Secrets and Things Not Well Hidden
by Crawlspace
~ Chapter 1: Serena ~
Serena sat at her desk, pen in
hand, staring at the paper in front of her.
The date was written neatly in the top corner of the page, but so far
that was all she had been able to set down.
She just didn’t know how to start her diary entry this time. Lately, it was becoming harder and harder to
express just how complicated her life had become.
It had been almost a week since the incident at the
Marine Cathedral. So much had happened
that day. The mystery of the
unidentified Sailor Scouts had been solved, and two people she had begun to
think of as friends were suddenly her enemies.
She had seen one lying dead when she got to the cathedral. The other might just as well have been for
the dead look in her eyes.
That look was what was bothering Serena tonight. She gnawed on the end of her pen and glanced
over at the magazine she had taken from Sammy’s room earlier. It was open to a photo spread of a charity
race from back in February. Serena
didn’t recognize any of the drivers and very few of the big name sports gurus
in attendance. But one picture had
caught her eye, and now she stared at it still in shock and disbelief.
Serena closed her eyes and shook her head, as if that
could clear the image from her brain.
For several seconds she held her breath, then
exhaled dramatically. A moment later,
pen met paper as the blonde tried to work out her jumbled thoughts.
When I got there,
Amara is
Uranus. Part of me knew that even before
the whole thing with Mina, but it still surprises me to actually see it. And everything happened so fast. She was holding on to the gun. For a second I really thought she would give
it to me and we could find a way to make things right. But she pushed me away and put it to her
chest. She didn’t hesitate at all. And she pulled the trigger…
Serena stopped writing for a second to rub at her
eyes. She would never forget that
suicidal moment in the other Scout’s life.
She was still having nightmares about it.
How could she do that? How could anyone just end their life that
way? Don’t get me wrong. Michelle is her only family as far as I know,
and it must have crushed her to see her die, but still…
I love my brother, honest I do. I may want him to go away and stop being a
brat sometimes, but if he died I would be upset. I’d even cry.
But would I be so devastated that I would kill myself right then and
there to end the grief? No. The same goes for my friends. Molly, Raye, all of them. As much as I love them, my life is important
to me. There isn’t anything I can think
of –
Serena hesitated.
The end of her pen went back into her mouth as a thought began to
form. She stared at the magazine
picture. Double-paned, the left side was
Amara standing and cheering in the stands with Michelle sitting next to
her. On the right, they were both
standing, and Amara had pulled Michelle into a kiss that was very definitely
not of cousinly affection. In fact, it
was almost just like when…
Serena’s eyes got wide as it finally hit her. The idea was crazy; these two were cousins
after all. But it was making more and
more sense.
After jotting down one last thing in her diary, Serena
grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and headed for the front door. She yelled to her parents that she was going
out for awhile and left without waiting for a reply. She hoped Raye wouldn’t mind her stopping by
this late, but she needed to talk to someone about this now.
The diary sat open on Serena’s desk, the magazine half on
top of it. The last word she had written
was visible in the weak light from her desk light. “