Lauraleigh's Secret Read online

  Vic Connor

  Illustrated by

  Raquel Barros

  Helvetic House

  Copyright (C) 2018 by Vic Connor

  All rights reserved www.MaxedoutKid.com

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and events are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, businesses, works of art, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Click here to subscribe — so you can learn about Vic Connor’s new book releases and discounts.

  Also by Vic Connor:

  Immortality Experiment: A GameLit RPG Thriller

  Hunters of Arkhart: Battle Mage

  Max!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  If You Enjoyed this Book…

  Also by Vic Connor

  About the Author

  One Last Thing

  Prologue

  Although I can barely remember it now, I used to live a very ordinary life. I considered myself dependable back then; predictable and, most certainly, reliable. These words also described most of my life growing up at the orphanage in Geneva, Switzerland. I had a best friend, Anna, whom I loved like a little sister, and everything about us seemed as normal as blue sky and green grass.

  Then, Anna turned 13. After Anna’s birthday, every one of those respectable words about me flew right out the window, never to return.

  Boom! Gone. Just like that.

  I turned 13 five years before she did. When I woke up the morning I became a teenager, it felt like pure magic, like something monumental had happened. But on Anna’s birthday, becoming a teenager didn’t just feel like pure magic; it was pure magic. She woke up to the stunning realization that she had the powers of a real, live witch. It’s hard to convey exactly how shocking this discovery was, since Anna had no idea she even came from a family of magical beings. How could she? Like me, she had grown up as an orphan.

  Once Anna came into her powers, it didn’t just dramatically change her life; it catapulted both of us right out of anything resembling a normal life. I guess that’s what happens when two people are as close as sisters and do everything together.

  There’s something strange about magic and me. It always seems to have a way of finding me. Unlike Anna, I’m not a witch; I can neither conjure up magic, nor can I stop it once it has been released. But I can always sense it, especially evil magic. If an Evil Being hovers anywhere near me, a terrible stench burns inside my nose — like I’m inhaling charred toast or something. Worse, my blood feels like it’s turning into ice as it moves through my veins. I wouldn’t wish these sensations on anyone, that’s how awful they are. However, growing up, I had no idea these uncomfortable and upsetting physical manifestations had anything to do with magic. Until Anna came into her powers two years ago, I honestly thought magic existed only in fairy tales and other made-up stories.

  Boy, have I learned differently.

  I’m the only one connected to the orphanage who knows about Anna’s magical powers. It’s her secret to keep or to share, and I will honor it as such unless she tells me to do otherwise. Keeping secrets — that’s something I do very well, perhaps too well.

  Have you ever thought about how many different kinds of secrets exist in this world? It’s kind of amazing. For example, most orphans have what I call an “orphan secret.” These secrets are harmless, really. It’s just that once both parents have disappeared from someone’s life, a secret becomes one of very few things in life they can control. Sometimes it’s as simple as someone washing their hair a secret way or having a code for tapping their pinky finger against a door frame before entering or leaving a room. It doesn’t matter what makes up the secret or how trivial or silly it might seem to others. What matters is not sharing it — not with anyone, not even with a best friend. Because once it is shared, the orphan loses control of it, and that’s the whole point of having it in the first place. An “orphan secret,” by design as well as necessity, only serves to help someone. It never hurts anyone. If it does, it’s another kind of secret entirely.

  My “Anna-is-a-witch secret” doesn’t harm anyone either. Quite often, in fact, it ends up helping someone, since Anna only uses her powers for good. I’m just trying to respect her right to tell whom she wants, when she wants, that she’s a witch. I can understand why she wouldn’t want everyone to know this. I mean, I’d definitely keep it a secret if I found out I was a witch, which as I said I’m not, although I do wish I had a few magical powers.

  Anyway, back to secrets. There are fun secrets which get kept all the time. Things like: throwing a surprise party for someone or not telling your best friend what you got her for Christmas. Even if you forget to keep it a secret and spill the beans, nobody gets hurt. Maybe a little disappointed, but not hurt. Perfectly harmless, right?

  But I also know about another type of secret. One that is harmful. I can’t think of anything good about this kind of secret at all. The person holding it desperately wants to spill it, disempower it, and get rid of the stranglehold it has on them, but they can’t. If they did, it might destroy them, or at least destroy the notion they have of themselves as a decent human being.

  I told you, I spend a lot of time thinking about secrets.

  The one I keep falls into the last category, but I wish it didn’t. I have never, ever shared this secret with anyone, not even Anna. Especially not Anna, which is significant because we have shared every other thing about ourselves for the past eight years.

  Keeping this secret from Anna makes me feel like a horrible person, but I have to. If I told her about this thing — this terrible, frightening thing I have turned into my deepest, darkest secret — I think she would be able to explain exactly what happened to me that confusing, terrifying night eight years ago, a few months before I became a teenager myself.

  Anna is 15 now, but she displays extraordinary wisdom regarding the worlds of immortal and magical beings. Because of this, even beyond explaining to me what happened that night, I suspect she would know why it happened. While this might seem like a good thing, the truth is what Anna might say terrifies me almost more than the secret itself.

  Sometimes, people don’t want to know certain things about themselves. Sometimes, it’s better to let truths remain unspoken and questions remain unanswered. Sometimes, I believe it is better not to know something. As I explained before, I’m not a witch, but this thing, this terrible thing that happened to me eight years ago, makes it impossible not to ask myself: If I’m not a witch and this … thing … happened to me … then what on earth am I? It is my fear of finding out the answer which prevents me from telling Anna.

  Yet, here’s the flip side: betraying Anna’s trust in me — which I know I’m doing by keeping something so huge from her — hurts my heart. I would do anything not to hurt Anna. I would lay my life down for Anna, and that’s the truth. I’m just not ready to tell her, mainly because I’m not ready to hear what she has to say. I don’t know if the day will ever come when I am ready. Not to mention, it’s a frightening story to tell. Just thinki
ng about it right now ties me up in knots.

  I’ve given this a lot of thought, as you can imagine, and I think there’s something I can do. I can try to tell you my story, the story of how I met Anna as a six-year-old girl and of the place she has occupied in my heart ever since. The story includes my secret, and maybe, just maybe, if I can speak the words here, I will have the courage to speak them to Anna. It’s a huge burden to carry this secret inside me, and I really don’t want to do it anymore. Perhaps if I tell it to you first, it won’t feel so impossible to tell it a second time, to Anna. I ask only that you listen with a gentle and open heart.

  Let me begin with the day I met Anna Sophia Medvedeva, the beautiful little girl who did not speak one word of my language and who came to live in my orphanage.

  Chapter 1

  My friend Louisa and I stood in the lounge between classes, catching each other up on our first day back to school after the long summer break. As newly minted sixth-graders, we had more than a few things to talk about.

  For starters, we now changed classrooms and teachers every 50 minutes. Even better, we had the heady responsibility of getting our own locker. Best of all, after years of envying the middle schoolers who had access to this sacred lounge — the one off-limits to elementary students — now we had the privilege of calling it ours. Having this lounge to ourselves filled us all sorts of excitement as we stood there for the first time.

  Except … suddenly, we didn’t have it to ourselves. A little girl we’d never seen before — surely not older than five or six — entered the room without any regard for the fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, honored the sanctity of this lounge with nothing less than holy reverence. Only middle-schoolers allowed — no little kids, no big kids!

  And yet, this little girl just strode through the door and into the room like nobody’s business. She looked around for a second, and after spotting Louisa and me in our corner, she marched in our direction with a grin as wide as the Ruinaulta — the Swiss Grand Canyon — and enough enthusiasm to fill it up.

  As if she had known us our whole lives, no sooner did the little girl reach us than she started chattering away, the words tumbling out of her mouth at breakneck speed. With her right hand she kept pace, gesturing wildly in the air, punctuating every thought. Her left hand remained still, because it was holding a stuffed bear securely against her side.

  “Da?” she asked gleefully, grinning and looking right at me. Not bothering to wait for a response, she nodded to affirm whatever she had just said. That small movement inspired an enormous number of wildly unmanageable, copper-colored curls to bounce completely out of synch with her head. They kept springing this way and that even after the nodding had ended. Her hair mesmerized me; it seemed to have a life of its own.

  “Da!” she repeated, and my eyes darted back to her face. This time, she uttered it as a statement of conviction, about what I had no idea. Smiling so broadly her enormous brown eyes crinkled up in apparent joy, she spun on her heel and, without another word, strode away as purposefully as she had arrived.

  We stood there speechless for a moment.

  “Da?” I finally said, turning to Louisa, who burst out laughing.

  “Have you ever seen anyone so totally adorable?” she gushed. “I didn’t understand a single word that came out of her mouth, did you?”

  “Not one,” I said.

  “Well, okay, maybe I understood one,” Louisa said, still laughing. “I’m pretty sure ‘da’ means ‘yes’ in Russian, which I know because I heard Yuri say it in Dr. Zhivago, and of course I remember every word he uttered.” Gazing upward, she sighed. “I so want to marry someone exactly like him one day.”

  As much as I hated to spoil Louisa’s daydreams, I wasn’t interested in Dr. Zhivago. I wanted to talk about the whirling dervish of a little girl we had just encountered. I knew Louisa could go on and on about the Russian doctor-poet, and would because she had an obsession with him. It didn’t even matter to her that many Russian critics hated the movie.

  “Who cares!” she had once responded when I dared to mention this fact to her. “It’s a love story, Lauraleigh. Nothing else matters!”

  Calling Louisa love struck — not only as it pertained to the Russian doctor but also to boys in general — didn’t do her state of mind justice. I often had to remind myself that Louisa had other qualities, too, like intelligence, humor, and kindness, which would probably outlast her boy craziness. Thankfully, in time I found out they did.

  Steering our conversation away from Yuri and back to the little girl, I remembered overhearing our head nuns, Sisters Constance and Daphne, say something about a new girl arriving. “I think you’re right about her speaking Russian,” I told Louisa. “I think she’s the one who might have come here from Siberia. If so, great job picking up on the language! I’m impressed.”

  She bowed. “Thank you. I pride myself on my movie memory, especially that movie!”

  “Well, if she doesn’t speak anything but Russian, you’d better remember more than just ‘da.’ Otherwise, who’s she going to communicate with? That is one little girl who likes to talk!”

  “Yeah, no kidding!” Louisa agreed. “She didn’t seem to care one bit that we didn’t understand her.”

  “Do you think she speaks any French at all?” I asked, incredulous at the idea a person could wind up in our orphanage without knowing the primary language. “Is that even possible?”

  “No clue.” Louisa shrugged just as the bell rang for our next class. “Maybe you should learn Russian, because she seemed taken with you, and vice-versa!” As she headed in the opposite direction from me, her hand came up over her head, and she flicked her wrist dramatically. “Good luck, Comrade Lauraleigh,” she shouted. “Da!” Her laughter trailed behind me as I walked down the hall to Sister Mary Margaret’s algebra class.

  I knew why Louisa said what she did. She noticed, as I had, the little girl’s eyes had locked on me from the moment she started talking.

  Later, I asked around, hoping to at least find out her name. It turned out Stella, my hall monitor, knew quite a bit about the little girl.

  “Her name is Anna Sophia Medvedeva,” Stella told me as we stood outside the door of her room. “She’s six, super cute, and I’m pretty sure falls at the far end of strange.” Wiggling her eyebrows up and down, Stella laughed. “But then, some people think we all fall on that end!”

  I decided to ignore her comment about our collective weirdness as orphans. Although there was some truth in it, I didn’t want to get sidetracked. I was looking for information about Anna. I asked, “Do you know if she really came from Siberia?”

  “Oh, she didn’t just come from Siberia,” Stella said. “She came from somewhere deep inside remote Siberia!” Two huge dimples emerged as she grinned at me. “A truly redundant phrase if I ever heard one,” she quipped, and I noticed her dimples deepen as her smile broke into laughter.

  I couldn’t help but giggle with her, but my mind was still turning. Where is the remotest part of Siberia? How did Anna come to live at our orphanage? What had she been saying to Louisa and me in the lounge, and what made her single me out?

  Before I could ask Stella any more questions, she gave me a friendly shoulder bump and said, “I don’t know why you’re so interested in her, Lauraleigh, but I have to say that a girl with crazy curls like hers who comes from a place that’s remote even to Siberians will sooo make the rest of us seem more normal!”

  Stella laughed again. It amazed me how she always managed to get away with saying things the rest of us wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. I just figured her indelible dimples explained how she managed to get away with so much.

  Chapter 2

  After my encounter with Anna in the lounge, I didn’t interact with her again for nearly two months. I had moved onto the preteen floor the week before she arrived, and our classes took place in different wings of the orphanage’s school. I had noticed her around campus, though, and I found myself drawn
to her in a way I couldn’t explain.

  Even at such a young age, Anna displayed both vibrancy and an old-soul wisdom that made her stand apart from the other girls. It was something in her eyes. When she was laughing or playing with other kids, her eyes seemed to take in everything around her, as if she were absorbing information through some secret sense the rest of us didn’t have.

  And of course, she had that hair. If nothing else, the coppery curls springing from Anna’s head in some crazy kind of harmony made it impossible to miss her in a crowd.

  She fascinated me in so many ways.

  About five or six weeks after Anna arrived, I was walking toward my room late one afternoon, when I heard Stella shouting my name. “Hey, Lauraleigh!” she yelled, and I found myself hurrying to close the distance between us before she filled the whole building in on whatever she wanted to tell me. Before I succeeded, though, she shouted, “That little redhead you asked me about? Well, she sure is a firecracker. Woohoo! You sure know how to pick them.”

  As soon as I got within normal speaking distance, I quickly set Stella straight. “I didn’t pick her. Jeez, Stella. I was just curious about her.”

  “Well, you know what they say about curiosity, Lauraleigh. It killed the cat!” She peered at me.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, half-exasperated. Sometimes Stella’s enthusiasm for the dramatic wore on me. “Why did you call her a — what was it — a firecracker?”