Page 141 of Wicked Little Secret

I don’t know what to think as I sit down on a stone bench and drop my face into my hands.

“I don’t understand why you’ve lied,” I said, my throat aching with every word.

“Would it have made it any better to know the truth?” Mom asked.

“You mean that you’re my aunt and not my mother? You mean that my entire life has been a lie!?”

“No,” Mom snapped immediately.AuntBrooksnapped as she grew indignant again. “You think we had any other choice? Your mother couldn’t be in those circles as a young, pregnant teen girl… a Black girl. She would’ve been outcast. Banished.”

“Isn’t that what happened anyway, or was that all a lie too?”

“The mistreatment Jos suffered was not a lie.”

“So she was found out? And what about Edward Oliver? That a lie too?!”

Aunt Brook shut down after that. With a somber shake of her head, she left the room and refused to answer…

Peaches gives a squeaky little meow when I walk through the apartment door. She’s waiting for me perched on the armrest of my sofa, her bright eyes shining with affection.

I walk over to scratch behind her pointy ears. “You’re my only companion, my sweet girl. Everything else… everyone else…”

…it’s all a lie.

She leaps into my lap as I plop down on the sofa and stare blankly at my latest sculpture. Where do I go fromhere? Should I carry on with my revenge? How can I when it seems so many secrets and lies have been exposed and I can no longer tell what’s real anymore?

A week goes by where I’m trapped in a sullen stupor. Concentrating on any task feels near impossible. My course work piles up by the hour. Any art projects are indefinitely on hold. Outside of class, only quick runs to the local market, no one sees me.

I lock myself into my apartment and drive myself to the brink of insanity.

The worst part is Professor Adler’s denial.

Every time I show up in his class with eyes only for him, he has eyes for everyone else.

He’s icing me out. He’s pushing me away, treating me like I’m nothing.

Less than nothing.

And though it might be deserved for what I did, it makes my chest hurt. I find it difficult to breathe as the hour stretches on and he calls on Heather Driscoll with her broad, boastful smile. She shoots me a sidelong glance once she gives him the wrong answer and he offers an amusing quip versus the condescending retort he’d utter in the past.

It’s the academic version of torture—your favorite professor that you admire, ignoring your existence for the blonde twit who can barely read.

The envy blooms inside me like a toxin that’s poisonous yet incurable. Rationale tells me to let it go. Clearly, things between us are over.

Professor Adler is moving on. He wants nothing to do with me.

I should take it as a sign to either proceed with the rest of my plan or figure out a new path forward.

That would be the sane, rational thing to do.

Yet as Friday morning rolls around and I meet up with Macey in the student union, she informs me Heather won’t be joining us for coffee.

Macey shrugs, her attention fixed on the menu up ahead. “Heather will meet us in class. Something about Professor Adler asking her to come by his office an hour before class starts.”

An arctic chill washes over me. I go still at once, like I’ve been delivered the worst news of my life.

“What is it?” Macey asks, barely noticing. “Don’t tell me you’re mad about the flavors they’re offering again?—”

“I have to go.”

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