My fingers were twitching. I’d never gone very long without a computer. And even though I didn’t have any inclination to do any coding, I did need to feel the keyboard, something. So in supervised study I asked for a pass to go to the media center and work on the Postcard Secret project Doc had assigned earlier in the month. With everything that had happened, I’d forgotten to be checking the Web site as it was updated with new secrets each week. Apparently confessing—even anonymously—your secrets and sins was good for the soul or some such.

And I certainly had my share of secrets. But my real secret was much too big to put down on a postcard. My real secret couldn’t be shared. Not even anonymously.

The only person I trusted was dead, and that was exactly what I wanted to be too. I just didn’t know if I could make it happen. That was my real secret.

I scanned for images to represent Kori and settled on a pair of beautiful black angel’s wings. Then in ransom-note fashion I added the words “I don’t want to live, if living is without you.”

I still had some time, so I pulled up the blog Doc told us about and looked through the secrets, reading each. One caught my eye. The handwriting looked exactly like Kori’s.

I knew and I didn’t tell you.

The picture was of a man embracing a woman. The way it was set up, it drew my eyes to the man’s hand as it caressed her blond hair, or more precisely, it drew my eyes to his wedding band. She was holding her ring-free left hand up to his face, shielding their identities. A couple having an affair was what the photo looked like. The hair on the woman looked familiar. The red car they were huddled up against triggered a tremor in me and I looked more closely at it. I could barely make it out, but there was something in the car’s window.

I held my breath as I clicked to enlarge the photo.

Colorado Cares. Just like the one on the back window of my mom’s lovingly used red Jeep Cherokee.

And once again I felt the world as I knew it shatter.

My hand shook as I clicked to close the Internet session. On Kori’s list there had been one thing—Tell Serena—that had confounded me more than the others.