stop.

As luck would have it, Aiden had just come into the cafeteria and quickly placed himself in between them. With Aiden’s sudden presence, the tension eased just enough to break up the stand-off.

“Better watch your back, Ch-Ch-Ch-Charlie,” Brock said with finality before leaving. I felt Amber’s sharp glare burn into me, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of looking her way.

My heart was still beating out of my chest, though.

Yeah. Way to stay undercover, Kally.

If this is any indication of how my sophomore year will be going, I want nothing to do with it, I thought. Looking back, I had no idea just how much worse it would get in the weeks ahead.

Charlie didn’t even miss a beat, though. He sat back down calmly like none of it even happened. He was just… Charlie.

Chloe broke the silence. “Well, that escalated quickly.”

“What was that about?!” Aiden asked incredulously. He also looked different from a summer of sun; his darkened complexion rivaled his dark hair and even darker eyes.

“Brock was just being a jerk to Charlie, and I told him to go to hell,” I explained.

“What could go wrong?” Charlie said with sarcasm.

“Brilliant,” Aiden added. “Man, I’m glad y’all didn’t mess up my hair. I worked hard on it.” He styled his hair differently every day. It was his one vanity.

Emery added, “It does look quite nice today.”

Charlie nodded in agreement.

While they talked of other things, I replayed the encounter with Brock in my head a few times before I was snapped back to reality by the first bell. Its ring echoed through the high ceilings of the auditorium. Chloe, Emery, and I all had Literature together for 1st period. Charlie had speech class with Coach Brumley. It was unfortunate for Charlie that speech class is a required course in our high school.

Aiden had remedial algebra. Being the star kicker had its benefits—the most important being that kickers hardly ever get concussions. He barely passed his classes as it was. He was a solid C student, thanks to his ridiculous inability to take tests. Aiden overthought even the simplest test questions. What he lacked in test-taking abilities, he made up for by being a genuinely good person.

Emery, Chloe, and I headed across the courtyard to Building A. It was the oldest building on campus. The floors reeked of the 60s. There was probably asbestos in the ceiling and lead paint on the walls. What carpet the building did have was in the locker area and stained from years of abuse. Even after a clear attempt to clean the carpet over the summer, it remained pretty disgusting. A bucket sat on the floor, catching drops of water that fell rhythmically from the ceiling. It hadn’t rained recently, so one could only imagine what that was.

Across from the locker area was Mr. Lawrence’s literature class. Roll call started quickly after we seated ourselves, and the second bell rang. My name was called first, “Kalysto Anderson?”

The nice thing about being called first was that I didn’t have a lot of time to agonize over how quickly to respond, if I should say “present” or “here,” or what tone I should use. “You can call me Kally,” I said while raising my hand.

“Ah, you’re one of those,” he remarked jokingly before jotting down my preferred name on his attendance sheet.

On he went with the roll call until all twenty-one of us were accounted for. Mr. Lawrence was a favorite teacher in the school. He also taught night classes at the local college. He had salt and pepper hair, a beard, and glasses. Like any other teacher, he seemed decades older than us. But, perhaps because he was also a college professor, he was far more relatable. He had a well-known penchant for coffee and not so well-known penchant for nicotine. 

After reviewing the class syllabus for the semester, we went straight into Edgar Allen Poe, the start of our poetry series. It always seemed that the most memorable poets over the ages were on drugs, psychotic, or had childhoods riddled with trauma. My mother would likely make an excellent poet.

Charlie had missed a lot over the summer. While we spoke several times a week, I hadn’t wanted to bother him with the drama of my mom’s worsening mental state when we did talk. It was too heavy for a phone conversation or a text message. My mother had undergone a morose metamorphosis that I could neither understand nor explain. I barely recognized her. Living in denial was a far better approach.