Rules for Secret Keeping (8 page)

“You don't get many secrets,” I try.

“Yeah,” he says. He finishes reading the secret, then folds it up carefully and slides it into his pocket. He's keeping it! He's keeping the secret! Does he want to read it over later? Did she confess her love to him? Is he going to tell me what was in the stupid thing?

“So what did—” I start, but my mom appears in the bedroom doorway, her hands full with a package of Oreos and two glasses of milk.

“Here you go,” she says, handing each of us a glass of milk and setting the package of Oreos down on the bed in between us.

“Thanks,” I say. I tear open the pack of cookies and pull one out. No use going to Emma's hungry, especially with Charlie's acid reflux problem. Who knows what kind of weird food will be served.

“Oh, and this came for you in the mail,” my mom says, handing me a cream-colored envelope. “It's from
You Girl
.”

I tear it open.

You are invited to the
You Girl
Annual Presentation Dinner.

Please join us at the King Tower Hotel,
New York, NY, for dinner and cocktails as we
announce the winner of the 7th annual
You Girl
Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

It's written on gold paper, and two tickets fall out into my hand.

“That's so awesome,” Jake says. He dunks a cookie into his milk and takes a bite.

“Congratulations, honey,” my mom says. She squeezes my shoulder, then takes the paper from me and scans it. “Oh, shoot,” she says when she sees the date. “I'll be on the night shift that night!”

“That's okay,” I say, even though it kind of isn't. If my mom has to work, that means I'm going to have to take my dad. Which is fine. I like hanging out with my dad. It's just that sometimes he can be so intense about all the business stuff, and I'm going to be nervous enough waiting to find out who won. I wish I could take Tom. Tom's a very calming influence.

“You'll have to make sure to take lots of pictures,” my mom says. After a few minutes of chatting about how
exciting the whole thing is, she finally leaves the room.

“So how was your photo shoot?” Jake asks, taking a cookie.

“Um, it was fine,” I lie. “The pictures should be out in the next issue.”

“Did you have to wear weird clothes?”

“Weird clothes?”

“Yeah, aren't models always wearing weird clothes, like big dresses or whatever?” Jake shoves two cookies at once into his mouth. “I saw it on
America's Next Top Model
.” I give him a look. “My mom was watching it!”

“I don't care if you were watching it,” I say. “You shouldn't be embarrassed about something like that; that show is for everyone.”

“I wasn't watching it!”

“Okay,”
I say. “And no, we got to wear whatever we wanted.” I decide to change the subject in case he's thinking about bringing up the fact that I'm completely unphotogenic. Plus we have to get back to the task at hand.

“Anyway,” I say. “So what were we talking about before my mom came in here?” Of course I already know the answer.

“How you're going to some lame sleepover and can't play Guitar Hero?”

“No, after that,” I say.

He frowns. “I don't remember.”

“I think we were talking about how you never get secrets passed to you,” I say.

“Right.” He pulls the top off an Oreo and licks out the cream. “And then you gave me the secret that was passed to me, and I took it, and then your mom came in.”

“Right, and you read it and—”

“Oh, crap,” Jake says, looking at the clock on my nightstand. “I gotta go. Leo's coming over. Anyway, let me know if you change your mind about your sleepover and want to play Guitar Hero with us.”

He grabs two Oreos for the road, and then he's gone.

Sigh. I thought for sure he was going to tell me what the note said! Why didn't he tell me what the note said? Even if it said she liked him, why wouldn't he want me to know?

Unless maybe . . . he likes her back?

AN HOUR LATER, I'M STANDING ON
Emma's porch with Daphne, and she's really not too happy. Daphne, I mean. About going to the sleepover. She was halfway complaining the whole ride over here. The only reason she didn't ramp it up into full-on complaining was because Tom was in the car, and it was impossible to get too cranky, because for some weird reason, he was playing a CD of Christmas carols. In September. Which was pretty funny.

But now that we're at Emma's, I have a feeling Daphne might switch over into full-on complaining. Which I can kind of understand, since Emma wasn't exactly all that nice to Daphne. But we should be determined to have a fun night. I mean, everyone deserves a second chance. Plus I
might need Emma's social status to save my secret-passing business. Not to mention she might like Jake. It's time to keep my enemies close and my friends closer or whatever.

“This is her
house
?” Daphne asks as I ring the doorbell.

“Yeah,” I say. “So what?” I'm being nonchalant, because Emma's house is BIG. Like, really big. Like, it has all these gigantic columns, and there's a statue of a lion on the front porch. A lion! Like, with a big steel mane and everything!

“It's just so
big
,” Daphne says.

“Daphne, she's nice,” I say.

“Are you forgetting that she wants to marry Jake?” Daphne's looking distastefully at the lion statue. Then she reaches out and pats it on the head. “I wonder what this guy's name is,” she says.

“I've decided to name him Alphonso.” I, too, give the lion a pat on the head. “Good boy,” I say. “And she doesn't want to marry Jake.” Why is no one coming to the door? I don't even hear any footsteps. Shouldn't there be a butler or something?

“Please, please, please try to have fun,” I tell Daphne. “It'll be fine, I swear; she invited you, she wants to be friends.”

“She asked if you could trust me!” Daphne says.

“I know, but she didn't mean it, she was just nervous, because she didn't want anything getting out about Olivia's
business. She was looking out for me.”

“I guess,” Daphne sighs. “But I'm serious, Samantha, if she—”

The door gets flung open then. “Hiiii!” Emma yells. She grabs one of my arms and one of Daphne's arms and pulls us into the house. “Come on, we're karaoking!”

“Um, okay,” I say. She's leading us through a maze of hallways now, and her house is so big I don't even know where the heck we're going. “Um, where are we going?” I ask.

“To the karaoke room!”

Right. I should have known. I look over at Daphne, who just rolls her eyes.

Be nice
, I mouth.

Fine
, she mouths back.

The karaoke room turns out to be part of Emma's basement. Like, a big part of it. And when I say “basement,” I mean it in a very loose sense of the word. The whole entire downstairs is refinished, with a big-screen TV in one corner, all these floppy chairs and couches, a big floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with books, and a bar in the corner.

Charlie is standing by the TV, in front of a big karaoke machine, messing around with some buttons. On the screen, a Jordin Sparks video is playing.

“Hello,” Charlie says coolly. “What do you two want to sing?” She says it like we might just be so lame that we won't know any of the songs they have, and might need a special CD, like
Karaoke for Losers
or something.

“They have to get into their karaoke outfits first,” Emma says. “What did you two bring?” Then she opens Daphne's bag where she dropped it on the floor and starts rummaging through it. She just starts going through Daphne's stuff! Like it's hers or something. Which is a total invasion of privacy, I mean, what if Daphne has something embarrassing in there?

“Why'd you bring these?” she asks, holding up a pair of Daphne's socks. They're pink with green polka dots.

“Um, because I like them,” Daphne says. She looks at me, and for a second, I think she might go crazy. Like, have a temper tantrum or something. Daphne doesn't have many tantrums, but when she does, they're not pretty.

“Those socks,” Charlie says, “are green.” She wrinkles up her nose like she hates green, which doesn't make any sense since she's wearing a green sparkly shirt. Maybe she just doesn't like green socks?

“It's okay,” Emma says to Daphne. She gives her a big smile. “You can borrow something of mine.”

“I don't want—” Daphne starts to say, but Emma cuts her off.

“You would look ah-mazing in my black leggings. You have such long legs, you are soooo lucky.” She steps back and looks Daphne up and down. “Seriously, you're tall enough to be a model.”

Daphne's face softens a little.

“Here's what I brought!” I yell like a crazy person. I want Emma to compliment me, too! I'm not as tall as Daphne, but I do have a pretty kick-butt karaoke outfit. I pull the stuff Taylor let me borrow out of my bag—the silver dress and black tights and ballet flats.

“Oooh, cute,” Emma says. “You can change in the bathroom over there.” She walks over to the wardrobe standing in the corner and flings open the doors. “Now, this,” she announces, “is the karaoke cupboard, and you can pick anything you want out of here to wear.” She pulls out a hat. “How do you feel about fedoras?”

“I'm not sure,” Daphne says warily.

I take my dress and silver shoes into the bathroom. I wonder why Emma made us bring our own karaoke outfits when she has a whole karaoke cupboard. I start to change, but I'm having a hard time getting the dress on because it's a little big for me and also because I can't tell which is the back and which is the front. Either it's almost backless, or the front is realllly low cut. Hmm. I really should have tried this on.

Someone pounds on the door. “Hello!” It's Charlie. “What are you doing in there? We have to do our makeup!”

“Just a second!” I yell back. I decide to go with backless, so I pull the dress on, then shove my feet into the tights.

I pull open the door.

“Do you want makeup or not?” Charlie asks. It seems vaguely threatening, like she's in charge of the makeup, and if I don't give her the right answer, I won't get any.

“Um, yeah,” I say. “I guess.” I'm still a little confused about this whole karaoke game.

“Good,” Charlie says. “Get back in there.”

I walk back into the bathroom, and Charlie pulls out a ginormous bin of makeup from underneath the sink.

“So,” I say. “What's the deal, you know, ah, with the karaoke thing?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning. She's rummaging around in the big bin, pulling out tubes of lipstick and cases of eye shadow. Some of them she lines up on the counter neatly, and others she makes a disgusted face at and then drops into the trash can. She's not very environmentally conscious, this girl. First the yogurts and now the makeup. Which is so not biodegradable.

“I mean, so we just do karaoke?”

“Nooo, we get dressed up,” she says. “And then we karaoke. And we pretend we're rock stars and sometimes
Emma films it with her dad's flip cam.”

“Oh. Okay.” Charlie pulls out a big compact full of what looks like bronzer. Then she opens it and smears it all over my face. “I don't think I need much bronzer,” I say. “I'm actually still pretty tan from the summer, and also I don't—”

“If we record anything, the camera and the lights are going to wash you out.”

I decide it might be best not to argue. And honestly, who am I to tell her what's going to look good? I have little to no makeup experience, and the one time I tried to do something beauty-related to myself, I ended up at the salon getting my eyebrows ripped off me in a terrible wax-related incident.

So I stay quiet and watch Charlie as she bites her lip in concentration and does my makeup. She has a smattering of freckles across her nose, which makes her look even prettier than she already is. She works for a while, and then her mouth sort of dips down at the ends, and she steps back a little bit and looks at me. “What's wrong with your eyebrows?” she asks.

“Oh, I have to use makeup to fill them in,” I say.

“Because you plucked them all off? Don't you have a good waxer?”

“I do now,” I say proudly. “Her name's Jemima and she's
amazing. But yes, I plucked them all off.”

She sighs, but keeps going. When she's done, it feels like I have about five pounds of makeup on my face. And when Charlie finally lets me look in the mirror, I don't know how I feel about my new, um, look.

“You look very edgy,” Charlie says, pleased. “It's like Lady Gaga or something.”

My eyes are smeared with purple eye shadow, my lips are lined in a plum lipstick, and I am very, very, very tan. Seriously. I look like Taylor that time she went for a spray tan and the lady working there went a little overboard and then my mom freaked out because Taylor was supposed to have been saving the money she used on her spray tan gone wrong for a new winter coat.