30 Days of No Gossip (6 page)

“You know what?” Sarah asked, wiping at her cheeks
again before pushing herself up until she was sitting up straight. “You’re right. Thanks.”

I sat up straight too. “You’re welcome.”

“Hey.” She leaned closer, glancing back nervously before speaking. “Could you do me a favor and not tell anyone about this conversation?”

Chapter Six

I HAVE TO GIVE SYDNEY
and Jessica credit. They waited until we were finishing our hike and finally away from everyone before they started questioning me.

“Was she crying?”

“What’s going on? Did he break up with her?”

I was walking next to Vi. She was staring straight ahead, not contributing to the conversation at all. These were the kinds of tests I’d have to suffer through for the rest of the thirty days. And then I would get my best friend back.

“She’s fine,” I said. “What about that tree over there?”

It was finally lunchtime, and one of our chaperones, Miss Hunter, had told us to find a place to eat lunch. It
was so hot, my potato chips were probably melted and stuck together by then.

“You have to give us the scoop,” Sydney whispered. We sat down, automatically forming a circle. “We want to know everything that happened with—”

“Sarah!” I called out loudly, mostly to alert Syd and Jess she was coming since they had their backs to her. I didn’t mean to sound so happy to see her, but . . . well . . . I
was
. “Come sit with us.”

It was obvious that was exactly what she’d intended, since she was walking straight toward us. I just wanted to stop Syd and Jess from asking more questions.

“Is it okay?” Sarah asked, stopping several feet from us and giving us a really sweet look that made me feel guilty for telling our entire second-grade class her dad had left and her parents were getting a divorce.

Not to mention the whole Sarah-and-Trevor-holding-hands thing.

“Sure,” I said brightly. “There’s plenty of room. Scootch over, guys.”

Sydney and Jessica flashed each other a look before shifting to the left to make space between Jessica and Vi. It was like they were doing a weird little dance.

“You okay?” Sydney asked. She sounded concerned,
but anyone who knew her knew she was just being nosy.

“Sure,” Sarah said. “Thanks to Maddie, I think I’m going to be fine.”

Everyone turned to stare at me. I wondered if I had enough time to dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it. Probably not.

I looked over at Vi, knowing she wouldn’t speak but eager to see her reaction. She was staring right at me, her eyebrows arched. Uh-oh.

I could feel the questions coming on. Jessica and Sydney, being all nosy, would try to work in some question about what was going on, and Sarah may or may not tell them. If she didn’t tell them, they’d expect me to tell them later.

So I changed the subject. “Where do you get your clothes?” I asked. “You always wear the cutest things.”

“You do,” Syd added.

Subject successfully changed. I turned to Vi and gave her a “See? I can avoid gossip” look, but Vi didn’t look impressed. Instead, she’d pulled a small brown paper sack out of her bag and was rifling through its contents.

“My mom works for McComb’s,” Sarah told us. “She gets a huge discount, especially when there’s a sale. I could see if she could get you guys some things.”

Vi lit up, which was weird, since she wasn’t all that into clothes. “Can you get a discount on bedroom stuff ? Like curtains and bedspreads?”

“Vi’s redoing her bedroom,” Sydney explained. “And I’m helping.”

“Awesome,” Sarah said. “Your parents are letting you pick everything out?”

“She has really good taste,” Sydney answered.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

As everyone pulled out their lunches and started eating, I sat there, frozen. Sydney was helping with Vi’s bedroom? Since when? That was supposed to be
my
job. Sydney sat next to Vi on the bus for thirty minutes on the way here and talked about Vi’s drawings, and that made her Vi’s official helper?

And why was it that Vi could talk to them but not to me? I was starting to feel a little hurt.

“Did you see what Miss Hunter was wearing?” Sarah asked suddenly, pulling me from my thoughts. “It looks like she got dressed in the dark.”

“I know, right?” Sydney added. “Jess and I were just talking about that. Nothing she wears ever matches.”

As they launched into a ten-minute conversation about the various quirks of the Troy Middle School faculty, Vi and I sat silently on the sidelines. Vi seemed focused on her
food, which is exactly what I pretended to do. But I was listening to every word they said.

I had to keep reminding myself that none of this could go into the
Troy Tattler
, since the
Tattler
was currently off limits. Even if I typed it all up and made the best
Troy Tattler
ever, no one could ever read it. Still, I hung on every word people around me said, processing it and preparing it for later. It made me feel better, even though I couldn’t share it with anyone else.

“Did you know Coach Ryan had lunch with Miss Einhorn?”

“Chelsea Tucker was caught chewing gum in class Friday.”

“Maddie said they’re doing away with pizza at lunch.”

Everyone looked at me, including Vi.
Especially
Vi. Her eyebrows were arched again, only this time she looked annoyed.

“How do you know that?” Sarah asked.

“I said that a couple of weeks ago,” I rushed to say. I didn’t look at Vi when I said it, but I saw her out of the corner of my eye. “It may not be true.”

“So why did you say it if it wasn’t true?” Sydney asked.

Before I could answer, Sarah spoke. “Where did you hear it?”

I looked at Vi. Was it gossiping to answer that question? Not if I chose my words carefully.

“I was in line in the cafeteria and I heard the lunch lady talking about it,” I said with a shrug. “So, like I said, she may have been making threats.”

“How exactly did she say it?” Sarah asked.

Again I looked at Vi. She was watching me too, but I knew this was a test. How I answered this question might make the difference as to whether Vi decided I’d made it through this lunch without gossiping.

“Um . . . I don’t remember,” I stalled. “You were there, Vi. Do you remember what she said?”

Vi set her sandwich down. “I think it was something like, ‘ They shouldn’t be serving pizza to you kids. If that council votes it down, you’ll all be eating broccoli.’ ”

“The word ‘broccoli’ was definitely used,” I said, flashing Vi a grateful smile. I knew fully well that Vi hadn’t even been listening when the woman in the cafeteria had started spouting off about pizza. She’d heard it secondhand from me over lunch that day. And I’d exaggerated it. At this point, I couldn’t remember whether she’d mentioned any kind of council voting, but it sounded good.

But that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that Vi had talked to me. Well, sort of. Her comments
were directed at everyone sitting here, but she’d heard what I’d said and had responded to it. That was closer to talking than we’d come since she’d gotten mad at me.

“I’ll just bring my own pizza,” Sydney said. “They can’t keep me away from eating it.”

“You fight that fight,” Vi told Sydney. She tossed her trash in her sack and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to talk to Miss Hunter.”

Sarah waited until she was gone to start talking. She leaned forward.

“You don’t think she’ll tell her what we were saying about her, do you?” Sarah asked.

Was I the only one who was confused? “Who?” I asked.

Sydney and Jessica looked at me like I should know the answer to that one. “Miss Hunter,” they said in unison. Jessica spoke alone when she said, “We were talking about her outfit, remember?”

“Oh, that.” I watched Vi head toward Miss Hunter, sketch pad in hand. I knew exactly why Vi was heading over there and it had nothing to do with clothing. “She wants Miss Hunter to look over her design ideas.”

Sydney’s mouth formed into a pout. “I was helping her with that.”

“She likes to get advice from different people,” I said.

“I don’t think she likes us talking about people,” Sarah suggested. “She acted all weird when we were talking about Miss Hunter.”

“Vi doesn’t believe in gossip,” I said.

They were all looking at me now as if this were big news. It wasn’t. It was just that Sydney and Jessica had spent so many years hanging on my every word, they’d never noticed how quiet Vi was.

“Let’s put it this way,” I said, knowing that if I didn’t say something quickly, they’d probably say something not so nice about Vi and I’d be forced to defend her, which would just make them talk about me when I got up and walked away. “Would you want people talking about you?”

“I’m sure they do,” Sarah answered, sitting up straighter. “I’m sure we’ve all been talked about.”

“Vi doesn’t want to add to the problem.” I shrugged. Then I sat back and finished my sandwich while they all stared at me.

Finally, Jessica spoke. “So what about the
Troy Tattler
?” she asked.

That was the question I’d been dreading. “What about it?” I asked. It was a delaying tactic, but I knew I could put her off only so long.

“Now that you’re acting like . . .” Jessica seemed to search her mind for the right word.

“Vi,” Sydney supplied.

“Vi,”
Jessica said, nodding. “Now that you’re acting like Vi, you won’t be doing the
Troy Tattler
anymore?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but my gaze was scanning the lawn around us, now scattered with kids running and hanging out and tossing paper sacks into garbage cans. I was looking for a distraction when I saw Vi waving toward me. She was calling me over.

“Gotta go,” I said, hopping up, gathering my trash as I stood. “I’ll see you guys on the walking trail.”

We were all going to spend the afternoon hiking to some lake, which would have been great if it hadn’t been so hot. But in the meantime, we were hanging out, waiting for Miss Hunter and the other chaperones to start yelling for us all to line up.

As I plopped down next to Vi on Miss Hunter’s blanket, though, I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder. They were looking over here. When they saw me watching, all three of them quickly turned back around again.

They were gossiping about me, I just knew it. It felt weird. Sarah’s words stuck with me.
I’m sure we’ve all been talked about.
Believe it or not, as much as I’d talked about other people, I rarely stopped to think about other people talking about me. Now that I thought about it, though, it had to happen. Probably often.

The thought bugged me for the rest of the trip.

Chapter Seven

What’s with Maddie Evans?

She used to be Troy Middle’s biggest gossip, but lately she’s been acting like she’s better than everyone else. She keeps walking off when we try to talk to her, and this morning she told Kathina Freeman she shouldn’t be talking about people. It wasn’t nice. Since when did the queen of gossip become the queen of high-and-mighty?

“Maddie Evans.”

I looked up from my cell phone, where I’d been madly typing away into an e-mail that I planned to send to myself. It was this week’s
Troy Tattler
, and it was all about me. Not
that I’d ever let anyone else see it. I was pretty sure gossiping about myself still counted as gossiping.

Miss Einhorn was staring down her flawless button nose at me. She wasn’t standing over me yet, but in just a couple of steps she would be. And she’d see the cell phone I had hidden on my lap. I covered it up with both my hands, but I knew the screen was still glowing.

“Are we interrupting your texting?” she asked.

“I wasn’t—”

I realized two words into my argument it was a waste of time. I didn’t want to explain what I’d been doing and she didn’t care anyway. That wasn’t the point. The point was, I was on my cell phone instead of paying attention to her lesson on rational numbers.

“Take it to Mr. Shelly,” Miss Einhorn said.

We had a rule at Troy Middle. If a student was caught using a cell phone in class, we were sent to the principal’s office without question. There, our phones were taken away for the day, and we were given a stern warning on responsible cell phone use that included warnings against texting at the dinner table and not turning the phone off in movie theaters. Mr. Shelly believed it was important to equip us for life.

At least people would have something to gossip about.
Maddie Evans was sent to the principal’s office for texting in class.
It wouldn’t matter that I hadn’t been texting. The gossipers would fill in the blanks with whatever they needed.

I avoided eye contact with everyone in class as I gathered my books and left the room. I didn’t even grab the hall pass from beside the door. I figured if someone stopped me, I’d just hold up my phone and they’d know immediately why I was out of class.

I noticed two things when I entered the school office. Nobody was behind the reception desk and Mr. Shelly’s door was open. Normally you’d check in with whoever was working the front desk, then sit in one of the chairs to wait until Mr. Shelly came out to get you. I could sit in one of the chairs and wait, but what if Mr. Shelly didn’t know I was out there? And what if nobody came back to work behind the desk? I’d be sitting out there forever and lunch period was coming up and I really didn’t want to miss that.

So I walked over to Mr. Shelly’s door and knocked. It was wide open, but I didn’t dare look inside because, let’s face it, none of us wants to know what a principal does when he’s not principaling. He might be eating a box of Twinkies or something.

“Come in,” an unfamiliar female voice said.

So Mr. Shelly had company. It was probably the
woman who normally worked the front desk, bringing him his mail. I stepped inside, ready to explain why I’d been sent here, hand over the cell phone, and get out as quickly as possible.