Rules for Secret Keeping Read online

  “Anyway, I think this is a fab idea,” Emma says, and Charlie nods. “I mean, you’re going to have access to the whole school’s gossip and secrets.” Her face is getting flushed with excitement. “Samantha! You are totally going to rule the school!”

  “Guys, um, it doesn’t really work that way,” I say nervously. “I can’t just go around reading them, that would totally—”

  Charlie waves her hand at me. “Of course you would still keep it a secret, even if you read it,” she says. “Sometimes it’s fun just knowing.” A song comes tinkling out of her purse, and she pulls out a small silver and blue cell phone. “Ugh,” she says. “It’s Mark.” She says this like it should be enough of an explanation and then flounces off down the hall.

  “Okay, listen,” Emma says, once Charlie is out of earshot. “I want to pass a secret.” She pulls a tightly folded piece of paper out of her binder. There’s a dollar clipped to the top.

  “Cool,” I say, reaching for it. But she pulls it out of my reach.

  “Now, listen,” she says, “I want to make it clear that usually I don’t do things like this.” She pulls a piece of her long red hair and twirls it around her finger. Then her tone turns serious. “I don’t believe in playing mind games.” Yikes.

  “Okay,” I say uncertainly.

  “But I think this is a totally cute and fab way to flirt, keep a guy guessing, you know?” She smiles. “So here you go!” She shoves the note in my hand.

  I look down at the note in my hand. It says “Jake Giacandi” on the front. Oh. My. God. My heart starts to slide down into my stomach, and I try to stop it by telling myself that this note means nothing. In fact, it probably says something really stupid. For example, maybe Emma wants to ask Jake about what kind of skateboard to buy. But then, how would she know that Jake skateboards? Actually, how would she really know Jake at all? Besides their little chat in homeroom the other day, have they even talked?

  I want to ask her what’s in the note, but I can’t really come out and say that, now, can I? After my whole big spiel about how the secrets are private and anonymous, it probably wouldn’t look too good to go around asking her what’s in it.

  “So when will you give it to him?” Emma asks.

  “Um, usually I give all the secrets out after lunch.” This isn’t totally true. In fact it’s pretty much a complete lie. Usually I just give the secrets to people whenever I see them. But I can’t just go give Jake a note from Emma immediately. This is an emergency situation, and I need some time to think about this, so that I can come up with some kind of brilliant plan. A slight delay in the passing of the secret is totally justified. After all, this is a previously unencountered situation. One of those “new business challenges” my dad is always talking about.

  “But you just gave Ronald his secret, and it’s the morning,” Emma points out. She flips her long hair over her shoulder and narrows her eyes at me. The look on her face reminds me of yesterday when she saw I was in her seat.

  “True,” I say. “But that’s only because I wanted to get it over with. Ronald’s crazy.” Emma looks at me skeptically, so I twirl my finger around by my ear to kind of drive the point home. “Totally crazy. One time last year he stole our teacher’s coat and wore it out on the playground.”

  Emma wrinkles her nose. “Weird,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “It was this really long black fur thing that he kept tripping over. He wanted to take the teacher’s snow boots, too, but he couldn’t get them out of the classroom without getting caught.”

  “Well, anyway,” Emma says. She’s looking at me strangely. I’m pretty sure she didn’t buy that whole coat story, even though it’s true. “Can you just let me know when you give it to Jake? I really want to see his reaction, you know, like if he acts different around me once he gets the note.”

  If he acts different around her once he gets the note? Is she crazy? She’s only known him for one day! How can he possibly act different around her? She doesn’t have anything to compare it to. Not like me. I have tons and tons of Jake memories. And not just TSSI, either. I have the time that we Photoshopped Daphne’s head onto a picture of a clown for her birthday party invitations in fifth grade. And the time Jake came over to my house for dinner and he ate four whole corn on the cobs, and my mom and Tom couldn’t believe it, and they totally thought we were hiding the corn somewhere. Or the time that I went with Jake’s family to the water park, and I got completely drenched by this really big wave and Jake and his brothers said I looked like a drowned rat.

  And okay, fine, maybe those aren’t the most romantic memories ever (especially that last one—I mean, a drowned rat isn’t exactly a compliment), but that’s not the point! The point is, if I told Jake I liked him, if I was the one who was sending him a note, I would have something to compare it to. I would know if he suddenly got weird and didn’t want to eat four corn on the cobs in front of me, or if he wasn’t calling me a drowned rat and was instead trying to help me dry off at the water park, that then things would have changed.

  But Emma. How could she tell? They have no history!

  But I don’t say that. Because I can’t.

  So I just slip the note into my bag and say, “Of course I’ll let you know.”

  And then the bell rings and we head to homeroom.

  That note taunts me all morning. It stares up at me from my book bag, laughing and pointing. It’s almost enough to make me regret the way I begged my mom for the bag I wanted—a very cute tan suede that is sophisticated and cool, but is not a normal book bag. It’s one of those bags with an open top. So all through the day, every time I look down, I can SEE THAT NOTE.

  It taunts me all through English.

  It taunts me all through science.

  It taunts me all through study hall, which is the worst because I have nothing to keep my mind on, and at one point I honestly think the note might have actually screamed, “OPEN ME RIGHT NOW, SAMANTHA, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO READ ME!”

  “I’m dying,” I say to Daphne at lunch. “I. AM. DYING.”

  Daphne reaches her hand out and touches my forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” she says.

  “I’m not sick,” I say. I reach into my bag and pull out the tuna fish sandwich my mom packed me this morning. I look around the middle school cafeteria. This place is so confusing. Last year, it was super simple. You ate with your class, and that was it. Now there are, like, tables of people all, you know, mixed-up. “It was an expression.”

  I pull the secret out of my bag and drop it on the table. “Look at that,” I say to Daphne.

  “Looks like a piece of paper,” she says.

  “Not just a piece of paper,” I tell her. “It’s a secret. And do you know whose name is on that secret?”

  Daphne picks it up and looks at it. “It’s for Jake,” she says.

  “Yes! And do you know who it’s from?”

  “No,” Daphne says.

  “It’s from Emma! Emma is sending secrets to Jake!”

  “No!” Daphne shrieks. She grabs the paper out of my hand and waves it around. “Why would she do that?” This is why Daphne and I are BFFs. She hasn’t even met Emma. All she knows is what I told her when I called her last night to fill her in on all things You Girl, Emma, and eyebrows. But she already understands just how completely severe the situation is.

  “Why do you think?” I say. “She probably loves him.” I take a bite of my tuna fish sandwich. Ugh. Totally soggy. My mom really has to stop letting Tom make the sandwiches. She knows he has a trigger finger with the mayo.

  “That little brat,” Daphne says. “She thinks she can just step in and LOVE HIM AFTER ONE DAY?”

  “That’s what I thought!” See? Perfect BFFs!

  “You have to read it,” Daphne says. She’s holding the paper up to the light, trying to see through it.

  “Don’t do that,” I say, snatching it away from her. “Someone could see.” I look around the cafeteria to make sure no one’s notice
d. But no one has. In fact, it’s kind of like we’re invisible. Sigh. I know I should put the note back in my bag before something untoward happens to it. But I can’t! It’s like if I let it out of my sight, something horrible will happen.

  “You have to read it,” Daphne says again.

  “I can’t read it,” I say. “That would be compromising the integrity of my entire business.”

  “But if you don’t read it,” Daphne says, “you’ll be compromising the integrity of your entire romantic future.”

  “Well . . . when you put it that way.” I stare at the paper, which is folded up nice and neat. JAKE GIACANDI is written on the front in sparkly gold gel pen. “Maybe I could just open it up, read it, and then tape it back up.”

  “Good idea!” Daphne says. She sounds excited. “You can totally read it, and then tape it back up!”

  “I don’t have any tape, though,” I say. Maybe I could just accidentally on purpose lose it. That happens, right? Even the U.S. Postal Service loses things once in a while. I know because my grandparents are always complaining about it.

  “This is a school,” Daphne says. She rolls her eyes. “I’m sure if you needed to find some tape, you could.” Good point.

  I start to pull the top of one edge of the paper down just a tiny, tiny bit. “Wait!” I scream. Two guys from the table behind us turn to look.

  “Who are you talking to?” Daphne frowns. “You’re the one holding the note.”

  “What if it says something I don’t want to know?” I ask her. “Then what?”

  “What would you not want to know?” Daphne asks. She takes a sip of her juice box and then looks at it sadly. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring juice boxes to school anymore,” she says. “No one else has a juice box.”

  “I mean, I don’t know for sure that it says she likes him,” I say. “And if I read it, and it does say that, it would be like opening up a huge can of worms.”

  “But that’s exactly why you need to open it,” Daphne says. “You need to know for sure.”

  “Maybe,” I say, deciding to abandon reason and go back to my earlier theory, “it’s something totally innocent, like how she wants him to give her skateboarding tips or something.”

  Daphne frowns. “Um, Samantha? Does Emma look like the kind of girl who skateboards?”

  I look across the cafeteria to where Emma is waiting in line for her hot lunch. She’s sipping out of a Diet Coke can with one hand, and texting someone covertly on her cell with the other. As she does so, her silver charm bracelet jangles down her arm.

  “Not really,” I say. “But maybe her brother or something—”

  “What did she say,” Daphne asks, “right before she gave you the note?”

  “Um, she said that she didn’t usually do this, that she wasn’t usually into games, but that”—I swallow—“but that she thought the secret-passing thing was a cute way to flirt.”

  Daphne doesn’t say anything, she just gets really busy putting her empty juice box back into her bag. “You should open it,” she says. “I mean, these are dire circumstances. If she likes Jake—and let’s be honest, it sounds like she does—then you have to know.”

  “Why, though?” Denial sounds kind of fun right about now.

  “So that you can do something about it! Go after him, tell Jake how you feel!”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. I trace my fingers over the writing on the front of the purple paper. J. A. K. E. in swirly letters. God, this is annoying. I mean, why is EMMA writing his name in swirly script, like, with LOVE or something, when I am the one who has known him forever? She thinks she can just come waltzing into . . . I don’t know, here or something, and just take over? I’m the one who’s been watching Jake skateboard since forever. I’m the one who shared a moment with him right before he went to camp, and I’m the one who’s been writing him all summer, trying to keep his spirits up! Well, a few postcards. But that’s better than the none that Emma wrote him!

  “You’re right,” I say to Daphne. “I have a right to open up this note!”

  “Do it!” Daphne cries.

  I am like a soldier going off to battle. I set the note slowly down on my binder. Then, very carefully, so that I can maybe seal it up later if I want to, I slide my finger under the tape that’s holding the note together. It catches on the side of my finger, so I apply a little more pressure. Just a little more, a littttlllee morrrreee . . . The tape starts to tear on the side, and I’m just about to break through, just about to see what’s in this super secret note, just about to learn the truth about—

  “There you are!” Emma says from behind me, and I scream and drop the note on the floor.

  “Wow, you don’t have to, like, freak out about it,” she says. She sits down next to me and flips her long red hair over her shoulder. “Anyway,” she says, “I have major news.”

  “Oh, really?” I say. Her secret note is on the ground, and obviously it won’t do to have her see it, because then she’s going to be all, Um, why is my note on the ground when I specifically asked you to give it to Jake? So I quickly cover it with my foot.

  “Yes,” she says. “Major news.” She looks over to where Charlie is still standing in line, looking at some yogurt. “Ugh,” she says. “I really wish she’d get over here.” We watch as Charlie pulls the tab off a container of yogurt, slips a plastic spoon in, and takes a small bite. Then she makes a disgusted face and drops it in the trash. The lunch lady behind the yogurt bar looks at her and then patiently hands her another kind.

  “What’s she doing?” Daphne asks.

  “She has weird food allergies,” Emma says. “It’s like acid reflux or something, way gross.”

  “But why is she taking one bite of a yogurt and then throwing the rest out?” I ask. I watch as another container goes plopping into the trash.

  “She has to figure out which ones she can eat,” Emma says. “She knows from tasting them if she can handle a whole container or not.”

  I want to ask why Charlie doesn’t just bring her own yogurt from home, or why she doesn’t know what brands she can eat, but Charlie’s weird acid reflux stuff is completely forgotten by what Emma tells me next.

  “Okay, so brace yourself,” she tells me. “This news isn’t good.”

  “What news isn’t good?” I ask warily. But then I perk up a little. Maybe she’s going to say that she told Jake that she liked him, and he rejected her. Maybe he told her that he likes someone else, someone he’s known forever, someone with really cute eyebrows. Maybe Emma decided she didn’t really want to—

  “Who are you?” Emma suddenly demands, looking across the table at Daphne.

  “Oh,” Daphne says. “I’m Daphne.” She holds her hand over the table, but Emma looks at her suspiciously.

  “Can she be trusted?” she asks me.

  “Who?” I ask. “Daphne?”

  “Yes, her,” Emma says, looking at Daphne with distaste.

  “Um, yeah,” I say. “She can be trusted.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Well, then.” She pauses and then looks around the cafeteria dramatically. She reaches into her big black leather bag and pulls out a wrinkled-up piece of paper. “I found this on the wall outside of our homeroom.”

  I look down at it. It’s light yellow, with an aqua trim, and here’s what it says:

  DO YOU HAVE A SECRET YOU’RE JUST DYING TO TELL?

  Get into the 21st century and send your secret to [email protected] and I’ll pass it on to whoever you want. Don’t take the chance that your secret could fall into the wrong hands! Would you want your secret to be known all over school if one of those other secret-passers loses it, or drops it, or something?

  I don’t think so!

  Use our secure online payment form at tellmeasecretmillboro.com or prepay for your secret by dropping a dollar into locker 245. Be sure to include your name! For our first week, buy one get one free!

  XXO,

  Olivia

 
P.S. If you want to be all old-fashioned about it, I will accept handwritten secrets in my locker, too, number 245.

  For a second, I just stare at the paper, sure this has to be a joke. I mean, who does that? Just steals someone’s idea for a business? Not to mention this flyer isn’t very professional. There are tons of run-on sentences, it doesn’t really have a structure, and it’s very confusing. Plus what does she mean by “those other secret-passers”? Everyone knows I’m the only other secret-passer around these parts.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  “I told you,” Emma says. “It was on the wall outside our homeroom.”

  “Did you see any other ones?”

  “Yes.” She takes a dainty sip of her milk. “But don’t worry, I took care of them.” She opens up her bag, and at the bottom, all scrunched up, are dozens and dozens of the same light yellow papers. I look at her, shocked.

  “You took them all down?” I ask, dazed.

  “Yes,” Emma says.

  “Good for you,” Daphne says. “Honestly, that’s so stupid, stealing someone’s idea for a business.”

  Emma looks at her sharply. “What’s your name again?” she asks.

  “Daphne,” Daphne says, sighing.

  “Well, Daphne, all I know is that someone close to Samantha’s business might have been leaking top-level secrets about how it’s run.” She looks at me. “It’s important that in business, we can trust our advisers.”

  “Daphne’s not my adviser,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And she doesn’t know any top-level secrets, there are no top-level secrets about how I run my business; I just do it. You put the secret in the locker and I pass it, easy as that.”