Your Secret's Safe With Me

“Time to get up, chwaer,” Lynn said sweetly, banging on her sister’s door as she spoke in their native tongue. “We’ve made food!”

Lily made an unintelligible noise and pulled the soft bed covers over her head of messy black hair. She’d spent her entire day yesterday on an airplane, didn’t she deserve some resting time?

Apparently not. Lynn continued banging on the wooden door, the sound echoing through the small room. “I’m not kidding, Lily. Get up.”

“Oh, piss off, Lynn. What time is it anyways?”

“It’s almost two in the afternoon, Lily. Now your sister might not be able to get you out of bed, but I sure as hell can, especially considering it’s my bed,” a different voice commanded, gentle but demanding. Tim. “Don’t bother getting dressed, just please get out of bed, would ya?”

Well, shit.

She felt so in debt to Tim. Lily had known him all of her life, or as much of it as she could remember, starting back to age four. Her mother had loaded her and her twin sister, Lynn, onto a plane and flew them to her hometown in Tempe, Arizona twice every year. Every year until she couldn’t anymore.

Even as a child, Lily could notice how much her mother loved the desert and the heat. And not only that, but the best friend she’d left behind when she moved to Michigan with Lily and Lynn’s father: Beth Kirch.

Hence where Tim came in, being the second-eldest child of Beth. While her mother reconnected with her best friend, Lily and Lynn would run around the house with Timothy, playing games and shouting at each other. And so Tim had become a rather good friend of theirs over the years, always being the constant support that they needed. Even if they were separated by state borders.

And now the Langsley twins were back in town for an indefinite amount of time. No mother, no father. Nothing. Just a younger brother with an oddly similar appearance and a past full of every nightmare imaginable.

Tim was her only place to go. Literally.

So she dressed, gripping her tangled black hair into a pony-tail and looking at herself in the mirror before trudging down the stairs of Tim’s brand new house (to him). She found the rest of them -Lynn, Tim, and Luke- sitting on barstools at the kitchen counter, talking and laughing.

All three of them froze mid-sentence as they noticed her, bed-head and all, and Lily watched as her sister forced a smile onto her face. Lynn was always trying to make her feel better.

“Nice of you to join us, sleepyhead.”

“Yeah. It’s so good to see you, Lil. You’re still looking as pale as ever,” Tim added, grinning widely.

Lily instantly smiled, her mood improving with his jokes. “Hey, I’ve been living in Detroit. It actually gets cold up there,” she defending lightly. “We all can’t live in the desert.”

“I’ve met albinos with a better tan than you!”

“Well, I’m Welsh, after all,” she said, cracking a smile as she fully entered the kitchen, instantly hooked to the smell of food drafting towards her. “So what did you make?”

“Pasta with bolognese sauce,” Luke answered, smiling proudly. “Your favorite.”

All three of them were looking at her with huge smiles on their faces. And it made her sick. She wasn’t ticking time bomb; they didn’t need to be so cautious. Lily hated feeling patronized.

Ignoring them, she turned and began digging through the drawers in Tim’s kitchen, looking for plates, until he finally stopped her and told her where to look. She scooped the pasta out of the bowl and onto her plate, grabbing a fork and heading towards the couch in the next room.

Naturally, as she flicked on the tv and pushed a bite of pasta into her mouth, she heard footsteps following her.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Lil,” Tim said as he walked into the room, taking a seat on an armchair across from her. “I just wish you would tell me why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you guys ran away from home. Why you showed up at my house and started sobbing the minute you saw me.”

Oh.

“It doesn’t matter, Tim,” she said absentmindedly, looking at the tv instead of the boy.

“Don’t you lie to me, Lily Adeline. I know you better than anyone else in the world, and you better believe I can tell when you’re lying. Now tell me what the hell’s wrong.”

“You don’t understand, Tim, it’s not that easy-”

“Yes it is! It is that easy! I’m your best friend, aren’t I?” he asked angrily. When she nodded, he continued. “So don’t I deserve to know what’s wrong? I mean, I’m letting you guys stay in my house for god’s sake!”

“But Tim-”

“No buts, Lily. I don’t want to be like this, but I can tell - something’s seriously wrong. I can see it when I look at you. You’re so skinny and your eyes are bloodshot and you have a new scar underneath your eye, and you just look scared. Like you’re scared to be around people, maybe? You’re scared to be here? And you’re always excited as hell to be here, normally. So something is not right. And if you don’t tell me what, we’re going to have a serious problem here.”

“Can’t you just let me fucking be?” she snapped, her pride getting the best of her. She really should tell Tim, right?

On the outside, she was furious. She insane with anger that Tim would accuse her of lying. She was, but that wasn’t the point. But on the outside, she was almost happy. She was happy that Tim was arguing with her instead of treating her like a porcelain doll. He was treating her like normal, and that’s exactly what she needed.

“No, I will NOT let you be! Not when I can tell that you’re physically hurt! I haven’t seen you in six years. Six fucking years, Lily! When I last saw you, you were happy and laughing and healthy. And now - I’m not going to lie to you, Lil, you look sick! What’s happened to you? Does this have anything to do with your mom? Please, please, please tell me.”

And that’s when she broke down. He was right; the last time Tim saw her, she was normal. If only she could go back to being sixteen, before everything went straight to shit.

No, everything when straight to shit when she was twelve, when her dad got himself killed. Him not being a dumbass would have solved a lot of her problems. Now she and her siblings had just spent the last six years fighting for their lives.. World’s best dad, huh?

“Tim,” she cried, leaning into his arms, which were already reaching to embrace her. “It’s not fair. Why did this have to happen? Why? Why did he have to hurt my sister and my brother-” she gasped, running out of air as she cried even harder now.

He didn’t understand what she was saying, but somehow calmed her down enough to avoid a trip to the emergency room due to a panic attack.

And once she relaxed more, she began to tell the story of the last six years. Her story.

By the end of the night, each demon was revealed, and each scar was shown. Lily’s very own, sick little trophies.