The Secret Keeper

“Eve! Eve, slow down!” Bo called as I raced back to the house.

Slow down? Ha! I sped up as fast as I could without falling on the ice. Luckily the snow plow had come recently.

“Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing,” he suggested, catching up to me. Curse him and his long legs.

I looked at him incredulously. “Yeah, Bo. My best friend being kidnapped is a good thing. Let’s go get donuts to celebrate, shall we?”

He rolled his eyes. I kept on walking.

When we got back to my house, my foster parents were sitting in the living room, watching TV. It was so typical, I almost felt like I was walking in on a normal family.

Almost.

“Holly was kidnapped by someone who wants to know the Secret!” I yelled as I walked in the door.

Their heads whipped toward my quickly and their eyes widened. “What?”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “Holly. Is. Gone. And. Her. Kidnappers. Are. After. The. SECRET!” I wailed.

“Who was it, Eve?” Mom asked urgently.

“I-I don’t know. They called my cell phone and said ‘If you want to see Holly alive again, you will tell me the Secret,’ and then hung up!”

“Did you recognize the voice?” my dad demanded, walking over to me. Bo put a
protective arm around my shoulders that I didn’t bother to shrug off.

I shook my head. “No… But it sounded like a man’s. I think.” I was shaking now; I could on tell because Bo looked at me funny.

My mom finally got a look at the soaked-to-the-bone boy standing next to me. Bo was about to offer an explanation but she lifter her hand and said, “I don’t want to know. Just go change before you get hypothermia.”

-[-]-

“Arkarian, I think it’s time we explained everything to them,” My mom said when we were all back in the living room. Bo had changed so that he wasn’t slowly becoming an icicle anymore.

My dad sighed and rested his head in his hands. “I really hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with this in their lifetime...”

Bo and I looked at each other curiously. In our lifetime?

“I know, but it looks like this is all happening sooner than expected…”

“What is happening? Somebody tell us!” I demanded, feeling tears prick my eyes. I couldn’t believe we were just sitting here talking when my best friend was out there somewhere, being held for ransom! “Can’t we call the police about this or something?”

My mom shook her head sadly. “The police can’t help us with this one, Eve. This has to do with the Secret.”

Bo groaned. “Well how are we supposed to know what they want if we don’t know the Secret?”

Unfortunately, he had a point. If what these people wanted was the Secret, well how the heck were we supposed to get Holly back?

My dad sighed. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

“It is believed that the Secret originated at the dawn of human existence, but it reached its peak in the Middle Ages in Europe. We don’t know why, but we – the elder Keepers, that is – think it might have had something to do with the bubonic plague. We believed that it’s what caused it. Whenever there is an attempt to capture the Secret, there always seems to be an uprising of disease in the area.”

My mom nodded. “We got a tip from one of our elders that the next bout of attack would take place here, in Witch Hazel. We have no idea why; the places are usually chosen at random.”

“Keepers are a strange thing,” my dad continued. “Keepers used to actually know the Secret, but I think it was determined that even Keepers were too fallible to be trusted with something so important.”

“See that birthmark on your neck, Bo?” mom asked. He nodded. “How about you, Eve?” Reluctantly, I nodded.

“Those are the marks of Keepers. For every generation, since the beginning of time, there has been a pair of Keepers: a man and a woman. For every pair, there is a different place on the body where the birthmark shows up, but it is on the same place on both of them. Arkarian and I have the marks on our ankles. You and Bo have the marks on your collarbones.”

I stared at them, digesting everything that they’d said. What would make people go so crazy for a stupid little Secret? So crazy that you would need Keepers?

I didn’t know much, but I did know this: this wasn’t some gossipy secret that girls tell one another at lunch. Oh, no. This was something big. Something that could spell doom for the human race.

The human race depended on Bo and me.

Oh we are so screwed.