Whispered Darkness by Jessica Sorensen Page 0,25
will more than likely wake up.”
Awesome. Just what I need—Harlynn’s dad catching me sneaking into her room.
I’m starting to grow wary about this whole going-into-her-room thing when she smiles at me and motions for me to come.
“You can come in, you know,” she teases. “Unless it’s too high of a climb for you. Then I can climb down and give you a boost.”
I crack a smile. “I think I can handle it.”
“I don’t know … You seem pretty hesitant about it.” The lamp in her room is on, highlighting her amusement.
And that makes me relax enough that I hoist myself into her room. Harlynn’s room, the only girl I’ve ever cared about.
“You have such pretty eyes,” she shyly told me when we were kids. “But they always look so sad.”
Her compliment had made my cheeks warm. No one had given me one in such a long time, and I literally had no idea what to do with it. In fact, I was so distracted by the compliment that my brain barely registered that she’d also been able to see the sadness in me. It was only later that her words really registered. And somehow, Harlynn managed to be the first person to give me a real compliment while also seeing me. It’s when I started really caring about her and loving her as a friend. And I may have fallen in love with her had our friendship not broke. After years of struggling to accept that, I finally came to terms with us never being friends again, only for us to be here now, together, in her room, with our souls intertwined and her looking at me like she did that day she shyly told me she saw me.
“You okay?” she asks.
I become aware that I’m staring at her and probably look like a freak.
“Yeah …” I force my gaze away from her and look at her walls that are covered with posters and photos. “I was just trying to remember the last time I was in your room.”
“It’s been a while.” She crosses her arms, seeming fidgety. “I’m sorry.”
My brows pull together. “For what?”
“For everything.” She shrugs. “For you not being in my room for a long time.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“No, it is,” she insists, heading for her bed. “You’re always welcome here. Any time you want, you can climb through my window. Or use the door.”
“Yeah, I don’t think your parents are going to be okay with that.”
“They will be after I tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
She sits down on her bed, her legs crisscrossed. “That you saved me.”
I promptly shake my head. “Harlynn, you can’t—”
“No, just let me finish please,” she cuts me off. “I understand why it’s important to keep what happened that night a secret, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and if I tell my mom to keep it a secret and tell her why, she will do it, Kings. I swear she will. And you don’t have to trust her. You just need to trust me. And if she knows what happened—what you did—everything will change. She’ll be able to see who you really are, instead of what Foster has convinced everyone to see. And I want that. I want her to be able to know what an amazing person you are.”
Maybe it’s because she called me Kings. Or maybe it’s how she’s looking at me right now, like she can see me again. Whatever the reason, I don’t end up arguing with her right away.
“I’m not an amazing person,” I say instead. “Trust me; if I was, I wouldn’t be working as an informant.”
She grinds her teeth in annoyance. “So what if you messed up once? Everyone does. And at least you’re making up for it now.”
All this positivity directed toward me is making me uneasy, so I focus on looking around her room again, my gaze eventually drifting to a collage she has on her wall, which includes a photo of me and her when we were kids. It was taken during one of our families’ camping trips and Foster hadn’t been around when it was taken.
“Have you always had that up?” I ask, nodding at the photo.
With her lips pressed together, she nods. “It always bothered Foster, but I refused to take it down. It was one of my few rebellious moments toward him.” She frowns, guilt crawling through her. “God, I was such a loser, always listening to him, like I was his fucking puppet. And the