Friends Don't Tell Secrets (please read and comment!)

by Claudia in for it

I looked down, hiding my face. The murky blue poolwater felt like ice on my skin, the willows and sycamores surrounding the pool now cast dark shadows across it. I couldn't bring my eyes up to meet his.

"You like him?" He repeated, accusatory.

I stared hard at the water by my "friend" Audrey. Why? Why would she tell him? I hadn't done anything-had I? Friends don't tell secrets...

Especially to twin brothers.

My head snapped back to the present, even if I wished it had stayed in the past.

"Um... yeah." My voice came out high-pitched and whiny. It was like I was hearing myself do things, say things, things I hadn't done or said. I was still me, but it wasn't my body anymore, just a stranger.

I didn't like them very much.

I made the mistake of looking up at his gray-blue eyes. They were squinched together, his mouth slightly open. But what got me the most was the unmistakable look of betrayal. As a sister, a friend, a twin, even. I was ashamed. I hadn't changed, but it was as if I had, like I was some new person that even I didn't know anymore.

I looked down again. I'd always been the girl whose only friends were boys, who could throw a fastball with the best of 'em. Not one who had crushes...

"Yeah," Audrey continued, while I stared at her, wishing she would just //shut up//, and //leave me alone//. But she went on: "She liked him in 3rd grade!"

I felt a lump rise in my throat.

The pool was still, silence clouded the air with a thick blanket. A horn honked.

The lump grew bigger and bigger, until I swallowed hard and tightened my jaw, trying to only listen to the birds chirping in the old sycamore. Tears sprung to my eyes, even as much as I willed them not to. The smoggy blue sky ran silver in front of me.

"I'm getting out," I said, in a choked up voice that still wasn't my own. I ran to my towel (the one that used to make me laugh- it had the Tasmanian Devil on it- but today he just looked grumpy), sprinting up to my room.

I changed quickly, shoving headphones on, playing Green Day's "Jesus of Suburbia", a song I didn't really like, but was the loudest one I could find. It was perfect, having enough guitar solos to drive even Hendrix out a window, and (hopefully) enough chaotic rhythms to blast the memory of what happened at the pool straight out of my mind.

It didn't work.