Page 1 of Keeping Our Secrets

CHAPTER 1

Mairi

I hit the snooze button and stared up at the ceiling.

A kaleidoscope of stars stared back at me. It didn’t surprise me I was in Michael’s room again. It didn’t matter which room I went to sleep in, most mornings this was where I woke up.

I rolled over to glance at the clock.

The movement was just enough to make my stomach turn again.

I was up and out of the bed so fast my head spun, barely making it into the Jack and Jill bathroom that connected his bedroom to mine.

A familiar dull ache in my chest reminded me that Michael wouldn’t be pounding on the door for me to hurry.

My brother wouldn’t be banging on that door. Not today, or tomorrow. Never again would we bicker about the timing of our showers, or how much hot water was left. No matter how many years passed, this ache would be a constant reminder of him being gone.

Especially on days like today where I really could have guilted him into holding my hair as I emptied the contents of my stomach for the fiftieth time this week.

Tears sprung to my eyes as I used my elbows to brace myself over the porcelain bowl. I closed my eyes, hoping the feeling would pass.

Both feelings.

If only grief was a person, so I could smack the shit out of them.

I pushed myself back from the toilet bowl just enough to situate my body so that my back was against the cool bathtub. Then I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my head there while I thought back to how I got here.

This whole mess all started a year ago.

The night I almost died.

The truth was, at times, I still felt like I was dying. It took some time for me to stop wishing I had died the day I lost my other half, my twin. It was getting better day by day, even if a chunk of me was forever gone.

A million different scenarios ran through my head on almost a daily basis since the accident.

Why did we go have to go out that night?

Could we have done anything different?

Michael and I left my best friend Jen’s house just after midnight on a school night.

The roads were clear.

There was no rain, sleet or snow.

Neither of us had been drinking.

It was only a night of movies and popcorn. With Jen’s parents in the other room, none of us could have gotten away with sneaking a drink. Even if we‘d been drinking, Michael would have stayed sober. Every time Jen and I drank at parties, Michael was the self-appointed designated driver.

What we hadn’t counted on was someone without the same sense of self preservation. A middle-aged man who thought he could drive home with a blood alcohol level two times the legal limit. A drunk driver who less than two blocks away from the pub ran a red light and broadsided our vehicle.

Maybe we would have been okay if he hadn’t have been driving eighty kilometres per hour.

The only thing I knew for sure these days was that I sure as hell wasn’t going to blame my best friend for the reason Michael was with us that night.

My brother and I had always been close, but we had our own set of friends. Lately, he had been tagging along with me because he had a thing for Jen. Unlike most sisters, I didn’t care that he wanted to crash our girl time. I actually wanted them to get together because if everything worked out, then Jen would be my sister for real.

To this day, I hadn’t told Jen about my brother’s true feelings.

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