Rules for Secret Keeping

  “I know, right?” Seriously. It would be such a shame if place cards were the death of me. It just doesn’t seem right.

  “Well, we’re going to have to get rid of them,” Nikki says.

  “Well, I already ditched my dad’s,” I say as we head out, hoping no one steps on it and then ventures down to see what it is. I’ve had enough of people stepping on papers they’re not supposed to see and ruining my life, thank you very much. “And the good thing is, I’m sitting all the way in the back.” And at that moment I spot my dad, standing over in the corner of the lobby. He’s wearing a black pinstriped suit and standing with his back to me, looking out through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the hotel. Probably looking for me. Crap, crap, crap.

  “That’s my dad,” I say. “And my stepdad is already in there.”

  Nikki bites her lip. “Didn’t you say your stepdad is cool?”

  “Ye-es,” I say slowly.

  “Well, maybe you could tell him that your dad just showed up here or something. You know, like you didn’t invite him but he just came. You and your dad can sit wherever I’m supposed to be sitting, and I can sit with Tom.”

  “Ohmigod!” I say. What a brilliant idea! I can tell Tom that my dad just showed up, like some kind of weird crazy person, and that it’s totally embarrassing, and now I need to keep him happy by sitting with him. That way, Tom won’t have to know that I actually invited my dad, and my dad won’t have to know that Tom is here at all!

  “You’re brilliant,” I tell Nikki, grabbing her in a hug and spinning her around.

  “Hey, hey,” she says. “Careful of the dress.” She smooths down her hair and smiles. “And besides, you can’t call me brilliant until tomorrow.”

  “Why tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Because that’s when I’m going to be sending you a mock-up of your new website,” she says. I squeal.

  Then Nikki and I sneak back into the conference room to break the news to Tom. (The file folder lady totally gives us a suspicious look as we go by, which, in my opinion, is kind of not necessary. I mean, you grab one folder and she, like, holds a grudge.)

  “Hey,” I say to Tom.

  “Oh, hi.” Tom’s drinking something out of a fluted glass. It looks like sparkling water. Leave it to Tom to order a water when we’re in a super fancy banquet room with free drinks.

  “Tom, this is my friend Nikki.”

  “Hello, Nikki,” Tom says.

  “Hey, Tom.” She hops into my chair.

  “Tom,” I say, looking at him seriously. “We have a bit of a . . . situation here,” I say, lowering my voice, hoping I can convey the seriousness of it. “Um, my dad’s here.”

  Tom looks around. “Richard’s here?” he asks wildly. His eyes sweep across the room, like he’s afraid my dad might be stomping through the door, about to start threatening him or something.

  “He’s in the lobby,” I say. Then I shrug. “He just showed up here; I didn’t even know!” I almost add on “honest,” but decide that would be going too far.

  “Well, you’re going to have to tell him to leave,” Tom says. He nods his head and takes a sip of his water.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I could do that. Or . . . or I could just, um, sit over there with him, in Nikki’s seat.”

  Tom looks across the room to Nikki’s table, which is filling up fast. Then he looks at Nikki, who gives him a grin. And then he looks at me. “At Nikki’s table?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, that way there wouldn’t have to be a big scene. We could still spend time together, don’t worry, I could change seats back and forth.” Of course, I can’t really do that (how would I explain it to my dad?), but I’m hoping Tom won’t call my bluff.

  Tom hesitates. “Samantha, I hate that you have to be put in the middle like this.” He chews his lip, and for a second, I’m afraid he might insist on calling my mom. “So I suppose it’s okay.” He sighs. “And why don’t you just sit with your dad for the whole night?”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, trying to seem like I’m at least a little bit sad. Which I actually am, since I would much rather be sitting with Tom. Especially when they announce the winner and that winner isn’t me.

  “Samantha, the important thing is that I’m here to see this moment with you, and I don’t have to be right next to you to do that.”

  He squeezes my hand and I head out into the lobby to get my dad, pushing down any feelings of guilt I have left.

  My dad is annoyed because he had to wait in the lobby for so long. Even though he’s the one who’s always late, he’s annoyed with me, who was on time. The first one in the banquet room, even! Of course, he doesn’t know that.

  “Sorry, Dad,” I say, breathlessly. “I just got here.”

  “Why couldn’t Tom get you here on time?” my dad asks as we make our way through the throng of people into the banquet room. “What was he doing? Probably spending all his time putzing around, with no regard for anyone else’s schedule.”

  How about working late and then getting settled in at table six? But I don’t say anything. We take a seat at our (Nikki’s) table after I do a quick , covert sweep of the place cards. I order a virgin pina coloda (yum) from our waiter, and soon after, the lights dim and the program starts.

  “Hello,” Barb says from the podium. “And welcome to the sixteenth annual You Girl Young Entrepreneur of the Year banquet.”

  Everyone claps. Then Barb goes through a whole slide show, announcing each of the finalists and our businesses. When she shows mine, I’m glad to see there’s a picture of me standing in front of my locker, I’m not blinking, and nothing is mentioned about my fake secrets. They serve us a dinner of roast chicken and these adorable little baked potatoes, but honestly, I’m way too excited to eat. Although I do sample a cookie from the dessert tray. (They’re these delicious frosted cookies in the shape of a magazine, with our names and the year in chocolate icing. I’m never too nervous to eat chocolate.)

  Then Candace gets up to give a speech, which I will summarize here:

  “Me me me, I’m so awesome, Darfur, me me me, here’s how to order some bracelets.”

  Then our special guest, a woman named Daisy Halverson, gets up to talk. Apparently she’s this super important real estate woman who’s made like millions and millions of dollars even though she started her business with, like, close to nothing. She talks about how important it is to instill a sense of entrepreneurism in the girls of today. Honestly, the whole thing is a teeny tiny bit boring. I mean, I like business and everything, but I’m not sure I want to dissect it so much. My dad, however, is totally riveted, staring at the stage, nodding at everything that Daisy is saying, and clapping in all the right places.

  Finally, it’s time to announce the winner of the You Girl contest, and Barb reclaims her place center stage.

  “All of our girls tonight are winners,” she says into the microphone. “Just taking the initiative to conceive of an idea and take the necessary steps to put it out there makes you miles ahead of other girls your age.” She gives the whole group a big smile.

  My dad looks over at me then, and I see the excitement and anticipation on his face. And then, just for a second, I let myself think that maybe I could win. Maybe I will win the You Girl contest, maybe Barb won’t hold against me what happened that day, maybe she’ll—

  “And the winner,” Barb says, “of this year’s You Girl Young Entrepreneur of the Year award is . . . Nikki Geraldi!”

  Everyone claps, and Nikki heads up to the stage to get her award, and I’m so happy for her that I leap out of my chair and I’m clapping and yelling her name, and I’m sad that her family isn’t there to see her. So I take, like, five million pics of her on my cell phone so that she can show her mom later.

  And when I sit back down, I look over at my dad. He looks surprised, probably because he can’t figure out why I’m so happy that someone else won. “She’s my friend,” I explain.

  “That’s nice,”
he says. And he’s clapping, and then he reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. But I can tell he’s disappointed.

  On the way out, that woman Daisy is standing in the lobby. She’s shaking hands with some of the parents and talking to some of the girls, who are falling all over her like she’s some kind of celeb or something. I see Candace getting a picture with her, and an autograph. Of course she would be. What a suck-up! Whatever. I’ll bet she didn’t even know who Daisy was until she got here.

  “Come on,” I say, pulling on my dad’s hand. “We gotta get home, it’s a school night!” I texted Tom after dinner and told him to let my dad and me leave first, that my dad would drive me home, and that Tom should wait until every single person is out of that banquet room before he comes out, so that I’m sure to be gone. I cannot believe I might actually get away with this. It wasn’t even that hard.

  “It’s not a school night,” my dad says. “It’s Friday.”

  “Well, I have this new thing where I treat every night as a school night,” I tell him. “That way I make sure I don’t upset my sleep rhythms.”

  “I want to talk to Daisy,” my dad says.

  Oh, for the love of . . . I look over my shoulder nervously to see if I can catch a glimpse of Tom. But so far, he hasn’t come out. Daisy’s now sitting at the check-in table, and a line has formed in front of it. Seriously. A line. You’d think she was, like, a rock star or something.

  I reluctantly join the line with my dad. It inches forward sllloowwly, and I go slowwwwly crazy. When it’s finally, finally, finally our turn, my dad and Daisy start chatting away like old friends—something about the real estate market and how brave she was to get into it when she did, and how she must be really smart and savvy to withstand this economic downturn, and blah blah blah.

  I get a picture taken with her, mostly because I think my dad wants me to, and then, finally, they’re wrapping it up.

  “Come on,” I say, pulling on my dad’s hand. “We gotta get going.”

  “It was so nice to meet you, Samantha,” Daisy says. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a business card that she hands to my dad. “And, Richard,” she says. “Feel free to call me if you ever have any business questions. We should have lunch and talk shop.”

  My dad tucks the card into his suit coat. “I will definitely do that,” he says. “Sooner rather than later.”

  Oh my God. Gross! My dad is hitting on Daisy! No, actually, Daisy was hitting on my dad first, and now my dad is flirting back with Daisy. Eww! I’m completely over the whole “maybe my parents will get back together” thing, but it’s just sooo disgusting when you see your parents flirting. It’s, like, not natural or something.

  “Nice to meet you, Daisy,” I say again, pointedly. I resume pulling my dad toward the door. Now that he has Daisy’s number, he can call her anytime he wants and doesn’t need to keep chatting her up, so, miraculously, my dad follows me. The lobby is almost completely empty now, and we’re almost at the door, we’re two steps away, even, when I feel my dad’s fingers get tense around mine.

  “Come on,” I insist, giving his arm another pull. But my dad stops.

  I turn around. And there’s Tom, coming out of the banquet room. My dad looks at Tom. Tom looks at my dad. My dad looks at me. Tom looks at me. I look at my dad.

  “Dad—” I start. “I can explain, look, he just—”

  But my dad drops my hand, turns around, and walks out of the lobby.

  The problem is that when you sort of kind of stretch the truth to your dad, and then you sort of kind of stretch the truth to your stepdad, your mom is always able to find out how you stretched the truth to each one. She just gets the story from the two dads, and voilà.

  Which is how I end up in my kitchen that night, sitting at the table with my mom. And she is not happy.

  “Why would you do something like that?” my mom wants to know. “Lie to your father and Tom?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking down at my hands. I feel so, so awful. Like, more than awful. “I just didn’t want anyone to be mad at me.”

  “Well, unfortunately, that mission has not been accomplished.” My mom throws her hands up into the air. “Because now everyone is mad at you, including me.”

  “I know,” I say. I feel like I want to cry. How did this happen? I mean, I’ve pretty much alienated everyone that was close to me. Now that my friends are total traitors, and Jake likes Emma and not me, I have no one but my family. And now even they’re mad at me. I wonder if I can transfer to Nikki’s school. At least she still likes me. “It was just . . . I mean, I invited Tom, and I really, really wanted him to go with me. But then it turned out that Dad could go after all, and then I couldn’t exactly tell him why he couldn’t, so . . .”

  “How did you even get two tickets?” my mom asks. She’s up and pacing around the kitchen now, her ponytail flying behind her.

  “I got one from my friend Nikki,” I say. “Her mom couldn’t go, even though she totally won.” I beam at my mom, but she doesn’t seem pleased.

  “You’re grounded,” she says.

  “Mom!” Then I realize it doesn’t matter. I have nowhere to go anyway. “Fine,” I say, sliding back in my chair.

  She holds out her hand for my cell phone. “No cell,” she says. “And no computer.”

  “Mom!”

  “No,” she says.

  I have no choice. I hand over the cell and head up to my room.

  TAYLOR IS THE ONLY ONE I HAVE LEFT. The only one who loves me. The only one who knocks on my door the next morning to see if I’m okay. At least, that’s what I thought she was doing. Turns out she just wants me to go with her to pick out a dress for the homecoming dance.

  “I’m grounded,” I say miserably. “So, sorry, I can’t.” Doesn’t she know that I need to wallow in my own misery? I go to push my bedroom door shut on her, but she wedges her hand between the door and the frame. “It’s okay,” she says. “I got special permission from Mom. She doesn’t want me going to the mall by myself, but if you go, I guess it’s okay or something.” She rolls her eyes, like the idea of me being her chaperone is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

  “Where are all your friends?” I ask.

  “Oh, please,” she says. “No one else is up this early.”

  “Then why are you?”

  “Because,” she says. “I don’t have my dress yet, and if I don’t go now, then I can’t go later, because I have cheerleading practice all weekend, and tomorrow is Sasha’s birthday party.” She rolls her eyes again like maybe I should already know all this.

  “Fine,” I say, figuring it’s better than lying in bed and obsessing over what happened with Emma and Jake at the Fall Festival. And how I have no friends left. And how my whole family minus Taylor is mad at me.

  I throw on jeans and a sweatshirt, then meet Taylor downstairs.

  At the mall, she drags me from store to store, trying on dress after dress. Long dresses, short dresses, dresses in every single color and style. You’d think it would be boring (and slightly annoying—how many dresses can one person try on?), but honestly, after the first few, I start getting into it.

  “You should try one on,” Taylor says, after two hours of her flouncing in and out of dressing rooms. So far, I’ve strictly been a spectator, rating the dresses Taylor tries on in three categories—color, style, and homecoming appropriateness.

  “But I’d have nowhere to wear it,” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter.” She shrugs. “Do you really think I can afford some of the dresses I tried on? Plus obviously some of them are so totally homecoming inappropriate. It’s just for fun.”

  So we try on dresses and laugh and act silly and probably drive the salespeople completely and totally crazy. We make up these ridiculous fake names where Taylor calls me Isadora and I call her Cornelia and we pretend we’re sisters who are visiting from England and we even talk in these fake British accents. And before I know it I’m giggling and laughing my way th
rough each dress, and kind of forgetting about what happened with Emma and Jake, with Daphne, and with my dad and Tom.

  Until we stop for milkshakes at Shake It.

  “I’m going to have the pumpkin shake, Cornelia,” I say, then crook my little finger in what I hope is a very British way. “It’s the only thing that will do at this time of the year.” I slide the menu back in between the napkin rack and the wall.

  “That sounds quite delicious, Isadora,” she says. She turns to the waitress. “Oh, excuse me, darling, we’d like two pumpkin milkshakes tip-top!”

  “Tip-top?” the waitress asks, giving her a disbelieving look.

  “Yes, darling, that means right away,” I say. “You Americans are so funny with your language!”

  “Yeah, whatever,” the waitress says, rolling her eyes and going to get the shakes.

  I burst into giggles, and so does Taylor, but when we stop laughing, she looks at me seriously.

  “You have to talk to Dad,” she says.

  My stomach does a flip. “What do you mean, Cornelia darrrling,” I try. “You mean our father, the Duke of Ellenbury?”

  “I’m serious,” she says.

  I reach over and fiddle with the menu. “There’s nothing to say,” I tell her. And why is she bringing this up now? I don’t want to talk about anything to do with my dad. I want to be Isadora from England, darn it.

  “Yes,” she says. “There is. You need to tell him about what’s been going on with your business.” I open my mouth to protest, but she holds up her hand and keeps talking. “I mean what’s really been going on, not just an overview. And you need to let him know that you’re only doing the secret-passing thing for fun. And that yes, you like the business side of things, but that you’re only in seventh grade, and you need to have some fun, too.”

  “I can’t say all that,” I say. “Dad will be crushed!”

  “And most of all,” she goes on. “You and I both need to talk to him about the way he is with Tom.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. Neither one of those conversations sounds like one I want to have. The waitress reappears and sets down our shakes.