Rules for Secret Keeping (19 page)

“We're talking,” I say, “about how horrible everything is.” I put my head down on the table in frustration. Eww. Kind of sticky. I pull my head back up quickly.

“What could possibly be so horrible?” Taylor asks. She reaches over and takes a bite of Daphne's cookie. “You're in seventh grade.”

“Shows how much you know,” I tell her. Then I start ticking everything off on my fingers. “One, the Fall Festival is the same night as the
You Girl
dinner. Two, that woman Barb is coming tomorrow and I haven't gotten any secrets in weeks.” I hesitate, contemplating going for three, but then decide to leave out the stuff about Jake.

“So what's going to happen?” Taylor asks, picking up my cider and taking a swig. “When she shows up and there aren't any secrets?”

“I'm not sure,” I say. “Probably something completely and totally disastrous.” I take the last bite of my doughnut and pop it into my mouth. I look at Taylor and Daphne. “Anyone have a brilliant plan?”

“Are you kidding?” Taylor asks. “I mean, isn't it so totally obvious?” Daphne and I look at her blankly. Taylor sighs like she can't believe how childish we are. “Samantha, all you have to do is make up some fake secrets.”

“Fake secrets?” I ask skeptically.

“Yeah, like, just make up a whole bunch of fake ones
and put them in your locker,” Taylor says, shrugging. “That way, when that Barb person comes, she'll just think you have tons of them. She doesn't know anyone at your school, so she won't be able to tell that they're fake. You could even use real names.”

“I don't know,” I say. My stomach flips thinking about it. “What if I get caught?”

“Oh, please,” Taylor says. She takes another long gulp of my cider, and I reach over and take it back from her before she drinks the whole thing. “You worry too much about things.”

“I do?” I ask. I actually think I've been handling this whole situation quite well. I mean, my whole business is falling apart, not to mention that tomorrow a national magazine is coming to do a story about said falling-apart business, and somehow I'm still managing to keep it together. By a hair, but still.

“She might be right,” Daphne says slowly. “Remember that time in fourth grade when me you and Jake needed money to go to the movies, because our parents wouldn't give us any, so we gathered up all the unopened food we could find in our houses and sold it and pretended we were raising money for the troops?”

“Exactly,” Taylor says. “You didn't get caught that time, and you won't get caught this time either.” She leans back
in her chair and looks smug.

“You guys,” I say. “That was fourth grade. We were
ten
. This is a little more serious.”

“True,” Daphne says. “If you get caught you'll probably get in a lot of trouble.”

“God, you guys are, like, so
nervous
,” Taylor says, sounding exasperated. She leans back in her chair, then reaches up and slides her hair tie out. Her long hair pools around her shoulders in soft waves. A couple of eighth-grade boys at the table next to us are staring at her, like, almost drooling.

“I don't know,” I say. “I just . . . I don't think I can do that. I'm going to have to come up with something better.”

“Suit yourself,” Taylor says, shrugging.

“I
will
come up with something else,” I say, nodding determinedly. “I
will
.”

BUT I DON'T COME UP WITH ANYTHING
else. Not One. Single. Thing. And by the time breakfast rolls around on Tuesday morning, I have a pit in my stomach the size of a cantaloupe.

“Oohh,” I say from my seat at the kitchen table. “I don't fee-eeel so good.” The one idea I
have
come up with is to fake sick. If I'm not at school when Barb comes, she can't figure out that my secret-passing is a sham, and voilà, perfect plan. Well, sort of. First I have to get Tom to let me stay home.

“What's wrong?” Tom asks, looking alarmed. He leaves the oatmeal he's making on the stove, and comes over and puts his hand on my head. “Are you getting swine flu?”

“Yes,” I say. This was not something I really thought of, but swine flu it is! “I'm getting swine flu. Someone at school told me their uncle had it, and I was hanging out with her a lot.” This isn't even a lie. Someone at school
did
tell me her uncle had it. Of course, her uncle lives in South Dakota and was nowhere near the girl in question ever, but Tom doesn't need to know that. Also I don't think anyone even really gets swine flu anymore, and if they do, it gets knocked out with an antibiotic in, like, five seconds. Unless you have one of those rare, serious cases. Which I obviously do.

“Swine flu is totally going around,” Taylor says, coming
into the kitchen. “And if you have it, please don't get near me, since it's going to be homecoming soon.”

“I won't get near you,” I promise. I decide that if Tom thinks this new swine flu development is pretty serious, then I should start acting it. Plus I heard somewhere that serious swine flu can progress rapidly. “Oooh, my head,” I say, resting it on the table.

The phone rings then, and Tom reaches over me to get it.

“Hello? Hello? Oh, yes, hi, Richard. . . . Yes, she's right here. Unfortunately, she's not feeling well; we think it might be swine flu.” Tom turns around to stir the oatmeal.

Gasp! Tom is on the phone with my dad! Talking about how I have swine flu. I don't think that's going to go over so well. My dad is probably expecting me to be at school no
matter what, even if I have, like, rubella or something. Not that I know what rubella is. I just know that it's pretty bad, since you have to get vaccinated for it. Anyway, the point is, a little bout of swine flu is not going to be enough for my dad to think it's okay for me to miss my time with Barb.

“Well, I know today is the day that
You Girl
is coming to her school, but if Samantha's sick, then that takes precedence over— No, I will
not
ask her if she's faking, that is not a very nice thing to even
imply
; Samantha would
never
— Why, yes, maybe you should call her mother on her cell phone, that might be a better—Hello? Hello? HELLO?”

Tom hangs up the phone and looks at it in wonder. “Your father,” he says, “just hung up on me.”

Taylor and I look at each other nervously. Hmm. This probably isn't the best time to bring up the fact that they're both going to the
You Girl
dinner.

“Oooh,” I say. “My throat is really hurting.”

“Do you want some oatmeal?” Tom asks. “Or maybe I should make you some soup.”

“Yes, oatmeal, please.” Tom makes the best oatmeal. He puts nuts and apples and all sorts of good things into it. “And then I'd better get upstairs to bed; I think maybe I'm going to have to cancel today. Now where's Barb's number?” I grope around the table for my cell phone. I'm
hoping Tom will offer to call Barb for me, since I'm slightly scared of her.

“See how you feel once you get something in your stomach,” Tom says. Taylor rolls her eyes and pulls two bowls down from the cupboard. She's obviously caught on to the fact that I'm faking. She also knows that Tom is a total pushover, and that if I want to stay home from school, I'll be able to. As long as my mom doesn't find out.

“So what are your symptoms exactly?” Taylor asks. “Because I heard that if it's really swine flu, you'll have a really bad fever.”

“I
do
feel hot.” I start fanning myself with the newspaper that's sitting on the table.

Taylor raises her eyebrows at me skeptically. “Then you probably shouldn't eat oatmeal, you should have cool things. Like orange juice.”

I glare at her. Taylor knows that I hate orange juice. My mom always buys the kind with the pulp, and there are always little bits of orange floating around in there. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

“I need something warm to soothe my throat,” I say. I rub my throat for good measure.

Tom plunks a bowl of oatmeal down in front of me, and another in front of Taylor. I take a warm, sweet spoonful. Yum.

“This is so good,” I say. “But, um, not so good that I'm feeling better or anything.”

“Of course not,” Taylor says, rolling her eyes again. She takes a bite of her own oatmeal.

And then my mom comes into the kitchen. “Mom!” I say, shocked. “What are you doing here?” My mom is not supposed to be home right now. It's only seven thirty. My mom gets out of work at nine a.m. Also, it is impossible to get a hold of my mom, because she is an ER nurse and when you call her, there are all sorts of things going on, like shootings and stabbings. Actually, not really. Mostly it's just people who broke their legs in skiing accidents or kids with appendicitis. But she's still usually really busy dealing with important things that do not allow her to get to the phone. Which was an integral part of my swine flu plan.

“I got out of work early,” she says. “I've been upstairs since five, catching up on the DVR.”

I look at Tom. “Tom,” I say accusingly. “Did you know about this?”

“Of course.”

“You could have told me,” I mumble. Now that my mom is here, there's no way I'm going to be allowed to stay home from school. Which really sucks, especially since I just got my hopes up, and now they are dashed into oblivion.

“Samantha has swine flu,” Taylor reports.

“I heard.” My mom crosses the kitchen, pulls a bowl down from the cupboard, and fills it with oatmeal from the pot on the stove. “Do you have a fever?”

Crap, crap, crap. This is why it's not so great to have your mom be a nurse. Sure, it comes in handy
sometimes
like when you fall off a swing in second grade and become convinced you're going to bleed to death because there is blood everywhere and you are afraid it means you're going to die. Then your mom can just pick you up and you can trust her when she says it just needs a Band-Aid, because she's a medical professional.

But when you are in seventh grade and pretending to have swine flu, it's a whole different story.

“I don't think I have a fever,” I say. “But one might be developing.”

“Hmm.” She puts her cool hand to my forehead.

“Your hand feels so very cold,” I try.

“Yes, well, you don't have a fever,” she says.

“But you can't tell if someone has a fever just by feeling their forehead! I read it online, it was a breaking news story on my AIM!”

“Samantha,” she says. “You're not sick. You're going to school. Your father and I talked about it, and really, there's nothing you need to be worried about. You're going to do fine.”

Easy for them to say. They don't have all the information.

Two hours later, I'm sitting in the front office waiting for Barb. She's late. I don't think this is a very good way to start our day. And I think it's very unprofessional of Barb to be late, but honestly, I can't say anything, because she holds my fate in her hands. Also, I can't
really
talk about people being unprofessional. Because this morning, before school started, I met Daphne at The Common and we made up a bunch of fake secrets, which I then shoved into my locker. I know. It's totally shameful. But I didn't know what else to do! And when you think about it, it's not
really
a lie. Because as soon as Olivia gets sick of this whole thing, my business will be back on track. So really I'm just sort of messing around with the timing.

“Did she call or anything?” I ask Mrs. James, the front-office secretary.

“No, hon,” she says, shrugging. “If she's not here by the time first period is over, we'll let you go to class and just call you down when she gets here.”

Ooh, score! If that happens, I can just be all,
I'm so sorry, Barb, but since you were late, I have a very important test that, unfortunately, I just cannot miss.
And then I'll let her take a pic of me or something, so that at least she
doesn't go away completely empty-handed. And then I'll tell her I understand that she doesn't have much information to really make a good profile, but that my education is more important, and that I hope she can respect that. What a good speech!

I watch the clock over the office door tick toward the end of first period, when I can make my escape. The good news, I guess, is that I'm missing first period. I look down and smooth my skirt. I'm wearing a black pencil skirt, a white lacey shirt, and a gray and maroon sweater with matching patterned tights. Very cute outfit. Too bad it will be all for nothing since Barb isn't coming, yay!

And then, literally
right before
the bell is going to ring, Barb comes barging into the office. She just walks right in, she's got a photographer(!!) in her wake, and she looks like she's on a mission.