These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf Page A

their friends. I didn’t waste my time even thinking about them. Grown men even stopped to look at me—my father’s friends, the manager at the grocery store—though they were much more subtle about it. I was flattered. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know that someone thinks you look good. I just didn’t have time for it.
    Every waking minute of my day was spent studying, cramming as much knowledge into my head as possible. I was sort of like one of those binge eaters who sit in a closet, with their packages of doughnuts and bags of potato chips, and stuff food in their mouths, not understanding why, just needing to do it. That’s how I felt. I needed more and more information and I didn’t know why. Well, of course, there were obvious reasons—to get good grades so I could get into a good college so I could get a good job and make good money. But there was more to it. I studied once for a history test on the Revolutionary War for ten hours straight. I knew the material, but I had to keep reviewing it, memorizing meaningless names and dates and battles. Finally, my father, who always tiptoed about as if he were afraid to startle the air around me, came into my room and tookthe book from my hands and insisted that I come down and eat something. I tried to balance things out—I joined all the sports teams I could—but it was the same kind of endless circle. I had to run farther, run faster—not to beat some competitor. No, it was something else. I’m not sure what, but I know I was miserable.
    “Are you okay?” the boy with brown eyes asked me. “You don’t look so good.”
    I blushed and stared up at him, not knowing what to say.
    “You just look like you’re in shock or something,” he explained. “You’re not going to pass out, are you?”
    “No, no,” I assured him. “I’m fine.”
    “Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to die on me or something terrible like that.”
    Well, I didn’t die, though a little more than nine months later I wished I would have. We walked to a nearby café, had coffee and talked and laughed. He was the one person who could distract me from myself and for the first time ever I was actually having fun. He told me he was a junior at St. Anne’s College, working on a business degree. We spent the next three weeks together, every spare moment. I really loved Christopher, but it was too much, too fast. I considered lying to him about my age, but although I may have been many things, a liar wasn’t one of them. At least, not at that time. Christopher raised his eyebrows at my age, but it didn’tstop him from taking my hand at the restaurant. I didn’t mean to keep him a secret, but I did. I didn’t introduce him to my parents or Brynn, didn’t even tell them about Christopher. I’m not sure why. He was twenty-two, way too old for a just-turned sixteen-year-old, and I knew my parents would have forbidden me from seeing him. Maybe deep down I knew it wasn’t going to last—that while there wasn’t anything wrong with a sixteen-year-old falling in love with a twenty-two-year-old, there was something definitely wrong with a grown man falling in love with a teenager. So I kept us a secret.
    In the three weeks that I was with him, I didn’t crack open one book outside of school. I rushed through my homework before school and during study hall. My grades dipped. I went to volleyball practice, but my mind wasn’t on what the coach was saying. My mother asked me if I was feeling okay. Brynn looked at me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything. Neither did my teachers. I’m sure they were thinking,
No one’s perfect, even Allison Glenn.
I think they were secretly pleased to see me this way. As for me, I was gloriously happy.
    That first week we met in ordinary places—the movies, restaurants, the park—but the next Saturday he took me to his house. We had met at the city park and then I climbed into his car and he drove us out of Linden Falls across the Druid