30 Days of No Gossip (9 page)

“So what’s going on with you?” Vi asked suddenly.

I looked up, alarmed. Was she on to me? Did she know
all about the gossip that had been going around the school? I’d have to explain myself and I had no explanation. I hadn’t even prepared for this moment—

“The no-gossiping thing.” Vi’s voice cut into my thoughts. “How’s that going for you?”

I was surprised she asked that. We hadn’t talked for so long that now that we’d started, things felt touchy between us. But since she’d brought it up, I had to give her an answer.

“It’s not easy,” I said. “People keep assuming things and reading into things that I’m saying.”

That was my way of preparing her for hearing that I’d started some massive rumor at school. This way hopefully she wouldn’t get as mad if she heard something like that. But she was looking at me with her head tilted to the side a little.

“What do you mean?” she asked, curious.

“They expect me to gossip, so even when I don’t say anything, they assume that’s saying something,” I told her.

She thought about that a second. “I see.”

“Like today,” I said. “There was this strange woman walking across the front lawn of school. Everyone asked who it was and started making up all these crazy stories. I told the truth about her—”

“Which
was
?” Vi asked.

I clamped my mouth shut and stared. Oh no. I wasn’t going to walk into that trap.

“Oh, I get it,” Vi answered for me. “Like right now I assume the truth is some huge thing you can’t tell me, so I’m making stuff up in my head?”

I nodded. She continued.

“And then that person tells someone else and says you’re the one who said it,” she added.

“Exactly.” I sighed in relief. It felt like I was letting out a breath I’d been holding in for the past few days. “Even if I state a fact, they add all kinds of things to it.”

“Hmmm. Let me think about that. That might count.”

“What? How can that count? I can’t spend the next twenty-six days hiding in a hole somewhere.”

“The whole thing was, you aren’t supposed to gossip,” Vi said, handing the chip bag to me and standing up. “Look up the definition of gossip. It’s not just what you say but what you hear, too.”

“I’m pretty sure gossiping is just spreading gossip,” I told her.

“But if you’re listening and nodding along while someone is gossiping, you’re making it worse. It was thirty days of no gossip.”

“Thirty days of not talking about other people or
writing the
Troy Tattler
,” I said, standing to face off with her. “That’s what you said.”

“But as you can see, you’re spreading gossip without even talking,” she said. “If I hear someone gossiping, I remove myself from the situation immediately. If they ask my opinion, I tell them I prefer only to say nice things about people.”

“You’ve listened to us gossip for as long as I can remember,” I pointed out. “I think you were listening to gossip when we were in preschool.”

“I don’t listen,” she said. “Most of the time, I really tune all of you out when you’re talking about other people.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, surprised. Seriously? She was trying to make me believe while she was sitting next to me, doodling on her sketch pad or doing her math homework, she wasn’t halfway listening?

“I know you too well to believe that,” I said. “I’ve known you all my life.”

Vi’s expression softened at the reminder that we’d been friends so long. I half hoped she’d suddenly realize how silly this was and everything could go back to being normal.
More
than halfway.

“It’s never been about the actual gossip,” Vi said. “That’s what I want you to see.”

I gave her a quizzical look and waited for her to say more. If it wasn’t about gossip, what
was
it about?

“Never mind.” Vi waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Just do whatever you want.”

“I’m trying,” I argued. “Can’t I get some credit for that? I’m doing everything I can do to make you happy, and I just don’t know what else to do.”

“I want you to make yourself happy,” Vi said. “But until you figure out that this isn’t about gossip but about our friendship and how I
trusted
you to keep my secret, I can’t help you. Maybe you’ll never figure it out. Maybe it’s just a lost cause.”

“What does that mean?” I asked as Vi grabbed our trash and started toward the kitchen.

“If our friendship is really important to you, you’ll figure it out yourself,” Vi called back as she disappeared through the doorway.

Chapter Nine

I SAW MISS GOLDEN AGAIN
first thing the next morning. Okay, so I actually kind of chased her down, following her from her car in the visitors’ lot to the teachers’ lounge, where I saw her standing outside, waiting for someone to let her in.

“Maddie Evans!”

I was so surprised that she remembered both my first and last names, I skidded to a stop several feet away from her. Maybe I’d told her Monday in Mr. Shelly’s office, but someone like Miss Golden was so busy, I wouldn’t expect her to remember something like my name.

“Hi, Miss Golden,” I said.

“Please,” she waved away my words. “Call me Ashley. ‘Miss Golden’ makes me feel old.”

“Okay,” I said. Although I doubted I’d ever be comfortable calling her by her first name. “Are you here to see one of the teachers?”

I knew I was being nosy, but I didn’t think it was against the rules to be nosy. Just to tell other people what I heard.

“I thought I’d pop my head in,” she answered. “Is anyone in there?”

I looked at the closed door. I didn’t know anything about what went on behind that door. The teachers’ lounge was top secret in this school.

“You know what?” Miss Golden said suddenly. “Never mind. I’d rather walk with you. Why don’t you show me around?”

That threw me off for a moment. She’d walk around school with me? Being seen with her was sure to make people ask me questions later. Questions like,
Who was that woman? What was she doing here?
Questions I couldn’t answer without starting rumors.

But what else could I say? I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this. I started toward the gym, where all the torture happened. Luckily, there weren’t enough people around yet that it made a scene. Miss Golden probably knew that.

“What’s this hallway?” she asked as we passed the language arts area. That was one of the worst hallways, with some kind of strange stuffing hanging from the ceiling and a couple of the tiles missing altogether. The floors were a weird yellowish shade that looked like paper after it had been around a long, long time.

But instead of avoiding it, Miss Golden took a sharp left turn into the Hallway of Yuck. She was squinting up at the ceiling, reminding me why she was here. Miss Golden saw this as a great opportunity, while most of us looked at it as hopeless.

“Do you have classes down here?” Miss Golden asked.

I nodded, pointing at my second-period classroom. To be honest, I never paid much attention to this hallway after my first couple of days of school. It was just something I went through to get to class.

“This is uninhabitable,” Miss Golden said, looking around. Her mouth was hanging open and her eyes were wide. “Kids can’t learn in a place like this.”

I might not know what “uninhabitable” meant, but I knew that last part. I figured it was a good sign. I mean, if she’d walked around the school and found it perfect, she wouldn’t want to bring her cameras in, right?

But it wouldn’t do any good to bring those cameras in
if Vi wasn’t a part of it. So I had to do it. I had to give it a try, right?

“We have some students that are really good at this stuff,” I said, my heart starting to beat like crazy. “My best friend, Vi, is redoing her own room, paint and everything.”

Miss Golden didn’t stop and beg to know everything about Vi as I’d hoped. She just kept looking around.

“Paint is the least of the problems,” she said. “With something like this, you have to redo the whole ceiling. Look at those tiles. And brick walls? Those need to be covered with drywall.”

I didn’t know what drywall was, but Vi would.

“Vi would love to learn about stuff like that,” I suggested. I didn’t know if it would count in Vi’s rules, but I saw it as my one chance to help Vi out. “I’ll bet she and a few of us other students could redo this whole hallway if the school would let us. We could make it a weekend project. Do you think they’d go for that?”

I gave Miss Golden a hopeful look. She looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. I’d gone too far. She was on to me. Now she’d cut me off and not speak to me again, with no chance at all of Vi being involved in
rebuilding. They’d have every kid in school help
but
me and Vi.

“That shows initiative,” Miss Golden said. “I like that. I’ll see if I can talk Mr. Shelly into it.”

I nodded, trying not to look too excited. If I looked excited, she’d figure out what I was up to. Nobody got excited about hanging drywall, did they?

“Now, show me your break area,” Miss Golden requested. She started walking, peeking into empty classrooms as she went.

“Break area?” I asked, rushing to keep up with her. “You mean the room where the vending machines are?”

She slowed and turned to look at me. At least that gave me a chance to catch up.

“There’s no break area?” she asked.

“The cafeteria?”

“No, somewhere you can hang out during your breaks.”

“We don’t have a room like that,” I said. “Just a vending machine that gives juice and bottled water.”

Had this woman never been in a middle school before? I realized as she took off toward the cafeteria that she probably hadn’t. She was used to going to hospitals and churches and stuff. She probably thought that with this many people,
a middle school was sure to have a lounge . . . and the teachers’ lounge didn’t count.

“Well, that’s wrong,” she said. “You need a place you can call your own.”

“They give us lockers,” I offered, thinking of the way we all gathered around each other’s lockers between classes. Vi’s locker was one of my favorite hangouts. I’d probably spent more time there than at my own.

“That’s just a place to store things,” Miss Golden said. “You need a comfortable place. I see fun chairs with butterfly designs. Maybe even built-in power plugs to charge cell phones.”

The funny thing was, she was standing in the middle of the cafeteria as she said it. The big, empty, sterile cafeteria, where the only background noise was the sound of workers getting lunch ready. This room couldn’t be further from what she was describing.

“I doubt the school would go for that,” I told her. I had no idea who made those decisions, but I knew they were more focused on helping us learn than making sure our phones had a full charge. Miss Golden wasn’t thinking like that, though. She was thinking in terms of what would work best for her TV show.

Maybe she wasn’t so wrong about that. Really. The
school wanted to look good on TV, so they’d be more likely to go along with what Miss Golden said. She might be able to talk them into it.

“And this cafeteria needs work.” Sighing, Miss Golden turned to look at me. She seemed to suddenly remember I was with her. I saw her slightly panicked look as she tried to remember if she’d given anything away. “Why don’t you show me to your first class?”

•  •  •

Showing Miss Golden my first-period class was what did it. By then the school was filled with students, rushing to get to class before the bell rang, so plenty of people saw me leading Miss Golden down the hallway. Those people included Jessica and Sydney, who gave me a curious look, and Kimberly Browning and Chelsea Tucker, who were in my first class.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” Kimberly said. “That’s the woman who’s here to fix the school, right?”

What was it Vi wanted me to learn? Not to break people’s trust? Miss Golden hadn’t actually said this was supposed to be secret, but someone didn’t have to say that something was a secret for it to be one.

Plus, speaking about it was gossiping, and not only was that breaking my promise to Vi, it might risk our chances
at being on
24-Hour Makeover
. It wasn’t guaranteed yet, I assumed.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “She wanted me to show her around.”

And that was the truth. So what if I’d searched the Internet and learned a few things about her? It was still not 100 percent true unless she’d told me herself.

“You have to know something,” Chelsea accused.

I felt that little tug that had led me to start gossiping in the first place. Back when I was Fatty Maddie, Chelsea and all her friends were the pretty ones, looking down on me. I wanted so badly to be part of their little group, but no matter what I said, they didn’t like me.

Then one day I found out Sarah Dooley’s dad had left. I heard one of the neighbors talking to Mom about it, which made sense since Sarah lived in my neighborhood back then. I didn’t mean to tell everyone, but I was sitting with Chelsea and Kathina during recess and they were asking why Sarah was out, so I told them.

That was when I learned that knowing things and telling them made people like you.

Well, they only liked me for a day or so, until they got more answers from Sarah than they could from me. But it was enough to show me what could happen if I said
something people wanted to hear. So from then on, I tried to find information and share it with others.

Now here we were. Full circle. Sitting in first period, with Chelsea wanting to know what I knew. It wasn’t that I thought she’d like me if I told her. She’d make fun of me with her friends, and next thing I knew, I’d be Fatty Maddie again. She pretty much had no opinion of me other than the fact that I knew things. It was just that I was afraid if I didn’t answer her questions, she’d stop liking me.

“I think she knows something,” Kimberly said to Chelsea. “You notice she’s not denying it.”

“Seriously,” I insisted. “She hasn’t told me who she is. She just asked some questions about the language arts wing.”