“Well, I’m not sure that would be appropriate for a school function,” Barb says. She seems a little . . . miffed. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Please do not let Barb write something down about this.
I give Emma another look. “Yes, well, we’ll have to talk about it later,” I say. “Barb and Tony are shadowing me and they have a limited amount of time.”
“Well, okay,” Emma says. But she doesn’t look convinced. She turns to Tony. “Do you want to get a picture of me and Samantha? We could pose right under her locker, and you could put in the magazine that we’re besties.” She puts her arm around me and gives them a big smile.
“No,” Barb says. “I don’t think that will be necessary, but thank you.”
“All right,” Emma says. She lets go of me reluctantly. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at lunch, Samantha.”
“I guess so,” I say. I let out the breath I’ve been holding. Now that Emma’s going away, I can get this rodeo back on track. Or at least try to.
Emma takes one step down the hall, but her black patent leather shoe slips on something. “Oooh,” she says, looking down. “What’s this?” She crouches down and picks up the piece of paper that’s under her shoe. One of the fake notes that was in my locker. One of the fake notes that was in my locker and has her name on it.
“Oh, that,” I say. I reach out and grab it from her. “That was just a note that was in my locker.”
“But it has my name on it.”
“Right,” I say. “So, you know, I’ll give it to you later, when I’m doing my rounds.” Which is a really dumb thing to say, since I don’t do rounds, and Emma knows it.
“But I want to read it now,” Emma says. She stamps her foot. “It could be from Jake.”
“Oooh, this is perfect!” Barb claps her hands. “Samantha, you give Emma the note, and Tony will take a picture. A real action shot!”
“Uh, no,” I say. “That’s not really how it—”
“Samantha,” Barb says, her voice steely. “Please do it.”
What else can I do? I hold the note out to Emma, and she takes it. Tony snaps the picture.
“Okay,” I say, giving her a pat on the back. “Off you go, off to second period!”
“But I hate second period,” Emma says. She looks at Barb. “The teacher is very boring.” And then Emma opens her note. She frowns and flips it over. “It’s totally blank.” She looks confused. “I wonder if this is some kind of game Jake is playing. We’re going to the Fall Festival together, and he said he was going to be a cowboy.” She giggles. “So maybe, like, cowboys used to write with invisible ink or something? To fool the Indians?”
“We don’t say Indians,” Barb says automatically. “We say Native Americans.”
“You’re going to the Fall Festival with Jake?” My voice is barely above a squeak.
“Yeah,” she says. “You’re not mad that he’s coming with me, are you? I still want to dress the same and everything, and we can still hang out there.”
I don’t even bother trying to explain to her again that I’m not going to the Fall Festival because (a) that would be fruitless, and (b) I’m having a hard time processing what is going on. One, Emma has opened a fake note in front of Barb, and two, she is going to the Fall Festival with Jake. My Jake! Jake who almost-kissed me last week, who has been listening to me and making excuses to hang out with me alone, and who promised he would figure out a way to hack into the Olivia’s Secrets website. And who’s been kind of avoiding you, a little voice in the back of my head whispers. I try to ignore that voice.
“So let me get this straight,” Barb says. “Your note is blank? Do students often send blank notes?”
“Well—” I start, but Emma cuts me off.
“No,” she says, peering down at the note thoughtfully. “It’s very strange. Although it might have something to do with Olivia’s Secrets. Did Samantha tell you what a huge pain in the butt that girl is being?”
“What Emma means,” I say, “is that even though it’s certainly not standard, often certain students do—”
But before I can finish what I’m saying, Tony bends down and picks up another note from the floor. He opens it. “It’s blank,” he says, speaking for the first time since he got here. And then he opens up two more. And then he looks up at Barb with a totally scandalized look on his face. “They’re all blank,” he says.
BARB AND TONY HAVE TO STAY FOR the rest of their time. It’s very awkward, since obviously Barb knows I planted those notes. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but she knows. She just doesn’t have any proof. By the time she leaves, I’m a mess. I feel like crying, and I just want to go home. Somehow I make it through the rest of my classes, but by the time the day’s over, I feel like my head’s going to explode.
“Now, you stand here and kick the ball toward me,” Daphne says. “And I’ll be the goalie.” After I filled Daphne in on what happened today, she somehow conned me into staying after to practice soccer with her. I totally protested, but Daphne said it would keep my mind off everything. So before I knew it, I was wearing cleats, a pair of soccer shorts, and some kind of shin guards. Which is very scary, since if you need to wear shin guards, that means your shins are in danger of something bad happening to them, and I really don’t like that. I need my shins. They’re important.
“Is goalie what you want to try out for?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” she says. “Maybe.”
“How about I try to be the goalie?” I ask.
“But how will that help me to be the goalie?” Daphne wants to know. Daphne’s wearing a similar outfit to mine, but she has on a sweatband, and she’s drawn two black streaks under her eyes. She looks very hardcore.
“Um, because you’ll get to see what it’s like on the other side?” Of course, I just don’t want to kick balls. Of course, on the other hand, getting balls kicked at me at what I assume are high speeds doesn’t sound so great either.
“Nice try,” she says, taking her place in between the two goalposts.
“Fine,” I grumble. “Even though I’m the one who’s having the most horrible life ever.” I march a few yards away and set the ball down next to me. At least now I won’t have balls flying at my face.
“Now give it a kick,” she says. I don’t really feel too much like kicking. I give it a kick, which turns out to be more like a soft tap. Hmm. Not so great. The ball rolls a few feet and stops well short of the goal.
“That’s all you got?” Daphne says. She shakes her head and then says sadly, “I have a feeling we might be here for a while.” And then her eyes look past me, out onto the field. “Uh-oh,” she says, getting this sort of panicked look on her face.
“What?” I ask. And then I turn around and see Jake loping toward us across the grass, his computer bag slung over his shoulder and his baseball hat on backward. Figures that when I finally see him, I’m out of my super cute outfit and in my shorts and T-shirt. At least I opted out of putting that black paint under my eyes. Not that it matters. He’s taking Emma to the Fall Festival, so what do I care what I look like?
“Hey,” he says to me when he gets close. “I was looking for you.”
I want to say something super smart and sarcastic like Oh, now you’re looking for me, or Why, is Emma busy? But all I say is “Well, here I am.” I cross my arms and wait. Wait for him to say something about how he’s not really going to the Fall Festival with Emma, how it’s all some kind of big mix-up. Or maybe something about how he almost-kissed me. Or how he’s sorry for blowing me off for the past week. But all he says is “So how did it go today? With Barb?”
“Horrible!” I say, throwing my hands up in the air. We haven’t talked since our almost-kiss and that’s the first thing he asks me?
“Really?” Jake asks. He sounds surprised. And there’s something about that that starts to make me even madder than I already am. I mean, he would know how it went already if he hadn’t been acting all weird. Rage courses through my body. I’
ve been trying all day not to think about what Emma said. About her and Jake and the Fall Festival. I’ve been trying not to think about how Jake almost-kissed me and then asked Emma to go with him. I’ve been trying not to think about how they’ve passed covert notes through me, not even caring about my feelings or bothering to tell me what’s in them. I’ve been trying not to think about what a COMPLETE AND TOTAL JERK JAKE IS. But now that he’s here, right in front of me, I can’t help thinking about all of these things.
“Yes,” I say, “really. Which you would have known if you hadn’t been ignoring me.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” Jake says, and then gives a little laugh, like it’s no big deal, like ha-ha, we’ll laugh about this someday like the fourth-grade food-selling story, but I’m not in the mood to be brushed off. I narrow my eyes at him.
“Uh-oh,” Daphne says from behind me. “Um, I’m going to go in and grab my cell,” she says. “And call my mom to make sure she knows what time to come and pick us up.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t have to go.” If Daphne goes, that means we’re definitely getting into a fight. And Jake and I are not fighting. We’re just having a little discussion.
“It’s not a big deal,” Daphne says. “I’ll come right back and then we can practice more.” She takes off running toward the gym.
“Look,” Jake says, taking a step toward me. “Listen, I wanted to tell you that I’m working on a new program. To try to hack into Olivia’s website? Leo’s older brother helped me with it, he thinks it could—”
“So, is it true about you and Emma?” I blurt.
“What?” His face goes a little pale.
“That you guys are going to the Fall Festival together?”
“Um, well . . .” He looks at me. “I mean, you’re going to be at the You Girl banquet, right?”
“That’s not the question.”
“No,” he says. “I mean, yeah, she asked me if I wanted to go, and I said I’d meet up with her there.”
I look down at the ground. “Oh,” I say. My head is suddenly spinning. Taylor told me this was going to happen. She would always say, “You know, when you get older, I bet you’re going to start liking Jake.” And my ten-year-old self would wrinkle up my nose at her and make a gagging noise, because Jake was my friend and boys were gross. But now . . . Now I do like him, and it just seems so unfair. I feel like my best friend is getting taken away from me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Everything’s a mess.
Yes, a little voice whispers in the back of my head. Everything is a mess. But it’s not Jake’s fault. You got yourself into all of these situations. You read that secret and drove yourself crazy trying to figure out what it meant. You wanted to be friends with Charlie and Emma because they seemed cool and you wanted to be cool at your new school. You invited your dad and Tom to the banquet, and you made up those fake secrets. And most of all, you didn’t just come out and tell Jake you liked him and you never asked him if he wanted to go to the Fall Festival with you, and what those almost-kisses meant.
“Excuse me,” I say to Jake, picking up the soccer ball that’s on the ground next to me. “I have to go get Daphne.”
And this time, I’m really going to whip that ball.
When I get home, I head right upstairs to Taylor’s room and knock on the door. I’ve decided that I’ve been going about this whole Olivia thing completely the wrong way, and so I need her advice. And yeah, Taylor’s suggestion to make fake notes didn’t work out so well, but she is good at coming up with ideas. I’ll just have to make sure to pick and choose the ones that aren’t too crazy.
“What?” she yells, her voice muffled and her music loud.
“I need you,” I say, raising my voice to be heard over Taylor Swift. (Taylor’s favorite artist, for obvious reasons.)
Taylor opens the door and looks me up and down. “Come in,” she says. Like I said, Taylor can be a complete and total pain sometimes, but she’s there when you need her.
“What’s up?” She flops down on her bed, where she’s doing something to her hair. Looks like putting it in tons of little braids with beads on the end.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I sit down next to her, and the pile of beads slides into the depression in the comforter. I pick them up and arrange them back into their neat pile.
“Putting tons of little braids with blue and white beads in my hair,” she says, in a way that’s like, Duh. “It’s going to be homecoming soon, and so I’m practicing hairstyles for the pep rally.”
Wow. I didn’t even know you needed a separate hairstyle for the pep rally, much less that you needed to practice them. This is why I need Taylor. She knows things like this.
“So what’s going on?” she asks. “I’m going over to Amanda’s in a few, so spill.”
“Well,” I say slowly, dragging my hand through the bead pile and letting them fall through my fingers. Then I gather them all back up and do it again. “You’re good at figuring things out about people, right?”
“What do you mean?” Taylor slides another blue bead up one of her braids, then ties it off with a tiny rubber band.
“Like gossip,” I say. “You’re good at getting gossip out about people.”
“I guess,” she says, shrugging.
“So what if,” I say, “hypothetically, I wanted to expose someone, like figure out something bad they did?”
Taylor frowns and looks at me suspiciously. “You mean like a scandal from their past?”
“No,” I say. “Something they’re doing now. Like, maybe if they were, uh, participating in immoral business practices.”
Taylor gives me a look. “Immoral business practices?” she asks. “Are you kidding me?”
“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes and putting it in simpler terms. “A girl started a rival secret-passing business and I think she’s reading all the secrets.”
“Oh,” Taylor says, then shrugs like that’s child’s play. “Then you would follow her.”
“Follow her?” Hmmmm. I never thought of that. “I never thought of that,” I say.
She shrugs again. “It’s kind of the best way. I mean, it’s pretty easy to follow people without them knowing, if you’re smart about it. Like, this time when we thought Amanda’s boyfriend was cheating on her? We just trailed him from Subway to the bowling alley, and he was totally meeting up with Brianna Sullivan.” She gets a disgusted look on her face. “Amanda had to break up with him of course. And we ruined our high heels walking so far, but we got the info we wanted.”
“Thanks, T.” I give her a hug. Following Olivia around is slightly shady, but it’s not, like, illegal or anything. Plus what Olivia’s doing is way worse. Not to mention stalking me down in the library.
“Wait!” Taylor says as I move to get off her bed. “That’s it? You just come in here asking for stalking advice and then I don’t even get to know any more of the deets?”
“We-ell,” I say, settling back in. “So there’s this girl, Olivia, right?” I fill her in on pretty much everything that’s been going on.
“And have you considered building a website?” she asks when I’m done.
“Well, sort of,” I say. “I mean, I did consider it for all of two seconds. But I don’t have the money for that.”
“If you don’t have the money,” she says. “You might have to think outside the box.”
“Outside the box?”
“Yeah, like, Amanda totally can’t afford to get her hair blown out for homecoming, but she’s getting this girl we know who takes cosmetology to do it. And then she’s going to lend her her green organza dress.” She slides another bead up her braid. “Get it? Like a trade?”
“Taylor,” I say. “I’m in seventh grade; I don’t know anyone who makes websites.” But then I remember. That’s not really true. I do know someone. Nikki. The girl who’s giving me her extra ticket to the You Girl banquet. I remember when we met at the photo shoot, she told me she was a website designer. Maybe I cou
ld get a cheap or reduced rate in exchange for putting her business name on the website!
“Taylor,” I say, awed. “I think you might be a genius.”
“Duh,” she says. She looks at herself in the mirror. “Do you think these braids are a little much?”
Nikki’s going to make me a website! I emailed her, and she called me right away, and she knows all about coding and stuff, and she said she’ll only charge me a hundred dollars! Of course, with business being the way it is, that’s pretty much all the money I have. And I was totally saving it up for a Blu-ray player, or an iPhone, or maybe some new clothes. But I guess I’ll just have to look at it as an investment in myself.
I’m so excited and motivated by the possibility of my website, that the next day at school, I put Operation Stalk Olivia into action. (Eric Niles works in the main office during his study hall, and he copied down her schedule for me.) I tail her to math. I tail her to science. I follow her into the library during her free period, and then try to see what she’s doing at the computer. She almost catches me when I follow her into the bathroom between seventh and eighth periods. I thought she’d left, but when I come out of the stall she’s still at the sink, drying her hands.
“Well, well, well,” she says. “If it isn’t Samantha Carmichael. I heard you put fake notes in your locker and then had to scramble when the You Girl lady caught you.”
“Who told you that?” I ask nonchalantly.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pink lipstick, then lines her lips. The thing is, I kind of already know. Who told her, I mean. There are only four people in this whole world besides me who know what happened that day. Barb and Tony are, obviously, out, unless somehow they ran into Olivia and decided to tell her. Not likely. No way Daphne would say anything. So that leaves Emma. Sigh.