The Book of One Hundred Truths (4 page)

“That’s today’s schedule,” Celia said.

“What about tomorrow’s?” I asked. “I don’t want to spend my vacation watching Jocelyn.”

Ellen turned around. “Do you have any important plans in the next few days? Anything you won’t be able to reschedule?”

“No, but—”

“Your Nenna is seventy-four years old,” she said, leaning toward me. Her nostrils were as dark as caverns. “Do you want her to chase after a pair of kids while you eat potato chips and watch TV all day?”

“Do we have potato chips?” I asked.

We didn’t.

Celia said she was sure it would all work out. She was sure I understood that a family vacation meant that every member of the family had to pitch in and help.

CHAPTER SIX

Truth #9: I don’t think I would have come to Port Harbor if I’d known that so many people were going to be here.

Truth #10: But I didn’t want to stay home, either. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to run away.

“I’m okay by myself,” Jocelyn said after everyone else had left. “You don’t have to pay any attention to me. I know I’m supposed to leave you alone and not bother you.”

I put my notebook in the zippered pocket of my suitcase and stuffed the entire thing under my bed. “Who told you not to bother me?”

“You did.” She contemplated the objects on her dresser, then moved her jewelry box half an inch to the left. “Yesterday you told me I’m not supposed to follow you.”

“Oh.” I stood up and stretched, then looked in the mirror above my own dresser. My face was too round, I thought. Worse, my chin had a cleft in it, like a misplaced dimple. I had tried to flatten it out with masking tape once, but it hadn’t worked.

“You’re different this summer than you were last year,” Jocelyn said.

“Am I?” I headed downstairs. “How am I different?”

“Your hair was longer last summer,” Jocelyn said. She was following me again. “You let me braid it.”

I remembered sitting on the living room floor watching some kind of movie while Jocelyn’s fingers twined through my hair.

“And you were nicer,” she added. “This summer you aren’t as nice yet.”

I turned around at the bottom of the steps. “Do you think I’ll get nicer?”

Jocelyn scratched herself. “I have eczema on this arm now, too.” She held her pale forearm up to the light, and I saw the peeling skin on her wrist and her hand, which was pink and rough.

I looked out the sliding door to the porch. The sun was hammering a silver path across the water. “I guess I’m supposed to do laundry now,” I said. “If you want, you can help. But we have to do it Ellen’s way, which means we’re probably going to need a compass or a calculator.” I opened the folding doors in front of the washing machine and dryer. Deep in the washer, Edmund’s sheets were tangled up with socks and pajamas and a tablecloth and Granda’s handkerchiefs. Old people used handkerchiefs, I had noticed. Why didn’t they use tissues, like other people? I tugged at the heavy, soggy bundle. It was like trying to pull an octopus out of a hole.

“I saw you writing in your diary,” Jocelyn said.

“It isn’t a diary; I already told you.” I dumped the laundry, including the balled-up sheets and a tiny pair of pajamas printed with elephants, into a plastic basket.

“Then what is it?” Jocelyn handed me a bag of clothespins. “Will you tell me what you wrote in it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I just won’t. It’s private. How often does Edmund wet his bed?”

“Not very often.” She helped me carry the basket past the dryer (which looked almost new) and down the outdoor stairs. “I think at home it only happens a few times a week.”

We set the basket down on the walk. The wind was blowing, and when I pulled the first sheet from the top of the pile, it flapped and clung to me, the cold cloth sticking to my legs.

“You haven’t gone swimming yet.” Jocelyn couldn’t reach the clothesline, so she sat on one of the three wooden steps that led over the bulkhead to the beach. “You didn’t go in the water yesterday or the day before. And you haven’t gone in it today, either.”

“Maybe I don’t like swimming.” I peeled the wet sheet off my legs and draped it over the line. By the time I pinned it into place, one long white edge was covered with sand. “Or maybe I went swimming before breakfast. Maybe I snuck out of the house and you didn’t notice.”

“There’s no wet bathing suit on the clothesline,” Jocelyn said. “And I would have noticed. Because I’ve been watching you.”

“Why are you watching me?”

“Why aren’t you going in the water?”

I pinned Edmund’s pajamas and Granda’s handkerchiefs to the clothesline. “I’m not going in the water because there are jellyfish,” I said. The lie came to me easily, like a bubble rising up in a glass. “I’m allergic to jellyfish.”

“Everyone’s allergic,” Jocelyn said. “Just like with bees.”

“But I’m allergic in a different way,” I said. “If I just put my toe in the water and there are jellyfish anywhere around, even ten feet away, my whole foot’ll swell up and I won’t be able to walk.” I pinched my thumb with a clothespin. “It’s called jell-itis.”

Jocelyn studied me. “I never heard of that.”

The sheets were flapping behind us in the breeze.

We didn’t have anything else to do, so once I was finished with the laundry, I suggested that we walk to the Ocean Market, a candy, magazine, and grocery store a few blocks down the beach. We went upstairs to get our sandals and some money. Jocelyn insisted on bringing her purse.

We climbed over the bulkhead and walked down the beach, past the lifeguard stand, which was bristling with signs that said,
NO DOGS. NO PLAYING BALL. NO SWIMMING OUTSIDE THE GREEN FLAGS. NO TALKING TO GUARDS
. The lifeguards both wore dark glasses. They stared at the water as if hypnotized.

“Do you think you’ll ever show it to anyone?” Jocelyn asked.

“Show what to anyone?”

A man with a sunburned belly the size of a beach ball walked past us and tipped an imaginary hat.

“Your secret notebook,” Jocelyn said. “Will you ever let anybody read it?”

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. The sand was warm on top but cool underneath; I took off my flip-flops.

“You’re not the only person here who’s keeping a secret,” Jocelyn said.

We saw a boy about Edmund’s age sitting on a towel with a mountain of seaweed in a bucket beside him. He was popping the rubbery brown bubbles between his fingers.

“I guess you want me to ask you who has a secret,” I said. “Okay—is it you?”

“No.”

“Is it Nenna or Granda?”

“No. It’s Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen. I heard them whispering. They were in the kitchen and they didn’t see me.”

“They could have been whispering for a lot of reasons,” I said. I remembered Ellen sifting through the mail, then tucking a single envelope into her purse. “Anyway, it isn’t polite to eavesdrop.”

“I’m good at eavesdropping,” Jocelyn said.

We watched two girls in matching red bathing suits playing lacrosse at the edge of the water.

“Do you want to know what Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen were whispering about?” Jocelyn asked.

“No.”

The taller of the lacrosse-playing girls dropped the ball and had to run into the water to find it. I imagined the two of them going shopping together and seeing the bathing suits and deciding to buy them.

Jocelyn touched my arm. “Are you going to have friends here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you have friends here, then you’ll spend time with them. Edmund already has a friend named Brian. He lives next door.”

When I was little—Jocelyn’s age—I used to play in the sand with any other kids in Port Harbor who were building castles or digging holes or dragging water around in buckets. But I was too old for that now. “Maybe you’ll have friends here,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” Jocelyn said. “I don’t have very many friends.”

We left the beach, climbing the splintery stairs that led over the bulkhead. “Why don’t you have very many friends?”

Jocelyn stopped to put on her sandals. She seemed determined to brush every single grain of sand from her feet. “Because I just don’t.”

Truth #11: I’ve never had very many friends, either.

“Some of the girls at school say I’m bossy,” Jocelyn said.

“Are you bossy?”

“Kind of.”

Truth #12: I used to have a best friend.

Truth #13: And her name was Gwen.

We had reached the street. Leaving the beach and going into the town of Port Harbor always felt strange to me. It was like opening a door and finding an entirely different world on the other side.

“Do you think you’ll find out what the secret is—the one that Celia and Ellen are keeping?” Jocelyn asked.

“No.” I shook a pebble out of one of my flip-flops. “I really doubt they’re keeping secrets, Jocelyn.”

We pushed through the door of the Ocean Market. The air was cold. It smelled like the inside of a cardboard box.

“Everyone always keeps secrets from me,” Jocelyn said. “It’s because I’m still young. If I was older, would you let me read what you’ve written in your diary?”

“No. And it isn’t a diary. Do you want any candy? I’m getting something chocolate.”

“I don’t eat chocolate,” Jocelyn said.

I chose two candy bars and a postcard and stood in line at the checkout counter.

Jocelyn tugged on my shirt. “But if Celia and Ellen
do
have a secret, and if you find out what it is, will you promise to tell me?”

Truth #14: I used to think secrets were kind of fun. But that was before I started lying to my parents, back in February.

“Will you, Thea?” Jocelyn scratched her arm. “Please? Thea?”

Because I thought she’d never drop the subject otherwise, I made her a promise. If I found out what the secret was, I would let her know.

CHAPTER SEVEN

M
ost people think there are only two kinds of lies: “little white lies” and all the others. But that isn’t true. Lies come in a lot of different colors.

White lies are the kind that protect other people’s feelings. Yellow lies are the ones that tell only part of a story; they leave things out.

Then there are pink lies; the pink ones exaggerate.

Green ones invent. Little kids like to use them. (“I saw a dinosaur yesterday. It made a nest in my yard.”)

Blue lies are the ones that people use when they’re desperately trying to get out of trouble: “I didn’t rob that bank. Really. I don’t know where those bags of money came from.”

And there are red and purple and orange lies. Gwen and I made the colors up. We sat down one day and wrote up a chart.

That was before I turned into a liar myself. And of course the first few lies I told were all about Gwen.

It became pretty clear during the next few days that I was stuck with my little busybody cousin. It didn’t matter whether I was on vacation or whether I said I didn’t babysit. Liam and Austin were always at work (so were Celia and Ellen); Phoebe was busy with the baby (and had volunteered to entertain Edmund every morning, wearing him out so that he would take a nap every afternoon); and Nenna was usually cooking or doing some kind of housework. Besides, she had to help Granda. He needed help getting dressed and even getting in and out of his favorite chair.

Because Jocelyn was usually hovering somewhere nearby even when I wasn’t officially spending time with her, the only moments I had to myself were at night in the attic. Sometimes I read under the covers with a flashlight. Or I took my notebook from the zippered compartment of my suitcase, chewed the cap of my pen, and waited to find out what I would write.

Truth #15: I have a lot of nightmares.

I glanced over at Jocelyn, a tiny lump on the opposite mattress.

Truth #16: I don’t always remember them. When I sit up in bed, the details disappear. It’s like shaking an Etch A Sketch: most of the picture gets rubbed away, so all you can see is an outline of what used to be there.

I sat in the dark and twirled my pen. Sometimes the truths came to me in bunches. Sometimes I thought of them during the day and had to carry them around with me for hours, until I had time to open my notebook.

Truth #17: I used to spend a lot of time at Three Mile Creek.

I paused; the pages of the notebook were smooth and thick.

Truth #18: I will never go to Three Mile Creek again.

“Thea?”

The notebook leapt out of my hands. “Jocelyn! You scared me to death. Why are you awake?” My heart was pounding.

“I heard you writing something.” I could see the tangled fluff of her hair against the pillow. “You woke me up.” She turned on the light. The only lamp in the attic was an old-fashioned one on Jocelyn’s dresser. The bottom of the lamp was shaped like a lady wearing a giant hoopskirt.

“I couldn’t have woken you up,” I said. “I barely made any noise.”

“I’m a very light sleeper.” She rubbed her eyes and glanced at my notebook. “I have insomnia.”

“Kids don’t get insomnia.” I put the notebook on my dresser, then thought better of it—hadn’t Jocelyn told me she was in the highest reading group at school?—and stuffed it under my pillow.

“What were you writing about?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I turned over and faced her. Our beds were parallel to each other, a six-foot stripe of floor between them.

“If I had a secret notebook, I’d write about all the things that other people hide from me. That’s what I’d do. I’d write about secrets.”

“You can turn the light out,” I said. “I’m going to sleep.”

She turned it out. “Why haven’t you invited me to visit you in Minnesota?”

I could hear her scratching herself. She was always scratching. “I didn’t know you wanted to come,” I said.

“I do. If you invited me, I could go to school with you. And if it was winter, it would be cold outside and when we got home we’d drink hot chocolate with little marshmallows in it and play a duet on the piano.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” I said, “except that I don’t know how to play the piano. We don’t even have one.”

“You don’t?” Jocelyn rustled around beneath her covers. “I thought everyone had a piano. Do you play the flute?”

“No.”

“The clarinet?”

“I don’t play an instrument.”

It was quiet for several minutes. I thought Jocelyn might have gone to sleep. But then her voice floated toward me in the dark. “What do you do after school if you don’t play an instrument? Do you play a sport?”

“No.”

“Do you go to your friends’ houses?”

I looked out the window. The night was a black box full of stars.

“Thea?”

“What?”

“Does it snow a lot in Minnesota?”

“Not in the summer,” I said.

“Maybe when I visit you, we can go sledding,” Jocelyn said. “It doesn’t snow in New Jersey very often.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t like thinking about the snow.

“Thea?”

“I’m tired, Jocelyn.” As soon as she stopped talking, I thought, she would fall asleep. But I fell asleep instead. The next thing I knew, it was eight o’clock, and Jocelyn’s bed was already empty, and very neatly made.

Dear Mom and Dad, It’s sunny here. But it’s not very hot. Everybody says hello. Love, Thea

Truth #19: I never know what to say on a postcard.

“Who are you writing to?” Jocelyn leaned over my shoulder. “Are your parents going to bring you a souvenir?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Unless they’re planning to wrap up something from my bedroom and give it to me.”

“My parents are bringing me something.” Jocelyn picked up a pink marker and wrote,
This is from Jocelyn too,
on the bottom of my postcard. “But I can’t write to them because I don’t know where they are. All parents argue sometimes,” she said.

“I guess so. Can I have my card back?”

Jocelyn was dotting the
i
in
this
with a little pink heart.

“Nenna, I’m going to the mailbox,” I called. The house was quiet. Nenna and Granda and Jocelyn and I were the only ones home.

“What did you say, Thea?” Nenna wore hearing aids in both ears, but sometimes they didn’t seem to work.

“I’m going out to mail a letter.” When I turned around, Jocelyn was in front of the door, struggling with the buckles on her sandals. Across her chest she was wearing her patent leather purse.

“Where do you think
you’re
going?” I asked.

“I’m going with you.”

“Did you say you’re going to the store, Thea?” Nenna had taken the hearing aid out of one ear. She tapped it against the back of her hand. “Would you mind picking up a gallon of milk?”

“I’ll do it, Nenna,” Jocelyn said, raising her hand as if she were in school. “I’m going with Thea.”

“Good girl.” Nenna gave her a kiss. Then she kissed me, too. She tucked several bills into Jocelyn’s purse.

We bought the milk and a pack of gum (Jocelyn insisted that we buy sugarless), and I mailed my postcard on the way back.
Hello, Minneapolis.
It was ten in the morning. I figured I had seven more hours to kill until someone else might be interested in taking charge of my cousin.

“Aunt Celia said you would take me swimming today,” Jocelyn said. She lifted her hair—it was more like a scarf—off the back of her neck.

“Aunt Celia must have been confused about that,” I told her.

We delivered the milk to Nenna and went back outside.

“If I go down to the water and look for jellyfish and make sure there aren’t any, then will you go swimming?”

“No,” I said.

“But Aunt Celia said you would take me. We’re at the
beach.
”

“I
know
where we are.”

Jocelyn looked disappointed.

“All right, listen.” I didn’t want her tattling to Celia and Ellen, in case there was any chance of my getting paid. “If you’ll stop asking me about going swimming, I’ll tell you one thing—
just one
—about my notebook. But then you have to stop nagging me. All right?”

Jocelyn considered the rash on her arm. She seemed to be thinking. “All right.”

“Okay, then.” The wind changed direction and the air felt cooler all of a sudden, as if someone had opened a giant window.

“So what is it?” Jocelyn asked. “What are you going to tell me?”

What
was
I going to tell her? I took a deep breath. “Well, this isn’t something that I’ve written down, but it’s about the notebook. I’m using it to write down things that are true. True things that matter. So it isn’t a diary. It’s just a bunch of, you know, a bunch of true things.”

“So it’s a list,” Jocelyn whispered, as if I had revealed to her the secrets of the ancient pharaohs. “What kind of true things are they? How many pages do you have so far?”

I didn’t appreciate the way her mind worked. “I said
one thing. One.
Now, let’s look around for something to do.”

Jocelyn skipped behind me, suddenly cheerful, as we went around the outdoor stairs to the storage area, a musty cinder-block garage at the front of the house. It was stacked from cement floor to ceiling with broken beach chairs and rusted umbrellas and a rotting volleyball net and horseshoes and fishing poles. There was a metal shelf full of paint cans and batteries. Celia hated to throw anything out.

“Okay,” I said, looking at the piles of cobwebbed stuff. “Do you want to play horseshoes?”

“No. They’re all rusty.”

“What’s this problem you have with dirt and bugs and rust? Should we play croquet?”

“No. There isn’t enough grass here,” she pointed out.

I pushed a toolbox and a stack of apple crates out of the way.

“I know what you should write about in your notebook,” Jocelyn said. “You should write down everything we find out about Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen’s secret.”

“They don’t have a secret, Jocelyn,” I said.

“Yes, they do. They drive to work together.”

I stubbed my toe on the toolbox. “So?”

“They work in opposite directions,” Jocelyn said. “Aunt Ellen doesn’t even work in Port Harbor.”

I turned around. She was right. Ellen spent the night at her own house, ten miles away, but came to Nenna and Granda’s every morning for breakfast. “She probably just wants to see Liam and Austin,” I explained.

“Look, there’s an inner tube.” Jocelyn pointed. “We can blow it up with the pump and take it in the—oh.” She looked at me sideways.

“That tube probably has a hole in it, anyway,” I said. “I know what we can do.” I nudged a path through the wreckage. “Do you know what the great thing about Port Harbor is?”

“No, what?”

“It’s small,” I said, “which means you can get anywhere on a bike. And this one—
oof!
—right here should be short enough for you.” I lifted the volleyball net and revealed a pink bike with a banana seat and moldy streamers dangling from the handlebars. “I used to ride this. It’s great. I can clean it for you. Help me get it outside.”

Jocelyn didn’t budge.

“Come on. What’s the matter? It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” she said.

Several streamers fell to the floor of the garage. “You don’t know how? You’re seven, and you can’t ride a bike?”

She folded down her ankle socks, aligning them perfectly along her skinny calves. I was desperate to go somewhere, to get away from the house and the list of chores Ellen had probably left on the refrigerator. (
Thea: Replace engine in car. Pour cement for driveway. Reroof garage.
) “We could ride double on one bike,” I said, glancing at the dark green model I’d been planning to ride.

“Riding double isn’t safe,” Jocelyn said.

Muttering darkly to myself, I shoved the pink bike back into place, then waded deeper into the garage. I pushed past the charcoal grill and the rusted lawn mower and the coils of garden hose that reminded me of bright green snakes, and then, in the corner, I discovered something I had almost forgotten: the giant trike.