Rules for Secret Keeping (13 page)

“Your stepfather told me,” he says. He sets his book bag
down in the middle of our table. Then he starts pulling a bunch of papers, books, and folders out of it, piling them all up.

“You talked to Tom?” I ask. This thought is worrisome. Tom's so nice to everyone. He might have invited Eric over to the house to hang out or something. Tom loves inviting people over. One time in fourth grade he invited my whole class over for a pottery painting party. It didn't go so well. The paint turned out to be nonwashable, and we'll just leave it at that.

“Yes,” Eric says. “I called your house because you weren't answering your cell.”

“What are you doing?” Jake asks. He looks down at all the stuff Eric is dumping on our table. The pile now includes half of a roast beef sandwich in a baggie, and some green plastic army men.

“Aha!” Eric says. “Here it is!” He pulls out a crumpled piece of paper and smooths it out. It's covered in pencil writing.

“What is that?” Jake asks.

“It's a record of what I'm about to tell you.” Eric looks at us seriously over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Now, first, I have to preface this with an apology.”

“Okay,” I say. I feel nervous. Usually if Eric is starting out with an apology, whatever he's about to tell you
definitely can't be good.

“I . . . I . . .” He looks at me. “Well, I guess I'll just say it.” He takes a deep breath. “Samantha, I used OLIVIA'S SECRETS TO PASS A SECRET!”

“You
what
?” I shriek. Not because I'm really that mad, but because I can't believe
Eric
would do something like that. Eric is supposed to be in love with me. He's not supposed to be going around using Olivia's website to pass secrets! That's like cheating on me. God, everything in my world has gone totally and completely crazy and out of whack.

“I know,” he says. And then he gets out of his chair and throws himself at my feet. “I'm sorry! I will make it up to you, Samantha, I will, I swear it!”

“Eric,” I say. His mouth is coming very close to my shoes, and I'm afraid he might try to kiss my feet or something. Hello, embarrassing. “It's okay, get up.”

“Yeah,” Jake says, not looking at all amused by this crazy display. “Get up.”

“What should I do?” Eric says. He gets up and plops himself down in a chair. “Do you want me to carry your books to every class for you? Should I make you dinner? Do you want me to do your homework every day for the rest of the school year?”

“Dude,” Jake says, “you need to chill.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Chill. It's okay, Eric, I'm not mad.”

“You're not? But I betrayed you!” He's almost wailing now.

“It's okay,” I say.

“Well,” he says. “If you say so.” He chews on his bottom lip. Then he takes a deep breath. “I have to tell you something else.”

“There's more?” I ask warily.

“There's more?” Jake asks. He looks like he might want to strangle Eric.

“Yes,” Eric says. He gives Jake a dirty look, then sits up in his chair and adjusts his glasses. “And I think, Samantha, that you will want to hear this.” He gives Jake a pointed look.

“Okay,” I say uncertainly.

“It's kind of confidential,” Eric says. He looks at Jake again.

“You want me to
leave
?” Jake asks.

“It's okay,” I say quickly. “Jake can stay, he's cool.”

“Yeah,” Jake says. He gives Eric a look. “I'm cool.”

“All right,” Eric says. “I guess.” He doesn't sound so convinced. “So anyway, the reason that I was using Olivia's Secrets in the first place was because I wanted to find out what your plans were for Halloween.”

“You wanted to find out what whose plans were?” Jake
asks.

“Samantha's.”

“Then why didn't you just ask her?”

Eric looks at Jake like he's crazy and has no idea about how to get girls. “Because it was going to be a surprise, which is why I didn't pass the secret through Samantha. She knows my handwriting, and I figured she would know something was up.”

“Why didn't you just have someone else write Samantha's name on it?” Jake asks.

Eric sighs, pulls his glasses off, and looks up at the ceiling, like he's dealing with a child. “Because the secret wasn't for Samantha, it was for Daphne. I wanted to ask Daphne if Samantha had plans for Halloween. But if I passed a note to Daphne through Samantha, then of course Samantha would ask Daphne who the note was from. I couldn't take the chance that Daphne would crack and ruin the surprise.”

“Why didn't you just ask Daphne to her face?” Jake asks.

Eric blinks. “I don't know,” he says. Oh, for the love of . . .

“
Anyway
,” I say. “Can we please focus here?”

“Right,” Eric says. He slides his glasses back on and sits up very straight. “So I passed Daphne a note asking what
you were doing for Halloween, and how you would react to us possibly going trick-or-treating as Romeo and Juliet. You know, if I asked you beforehand.” Eric's whole face gets red, and his ears turn red too.

“You wanted to go trick-or-treating with Samantha as Romeo and Juliet?” Jake asks.

“Yes.” Eric clears his throat. “It's a play. By Shakespeare.”

“Yeah, I know what it is,” Jake says, his voice tight.

“Aww, that's sweet, Eric,” I say. It is, too. Not that I would really want to go trick-or-treating as Romeo and Juliet with Eric. I don't think I'm dressing up this year. I might be a little too old for that whole thing.

“Yes, well, I'm getting to the best part,” Eric says. He rubs his hands together gleefully. “So this morning, I'm walking along, minding my own business—” Jake snorts at this part, I guess because he can't really imagine Eric minding his own business. Which kind of makes sense when you think about it, since Eric is usually very much completely up in people's business. “
Anyway
,” Eric says. “I was minding my own business, just walking along to The Common, when all of a sudden, I walked by Brooke Highsmith and Tucker Levangie. And do you know what they said as I passed by?” Eric lowers his voice and looks around, getting ready to lay the punch line on us.

“No,” I say. “What did they say?” For the love of God,
spit it out.

Eric looks down at the paper, where he's apparently constructed a written record of the whole incident. “They said, ‘Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?' and then they laughed.” Eric sits back in his seat and looks smug.

“Um, okay,” I say, not really getting it.

“That's pretty funny.” Jake chuckles and takes a sip of his hot chocolate.

“Don't you
see
?” Eric says, shooting Jake a dirty look. He moves his chair closer to mine. “Those two knew my secret! Olivia told them! She is READING THE SECRETS!”

My mouth drops open and I sit up straight. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” he says.

“You didn't tell anyone else about the Romeo and Juliet idea?” I ask him.

“No!” He shakes his head from side to side vehemently. “I didn't! I sent the secret as soon as I came up with the idea.”

Jake laughs again. I shoot him a dirty look of my own, because honestly, he's being a little bit of a jerk. Eric is perfectly nice, and besides, he is giving me important information here. Important, possibly life-changing information.

“Eric,” I say. “I might love you just a little bit right now.” Eric beams.

“It doesn't matter,” Jake says, shaking his head. “You need proof.”

“We
have
proof,” I say. “Eric heard two girls talking about a confidential secret that he passed. A secret that he didn't tell anyone else.”

“That's not really proof,” Jake points out. “It's just one person's word against someone else's.”

“It
is
proof!” I insist. Even though I know in my heart that he's right. It would be Eric's word against Olivia's. And who's going to believe Eric? Everyone knows he's been in love with me for, like, ever.

“He's right,” Eric says stiffly. “But I'll help you to bring them down any way I can.”

“Actually,” Jake says. “Samantha and I were just talking about that. Do you know anything about computers?”

“Not really,” Eric admits. For all his geekiness, Eric is more into earth science, math, and video games. He doesn't get too much into the techy, hacker side of geekdom.

“Well, I think this website is highly unsecured,” Jake declares.

“You do?” Eric asks.

“Yeah,” I say, frowning. “You do?” And why is this the first I've heard of this?

“Yes.” Jake looks at me seriously, and then he looks at Eric triumphantly. “And I'm going to help you hack it, Samantha. If we can hack into it, we can prove her whole online business is completely vulnerable.”

“This,” Eric says, propping his glasses up onto his nose, “is war.”

“You two,” I say, “are the best!” Eric keeps beaming. But Jake just looks annoyed.

“IT'S WAR,” I TELL DAPHNE WHEN I SEE
her at her locker before homeroom. Of course, this might be overstating it just a little bit. I mean, of course it's not war
exactly.
Also, I don't know much about waging war on someone. I might have to ask Taylor and/or Emma for tips. Those two probably know lots about it.

“What's war?” Daphne asks.

“The whole secret-passing thing.” I fill her in on what happened at The Common.

“Jake really thinks he can hack into the site?” She sounds doubtful, and she keeps putting her books into her locker really slowly, not looking at me.

“I don't know,” I say. “Of course, I have no idea how easy it will be or if he knows what he's doing. But he's
going to try! And that means we're going to be spending a lot of time together.” I raise my right eyebrow up and down suggestively, trying to make her laugh. But she doesn't. Which means something is definitely wrong. Daphne usually loves it when I wiggle my right eyebrow up and down. It's a very hard thing to do, to wiggle only one eyebrow. Plus now that my eyebrows are half-painted on, it should be, like, doubly funny.

“What's wrong?” I ask. “Seriously, Daph, let's talk. Whatever it is, we can talk about it, I swear. I want to, I—”

“I told you,” she says. “It's nothing.” But she slams her locker door shut more forcefully than I would deem necessary. So I'm pretty sure she has some pent-up anger boiling around inside. “I have to get to the newspaper office to drop off my story. And then I'm going down to the gym to talk to Coach Krasinksi about soccer.”

“I didn't know you were joining soccer,” I say.

“Yeah, well, there's a lot of things you don't know lately.” And she takes off down the hall before I can say anything else.

Geez. The high I had for a little while when I heard that Olivia might be reading people's secrets is totally gone. How can I be happy when Daphne's mad at me? And not just, like, normal mad at me, but really, really mad at me. I mean, she's not even telling me about the things she's
doing, like trying out for soccer! How horrible is that? I
alway
s know what Daphne's doing, and she always knows what I'm doing.

And then, as if out of nowhere, comes the perfect solution to my Daphne-related problems. A flyer on the wall, announcing our school's Fall Festival. It's, like, this completely big deal, with a hayride and a corn maze, and maybe even some other, lamer stuff that teachers think will be fun but really isn't, like bobbing for apples. And everyone is supposed to bring a date, but I can ask Daphne to go with me! It's not like we're going to have dates. We can eat candy apples and ride the hayride and go through the big corn maze and it'll be totally fun.

Yay! I'm so excited that when the bell rings for lunch, I wait outside the cafeteria for Daphne, hoping I can cut her off before she goes in.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi,” she says.

“You wanna sit outside today?” I ask. I hold up my bag. “I have a Nutella sandwich and half of it has your name on it.” Hopefully she likes Nutella as much as Tom does.

Daphne hesitates. “What about Emma and Charlie?” she asks. “Won't they be upset if you're away from them for two days straight?”

“No,” I say. “I'll tell them I had to make up a test or
something.” I don't really care if Emma and Charlie get mad. This is about me and Daphne. We need to reconnect and work on our friendship. Hmm. That sounds like a totally fab article for
You Girl
: “You and Your BFF: How You Can Work on Reconnecting.” I should bring that up to Barb when she comes to shadow me next week. I wonder if they're looking for writers. I could totally be a tween correspondent or something.

Daphne and I head outside to one of the big stone benches in the courtyard. We set up our lunches between us and then straddle the bench, facing each other. It's a gorgeous day, still warm enough to be outside without a jacket, but the air smells of fall, and the trees are shedding leaves in all different colors.