The other day I was walking down Ninth Street, headed over to Patch’s, and this girl with honey-colored hair and a long, gray coat passed by me. We smiled at each other, because we’d definitely been at parties together. This was before all the secrets around me started to churn, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving.
The streets of New York City shone in the sunlight and the wind was strong. Brightly colored leaves rustled in the wind. In the fall, I like to have a warm, dark-colored sweater on hand—either for me, or to lend to a girl like that, like the one in the long, gray coat who walked by me that day and who shared the trace of a smile.
I remember looking at that girl and wondering, what’s her secret? Then, only a few days later, when all the secrets started to build, they felt like the big difference between me and my friends. Whenever I saw a girl, or even other guys, I thought, what’s their secret? And I wondered that about people because all of a sudden I had so many secrets of my own.
Now I believe that everybody I like has secrets. They sprout up fresh all the time, like mushrooms or something growing in nature that I’m not familiar with, since I rarely leave Manhattan.
But let’s start this story right at the moment when I had to take on my first big secret, which is about my dad and what he’d been up to over in London, where he moved about five years ago when he left my mom and me and my brother.
This is the secret that I had to keep from everyone. And I’m pretty sure it’s the one that set all the others in motion. Soon enough the secrets were growing, gaining speed, and rushing toward me and my friends until we had no choice—we had to either knock them apart or let them mow us all down. And that girl I saw on Ninth Street? Yeah, I got to see her again.