Page 64 of Sugar Coated Secrets

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m not laughing at you, Katie. I can’t do any of that.”

“Why not?” she asks, confused.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "What I'm about to tell you cannot leave this car."

“Okay,” she says nervously.

"It stays here."

"Okay," she repeats.

I tell her about high school. I tell her about Ford, Chris, and Trent. I don’t tell her the rest or what exactly happened, but I tell her I was attacked without going into details because I’m not ready to visit the dark room in my mind; I’ve managed to keep it shut.

“Is that why you acted like you didn’t remember Ford when he showed up?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

She leans back in her seat. “Shit. Here, I was encouraging you and thought he was a racing god.”

“It’s not your fault, and what happened isn’t his. Not really.”

"But he could have acted differently toward you. I mean, before.”

“He left the country before prom. It wasn’t his fault, and I can’t hate him for not wanting me, Katie. I can’t blame me for being stupid enough to think he would look at me the way I wanted him to.”

“Then why is he here sniffing around you?”

"I question myself every time I see him. Sometimes I think he is trying to absolve his friends or maybe his name. Reputation. Celebrities are worried about their past coming to light.”

“Huh, Ford is really a bully. I could see it, but I never would have guessed based on the way he looks at you.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Apparently, anything. So that is where Danny fits in all this, and he turned out to be..."

“A liar like the rest,” I finish for her, looking down the road, trying to see if I can find the house I saw.

The trees shift in the light breeze. The sun shines through the trees, revealing a brown roof in the distance. The house is a small one, no larger than a cabin.

I open the door.

“Dulce, where are you going?”

“I need to see something,” I say. Before I close the door, I look down at her. “I’ll be right back.”

My heart is racing, but I’m confident that either someone lives there, it is abandoned, or Dean from the tow truck was full of shit. Maybe the old man doesn’t live there anymore. The story Dean fed me couldn’t have been recent.

“Are you crazy?” Katie yells from behind me. Her car door opens and slams. “I’m not going to let you go alone!”

“I’ve been called plenty of things, but crazy was never one of them,” I shoot back.

She catches up to me, out of breath, looking back every few seconds. “What are you doing out here?” She pauses when I don’t answer. “Is this where it happened?”

“Yeah,” I say, looking between the brush of trees, treading carefully.

"That's why you had the panic attack," she says, speaking more to herself than to me. “Is that…”

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