16
SEDECIM
Finn
My secret is eating me alive, clawing at my skin, trying to get out. But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
You’reCrazyCrazyCrazyAndEveryoneKnowsIt.
I stare at my journal, at the brown leather cover, and I grab it, hurling it across the room. It slams into the wall, then flutters unharmed to the floor. I rush to grab it, to clutch it to my chest as I rock with it on the floor.
After a minute, something occurs to me.
Of course.
I can’t tell Calla, but I can tell my journal, the way I’ve spilled every other thing in my life onto its pages.
I grab a pen and then I press hard enough that it almost pushes through the page, as if my secret is bursting to get out as the words rush out through the ink.
Once it’s there, I feel better, calmer, as though I’ve confided in an old friend. I close the cover and leave it on the windowsill. As I flip off the light and walk through the door, I almost miss the hissing whisper in my mind….the sharp female voice that I just can’t get away from.
Coward.