The Heart Ring

Chapter 4 – The Grip of Secrets

By Thursday the secret felt like a splinter Abby couldn’t dig out. Every time she thought she’d stop thinking about it, she brushed the wrong way and the sting came back.

Kimi wasn’t giving her room to dodge anymore.

“Don’t run,” Kimi said, stepping sideways into Abby’s path with practiced ease. They were in the narrow corridor by the science wing, where the air always smelled faintly like vinegar and warm dust. Posters about cell mitosis curled at the corners; the old radiator ticked like a metronome. Between classes, the hallway went oddly quiet—most kids cut through the main hall instead—so there was nowhere for Abby to hide behind noise.

“I’m not running,” Abby said, hugging her books higher.

“You are. With your feet pretending they’re walking.” Kimi’s eyes searched her face. “Something’s wrong. I want in.”

Abby shook her head. The ring pressed cool against her finger, a coin of pressure. “I can’t.”

Kimi’s mouth flattened. “Then let me see for myself.”

She reached for Abby’s sleeve.

Reflex moved faster than thought. Abby caught Kimi’s hand, fingers closing around her friend’s wrist.

The world jolted.

Kimi’s glow detonated into clarity—deep lake-blue brightening at the core, threaded with living green, shot through with clean, bright gold that felt like sunlight tossed onto water. The colors didn’t just show; they moved, a tide pulling toward Abby’s palm where skin met skin. Warmth flashed up Abby’s arm, not heat that burned but heat that was, a presence, a yes.

Kimi inhaled sharply. “Whoa.”

Abby let go like she’d touched a live wire. The glow snapped back to its usual softer halo. The hallway blinked into being again: curling posters, ticking radiator, her heartbeat thudding in her ears.

Kimi flexed her fingers, eyes wide. “What was that?”

“N-nothing,” Abby said too fast. “Just static.”

“Static doesn’t feel like being plugged into a sunrise.” Kimi stared. “Abby.”

“It’s nothing,” Abby repeated, backing a step until her spine met cinderblock.

Kimi studied her for a beat that stretched. “Okay,” she said finally, voice steadier than Abby felt. “I don’t know what you’re doing. But I felt something. Like… like you were a lighthouse and I walked into the beam.”

“I’m sorry,” Abby blurted. For what? For grabbing her? For not telling her? For having a ring that turned people into weather maps?

Kimi’s expression softened, the gold in that glow Abby wasn’t supposed to be seeing glinting brighter for a heartbeat. “Don’t be sorry. Just—don’t shut me out.” She touched Abby’s elbow lightly. “Not from you.”

The bell split the quiet. Doors opened down the hall, voices spilling like water. Kimi flicked a glance toward the tide, then back to Abby. “We’ll talk after last period.”

Abby nodded, throat tight. Kimi slipped into the stream of students. Abby stayed pinned to the wall until her pulse slowed.

---

The rest of the day slid by in skids and catches. Abby kept her hands to herself, like a kid in a glass museum with a sign that said Do Not Touch in ten languages. Even so, the world kept brushing her—the exchange of a worksheet, the brief lean of a classmate reaching across her desk—and every tiny contact made the colors cleaner, like wiping a fogged window with your sleeve.

She didn’t push. She didn’t pry. She pretended not to notice that pretending not to notice took more energy than noticing.

At lunch, Kimi didn’t press. She told a story about her little brother trying to microwave a fork (“He says he wanted to see sparks, which, fair”) and made Abby snort-laugh accidental pizza shreds onto her tray. The normalcy felt like a warm coat pulled from a dryer, heavy and safe.

Even normal ran out.

Last period stretched like taffy, teacher voice a drone that slid under Abby’s skin. By the time the final bell rang, her nerves felt like frayed cable. She and Kimi walked out together without saying much. The late afternoon air had a bite; leaves scraped along the sidewalk.

“After school?” Kimi said, hopeful but careful.

“Mom needs me home,” Abby said, which was true in the way excuses are sometimes true.

Kimi’s mouth pulled to one side. “Okay. Text me you’re not dead.”

“Bossy,” Abby said.

“Accurate,” Kimi returned, and bumped Abby’s shoulder again—light, testing. The warmth rushed Abby’s palm where the ring lay. She masked a flinch as a tug at her backpack strap and waved goodbye.

---

The house felt too quiet the moment Abby stepped inside. The dishwasher hummed. The TV murmured from down the hall, some cooking show with the volume low. Afternoon light lay in a rectangle on the hardwood like a rug no one had stepped on yet.

“Hi, honey,” Mom called from the living room. “There’s a snack on the counter.”

“Thanks,” Abby managed. She set her backpack down without a thump and took the stairs slow, hand sliding the banister like she’d bruise the air if she moved too fast.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped.

A thin seam of light leaked from under Randy’s door. It cut across the carpet, pale and sharp. The air felt different here—heavier—as if the house had lungs and was holding its breath.

Abby didn’t need the ring to know, but the ring answered anyway, a throb against her finger like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. She looked without meaning to. Color gathered under the door like smoke pooling along the floor: red gone old and dark, purple pooling deep, black curling and uncurling like something dreaming.

For a heartbeat, she thought she saw the black reach, a slow slip along the baseboard, the way water finds the lowest place.

Her mouth went dry. “Randy?” she whispered, not touching the door.

No answer. The TV murmured on downstairs; the dishwasher hummed. The house continued pretending to be a house.

Abby pressed her palm flat to the wood. “I’m here,” she said, barely sound.

The ring warmed—not a burn, not the sear from the cafeteria, but a steady heat that made her hand feel less like a hand and more like a promise. The black under the door thinned for a breath, not retreating so much as remembering she existed.

She stayed there, breathing with the wood, until her heartbeat slowed enough to count: one, two, three. When she finally pulled her hand away, her palm tingled like she’d pressed it against a window in winter.

In her room, the cedar chest sat where it always sat, brass fittings dulled by fingerprints from a hundred tiny stories. The smell of cedar—clean, sharp—met her as soon as she pushed the door closed. She crossed to the bed and sat without turning on the lamp.

She slipped the ring off and set it on the quilt. The world’s edges blurred, color subsiding like tide. It didn’t take the weight with it. The weight stayed.

Abby rested her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Behind her eyes, the hallway replayed—the way Kimi’s glow had unfurled at a touch like a flag catching wind, the way it had felt like being found instead of finding. Her chest tightened with the ache of it, the dangerous relief.

“Don’t shut me out,” Kimi had said.

“I’m trying not to,” Abby said into her palms, voice muffled. She lifted her head and stared at the small red heart in the silver band. “I’m trying.”

Down the hall, a floorboard creaked. The seam of light under Randy’s door thinned to a sliver and then went dark. The house exhaled so softly Abby would’ve missed it if she hadn’t been listening for something to prove it wasn’t holding its breath anymore.

Grandpa’s voice rose in her mind, not stern, not soft—just certain. That’s not a toy, girl.

“I know,” Abby whispered, and believed it and didn’t, both at once.

She reached for the ring, hesitated, and drew her hand back. For tonight, not wearing it felt like the truest way to love the people under this roof. For tonight, she could be just a sister who made dinner and kept quiet and didn’t pry.

She stood, went downstairs, and let the ordinary noises of the house fold around her like a blanket: the pot lid rattling as water started to boil, Mom saying something about sauce, the front door opening and closing as Dad came in late. She held onto them the way you hold onto a rope in the dark—one hand over the next, careful, steady—knowing the dark was still there, but so was the rope.

She’d talk to Kimi tomorrow.

She’d face the door when she had the courage to knock.