54. Darkest Secret

-Troy-

I wasn't sure why it was a surprise to me when I found out about Luke's antidepressants. He wasn't the most carefree, happy guy I knew, but seeing the bottle of pills opened my eyes. People at school, especially girls, described him often as a dark, mysterious guy, but in reality, he was sad and depressed.

It was around two in the morning, and I couldn't sleep. It was so hot in Luke's room, even with the door open, and I was thirsty. I had been trying to ignore it because I didn't want to wake up Luke, whose steady breathing filled the room. I stared at his bathroom door for a while, wondering if he would wake up if I used it. Then I turned to look at the door. Maybe if I sneaked out and went to get water in the kitchen?

I decided to do just that. I carefully got up from the squeaky spare bed they had dragged into his room for me and tiptoed my way to the open door. I stopped by it and turned to look at Luke, who was still sound asleep. A tiny smile emerged on my lips when I felt the jittery feeling in my guts. Butterflies, I suppose.

The hallway was dark when I sneaked to the stairs, but I could see light coming from downstairs. I assumed someone had left a light on, but I was surprised to see Mrs. Frost standing in the middle of the kitchen with a glass of water in her hand and a sleepy expression on her face.

"Troy," she said with a worried tone. "Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine – I just got thirsty," I explained. "I didn't want to wake up Luke, so I thought I'd come here..."

"Oh, is he asleep?" she asked, like it was something unexpected.

"Y-yeah," I muttered. "I don't think he woke up..."

She seemed awfully happy about it, and I couldn't understand what was the big deal, but I did remember seeing his sleeping pills.

"He always does sleep better when there's someone else in the room with him," she said with a smile, and went to get another glass. "We believe it's because of the familiar voices and sounds."

She gave me the glass of water, and I thanked her before drinking it empty in one go. She chuckled and refilled my glass. "I hope the food wasn't too spicy?"

"No, it's just... It's so hot in his room," I said, and took a smaller sip.

"He gets cold so easily," she said, and her smile turned a little sad.

"Are you... all right?" I asked carefully. The woman was standing in the middle of the kitchen in the middle of the night, after all.

"My neck is killing me," she sighed. "And my back. Sitting on a plane for almost a full day isn't meant for anyone. I was trying to do some stretches, but it didn't seem to help."

"Oh, okay..."

We stood there for a moment in silence, and Mrs. Frost was studying me with her gaze. "I'm glad Luke has a friend like you. And when I say friend, I mean I know you two have something going on, but no one has told me where you two are standing, so I'm just going to keep calling you friends until I'm better informed," she spoke, smiling knowingly the entire time.

I smiled too and tousled my hair nervously. "I'm... not sure yet... but... technically..."

"You don't have to explain anything to me, sweetheart. I'm just happy that my only child is happy," she said tenderly.

I had a stupid grin on my face, and I knew I was blushing. But then I remembered his antidepressants, and my smile faded. She noticed that.

"Did I say something wrong?" she asked worriedly, and I shook my head.

"He told me about his depression yesterday," I said quietly. "I wish he had told me sooner..."

She nodded slowly and leaned against a counter with a small sigh. "It's more complicated than that," she said, winning my curiosity.

"What do you mean?"

"It's such a long story to be told in the middle of the night," she said.

"I want to understand," I told her, and I guess it was enough.

She gave me a small smile and nodded toward the living room. "Come."

I followed her into the living room, where she stopped in front of a huge bookcase that was filled with pictures and books and photo albums. She picked one of the framed pictures, and looked at it with a smile on her face before giving it to me. All three of them were in it, except Luke was probably two or three years old, and Gwen looked like a man.

"Luke is my angel," she began quietly. "He is my everything. Gwen and I tried for years to get pregnant. It was back when Gwen was still hiding her true identity, and went by the name, Gerry. We tried so many times to get pregnant, but it just didn't happen. Gwen blamed herself. I blamed myself, but then our doctor recommended that we'd start fertility treatments. And it worked!"

I turned to look at her, and even though she was smiling, I could tell she was in pain.

"I got finally pregnant, and we were so excited..." she trailed off, looking devastated now. "It ended in miscarriage, and I thought I was dying inside. After a year or so, we tried again. I got pregnant three months later. And four months after that... we lost the baby, again..."

She turned to look at me. "But third time's the charm," she smiled, with tears burning in the corners of her eyes. "I kept praying every night that God would let me keep this baby. I didn't leave the house, I didn't pick up anything heavier than a phone, and I followed every instruction with such obsession it scared us both. And it worked. There were no complications until my water broke. We rushed to the hospital, thinking everything was all right, but there we found out that my baby boy had his cord around his neck... You can't believe the fear I felt at that moment. I thought I would lose this baby too, no matter how many times the doctor tried to tell me everything would be all right."

"But, he was fine, right?" I asked, and she nodded with a smile.

"Yes. My angel was perfect," she said, and picked up another picture of Luke, and stared at it with a warm look in her eyes. "Everything was perfect... Then he started having nightmares when he was four or five. We didn't think much of it, because children have nightmares, but his only got worse. And they didn't stop... He refused to sleep. He screamed and cried until we let him in our bed, and every night was just a constant battle against his nightmares. We tried everything, we consulted every doctor and therapist there was, and even though he started to sleep better, they never went away. He doesn't have nightmares that often anymore, but he still can't sleep. It's like he refuses to sleep."

She sighed silently and put the picture away. She spent a moment looking around, touching some of the pictures, and I followed her movements with my gaze. I soon noticed that the pictures of Luke were similar – he was pale, tired, and never smiled. Every single picture...

"His sleeping problems have brought new ones. Migraines, exhaustion, eating problems, low body temperature, nosebleeds, anemia, concentration problems, illnesses... depression..." Mrs. Frost sniffed. "I can't even remember them all... He just lost it when we found out his eyesight was getting worse. And I just know this is all my fault. I never got pregnant after him, and sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing by having a baby. What if I wasn't meant to have a child? What if there's something in my genes that caused all these problems to my angel...?"

"I didn't know it was this bad," I said, and she turned to look at me. "But I can say, from the bottom of my heart, he is really kind and sweet, and I am happy I met him."

"Luke is a lucky guy to have met you," Mrs. Frost smiled. "You know, I've seen him changing over the past year. He's been more outgoing, he tells us more about what's going on in his life, and he's been smiling more often... And now that I think of it, he hasn't had nightmares hardly at all. I don't know if he told you about his accident, but after that, he's been different."

"When he drove off the cliff with his ATV? Yeah, he told me about it," I said, still feeling horrified about it.

I assumed Mrs. Frost would continue her story, but she didn't. She grabbed another picture of Luke sitting on his ATV. She looked... troubled.

"What?" I asked quietly and stepped closer to see the picture she was holding.

She shook her head a little and looked at me shortly. She hesitated for a moment before she continued speaking.

"There was this incident back in Australia. It was Luke's sixth birthday, and we had all our friends and family with us. Gwen had come out as transgender only a couple of months before that, and only I and a few closest friends knew about it. One of them, Lucy, a dear friend of mine, who had been babysitting Luke quite often, started to act strange after I told her about Gwen. On Luke's birthday, she went completely berserk. You see, Luke's birthday is on the sixth of June, and she started screaming Luke was a child of the devil. She grabbed him and tried to take him away, saying awful things... He shouldn't have been born, that God was punishing us all because of Gwen..."

Her voice was harsh and angry when she spoke about that woman. "I can't even imagine what she had been telling my son when we weren't around. He thought for a long time he was never supposed to be born. He was convinced that God wanted him dead, that He hated him. Our families shunned us because I refused to leave Gwen. Luke thought they hated us because of him. Eventually we decided to move here to get away from them all and start everything from the beginning."

I listened quietly in absolute horror while she spoke. She turned her attention back to the picture she was holding and touched the surface.

"Before his accident, Luke barely even spoke to us anymore. He spent all his time in his room, and if we forced him out, he hated us for it. My angel hated us. It hurt as much as the miscarriages... Our prayers had been answered. We had a beautiful son, but it never was easy for any of us. I love him so much, and... No matter what I did, it never seemed to be enough. And then he was in an accident... We found him lying on the ground, bleeding and in pain, and I thought once again that I had lost my baby."

"But he survived," I said, when she started to cry. "He said he's better now."

She tried to control her emotions, and she nodded. "I just can't stop thinking about it. How could he run over the cliff like that? He knows those hills like the back of his hand. And he had his GPS locator on... He never had it on... He always forgot to turn it on."

"It was a good thing he remembered to put it on," I said. "Maybe it was God's doing. Maybe He knew what was going to happen."

She gave me a small smile before she turned her eyes back to the picture. Her smile vanished, and she took a deep breath, shaking her head. "I'm not so sure about that," she whispered, and caressed the picture. "Call it mother's instinct, but..."

I felt an awful knot in my stomach when I realized what she meant by that.

-Luke-

I quietly listened to my mother's words. Neither of them knew I was standing on the stairs, listening in on their conversation. I had woken up and couldn't find Troy anywhere, so I came looking for him and found him with my mom in the living room, talking about my childhood.

I had tried to tell my mom many times it had been an accident. I had tried to tell her I hadn't wanted to kill myself. She never believed me. She pretended she did, but I knew she didn't.

Closing my eyes, I leaned my back against the wall, going back to that day.

"I can't do this anymore..."

I saw the hill right in front of me. I had been thinking about it for weeks.

"Are you trying to tell me I wasn't supposed to be born?" I screamed up at the Heavens.

I'd had two migraine attacks that week and the nightmares had returned.

"Am I evil? Is that why you're punishing me?!"

Was Lucy right? My mom had two miscarriages before me, and I'd been born with a cord around my neck, like God had tried everything to prevent me from being born.

"Fine. I know you don't want me here," I spoke and turned the engine on.

I was tired of being punished just because I was alive. All I had ever truly wanted was the sweet relief of death. I had the GPS on, so my parents would find my body. I cried when I flew up the hill and smiled when there was nothing but air under my tires.

"You got your wish."

I opened my eyes and stared at the wall in front of me. The living room was silent. I never wanted my mom to feel that pain of knowing I really had tried to end my life that day. I didn't want her to know that death was all I had ever wished for. That was why I decided to run over the cliff so it would look like an accident. I believed it would have been easier for them if they thought it had been just an accident.

I remembered lying on the forest floor, staring at the blue sky, asking why I was still alive. I begged Him to end it all. I had failed, just like I failed in everything else I ever did. I decided I would try again, but this time, I wouldn't fail.

And then... I saw light. When I met Troy, after spending a little time with him, I got this small little thought in my head. What if God had tried everything he could so I would stay alive? I had refused to believe so. At first. But the longer I spent with Troy, the stronger that thought became. He had the ability to put on the lights in my darkness, and it didn't take long until the lights felt as bright as the sun.

I would never admit to them I had wanted to die. I didn't want that anymore. Now I wanted Troy more than anything.

I took a deep breath, and walked the rest of the stairs down, making some noise so they wouldn't know I had been eavesdropping. I turned around the corner to face them. I stared at them for a moment, pretending to be trying to understand what I was seeing.

"What's going on?" I asked. "It's... three in the morning?"

"We couldn't sleep," my mom said, and put one of our pictures back on the shelves. "I showed Troy some pictures."

"The most embarrassing ones, I assume?" I said, forcing a chuckle out of my mouth.

"Of course not!" My mom said and walked to me to give me a tight hug. "I would never do that."

I smiled and hugged her back, knowing she needed one right now. When she let go of me, I turned to look at Troy, who had a sad look on his face when he looked back at me.

"Are you coming back to sleep?" I asked tentatively, and he nodded. I waited for him to walk to me. I was surprised, but pleased when he hugged me, too. "Is everything all right? Why all the hugs?" I asked like I didn't know.

Troy gave me a smile and shook his head. "I like hugging," he shrugged, and I let the topic go.

"Let's get back to sleep then. I was getting worried about you," I told him truthfully.

"Really?" he asked, when all three of us started climbing up.

"I had no idea that you're a sleepwalker," I explained.

"Oh," he chuckled. "No, I'm not a sleepwalker. I do speak in my sleep, mostly gibberish, or so I've heard."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

We wished my mom goodnight before entering my room. I let go of Troy, expecting him to go on his bed, but when I sat down on mine, he sat right next to me, taking my hand in his.

"What?" I asked slowly, when he just stared at me.

"I hope you know you can tell me everything," he said. "And I do mean everything. What you're doing or thinking or how you're feeling..."

I knew exactly what he wanted me to tell him, but I pretended I didn't. "So... does that mean I have to call you if I need to use the toilet?"

He started laughing, shaking his head. "I'm being serious," he said eventually. "We are... we are... we're dudes now, so..."

I started laughing too and lay down on the bed, pulling him with me. "Can we just agree that we're boyfriends now."

He smiled and looked away without saying a word. I waited for a while, but he didn't speak, so I opened my mouth hesitantly. "Do you... Do you want us to be boyfriends?"

"I... Is it too soon, though? I mean, I don't want to jinx anything..." he muttered, but his smile never faded.

I assumed he was just being shy or something, because to me, his smile looked happy. "All right, we're dudes then," I said reassuringly, and he snuggled closer to me, resting his head on my shoulder and wrapping his arm around my stomach.

"My dude..." he muttered, and hugged me. "I want you to know that I'm here for you if you ever need to talk to somebody."

"I know," I said, and kissed his temple.