Rules for Secret Keeping (12 page)

“I don't know,” I say. “You should see this website,
seriously. It has this completely interactive interface.”

“Interactive interface?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“Yes,” I say. “It means that the interface is interactive. Duh.” Seriously, boys can be so dumb.

“Okay,” Jake says. “Look, we'll figure it out.” My heart speeds up a little bit when he says “we'll.” It's very . . . couple-y. Like we're in this together.

“Will we?” I ask, mostly because I just want to try out how it feels to call Jake and I a “we.” It sounds good. Perfect, even.

“Yes,” he says. “Look, do you want to meet at The Common tomorrow morning before school? We could get danishes and I'll bring my laptop and you can show me this lame website you think is so great.”

I think about it. First, I am not a morning person. Second, The Common is actually just a fancy name for a special cafeteria at our school. It's the caf they used to use before they built a new one, and now they open it before and after school so that kids can hang out and study. Third, I am going to have to get Tom to agree to drive me there. Fourth, I don't care, because JAKE IS INVITING ME TO THE COMMON! Is this a date? Probably not. But still. He wants to hang out with me. Alone. Not with Daphne or
Emma or anyone else!

“Sounds good,” I say. Me and Jake alone. Not that I've never been alone with him before, but obviously it's different now. Completely different. His new voice is just one part of the whole “now this is different” puzzle. Why, oh, why did I wear Emma's dress today? I should have worn it tomorrow, so I could be super cute for my date with Jake. I mean, my not-date with Jake. My sort-of-date with Jake? Whatever, the point is, I should have worn it tomorrow.

“Great,” he says. “Meet me at seven forty-five or so?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Oh, one more thing,” Jake says. “Did you ever give Emma my note?”

Sigh.

“HE MUST LIKE HER, DAPH,” I SAY THE
next morning, turning my head completely toward the windows of the cafeteria so that no one can tell I'm on my cell. “Otherwise why was he freaking out about me giving her the note?”

The thing is, I
did
give Emma the note. I gave it to her after lunch. And I didn't read it. Of course I
thought
about reading it, I
obsessed
about reading it, but somehow, I was able to control myself. It was very hard. Especially when she started opening it as she walked away down the hall, and I probably could have looked over her shoulder and tried to sneak a peek. But I didn't.

What I don't get is, Jake knows I would never read a secret, or hide a secret, or accidentally on purpose lose a secret. I don't think he even knows I've thought about doing
those things. So there was really no reason for him to ask me if I gave that note to Emma. Unless he was really, really anxious and wanted to know if Emma got it. Which means he probably likes her, too. Right? I mean, why else would he be freaking out about it? This is what I'm debating with Daphne on the phone while I wait for Jake at a table inside The Common.

“Samantha,” Daphne says, “so what? He'll be over it in two weeks. That's about how long seventh-grade crushes last.”

“That is so not what I want to hear.” Two weeks? How am I supposed to go through two
weeks
with Jake liking Emma and Emma liking Jake and the two of them passing notes back and forth like two little crazy note-passers with nothing better to do than to make my life miserable? Two weeks is a lifetime! Two weeks is, like, fourteen whole days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes. That is forever. And wow, I am really good at math.

“I know it's not what you want to hear.” Daphne sounds grumpy. Probably because I woke her up at six a.m. asking her what I should wear to go meet Jake. I tried to call and text her a bunch of times last night, but she never answered.

I finally settled on my favorite jeans, my new comfy
sweater boots, and a red-and-blue-striped sweater. It's a very cute outfit. It was actually a blessing that I wore Emma's dress yesterday, because otherwise I would have been obsessing over whether or not I should wear it. And now that I think about it, that dress really is way too dressy for school.

“Listen,” I say now to Daphne. “We need to talk later. About why you're mad at me.”

“I'm not mad at you,” she says.

“But in the computer lab yesterday—”

“Look, I'm not mad,” she says. “Now I have to go; my bus is going to be here soon. I'll see you at school.”

She hangs up. I sigh and look out the window. Jake's mom's van is pulling up in the circle out in front. I pull a magazine out of my bag and pretend to be reading it.

“Hey,” Jake says when he gets to my table.

“Oh, hey.” I try to sound surprised, and peer at him like maybe I even forgot he was coming. “I didn't see you there.”

He looks at me funny and then slides into his chair. “Yeah, well, here I am,” he says. “Do you want a drink?”

“Sure,” I say. “A lemonade would be fab.” I reach into my bag and pull out my wallet (it's from last year and has a rainbow on it with clouds—sooo embarrassing—but I haven't gotten around to buying a new one, and besides,
how can I afford a new one now when my business is going kaput?) and pull out two dollars. I try to hand it to Jake, but he waves me off. “I got it.” He heaves his computer bag up onto the table. “Can you boot it up while I go wait in line?”

“Sure,” I say. Ohmigod! Jake is buying me a lemonade! Hello! That is like one step away from a date. Isn't it? I mean, that's what happens on dates. Guys buy the girls something. Like a lemonade, for example. Also, Jake has left me in charge of his computer! Jakes loves his computer. It's not something he would let just anyone touch.

I pull it out of the bag slowly, careful not to drop it. It's a MacBook Air that Jake named Wilfred. (I know, how cute, right?) Jake saved up all his Hanukkah money and all his birthday money, and then worked, like, three hundred hours at his dad's landscaping business to make up the difference. It's sleek and shiny and he loves it.

The computer is almost booted up (Jake's background is a picture of his dog, Sylvester, even cuter) when the door to The Common opens, and Emma and Charlie come waltzing in. Well. It's more like strutting. Seriously, they look like they're on a runway at Fashion Week or something. And what are they
doing
here? Not that I mind seeing them exactly, it's just . . . when you're on a maybe-date with the guy you like, you don't want the girl he's been passing secrets with to show up. That just, you know, doesn't really
work.

I bury my head in my magazine and decide to try and ignore them.

“Samantha!” Emma yells, waving like a maniac. Sigh.

“Oh, hi,” I say. I peer up at them like I really didn't even see them come in. This look might be starting to become a thing with me.

“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.