Blood Secret by Kathryn Lasky

for use, for earth too dear! / So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, /As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. / The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand, / And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. “Buck up, Romeo, quit groveling. Nothing wrong with your hands. Oh my God, what a googly-eyed wimp. Spare me!
    Well, she would write something about this. Miss Lafferty said it only had to be three hundred words. At least there were no stars in this one. Three hundred words, did that include the words in quotation or not?

Chapter 10
    O NCE AGAIN IT WAS Friday night, and once again as Jerry came out of her room she saw the back of her aunt as she stood in front of the window lighting her Lenten candles. The window itself was a rectangle of lavender light, with her aunt’s face mirrored in the glass. And just beneath her eyes, which were shut tight in some sort of prayer, there were the reflections of the flickering candle flames. A bolt of lightning popped across the sky, jagged and hot white, slicing the window on the diagonal, splitting the image of her aunt’s face.
    Thunder rumbled as they sat down to their dinner, and outside the sky flinched with lightning that spread like electric lace over the mountains.
    “You want a little wine, Jerry? You can havesome. It won’t kill you. And it’s a heck of a lot better than that stuff they give us at Communion. Friday night, you know.”
    Jerry shrugged. She really meant to say no. She tried to make her mouth move around the simple word, but ever since…well, she didn’t want to think about “ever since.” Even so, she stole a glance at the cellar door, then slid her eyes to where the putty can had been. It was still there.
    “Nnnah.” The chopped sound came out with a mighty effort. It felt as if she were spitting a chunk of rock.
    “I’ll take that for a ‘no,’” Constanza said softly, and then quite suddenly reached over and patted Jerry’s hand. “It’s fine, gal. You’re doing just fine.”
    Jerry felt an unfamiliar sting in her eyes. Was she going to actually cry? She did not want to cry. Constanza got up quickly from the table. “Forgot the raisins. This stew always tastes better with raisins.”
    Jerry could see that there were already raisins in the stew. Constanza had not forgotten them at all. Her aunt was not a good liar, but her intentions were good.
    She came back to the table with the box and sprinkled some on top.
    “A garnish, you know. Just for decoration, really,” Constanza explained, and then they began to eat, both pretending about the raisins—about the raisins being just a garnish.
    Later, after dinner, after they had gone out to look for trapdoor spiders, after the dishes were cleaned and dried and put away on the pine shelves, and after Constanza had gone to bed and Jerry had stuck on nearly one hundred “Constanza Delivers” labels to the baked-goods boxes in the back pantry, a task she knew Constanza loathed, and after she had lain in bed for almost two hours staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, Jerry began to think about the silent lies she had told in the past two days—the two days since “the ever since.” Yes, she reflected on how one did not have to speak to be a liar. She had written a very excellent, exactly three-hundred-word essay (excluding the quote) about why Romeo’s stupid speech moved her profoundly. She had just agreed that there were no raisins in the stew. Let’s see, what else? she mused. Oh, Jerry’s silent voices could be very sarcastic and cutting. Perhaps that was why her voice had deserted her, because her tongue was gnarled with lies. She squeezed her eyes shut as she remembered the touch of her aunt’s hand on her own.
    Then she suddenly got up. She knew what she had to do. It was time to think of “the ever since.” She refused to be pinned in by “the ever since” and the silent lies. So she walked out of her bedroom, down the hall, and to the kitchen. It was a