No One Needs to Know (2 page)

I try not to look at the stack of homework in my backpack, or the three textbooks I need to bring home, but it’s impossible to ignore the tightness in my chest as I remember how behind I am already. I don’t remember school being this overwhelming this fast before.

I zip my backpack shut, wishing I could push away the stress as easily as I can bury books in my bag, and then head across the cafeteria, striding straight toward the restroom.

Halfway there, a small group of sophomores blocks the path, completely oblivious. I pause, waiting for them to see me, but they’re too busy talking. I only have a few minutes to duck into the bathroom and get what I need from my bag, out of the view of the student body.

“Excuse me
,” I announce, annoyance lacing my tone. “Maybe you could take your little conversation out of the pathway?”

The girl nearest me, a redhead, grabs her backpack. “Oh, uh, sorry.” She moves just far enough that I can squeeze past them and make my way to the door of the restroom.

I’m relieved to find it empty. I set my backpack on the countertop, then fish out a little purple pill box.

Just as I’m about to open it, a girl from my history class, Zoey, waltzes through the door, her torn-up sneakers squeaking on the tile floor. The shoes look ridiculous with the schoolgirl outfit, like some lame attempt to make our standard uniform look punk rock.

I freeze, standing there like a deer in headlights, my fist clenched around the pillbox.

Zoey pauses, her gaze flicking to my hand and then to my face and back again. I must look like I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

After a few heartbeats of nothing but staring back at her, I let out a jagged breath of air.

One side of her mouth curls up in a mocking smile as she glances down at my fist again. “Diet pills, maybe? I mean, you don’t really
seem
like the type to go for the harder stuff … ”

My face flushes and I shove my hand back into the pocket of my backpack, dropping the box inside. I zip it shut, panic tightening in my chest. “I don’t do drugs, you idiot. I’m a gymnast. I can’t poison my body like that.”

They’re prescription, so it’s not like they’re
drugs
drugs. Not the kind of thing girls like Zoey probably do.

“Hmmm … ” She tips her head to the side, tapping one black-lacquered finger on her chin in an annoyingly exaggerated gesture. “And yet I’ve caught you red-handed doing
something …
” She brightens and claps her hands together. “Oooh, pregnancy test?”

I let out a snort of ugly laughter. “I’m a freaking virgin. I don’t even have a boyfriend. And I swear to god if you start spreading rumors … ”

She screws her crimson-painted lips up to the side and ignores my words. “But then a pregnancy test is too big to fit in your fist like that, so—”

“Just shut up, okay?” I grab a paper towel and dry off my hands. It’s just my luck that our school’s resident pariah was the one to find me in here. She’d probably love to hand the title off to me and dust her hands of the whispers that follow
her
around like smoke trails a fire.

Then Zoey turns around, reaching for the bathroom door. I scramble over to her and grab the strap of her messenger bag, yanking her toward me just as her fingertips brush the door handle.

“Whoa,” she says, stumbling back and turning to face me.

“Just forget about it,” I snap.

Her expression morphs from triumph to something else. Sympathy? Ugh. The last thing I want is Zoey Thomasson’s
sympathy
.

“Huh,” she says. “So the girl who has everything has something to hide.”

I do nothing but stare into her eyes, willing her to forget it. She saw nothing. She knows nothing. But I can’t get my heart to stop spasming painfully against my ribs.

“All right, all right,” she says, breathing it out on a reluctant sigh. “Your secret’s safe with me, princess.” And then she pats my cheek, smiles, and pushes past me, disappearing into a bathroom stall.

I don’t trust her—
no one
trusts her—and I stand there for a long moment, uncertainty swirling in my stomach. I don’t think she actually saw what was in my hand, so there’s nothing for her to tell. But I screwed it all up with that panicked, frozen reaction. Now she knows I’m hiding something, and that’s enough to freak me out. I leave the bathroom without another word, simply because I’m not sure what else to say.

The late bell rings before I’m halfway to Chem, but I can’t bring myself to care.

ZOEY

Olivia Reynolds has a secret.

Those five words have been rolling around in my head for the last hour and a half, and part of me regrets that I didn’t just knock her out and dig into that ugly Coach backpack of hers to find out what it is. One decent punch to the nose and I bet she would’ve keeled right over.

It was that wild, cornered-animal look that stopped me. The building panic gleaming in her eyes.

The girl who beams from every yearbook photo, who has single-handedly filled one of the trophy cases in the hallway, has a whole lot more going on in her head than I’d ever expected. And it’s almost …
almost
enough to make me like her. You know, if she weren’t such a self-entitled bitch.

I push my way through the crowd, heading toward the only class I share with Olivia—history. I make it through the door with only seconds to spare and sink into my chair, glad I’m several rows behind Olivia. She currently has her back to me and is chatting with Ava, her BFF, the one I would like to strangle with my bare hands.

Mr. Nelson walks to the front of the room, a stack of paper in his hand. “All right guys, settle down. I’m returning your quizzes today. Some of you have some ground to make up, but I’ve got good news for you: we’re getting into our first big project of the new semester. It represents twenty percent of your grade for this term, so you’re going to want to spend some serious time on it. Especially those of you who didn’t fare so well on our first quiz.”

He’s walking around the room now, setting quizzes face-down on desks as he goes by. When he reaches my desk, my breath hitches in my throat. I
need
a solid grade in this class, in
every
class, or I lose my scholarship.

This place—Annie Wright School—is the only good school I’ve ever gone to. Inside these walls, I forget about the hellhole I call home. But if I get even
one
C, I’m out. And even though I’m pretty damn smart, even though I work hard, the pressure constantly makes me second guess.

I hold my breath, flip the quiz over, and instantly grin. A-. I can handle an A-.

“Okay then,” Mr. Nelson continues. “The project will be done in pairs. You’ll be choosing one time period in American history. You’ll then report on a historic event from two different perspectives. Choose two people involved and showcase their viewpoints. Be creative. For example, you could show the Civil War through the eyes of the president and a slave, or show a battle from both sides. You can write a compare-and-contrast essay or two fictional letters or create a skit, anything along those lines. Basically, I want to see how two people with wildly dissimilar perspectives view the same event.”

He turns to the board and starts writing
DIVERSE
PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN HISTORY
, and the class starts to hum. Someone’s chair screeches as they slide over. Four rows up, Olivia and Ava smile at each other.

Ah, yes, the familiar sting of rejection. I haven’t had an automatic-partner in three years, ever since … well, in three years. I don’t want to think about why every girl in this school refuses to acknowledge me.

“Settle down, folks. I will be
assigning
partners.”

I sigh. With a bit of luck, I would have ended up as the odd one out and I could’ve done the project alone. Twice the work, sure, but none of the drama. Last spring, in junior English, I got paired with Charlotte Vincent, Ava’s cousin. She refused to get together outside of class and I did the entire project myself. I just showed up and handed her cue cards for her speaking parts.

“I’ve got eleven pairs of numbers in this hat, so choose a number and then find your match,” Mr. Nelson says, walking up to the first row. As he works his way back to me, I glance around, trying to decide the best case scenario. There’s a new transfer student who wasn’t at Annie Wright when everything went to shit. She’s probably heard about me, but she might not care about my apparent super-power of stealing boyfriends.

Mr. Nelson finally gets back to my corner, and I’m the last to choose a number. Around me, the desks are already screeching across the floor as the students find one another. And as I unfold my scrap of paper and find the number three on it, the transfer student is already chatting with her new buddy.

I stand up and look around, grabbing my ratty messenger bag and heading toward the front, to where a few people are still comparing numbers. But the closer I get, the more the dread spins through me.

Because Ava just walked off with her partner, and the only one still alone is Olivia. Great. She’ll probably do the same thing as Charlotte and ignore me, and I have no time to do both sides of the project. I’m barely staying afloat.

When she looks up and meets my eyes, her face flushes and she stiffens.

“Number three?” I ask, holding it up. She doesn’t speak, just flashes me the matching number on her slip of paper. So I drop into the seat next to her, spin the desk to face her, and meet her eyes.

She stares back, and a thousand things seem to fly between us. She’s questioning me, challenging me, judging me. And suddenly I want to defend myself.

“I meant what I said in the bathroom earlier,” I find myself saying. “I mean, I won’t—”

“
Shut it
,” she says, cutting me off. She darts a nervous glance over at Ava. Wow—girl is dodgy. “Look, you and I aren’t friends, and this project isn’t going to change that. We’ll settle on a topic and do a simple essay. I’ll write my paper immediately. Then you can look it over so that the compare and contrast aspect is clear, and you write yours. I’ll review it to be sure my paper still stands, and we’re done.”

I stare back at her, wondering how much of this has to do with whatever she’s hiding and how much has to do with hating me, with believing everything she’s heard about me. Behind her, Ava is darting glances our way, as if to be sure Olivia is being rude enough to me.

“No talking necessary then, huh?” I say, anger igniting. “You’ve got it all figured out, as always.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a planner. A color-coder.” I wave my hand over her binder. “You know. A control freak.”

“Look. Unlike you,” she snarls, her eyes sweeping over me as if she can tell by my appearance I’m some wastoid loser, “I care about my grades, and I’m not going to let you screw this up. So let’s just settle on a topic and get to work, okay? We don’t have to like each other.”

Of course she thinks I don’t care about my grades. Of course she thinks she’s better than me. Olivia has no idea what it’s like being one bad grade away from losing my slot in this school. Her parents have no problem ponying up the cash to send her to this place, with its brick façade and manicured lawns and ridiculous tuition.

“Clearly,” I mutter, wondering why I ever once wanted to be her friend. I actually used to admire her. It seems like a lifetime ago.

I flip open the textbook. We skim over a few chapters in silence, the only sounds coming from the turning of the pages. The tension settles around us like a fog, but I can’t think of anything to dispel it. I’m the enemy. Because her friend hates me. Because I caught her doing … something in the bathroom.

I should just tell her I don’t even know what the hell she was doing in there, but part of me likes that she’s so on edge. It makes her almost tolerable.

“How about the abolition of slavery?” she says, glancing up from her textbook. The look in her eyes has morphed back into the cool, composed Olivia I’ve come to know and loathe.

“Too obvious,” I say.

“The Boston Tea Party,” she says.

“Too boring,” I say.

“The signing of the Declaration of Independence.” She’s flipping rapidly through the pages now, scanning the chapter titles.

“Overdone.”

She tosses her hands up in the air, and I kind of like that her frustration is already bubbling over. Pushing her buttons is proving way too easy. “What do you suggest, then?”

“Everyone’s going to cover the major events, but they’re overlooking the simpler things. I say we compare and contrast the socioeconomic standing of two Americans during a rapidly changing time in history. A factory worker or a farmer or something, and someone wealthy. Make it less about an event and more about everyday living.”

She stares at me, and it almost looks like awe. Like she thought I’d go,
Erm, I dunno, how about, like, whatever?
Does she really take me for such an idiot that saying anything intelligent has rendered her speechless?