Read Online Silver is for Secrets by Laurie Faria Stolarz - Free Book Online

quietly to a corner, away from the light of the windows, the moon casting in. Here, it‟s safe to look around. His figure moves in front of the bay window in the living room. It appears as though he just came out of Jacob‟s room. As though he‟s coming right toward me. I back up farther against the wal , but it‟s like I can‟t move—can‟t get away. Like I‟m trapped in place.
    “Stacey,” he breathes. The wooden floor creaks with each step he makes toward me. “Can you hear me?”
    Tears stream down my face. I hear myself whimper, my breath choking up inside my throat. I tighten my grip around the letter opener, readying myself to fight.
    “Stacey . . . are you al right?” He tugs at my arm, jiggles me back and forth.
    Until I wake up.
    “Jacob,” I say, al out of breath.
    “Yeah,” he says, stil lying beside me in bed. “You were crying.” I look by the side of the bed at the candle stump. We didn‟t end up fal ing asleep until after the candle had burned down through the knots, until after Jacob had extinguished the flame with a snuffer. I shake my head, disappointed that I didn‟t sleep longer, that I don‟t remember any secrets being revealed.
    “I‟m sorry,” he says, leaning over to kiss me. “Did I screw up a premonition? It‟s just that you were whimpering a lot. I got scared.”
    “It‟s okay,” I say, noticing how his lips taste like the sea. “I probably would have done the same.”
    “So do you remember anything?”
    I nod, remembering pretty much everything —the shadows at the shoreline, not being able to stand, the cold, the words, being chased, the lilies.
    “Death,” I whisper. “The death flower. I dreamt about it.”
    “What death flower?”
    “My grandmother taught me that lilies mean death. The guy in my nightmare was holding a whole bouquet of them, just like in the premonitions I was having about Drea a couple years ago.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “In the nightmares I was having about Drea, there was this faceless guy and he was carrying a bouquet of lilies. It turned out to be Donovan. Maybe the guy in my dream was supposed to be him.” The thought of him sends a shiver down my spine.
    After everything that happened, Donovan was sent to a juvenile detention center until his twenty-first birthday, still three years away. When he told the jury that he was in love with Drea, that his stalking—as most dubbed it—was the result of his confusing their friendship for loveship à la temporary insanity, I think they felt bad for him. So bad that it almost didn‟t even matter that someone else got kil ed in his path—an accident, he called it. And everyone believed him.
    “Yeah, but why?” Jacob says. “That doesn‟t make sense. He‟s locked up.”
    “As far as I know.”
    “Did you see the guy‟s face in your dream?”
    “No.”
    “So maybe it was someone else.”
    I shake my head, getting more confused by the second. And then it occurs to me.
    I look at Jacob, at the murky aura that surrounds him. “Did you dream about anything?”
    He looks away, obviously not wanting to tell me.
    “Is that a yes?”
    “I told you I can handle it.”
    “Are your nightmares the reason why you‟ve been acting al quiet lately?”
    “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I haven‟t been quiet.”
    “Last night at Cape Chowdah you barely said a word. And then when we came back to the house and played Pictionary with everyone, you were still kind of mute.
    Plus, yesterday morning when Clara came over . . . you sort of clammed up, and then when I looked back you were gone. It‟s like you haven‟t quite been yourself lately.”
    “I have a lot on my mind, Stacey.” He sinks back into the pil ow and chews his bottom lip, his aura all hazy and gray.
    “I know, so we should talk about it. Is it that you don‟t trust me ?”
    “How can you ask that?” He reaches out to my forearm.
    “Then what?”
    “Then nothing.”
    “Fine.” I clench my teeth.