Rules for Secret Keeping Page 9

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, uh, same thing you are,” I say, trying to be deliberately vague.

  “What is Jake’s computer doing here?” Charlie demands. “And his bag?”

  “How do you know what Jake’s computer looks like?” I ask before I can stop myself.

  “We see him here all the time,” Emma says. She sits down. Across from me. In Jake’s seat. “Anyway, I have another note for him.” She slides it across the table to me, with a dollar clipped to the top. Oh, for the love of . . . I look down at it and try not to let my face betray what I’m feeling. Which is OHMIGOD, WHYARETHESETWOPASSINGSOMANYNOTES? Also, maybe they should just LEAVEMEALONEANDGOTRY-OUTOLIVIA’SSECRETS.

  “Thanks,” I say. My voice sounds strangled.

  “I gotta go,” she says, looking over her shoulder nervously. “I don’t want to be here when you give it to him.” Then she and Charlie move over to the other side of The Common, where they plop down at a table, pull out their math books, and start giggling.

  I run my finger over the note. What the heck are they passing notes about? The curiosity is killing me! Honesty, I might just be about to go crazy. One little look wouldn’t hurt, would it? Just one look. At one note. I know I said I would never do that, but aren’t these kind of, like, extreme and extenuating circumstances? Mental torture, even?

  I glance over to make sure Emma and Charlie aren’t looking, and then I slide my finger under the note, ready to break the tape. I can tape it back up later, when I get to homeroom. Or first period. Or home. Or somewhere. I don’t know, I’m not thinking straight! I’m like a woman possessed! I reach under the tape and it’s about to break ohmigod it’s going to break and I’ll finally find out what—

  “Here you go!” Jake sets a bottle of lemonade down next to me and I scream.

  A couple of people turn to look. “Geez,” Jake says. “What’s your problem?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was, um, so engrossed in this article that you scared me, haha.” I grab the bottle of lemonade and take a sip. Luckily, Emma and Charlie are so far away that they didn’t seem to notice me shrieking.

  “Is that for me?” Jake asks. I follow his gaze to the note that’s sitting on top of my magazine. I pull the dollar off of it slowly, slip it into my rainbow wallet, and hand the note to Jake. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

  “Is it from Emma?” He looks excited.

  “Yes,” I say again. “It is.”

  “Thanks.” He puts it into his bag without reading it, then turns back to his computer. “So should we look at this site or what?”

  “Sure,” I say. I can’t believe he actually wants to do work! How can he not notice that I’m freaking out, that I’m completely and totally upset by the fact that he is passing notes with Emma? And why is he not reading it? If he was so excited to get it, then why doesn’t he just READ THE DARN THING?

  “Hmm,” Jake says, tapping at the keys and looking at the screen. “Okay, so it seems like she has a pretty easy system set up here. Very user-friendly.”

  “Great,” I say. I take another sip of lemonade. “Easy and fun and just what everyone wants.”

  “You could do this,” Jake says. “You could get something like this set up—it would only take maybe, like, five hundred dollars.”

  I laugh. “And where, may I ask, am I going to get five hundred dollars?” I apparently now can barely even get one dollar, much less five hundred.

  “I wish I knew more about coding,” Jake says. “But I don’t. Otherwise I would totally build you something.” Jake’s more into hacking than coding. One time last year he was even able to hack into our superintendent’s email account. He could have set up a fake snow day and everything, but he didn’t. He says it was because he was only doing it for the challenge, but I think it’s really because he knew he could probably get arrested or kicked out of school or something.

  “That’s really sweet of you,” I say.

  “We could always set you up a website with some kind of template,” Jake says.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Like some crappy template website is going to compete with that.” I gesture to the screen, where the OLIVIA’S SECRETS header is now blinking and flashing. I lean back in my chair. God, what a disaster.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Emma and Charlie wave at Jake from the other side of the caf. “So you see Emma here a lot?” I ask, as Jake waves back at them.

  Jake shifts in his chair uncomfortably. “Um, not really,” he says. “I come here a lot in the morning to go over my math notes.” Jake has a hard time in math, and I know his mom told him last year that if he didn’t keep his math grade up, he’d have to stop skateboarding.

  “Oh,” I say. For some reason things get awkward for a second, and Jake and I just sit there not saying anything, and then suddenly, the door to The Common goes flying open, and Eric Niles rushes in, his backpack bouncing roughly against his back. He’s wearing one of those hats with the floppy ear flaps, and they’re flapping all over. His face is red.

  “Samantha Carmichael!” he yells. “Samantha Carmichael, where are you?” He looks all around, and even though I’m sitting right there, his eyes slide past me. I guess because he’s in such a panic.

  “I’m right here,” I hiss. Everyone is looking. So extremely embarrassing.

  “Oh, Samantha, thank God I found you!” Eric pulls a chair up to our table and plops himself down. Great. So far, on what I thought was a maybe-date, I’ve been asked to pass a note to Jake from Emma, and Eric Niles has shown up and is now sitting at the table with me and Jake, like a complete date-crasher. One hundred percent not the way I imagined this morning going.

  “How did you know I was here?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light. I don’t want to be mean to Eric, since he is nice and usually pretty harmless. Of course, he is also an inconsiderate date-crasher, so I don’t know how long my self-control will last.

  “Your stepfather told me,” he says. He sets his book bag down in the middle of our table. Then he starts pulling a bunch of papers, books, and folders out of it, piling them all up.

  “You talked to Tom?” I ask. This thought is worrisome. Tom’s so nice to everyone. He might have invited Eric over to the house to hang out or something. Tom loves inviting people over. One time in fourth grade he invited my whole class over for a pottery painting party. It didn’t go so well. The paint turned out to be nonwashable, and we’ll just leave it at that.

  “Yes,” Eric says. “I called your house because you weren’t answering your cell.”

  “What are you doing?” Jake asks. He looks down at all the stuff Eric is dumping on our table. The pile now includes half of a roast beef sandwich in a baggie, and some green plastic army men.

  “Aha!” Eric says. “Here it is!” He pulls out a crumpled piece of paper and smooths it out. It’s covered in pencil writing.

  “What is that?” Jake asks.

  “It’s a record of what I’m about to tell you.” Eric looks at us seriously over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Now, first, I have to preface this with an apology.”

  “Okay,” I say. I feel nervous. Usually if Eric is starting out with an apology, whatever he’s about to tell you definitely can’t be good.

  “I . . . I . . .” He looks at me. “Well, I guess I’ll just say it.” He takes a deep breath. “Samantha, I used OLIVIA’S SECRETS TO PASS A SECRET!”

  “You what?” I shriek. Not because I’m really that mad, but because I can’t believe Eric would do something like that. Eric is supposed to be in love with me. He’s not supposed to be going around using Olivia’s website to pass secrets! That’s like cheating on me. God, everything in my world has gone totally and completely crazy and out of whack.

  “I know,” he says. And then he gets out of his chair and throws himself at my feet. “I’m sorry! I will make it up to you, Samantha, I will, I swear it!”

  “Eric,” I say. His mouth is coming very close to my shoes, and I’m afrai
d he might try to kiss my feet or something. Hello, embarrassing. “It’s okay, get up.”

  “Yeah,” Jake says, not looking at all amused by this crazy display. “Get up.”

  “What should I do?” Eric says. He gets up and plops himself down in a chair. “Do you want me to carry your books to every class for you? Should I make you dinner? Do you want me to do your homework every day for the rest of the school year?”

  “Dude,” Jake says, “you need to chill.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Chill. It’s okay, Eric, I’m not mad.”

  “You’re not? But I betrayed you!” He’s almost wailing now.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “Well,” he says. “If you say so.” He chews on his bottom lip. Then he takes a deep breath. “I have to tell you something else.”

  “There’s more?” I ask warily.

  “There’s more?” Jake asks. He looks like he might want to strangle Eric.

  “Yes,” Eric says. He gives Jake a dirty look, then sits up in his chair and adjusts his glasses. “And I think, Samantha, that you will want to hear this.” He gives Jake a pointed look.

  “Okay,” I say uncertainly.

  “It’s kind of confidential,” Eric says. He looks at Jake again.

  “You want me to leave?” Jake asks.

  “It’s okay,” I say quickly. “Jake can stay, he’s cool.”

  “Yeah,” Jake says. He gives Eric a look. “I’m cool.”

  “All right,” Eric says. “I guess.” He doesn’t sound so convinced. “So anyway, the reason that I was using Olivia’s Secrets in the first place was because I wanted to find out what your plans were for Halloween.”

  “You wanted to find out what whose plans were?” Jake asks.

  “Samantha’s.”

  “Then why didn’t you just ask her?”

  Eric looks at Jake like he’s crazy and has no idea about how to get girls. “Because it was going to be a surprise, which is why I didn’t pass the secret through Samantha. She knows my handwriting, and I figured she would know something was up.”

  “Why didn’t you just have someone else write Samantha’s name on it?” Jake asks.

  Eric sighs, pulls his glasses off, and looks up at the ceiling, like he’s dealing with a child. “Because the secret wasn’t for Samantha, it was for Daphne. I wanted to ask Daphne if Samantha had plans for Halloween. But if I passed a note to Daphne through Samantha, then of course Samantha would ask Daphne who the note was from. I couldn’t take the chance that Daphne would crack and ruin the surprise.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask Daphne to her face?” Jake asks.

  Eric blinks. “I don’t know,” he says. Oh, for the love of . . .

  “Anyway,” I say. “Can we please focus here?”

  “Right,” Eric says. He slides his glasses back on and sits up very straight. “So I passed Daphne a note asking what you were doing for Halloween, and how you would react to us possibly going trick-or-treating as Romeo and Juliet. You know, if I asked you beforehand.” Eric’s whole face gets red, and his ears turn red too.

  “You wanted to go trick-or-treating with Samantha as Romeo and Juliet?” Jake asks.

  “Yes.” Eric clears his throat. “It’s a play. By Shakespeare.”

  “Yeah, I know what it is,” Jake says, his voice tight.

  “Aww, that’s sweet, Eric,” I say. It is, too. Not that I would really want to go trick-or-treating as Romeo and Juliet with Eric. I don’t think I’m dressing up this year. I might be a little too old for that whole thing.

  “Yes, well, I’m getting to the best part,” Eric says. He rubs his hands together gleefully. “So this morning, I’m walking along, minding my own business—” Jake snorts at this part, I guess because he can’t really imagine Eric minding his own business. Which kind of makes sense when you think about it, since Eric is usually very much completely up in people’s business. “Anyway,” Eric says. “I was minding my own business, just walking along to The Common, when all of a sudden, I walked by Brooke Highsmith and Tucker Levangie. And do you know what they said as I passed by?” Eric lowers his voice and looks around, getting ready to lay the punch line on us.

  “No,” I say. “What did they say?” For the love of God, spit it out.

  Eric looks down at the paper, where he’s apparently constructed a written record of the whole incident. “They said, ‘Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ and then they laughed.” Eric sits back in his seat and looks smug.

  “Um, okay,” I say, not really getting it.

  “That’s pretty funny.” Jake chuckles and takes a sip of his hot chocolate.

  “Don’t you see?” Eric says, shooting Jake a dirty look. He moves his chair closer to mine. “Those two knew my secret! Olivia told them! She is READING THE SECRETS!”

  My mouth drops open and I sit up straight. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” he says.

  “You didn’t tell anyone else about the Romeo and Juliet idea?” I ask him.

  “No!” He shakes his head from side to side vehemently. “I didn’t! I sent the secret as soon as I came up with the idea.”

  Jake laughs again. I shoot him a dirty look of my own, because honestly, he’s being a little bit of a jerk. Eric is perfectly nice, and besides, he is giving me important information here. Important, possibly life-changing information.

  “Eric,” I say. “I might love you just a little bit right now.” Eric beams.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jake says, shaking his head. “You need proof.”

  “We have proof,” I say. “Eric heard two girls talking about a confidential secret that he passed. A secret that he didn’t tell anyone else.”

  “That’s not really proof,” Jake points out. “It’s just one person’s word against someone else’s.”

  “It is proof!” I insist. Even though I know in my heart that he’s right. It would be Eric’s word against Olivia’s. And who’s going to believe Eric? Everyone knows he’s been in love with me for, like, ever.

  “He’s right,” Eric says stiffly. “But I’ll help you to bring them down any way I can.”

  “Actually,” Jake says. “Samantha and I were just talking about that. Do you know anything about computers?”

  “Not really,” Eric admits. For all his geekiness, Eric is more into earth science, math, and video games. He doesn’t get too much into the techy, hacker side of geekdom.

  “Well, I think this website is highly unsecured,” Jake declares.

  “You do?” Eric asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, frowning. “You do?” And why is this the first I’ve heard of this?

  “Yes.” Jake looks at me seriously, and then he looks at Eric triumphantly. “And I’m going to help you hack it, Samantha. If we can hack into it, we can prove her whole online business is completely vulnerable.”

  “This,” Eric says, propping his glasses up onto his nose, “is war.”

  “You two,” I say, “are the best!” Eric keeps beaming. But Jake just looks annoyed.

  “IT’S WAR,” I TELL DAPHNE WHEN I SEE her at her locker before homeroom. Of course, this might be overstating it just a little bit. I mean, of course it’s not war exactly. Also, I don’t know much about waging war on someone. I might have to ask Taylor and/or Emma for tips. Those two probably know lots about it.

  “What’s war?” Daphne asks.

  “The whole secret-passing thing.” I fill her in on what happened at The Common.

  “Jake really thinks he can hack into the site?” She sounds doubtful, and she keeps putting her books into her locker really slowly, not looking at me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Of course, I have no idea how easy it will be or if he knows what he’s doing. But he’s going to try! And that means we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.” I raise my right eyebrow up and down suggestively, trying to make her laugh. But she doesn’t. Which means something is definitely wrong. Daphne usually loves it when I wiggle m
y right eyebrow up and down. It’s a very hard thing to do, to wiggle only one eyebrow. Plus now that my eyebrows are half-painted on, it should be, like, doubly funny.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Seriously, Daph, let’s talk. Whatever it is, we can talk about it, I swear. I want to, I—”

  “I told you,” she says. “It’s nothing.” But she slams her locker door shut more forcefully than I would deem necessary. So I’m pretty sure she has some pent-up anger boiling around inside. “I have to get to the newspaper office to drop off my story. And then I’m going down to the gym to talk to Coach Krasinksi about soccer.”

  “I didn’t know you were joining soccer,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things you don’t know lately.” And she takes off down the hall before I can say anything else.

  Geez. The high I had for a little while when I heard that Olivia might be reading people’s secrets is totally gone. How can I be happy when Daphne’s mad at me? And not just, like, normal mad at me, but really, really mad at me. I mean, she’s not even telling me about the things she’s doing, like trying out for soccer! How horrible is that? I always know what Daphne’s doing, and she always knows what I’m doing.

  And then, as if out of nowhere, comes the perfect solution to my Daphne-related problems. A flyer on the wall, announcing our school’s Fall Festival. It’s, like, this completely big deal, with a hayride and a corn maze, and maybe even some other, lamer stuff that teachers think will be fun but really isn’t, like bobbing for apples. And everyone is supposed to bring a date, but I can ask Daphne to go with me! It’s not like we’re going to have dates. We can eat candy apples and ride the hayride and go through the big corn maze and it’ll be totally fun.

  Yay! I’m so excited that when the bell rings for lunch, I wait outside the cafeteria for Daphne, hoping I can cut her off before she goes in.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “You wanna sit outside today?” I ask. I hold up my bag. “I have a Nutella sandwich and half of it has your name on it.” Hopefully she likes Nutella as much as Tom does.