30 Days of No Gossip (2 page)

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone.”

There was a reason Vi said things like that. One of the downsides of being the gossip queen of Troy Middle School was that sometimes I got the feeling that people didn’t want to tell me things. Actually, it wasn’t even a feeling. People stopped talking when they saw me walking by, and even my friends—the people who were supposed to trust me more than anything—would start to say something, look at me, and clamp their mouths shut.

Which is why I had to be extra good at eavesdropping.

“I don’t tell anyone anything you tell me,” I told Vi. That wasn’t entirely true and she knew it. I just hoped she wouldn’t point out the time I let it slip in front of everyone in gym class that she still slept with her childhood teddy bear.

Luckily, she was too caught up in her excitement to worry about that. She closed her locker and leaned in close to tell me her secret.

“I figure it’s like this.” Vi’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Travis is off the football team, right?”

I nodded, even though we weren’t sure about that. Sometimes you just had to go with a rumor.

“If he’s off the team, I might have a chance,” Vi said. From the look on my face, she probably got that I wasn’t following. “He might like me back.”

I looked around. The halls were crowded, reminding me just how hard it was to stand out around here. It didn’t help that Vi was so shy. She barely talked to anyone but me. Any friends I had became friends of hers, too.

There was no way Travis would just start noticing her, even if he
was
off the football team.

Which was silly, because Vi was pretty. Even a popular guy like Travis Fisher
would
like her. If only he knew she existed.

It was like a lightbulb went on inside my head.
That is my job.
As her friend, it was my
duty
to get through to Travis for her.

I knew she’d freak out if I told her I planned to say something. But I could already imagine the look on her face when I told her he liked her too. At that point, she’d forgive me for giving her secret away.

Chapter Two

“I KNOW SOMEBODY WHO LIKES
you.”

Travis was in my sixth-period class. I’d like to say he just happened to sit next to me, but I actually had to cross two aisles and pass three people just to get to him.

As he stared at me, his eyes wide, I started having second thoughts. It wasn’t too late, I told myself. I could just go back to my seat and leave him wondering who liked him. He probably wouldn’t chase after me later to find out.

That was exactly what I planned to do when I stood and started walking away from him. I was halfway to my seat when Travis called out to me.

“Who?” he yelled. “Who is it?”

Everyone was staring at me at that point. I had to say something. Sure, someone else might just give him a
mysterious look and let him keep guessing, but I remembered the reason I’d walked over here in the first place. Vi. I imagined how excited she’d be when Travis liked her back. They’d go out and I’d be the best friend who had made it happen.

Even though everyone had stopped staring, it was still important to keep this as quiet as possible. I returned to Travis’s side, knelt down, and whispered, “Vi Lakewood.”

His face scrunched up and he squinted at me. “Who?”

I should have expected that. I tried her full name. They were in second period together, so he’d probably heard his teacher call her by that.

“Vivienne Lakewood,” I whispered.

Nope. That one didn’t register either. He shook his head and continued to stare at me like I was from another planet.

Even though I was friends with some of Travis’s friends, we’d never really spoken before. He was definitely cute. Cute guys made me nervous, especially when they were waiting for me to say something.

“She’s really pretty,” I said loudly, realizing only after I’d said the words that I was no longer whispering. I lowered my voice again to whisper, “You’ll see me with her in the hall after this class.”

She always rushed this way when class let out . . . mostly to walk by Travis. But he didn’t need to know that.

I knew I should stop talking, before I said something I’d regret. Sometimes I needed someone to slap a piece of duct tape over my mouth.

Once I was safely seated across the room from Travis, I started to get excited about seeing Vi again. She’d pass us in the hall, Travis would look at her as if seeing her for the first time—and she would
know
he liked her. I just wanted everyone to be happy.

The bell rang and I sprang for the door, as usual. It was important that I got to Vi before Travis caught up with us. I had to be with her so Travis would know who she was, decide she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and fall madly in love with her. Or something like that. I wasn’t sure what Vi wanted out of this, since she was so secretive about things, but I was guessing that would be just fine with her.

“Are you coming over today?” Vi asked without even saying hi. We wove around the throngs of people rushing toward the exit to catch buses, keeping our pace quick until we got close to where we’d run into Travis. That was when we slowed down and I acted as though it were completely normal for me to be walking this way when I’d just left class.

Any other day, Travis wouldn’t have even glanced our way, so it was no big deal. I figured this was just something
I did for Vi, as her friend. If it made her happy, I’d do it. But today I saw him looking through the crowd, trying to find the girl I’d told him about.

His gaze landed right on her. I watched for an expression and saw his eyebrows lift. He liked her.

Didn’t he?

That was how I interpreted it. If he’d frowned at her or wrinkled his nose in disgust, that would be bad. But an eyebrow lift had to be a good thing. Like he was surprised to find how cute she was.

Or surprised that she was smart and talented and had other things to worry about besides how she looked.

I shoved that last thought aside and grabbed Vi’s arm. “Look!” I squealed.

Vi winced. Squealing wasn’t really her thing. She probably hadn’t squealed once in her life. Squealing was
my
thing, though, and this was my good news.

Instead of looking in Travis’s direction, she turned her glare on me. “What on earth . . . ?”

“He’s looking at you,” I blurted, smiling as I pointed at him. I actually pointed. If there was one thing you didn’t do to Vi—besides squeal—it was point at the boy she liked while he was looking your way.

Only, he wasn’t looking our way anymore. He wasn’t
even standing there. So what I was pointing at was Kathina Freeman, who saw me pointing and took it as her cue to come rushing toward us.

“You’re Vi, right?” she asked, stepping in front of us. She walked backward to keep up, despite the fact that she was in serious danger of running into one of the many people rushing in the opposite direction of us. “I told Travis I knew who you were.”

Oh no. This wasn’t good. I’d told Travis quietly. It wasn’t possible anyone had overheard. Unless . . .

I looked over at Kathina, my eyes wide. She sat directly behind Travis, but I didn’t think she’d been there when I gave the news to Travis. Travis must have asked Kathina if she knew who this Vi person was.

“That’s so cool that you like Travis Fisher,” Kathina, totally missing my warning stares, continued. “My best friend likes him too. Do you know Chelsea Tucker?”

Chelsea Tucker was one of the most popular girls in seventh grade. She had long brown hair with red streaks and perfect skin and everyone thought she was beautiful. If she liked Travis, Vi didn’t stand a chance.

Vi was looking at me.
Uh-oh.
For once the look on her face told me exactly what she was thinking. It wasn’t good.

“I need to speak with you a second,” I told Vi,
grabbing her arm to pull her away from this blabbermouth. “Come on.”

Vi was going nowhere. In fact, she’d come to a dead stop in the center of everything. Two people almost ran into her and someone yelled something at her, but Vi didn’t notice any of it. Her stare was firmly fixed on me.

And it wasn’t a happy stare.

I had two choices. I could run as far and fast as my feet would carry me, or I could face this. Running away wouldn’t fix it. I wasn’t sure talking to her would fix it either, but I had no choice. I had to try.

Unfortunately, Kathina was still standing there. As was her friend Robyn. And another girl had joined her too, but she had to be in another grade because I didn’t recognize her.

“Can we talk?” I asked Vi. “Alone?”

“No,” she said.
“What did you do?”

“I just thought Travis should know—”

“That was our
secret
.” Vi stepped closer to me. She was speaking quietly, as though she didn’t want any of these people to hear, but of course they could hear. They were listening to every word of this.

“Excuse us,” I said to Kathina and company.

Kathina and Robyn looked at each other, shrugged, and walked off. The other girl stayed.

“You too,” I added. I didn’t know her, so I didn’t have to be nice.

Vi didn’t wait for the stranger to be completely out of earshot before saying, “I asked you not to tell anyone, and you told . . . everyone?”

“Not everyone. Just . . . Travis.”

My voice drifted off on that last word. Vi was too busy going ballistic to hear me.

“You told Travis?
Travis? 
”

That last part was a shriek. Luckily, the halls had already cleared out, so no one could hear us. But that also meant we both were probably going to miss our buses, which meant I’d have to start making up with her fast so I could talk her into getting her mom to come pick both of us up. Otherwise, I’d have to call Mom at work, and she would not be happy.

“Just listen,” I said. “He likes you back. I’m sure of it.”

That didn’t get the reaction I’d thought it would. She didn’t light up or smile or anything. She just stood there, frowning at me, her arms holding her books protectively in front of her chest.

“He didn’t know who you were at first,” I admitted. When I saw her frown deepen, I rushed to add, “So I told him we’d be walking together after class.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You told Kathina Freeman,” she accused. “You told everyone.”

“He told Kathina, I guess. He must have asked who you were.”

Why did I get the feeling I was just making things worse? There was only one thing I could say that would even have a chance of making her less angry. I decided to go for it.

“He lifted his eyebrows,” I said.

She didn’t get that, at all. That much was clear right away. She seemed to tighten her grip on those books as she edged backward. She was creeping away from me. I had to say something to keep her there.

“When he saw you,” I explained. “He lifted his eyebrows like this.”

I demonstrated the exact look Travis had gotten on his face when he saw Vi. Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little. I made it look like a “wow, she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life” reaction instead of the “maybe I think she’s cute” expression I’d really seen.

It didn’t help. Vi had known me long enough to see through stuff like that.

“He really did lift his eyebrows,” I repeated. “I think he likes you.”

It took me saying that to figure out that Vi didn’t care about Travis’s reaction. This wasn’t about whether he liked her or not. It was about me giving her secret away. I’d been wrong. Even if Travis had walked up to her and asked her to go out with him, she still would have been mad at me.

“I’m . . . sorry?” I asked sheepishly. Too little, too late. She was getting angrier by the second, I could tell. If she were a cartoon character, steam would be coming out of her ears.

“You have a problem,” she said.

I opened my mouth, waited for something to come out, then closed it again. That would have been the last thing I would have expected her to say. I didn’t know what to say back. I couldn’t argue with her, because I had to make up with her, but I didn’t agree with her either, even though I knew exactly what she was about to say.

“You can’t stop gossiping,” she told me. She was backing her way toward the entrance of the school. I was following. I’d trail her all the way out the door if that was what it took. “You can’t stop being the star for a second.”

That last sentence almost brought me to a halt. I had to walk fast to keep up with her, though. A star? Who said I wanted to be a star? I just liked being the one who knew everything and could tell everyone first. It made people like me. It made me popular.

“You don’t remember what it was like back in elementary school, but I do,” Vi continued. “Girls like Kathina and Chelsea Tucker were the ones everyone liked. Now everyone likes you. They come to you to find out what’s going on. You couldn’t stand for that to stop, could you? You care too much what everyone else thinks.”

I shook my head. No way. That wasn’t true at all. I didn’t care what anyone thought. Sure, it was nice to have so many people give me shout-outs as I walked down the hall, and I was friends with just about every group of people in my grade, no matter how popular or unpopular. I didn’t want that to go away, but that wasn’t why I gossiped.

And yes, I remembered elementary school. I remembered third and fourth grade, when Vi and I played by ourselves during recess because nobody else wanted to talk to us. I remember being nicknamed Fatty Maddie because I had extra baby fat that, luckily, disappeared by fifth grade. And I remembered sitting with Vi at lunch, watching Kathina, Sarah, and Chelsea giggling as all the other kids gathered around to tease the rest of us.

Over the years, I’d learned a few lessons. When you had secrets, people wanted to be around you. If you could entertain people with imitations and funny stories, they liked you even more. So I
used my observations to create entertaining stories. It wasn’t bad. Everyone did it!

“I just think it’s important to tell the truth,” I said. “That’s why I publish the
Troy Tattler
. People need to know things.”