Secret Heart

Secret Heart


I looked back over my shoulder just to make sure no one was following me. This was the first time I had gone to the tree ever since Dad caught me sneaking out on Monday. This time I was much more confident. It was one o’ clock in the afternoon. He couldn’t punish me for going out at one o’ clock in the afternoon, but I still didn’t want him knowing about it. After seeing the way he’d acted when I told him about my project, I would be reluctant to tell him anything.
When I was finally in the clearing, I looked back one more time and was relieved to see that I was the only one standing in the woods for as far as I could see. I knew Milly was here, of course, but other than that, there was no one. I knelt down beside the tree. This was it. I was going to do this one little thing, and I was never going to change a thing. It would be our little secret, Milly’s and mine. To everyone else, it would just look like a heart carved in a tree. They would never know what was hidden beneath the layer of bark and wood.
I took out my pocket knife and pried the shape out of the tree. I reached into my pocket and slowly pulled out the perfectly folded note that I had written. I tucked it into the indent in the tree and replaced the heart shaped piece. I stood up and surveyed my work. I smiled. It was perfect. No one would ever suspect there was a note behind the perfectly carved heart. I sat back against a tree opposite the one I had carved and let myself drift back to one last memory.

We were standing out at the pavilion, and I was watching my breath come out in little white puffs, and laughing as they got larger and larger. Milly laughed as she watched my mouth widen in my quest to blow a huge white breath and blow it into Niki's face.
"Sooooo," I said mischievously.
"What?" She asked, still laughing as my mouth widened as far as it would go.
"It’s your birthday soon, right?"
"Yeah," She said wondering where I was going with this. "Why?"
"‘Cuz I know what I’m getting for you!"
She sighed. "Tod! You’re going to torture me about it, aren’t you?"
"Yep." Yep said, half laughing as I saw her frustrated expression.
"Yeah, my dad and I are going to the mall tomorrow, and then . . ."
"Tod!"
" . . . I’m going to that one store and getting that one thing . . ."
"Tod!"
" . . . And then I’ll wrap it in that one color that you like . . ."
"TOD!"
"Okay, okay!" I said with a laugh. "I won’t tell you!"
"Good!" She said, amused.
But after a few minutes of blowing my breath into Lisa’s face, I started again.
‘I just know it’s going to be perfect!" I said. "It’ll be white, cause white goes with everything, plus you said that the white ones were your favorites . . ."
"Tod Jeremy Belle, what am I going to do with you?!" She said, exasperated.
"Absolutely nothing! I like myself right where I am, thank you!" I said with a laugh.

That had been only a few weeks before her fourteenth birthday. I had given her a ring with a white horse on it. The day after her birthday, I had seen her wearing the ring. I though back, trying to remember even once when I had seen her without the ring on. I couldn’t think of a single time. I wondered if she had worn the ring because I was the one that gave it to her, or just because she liked the ring. I sighed. There was no use in torturing myself about it.
My attention turned back to the heart I had carved in the tree what now seemed like ages ago. I smiled as a thought came to my mind. This heart would never break.