The Secret

                                                            THE SECRET



                                                                By Imani



Sincere Blackwell was a twenty four year old level headed female who lived a comfortable life in Washington, DC. Her friends often joked that her name fit her personality. Anything she put her hand to, work or school related, she was sincere about it.  She was an honor roll student and she made her parents proud.

Today, Sincere graduated George Washington University with a major in Journalism and two of her closest friends Liberty Jackson and Charlene Washington surprised her with a celebration by taking her out for a night on the town:  an Alicia Keys’ concert at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC followed by dinner at the Mexican rooftop restaurant, Lauriol Plaza, where they gorged on quesadillas and empanadas and drank frozen margaritas. Though Sincere wasn’t a heavy drinker, she had to admit it wasn’t half bad.

All three promised that they’d go to George Washington University together after they graduated high school, only Sincere wasn’t able to. The night of her graduation from high school, her father died from a heart attack and she had to take care of her mother who had cancer.

Her mother was diagnosed with leukemia when she was twelve. It went into remission when Sincere was fifteen and returned when she turned eighteen. Since Sincere was her mother’s only living relative, she had to put college on hold.

On her twentieth birthday, her mother passed away. She took it hard and felt more alone than ever despite the comfort of friends.

Months after her mother passed, she surprised everyone when she closed up the house she grew up in and moved to a studio apartment in DC and enrolled in George Washington University. Because of what she went through, no one thought she would make it through four years of college despite a rough first year.

Now here she was finally done with school. But the excitement of it all was very short lived, because not even three hours ago, Sincere felt she had made the biggest mistake of her life. She was torn between staying loyal to two very good friends of hers and obeying the law.

After they left Lauriol Plaza, the three decided to call it a night. Liberty, who was their driver, was slightly buzzed. But no one thought twice when she climbed

behind the wheel because she’d driven many times before while tipsy. Charlene was the most intoxicated of them all.

Liberty decided to take a back road to Sincere’s apartment since there were almost no cars on this road. She let the top down to her Mustang letting the breezy night air caress their faces, and as Charlene teased Sincere about not having a man in her life, Liberty sped dangerously along the curbs of the partially dark road. She did not see the man in the long black trench coat step out into the road until she struck him causing him to bounce from her windshield to the hood of her car and back to the ground.

Stunned, nobody spoke. Liberty’s eyes remained glued to the splatter of blood on her windshield. Sincere sat in the backseat, sweat broke out on her forehead and her heart pounded heavily in her chest.          

“Oh no!” Liberty whispered. Charlene’s eyes darted around them. The street was deserted. It was nearly one in the morning. Where the hell did he come from? What was he doing out here?

“Don’t panic, yall,” Charlene said. “Before any one come driving over that hill, we got to push him to the side somewhere over there.” She pointed to the wooded area on her side. Since they were in grade school, Charlene was always the one to take charge of situations. She always seemed to have the solution for everything no matter how lame it sounded.

“Are you nuts?” Sincere stated glaring at the back of Charlene’s head.                    “We got to call the cops!”

“Sincere, don’t be stupid!” Charlene said turning in the passenger seat.      “We’ve all been drinking, remember? Do you know how much trouble Liberty would be in since she’s the one behind the wheel or do you care?”

Sincere sat back quietly and pondered what she said. Besides, it was pointless to argue with someone like Charlene. Once she got an idea stuck in her head, she wasn’t letting go.

“Now let’s take care of this and stop wasting time!” Before anyone else could argue, Charlene and Liberty stepped out the car and Sincere reluctantly dragged herself out and trailed behind Charlene.

The head lights from Liberty’s car beamed on his face. One look at the lifeless eyes and the bloodied gash in the right bottom jaw that exposed his teeth, Sincere thought she was going to be sick.

Together, they grunted and sweated as they worked to pull the man to the side of the road. The smell that drifted from the body to their noses indicated thatthe man hadn’t washed in ages. Liberty coughed and turned her head to the side. It was all she could do to keep from gagging.

Charlene, seemingly oblivious to the smell, continued pulling him by the legs further behind some trees til he was almost hidden.

“He looks and smells homeless,” Liberty said.

“My thoughts exactly,” Charlene said as they all hurried back to the car and got in.

“He probably doesn’t even have a family,” she added. “I’m sure no one would be missing him.”

“Yeah you probably right,” Liberty said not at all sounding convinced.

“I can’t believe this,” Sincere murmured. “We’ve just become a couple of murderers.” Of course, no one was paying attention to her.

Charlene reached over and turned on the windshield wipers and the windshield fluid to clean the blood stain off Liberty’s windshield.

The sudden glare of headlights of a car in the opposite direction caught them off guard. Liberty’s sweaty hands gripped the steering wheel and her feet hit the gas pedal propelling them backwards against their seats. Sincere held her breath as the car in the opposite lane sped past.

Nobody said a word as Liberty continued driving. They were all having the same thoughts. That car seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Was it possible that someone had seen them?

Once at her apartment complex, Sincere didn’t bother by saying goodbye to her friends. She just hurried inside needing to shower, but no matter how hard she scrubbed, she could not rid her body of the scent of the homeless man.

Wrapping her blue terry bathrobe around her, she began pacing the floor. She peered outside for any signs of the cops, but there were none. That still didn’t make her knotted stomach feel any better.

Never in a million years did she think she would find herself in such a predicament. They had pushed that man to the side of the road as if her were an animal and continued on. He had to be homeless, so why was he there? Most homeless people hung out in downtown DC or near metro stops. It just seemed odd that he’d been walking across the road from a wooded area and in the middle of the night no less.

But it didn’t matter where he came from, why he was there or where he was going. He was a human being.

What was even more bizarre was the mysterious car. If the person had seen them, why not call the cops? On their way back to her apartment, she kept listening for the sound of sirens and watching for flashing blue lights that never came.

Sincere should have insisted that they call the cops, but no matter how bad she wanted to do the right thing, she couldn’t turn on her girls. She would just have to move forward with her life.For the next couple of weeks, Sincere tried to do just that. She went through the motions of searching for journalism jobs and putting in extra hours at TGIF’s where she’d been a waitress for the past year.

She hadn’t heard from Liberty, but Charlene had called Thursday morning reminding her of a barbecue her family was having that coming Saturday which was the 4th of July.

Sincere didn’t feel much like partying with Charlene and her family, but it would seem highly suspicious if she suddenly didn’t show up when she and her parents had been going for years.

That night, as she got out of her car to head into her apartment, she silently wondered if Liberty was going to the barbecue. It seemed like she was avoiding her just like Sincere was avoiding her.

Deep in thought, Sincere walked toward her building. She almost didn’t see the dark car with no headlights on creep past. Her eyes followed it as it slowly turned on the streets and disappeared from view.

For the past couple of nights, she had been feeling really jumpy. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

She always felt safe at Van Metre Park Georgetown apartments, but these days, she found herself jumping at her own shadows and constantly looking over her shoulders.

Paranoia caused her to hurry into her apartment even though the dark car was long gone, and double lock her doors.

That night, she checked the door two more times before she hit the sack. She didn’t bother to call Charlene. She figured she just show up at the barbecue. After all, Charlene’s parents loved her and she didn’t want to disappoint them.

The next day, she threw herself into her work. By noon, she wished she had called Charlene, because she got a call from her older sister Mo’nique who was in tears, saying that Charlene had been murdered.

It was no random act of violence. Her body had been found chopped into pieces inside her Miata and there was a note on the windshield of the car. When Mo’nique told her what the note had said, Sincere nearly fainted.

“That which is done in the dark will come to light.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Mo’nique had said. “Was she in trouble or somethin’?”

“I-I wouldn’t know,” Sincere muttered. She ended the call saying that she would stop by and offer her condolences to the Washingtons. Sincere felt so sick she had to leave work early. Only she knew what that note meant and only she knew why Charlene was murdered so brutally. As much as she wanted it to not be true, a note and a body chopped up in pieces was sending a message loud and clear. Whoever did it was furious.

Sincere tried calling Liberty on her cell, but got no answer. She decided to head over to her apartment in Waldorf, MD, her heart pounded so hard she thought she was having a heart attack.

The memory of her best friend glaring at her telling her how stupid she was for suggesting they call the cops the night they killed that man burned in her head. She wanted to cry because she would miss her, but more so because of the unfortunate way she was taken from this world.

Her eyes stung from unshed tears as she parked her car next to Liberty’s Mustang in front of the high rise building. Sincere hurried inside and took the elevator to the second floor. She stopped in front of Liberty’s door and was shocked to find yellow tape crossed over the door. Her face heated and sweat beaded her upper lip.

“You didn’t hear?” Sincere whirled around to face a short older woman holding a cane.

“Somebody done busted in and kill that there young lady,” she said. “Yes siree. It happened yesterday morning.”

Sincere didn’t read the papers or keep up with the news so she had no way of knowing. Suddenly afraid for her own life, Sincere fled down the hall toward the elevator. Her only thought was getting the hell out of DC! Little did she know her nightmare was just beginning.