Keeping Secrets

  “A Halloween dance,” said Nikki.

  “For seventh- and eighth-graders,” said Flora.

  “Our first school dance,” said Olivia. “Actually, our first dance ever. Mine, anyway.”

  “Mine, too,” said Nikki and Flora.

  Olivia now read the entire sign. “‘Camden Falls Central High School presents the annual Halloween dance for seventh- and eighth-graders. Halloween night. Six to nine o’clock. Food! Music! Fun! No costume necessary.’”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Our first dance ever,” Olivia said again.

  “Should we go?” asked Nikki.

  “We don’t need costumes,” said Flora. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. What should we wear instead?”

  “Yeah. I wonder if people get dressed up,” said Nikki.

  “In evening gowns,” said Olivia, and the others laughed.

  “Gosh,” said Flora. “Dancing with boys. I’m not sure I want to dance with boys.”

  “Sometimes girls all dance together in a group,” said Nikki. “I’ve seen that on television. Boy, it’s a good thing my father isn’t around anymore. He’d never let me go to a dance.”

  “Your mother will let you go, though, won’t she?” Olivia asked anxiously.

  “Definitely. I think she’ll be excited about it.”

  “How dressed up do we get?” Olivia wondered aloud, and it was while she was waiting for an answer that she became aware of voices behind her.

  “Should we get out our ball gowns?” someone said.

  “Right after we make sure our pumpkin coach is available,” someone else replied.

  The first voice became high and adopted an unconvincing British accent. “Oh, Maximilian, how chah-ming of you to invite me…. What? A rose corsage? … Oh, no, darling, that isn’t necessary.”

  Olivia closed her eyes. The voices, derisive and sarcastic, belonged to Melody Becker and Tanya Rhodes. She didn’t need to turn around to know that. She could even tell that Melody was the first speaker and Tanya the second. Tanya was rude and thoughtless, but Melody — Melody was out-and-out mean. Almost as soon as school had gotten under way in September, Melody had tried to take advantage of Olivia by enlisting her to help with her homework (okay, to do it for her). Olivia, at first pleased to have been befriended by someone as popular and sophisticated as Melody, soon realized she was being taken advantage of. And she’d worked hard to outwit her. (“What did Melody expect?” Ruby had said later. “She was using you because you’re smart and she needed your brainpower. Didn’t it occur to her that you would use that brainpower to get back at her?”)

  Olivia opened her eyes and glanced first at Nikki, then at Flora. She was about to say that maybe she was hallucinating — she was hearing the voices of stupid people in her head — when behind her Melody whispered loudly, “She has nothing to worry about. No one will want to dance with a nine-year-old.”

  Olivia whirled around. “I am not nine —”

  “Hey, you guys!” a cheerful voice called. “What’s going on?”

  Nikki poked Olivia and whispered, “Jacob’s here.”

  “Hi, Olivia.” Jacob smiled at her. “Hi, Flora. Hi, Nikki.” He glanced at Tanya and Melody and said nothing. His eyes landed on Olivia again, and then he noticed the poster. “Cool! A dance!” He touched Olivia’s arm. “I have to go. See you later.” He strode down the hall.

  Olivia looked after him. By the time he turned a corner, Tanya and Melody had disappeared.

  “They slunk away like cats,” announced Nikki with satisfaction. She paused. “Although I probably shouldn’t say that. It’s mean to cats.”

  Olivia laughed.

  “He seemed pretty interested in the dance,” said Flora.

  “Melody seemed pretty interested in him,” remarked Nikki.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, he can’t stand her. Poor, poor Melody,” said Flora. “Well, that’s what she gets for being a, um, a …”

  “A toad?” suggested Nikki.

  “A worm?” suggested Olivia.

  “Although, again, we don’t want to be mean to toads or worms,” said Nikki.

  Much later, near the end of the day, Olivia and Nikki made a quick stop at Olivia’s locker between classes.

  “What’s that?” asked Nikki, and she pointed to a slip of white paper sticking out of the door.

  “Oh, no. Not again,” said Olivia with a moan. She plucked the paper from the crack and held it between her thumb and forefinger as if she had just pulled it from a garbage can. “I’m going to throw it away without reading it. Melody’s probably watching from somewhere. Won’t she be surprised if I don’t even look at it?”

  “What if it’s from Jacob?” asked Nikki.

  “It isn’t. Jacob always writes my name in fancy script. He’d never leave a plain old note like this.” Olivia crumpled the paper, unread. “There,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Nikki. “I know something’s still bothering you.”

  “Well … she found my new locker!” exclaimed Olivia. “I thought I was safe from her.”

  “All she had to do was follow you. It wouldn’t be hard to find anybody’s locker.”

  “That’s true.” Olivia thought uncomfortably of her old locker, the one that had been broken and didn’t actually lock. Melody had begun stealing Olivia’s homework (always perfectly executed) out of the locker, copying it over, and handing it in as her own — until Olivia had caught on and outsmarted her.

  “Anyway,” said Nikki, “Melody can’t get into this locker. That’s the important thing. So you’re still safe.”

  “True,” replied Olivia. She smiled at Nikki, then tossed the crumpled note in a trash can. “Can’t get me!” she exclaimed.

  Lacey Morris’s house was a mirror image of Ruby’s. The same but backward, thought Ruby. This meant that although Lacey, like Ruby, occupied the room on the second floor opposite the top of the staircase, it was in fact on the other side of the house, and because the Morrises lived in one of the coveted end-of-the-row houses, Lacey had a corner bedroom featuring not only a window facing the front yard but one facing south as well. It was a bright, airy room, and Ruby was slightly jealous of it — a fact she did her best to hide.

  “You know,” said Ruby one afternoon as she and Hilary Nelson and Lacey sat in Lacey’s sun-filled room, “we should really make a decision about our Halloween costumes right now and get started on them.”

  “Especially since we might need help with them,” said Lacey.

  “Yeah. We should give Min and Flora and your parents plenty of advance warning. Your parents, too, Hilary.”

  “Don’t we want to make the costumes ourselves?” asked Hilary. She had moved to Camden Falls over the summer. This would be her first Halloween in her new town.

  “People around here make costumes that are pretty, um — what’s the word?” said Ruby.

  “Fancy?” suggested Lacey.

  “No …”

  “Elaborate?” suggested Hilary.

  “That’s it. Elaborate,” said Ruby. “Just wait until you go trick-or-treating on Main Street with us. Then you’ll see. Even the people who run the stores get dressed up.”

  “What — you mean your grandmother gets dressed up?” asked Hilary incredulously.

  “Yes. Hey, you have to tell your parents about this, Hilary,” said Lacey with sudden urgency. “They’ll have to decorate the diner. And —”

  “Oh, no!” exclaimed Hilary. “I know what you’re going to say. My mom and dad will have to get dressed up! Yipes.”

  The Nelsons — Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, Hilary (who was ten like Ruby), and Hilary’s younger brother, Spencer — had moved to Camden Falls at the beginning of the summer. Hilary’s parents had decided to leave Boston in order to raise their children in the quiet of a small town. They had sold their home and bought a small building on Main Street, one in which they planned both to live and to run a diner. They had been busily renovating th
e building, creating the Marquis Diner on the ground floor and converting the second story into their living quarters, when a middle-of-the-night fire damaged the building and nearly sent the Nelsons back to Boston. But the people of Camden Falls, inspired by an idea of Ruby’s, had held Nelson Day, a fund-raiser that had made enough money to get Hilary’s family back on their feet. Now the diner was open again, and practically everyone in Camden Falls knew the Nelsons. But the Nelsons were still learning about their new town.

  “Won’t your parents want to get dressed up?” Ruby asked Hilary.

  “They’re not very, um, dressy-up people. They’re kind of shy.” Hilary let her gaze travel out Lacey’s front window, through which she could see the back of her apartment on Main Street and even make out her own bedroom window. “What does your grandmother wear on Halloween?” she asked, turning to Ruby.

  “Every year she dresses as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. And Gigi dresses as Glinda, the Good Witch.” (Gigi was Olivia’s grandmother.) “Their costumes are really great.”

  “Hey, this year Olivia’s parents will have to get dressed up, too,” said Lacey. “This will be the first Halloween since Sincerely Yours opened.”

  “Well, anyway, let’s think about our own costumes,” said Ruby again. “So. What could we be?”

  “I always wanted to be a Tibetan spaniel,” said Hilary.

  “A … what?” said Ruby and Lacey.

  “It’s a dog.”

  “Oh. I kind of want to be a clock,” said Lacey. “A grandfather clock.”

  “Interesting,” replied Ruby. “I was thinking about being an enormous pair of glasses, but that would be hard because the glasses would probably have to stand on end and they wouldn’t look as good that way.”

  The girls sat in silence for a few moments.

  “It might be more fun if we went as three things that go together,” said Lacey. “You know, like the Three Bears.”

  “Or the Three Kings. The ones from Orient Are,” said Ruby.

  “Oh! Oh! How about the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?” suggested Hilary.

  Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Which one of us would have to be the Wardrobe?”

  “Well … not me, since it was my idea. I want to be the Witch.”

  “I call the Lion!” cried Ruby, jumping to her feet.

  “Hey, who said we even decided on the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?” exclaimed Lacey. “What about the Three Bears?”

  “Too babyish,” said Ruby, and Lacey glared at her.

  “Well, now, wait a minute,” said Hilary. “There are plenty of things that go together. We just need to think.”

  “We could be three of a kind, from a deck of cards,” said Ruby.

  “Boring,” said Lacey.

  “How about the Three Little Pigs?” said Hilary.

  “The Three Little Kittens, the ones that lost their mittens,” said Ruby.

  “Talk about babyish,” remarked Lacey.

  “Anyway, let’s try to be more original,” said Hilary. “Use our imaginations. We could be three anythings — three different kinds of candy bars.”

  “That could be fun,” said Lacey.

  “Three different kinds of flowers. A bouquet of flowers!”

  “Ooh, I like that,” said Lacey.

  Ruby looked thoughtful. “I have an idea. What if we were three magic witches? Then we could have really fun costumes. We could be witches but with just a touch of magic.” Ruby envisioned costumes calling for much sparkle and glitter, as well as magic wands and crowns in addition to normal witch attire.

  “What are magic witches?” asked Hilary.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might,” said Lacey, frowning. “How will people know what we are?”

  “It will be obvious,” replied Ruby. “They’ll see the witch clothes and they’ll see the magical accessories and they’ll put two and two together. Magic witches. Three magic witches.”

  “It does sound like fun,” said Hilary slowly.

  “We’ll make wands and tiaras,” said Ruby. “And we’ll put on lots of jewelry.”

  “And maybe instead of black robes we could wear silver ones,” said Lacey. “Or we could each wear a different color.”

  “But we don’t want to look too much like princesses,” said Hilary.

  “Let’s go downstairs and tell my mom about our costumes,” said Lacey.

  The girls ran downstairs, where they found Mrs. Morris in front of her computer.

  “Mom!” cried Lacey. “Guess what we’re going to be for Halloween. Three magic witches.”

  Mrs. Morris removed her reading glasses. “Magic witches?”

  “Yes,” said Lacey. “Magic witches are, um, they’re …”

  “Sort of like witch princesses,” said Ruby.

  “Oh, I see.”

  “And we might need some help with our costumes,” Lacey went on. “You know, from you and Dad and Min and Flora and Hilary’s parents.”

  “I’m here to help,” said Mrs. Morris. “Tell me what you want to look like and we’ll see what we can do.”

  Lacey, Hilary, and Ruby described their costumes, and Mrs. Morris made a list of supplies to buy. Then the girls returned to Lacey’s room.

  “How many days now until Halloween?” asked Ruby as she plopped onto Lacey’s bed.

  “Seventeen,” replied Lacey promptly. “I counted this morning.”

  Ruby, instead of sounding excited, gave forth a noisy sigh.

  “What?” said Lacey.

  “Oh, it’s just that Flora and Olivia and Nikki said they might not go trick-or-treating this year. They said they think they might be too old.”

  Lacey frowned. “So?”

  “So last year we all went trick-or-treating together. Well, not Nikki. She wasn’t allowed to go. But she was supposed to. We had plans.”

  “Well, you have plans with us this year,” said Lacey.

  “Yeah. What about the costumes we just talked about?” said Hilary, who was now frowning, too. “We’re going together. Three magic witches, hello?”

  Ruby squirmed. “I know. But I was hoping the others would come with us. I mean, in whatever costumes they want to wear. I don’t like that they think they’re too old to go trick-or-treating. And did you notice that they didn’t say I’m too old for it?”

  “But you aren’t too old,” said Lacey at the same time that Hilary said, “Do you want to be too old?” And after a moment, Lacey added, “It sounds kind of like you’d rather go out with them than with us.”

  “No, no!” cried Ruby. “That isn’t it at all. It’s … it’s hard to explain.”

  Ruby looked at her friends. Hilary was staring moodily out the window again. Lacey was picking at the corner of her pillowcase and her lower lip was trembling.

  “Hey, just forget about it, okay?” said Ruby. “Seriously. Come on. Let’s think about our costumes. Lacey, you be a silver witch, and Hilary, you be a pink witch, and I’ll be a blue witch. That’s a good color combination. Now … what should we wear in our hair?”

  “Oh, doggie mine, doggie-doggie mine,” sang Mae Sherman. “Oh, doggie-doggie mine! I love you, doggie. I love you, love you, doggie. I think you are quite fine.” She laid her cheek on Paw-Paw’s soft head.

  “Another good one,” said Nikki, smiling at her sister.

  It was a cool Saturday near the end of October, but sunny and so bright that Nikki, who was baby-sitting for Mae all day, had brought sunglasses outside for both of them. “What are some of the other dog songs you’ve written?”

  “Well, my best one,” replied Mae, puffing her chest out, “is the ‘Supper Song.’”

  “And how does that one go?” asked Nikki.

  “Like this: Supper for the pupper, supper for the pupper, supper for the pupperoo! Supper for my boy, supper for my boy, supper for me and you!” Mae smiled, satisfied. “I love making up songs. You know what else is fun? Pretending Paw-Paw is in a fashion show, and then yo
u get to say, ‘Pre-senting … Mister … Paw-Paw … Sherman!’ And then it’s like he just walked out on a stage in a gold suit and everyone is clapping for him.” She smiled again. “Dogs sure are fun.”

  Mae, wearing the pink star-shaped sunglasses her big sister had handed her, sat contentedly on the front stoop. Nikki was next to her, and when she stretched her legs out straight, Mae stretched hers, too.

  Mae decided there was nothing better than this fine Saturday, a day spent with her dog and her sister. She was in second grade this year, and so far, things were going well, even though Nikki no longer rode the bus with her. That was the only bad part about school days. Mae missed Nikki, plus there was no one to protect her from rude comments about her clothes and appearance. Nikki and their mother tried hard to keep up with the mending, and Mrs. Sherman did earn more money now than before, so the Shermans were able to buy new clothes and things more often. But Mae was still apt to climb aboard the school bus with holes in her sneakers or a tear in her backpack, out of which leaked work sheets and crayons. And then her fellow passengers might tweak papers from the backpack or snicker at her. Nine days earlier, an annoying third-grader had called out, “Nice shoes!” as Mae walked by in her holey sneakers. Quick as a flash, Mae plopped down next to her, squashing the third-grader’s science project, which had been taking up half the seat. Then Mae had leaned over and whispered loudly, “Do that again and I’ll sit on something else. Go ahead — tell the bus driver. I don’t care. Because then I’ll tell him everything.” She paused. “And he’ll believe me.”

  Nothing further had been said to Mae (the driver hadn’t been involved, either) so now even the bus rides weren’t too bad. And then there was Miss Drew. Mae loved her teacher. She loved second grade, she loved reading, she loved library time and art time, but she especially loved Miss Drew, who lent her extra books to take home and was always willing to listen to a new dog song.

  And now it was Saturday, and Mae had an entire day to spend with Nikki. Even her father wasn’t around to spoil things. What could be better?

  “Nikki? How come Mommy is working today?” Mae asked.