The Secret Tree (17 page)

As the night grew dark and the party wound down, Raymond took me to his new room and presented me with a rectangle wrapped in comics.

“I haven’t given you your birthday present yet,” he said.

“Thank you, Raymond.” I opened the card first. Raymond had made it himself. It was a drawing of me and him, standing in front of the model home. Inside it said,
Happy birthday to my best friend — Raymond.

I tore open the wrapping paper. Inside was the secret notebook of friends. “For me?”

He nodded. “I have real friends now. And anyway, the book is finished. Look.”

I opened the book and turned the pages. We’d matched up all the secrets with pictures of people we knew, each secret underlining a picture like a caption in a yearbook. Some secrets were decorated with gold stars.

“The gold stars stand for problems we fixed,” Raymond told me.

There was Thea’s school picture with the caption:

Under a picture of Melina playing the guitar, he’d pasted:

Then Martin Barton:

Next came David Serrano with his squirt rifle.

Troy had two secrets under his snarling picture.

“I think Troy will start to like Wendy soon,” Raymond said. “Once he sees that a family can have lots of different people in it.”

We’d put that one under Isabelle’s picture. But, really, it could have gone with anyone. Secrets can always apply to more than one person, as I’d found.

We assigned this one to Kip:

We figured that was why he loved his car so much — because he could use it to escape. It couldn’t have been Raymond’s, because Raymond
had
run away. But I didn’t think he’d be running away anymore.

There was our new friend Katie Park.

And Paz’s, which she could have shared with Thea:

Lennie didn’t have a gold star.

“We can put a star next to Lennie’s secret now,” I said. “She promised to stop cursing Paz.”

Raymond grabbed his box of stars and starred Lennie’s secret.

On the last page was a picture of me. Underneath, it said:

That one didn’t have a star either.

“How did you know this was mine?” I asked.

“Because I know you,” Raymond said.

“We can put a star on this one too,” I said. “Because I changed my mind.” I wasn’t scared of middle school anymore. Paz and Raymond would be there with me, and Isabelle, Katie, and Lydia too. Even Troy and David didn’t bother me so much. I had a whole roller derby squad’s-worth of middle school friends.

One secret was still loose.

“Don’t forget about this one,” I said. “We need a picture of you.”

“I don’t have one,” Raymond said.

“Do you have any film left in your camera?”

Raymond checked. “One more picture.”

I picked up the Polaroid camera and aimed it at Raymond. He smiled. I took the picture. It slid out of the camera, dark and murky. A few minutes later, it developed in front of our eyes.

I pasted it in the book, with the secret underneath. “
Now
we have everybody.”

I gave it a gold star.

The next day, we carried the secret notebook through the woods to the Secret Tree. The secrets belonged to Crazy Ike. We decided to return them to him in a Secret Ceremony.

“O Crazy Ike,” I said in a low, serious voice that I thought would be appropriate for a Secret Ceremony. “O Craziest of Ikes. We present these secrets to you. Keep them well, and let them be whispered on the wind.”

“Yes, O Crazy Ike,” Raymond said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

I dropped the notebook into the hole, but it wouldn’t go all the way down. Something was blocking it.

I reached inside and felt around. I touched something soft and squishy. I yanked it out.

“The voodoo doll!” Paz’s face was still taped to the head, but all the pins were gone.

“That means the curse is really over,” Raymond said.

I put the notebook into the hole and stuffed the doll in with it. “That ought to keep you full for a while, Crazy Ike,” Raymond said.

The ship’s bell rang. Mom was calling us home.

We bowed before the Secret Tree and ran home through the woods. Mr. Gorelick waited for us on his front steps.

“Get your harmonicas, kids. I feel like playing a round.”

Raymond and I sat down with Mr. Gorelick and played this song:

Natalie Standiford
was born and raised in Maryland, where she learned how to tell stories, play the harmonica, and keep secrets. She has never seen the Man-Bat. Natalie lives in New York City, where she writes and plays the bass, and you can find her online at
www.nataliestandiford.com
.

If you have a harmonica in the key of C, you can play this song. The numbers correspond to the numbers marking the holes on your harmonica. Blow into the hole as noted. When the number has a minus sign (-) in front of it, that means draw in on that hole rather than blow out. With a little practice, you’ll soon be playing a tune.