Rules for Secret Keeping

  “Cool,” I say. “We missed you, too.” We missed you, too! How cool is that to say? Am I flirting? I read an article about flirting in Taylor’s Spark magazine (America’s number one teen magazine), and it seemed horribly complicated. But maybe I’m a natural.

  “How was your summer?” he asks.

  “Not bad,” I say. “I found out I’m a finalist for the You Girl Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.”

  “That’s awesome,” he says.

  “Yeah, I have to go to New York after school today to get my picture taken for the magazine.”

  He laughs. “You’re going to be in You Girl?”

  “Yeah. Well, not just me. All the other finalists too.” I try to raise my voice a little so that Pink Beret might overhear and be all, Wow, you’re going to be a famous model in America’s number one tween magazine? but she just keeps talking to Charlie, oblivious.

  “That should be interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yeah. Since you hate getting your picture taken.”

  This is true. I do hate getting my picture taken. “Well, I don’t hate it exactly, I just—”

  “Remember in third grade when you had to get your school picture retaken, like, ten times?” He laughs. I did have to get my picture retaken a bunch of times, but it wasn’t my fault. The photographer kept telling me to look at this one spot above the camera, and every time I did, the flash would blind me. Plus they kept giving out these little plastic combs before taking your picture, and they’d encourage you to comb your hair, and for some reason, my hair always ended up sticking up.

  “Ten times?” Pink Beret pipes up from her seat next to us. Oh, now she’s listening. Of course. “That’s crazy.” She leans over the back of her chair, and her sweater dips down, revealing more of her shoulder, which is very tan. How is her shoulder tan? I thought redheads only burned. I’ll bet it’s fake.

  “It wasn’t ten,” I say, feeling my face go red.

  “It wasn’t,” Jake agrees, flashing his perfect smile at Pink Beret. She leans over farther, and now her stupid fake tan shoulder is almost right in Jake’s face.

  “Thank you,” I say, shooting her a triumphant look.

  “It was more like five.” Jake winks at me. Pink Beret and Charlie giggle.

  And they keep giggling when our homeroom teacher, Mr. Levin, comes in and welcomes us to Somerville Middle School. They giggle all during the morning announcements, and all during the pledge of allegiance. And when the bell rings, and Jake squeezes my arm and says, “See you later, Samantha,” they don’t even notice because they’re already gone.

  By the end of the day, I’m beginning to think that maybe middle school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In gym class we have to change. Which is fine, except that all the girls are wearing bras. I don’t need a bra. Usually I just wear a sports bra under my clothes, but apparently even the girls who don’t need bras are wearing real bras and then changing into sports bras. No one alerted me to this system (it really should have been revealed to us in our back-to-school mailing—locker number, homeroom, and bra situation).

  We also get homework on the first day of school in math and English, which is just ridiculous. Daphne is in my lunch but none of my other classes, and except for homeroom and a few times in the halls, I don’t see Jake again, but Charlie and her dumb red-haired friend are in my science, math, and gym classes. Of course.

  When I finally get home, I just want to curl up and take a nice nap before the You Girl shoot, but my mom, who has the uncanny ability to pick the worst possible moment to decide to do something she thinks will be fun, has announced she’s taking me to get my eyebrows waxed before she and my stepdad, Tom, drop me off at the train station for the photo shoot.

  So the three of us pile into the car and head over to Wave, this totally cool spa and salon near our house. (My mom wanted to go to her fave salon, Candy’s Curl, but luckily Ruth, their eyebrow waxer, was out for the day.) Once we’re in Wave, Tom settles into a chair and starts flipping through a magazine (Vogue, which is weird, since, you know, he’s a guy), and my mom marches me right up to the reception stand, where she begins talking in tones way too loud for an activity that is so embarrassing.

  “We need an eyebrow waxing,” she declares. “For a thirteen-year-old.” She grabs me by the shoulder and pushes me forward. The receptionist, whose name tag says “Jemima,” looks at my eyebrows and nods. “Now, normally,” my mom says, “I would think that this was unnecessary for someone her age, but as you can see, she tried to pluck them herself.”

  Jemima nods again. “We get a lot of self-pluckers in here.” Is this supposed to make me feel better? That there are a lot of self-pluckers? That’s kind of like saying, “A lot of people wear hideous clothes.” Just because a lot of people are doing something doesn’t mean you necessarily want to be grouped in with them.

  “Now, we don’t want anything too nuts,” my mom instructs. “Just a fix-up. No craziness like pink eyebrows or anything.” She leans in a little closer to Jemima. “She’s going to a photo shoot in the city, and she needs to look fabulous!”

  Jemima looks me up and down, and I can tell she’s wondering what kind of photo shoot I could possibly be going to, but thankfully, she doesn’t ask. And even more thankfully, she pulls me into the back and away from my mom.

  “Now,” she says, pulling out a huge mirror and shoving it in front of my face. It makes every single pore look like a crater. I try not to look, but she’s, like, pretty much forcing me. “Unfortunately, you’ve done a very bad job with your eyebrows.”

  Geez. Tell me what you really think. “I know,” I say. “But, see, they were getting kind of bushy, and—”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she says, nodding. Her ears are pierced all the way up her ear. How cool. I only have one hole that I got a long time ago, when I was little. I want to get a second one, but I’m afraid of the pain.

  “Now, this is going to be a two-step process,” Jemima says. She sits me down in a chair and leans me back. “First I’m going to wax you. Then I’m going to shade you.”

  “Okay,” I say uncertainly. Waxing and shading doesn’t sound fun. Not even close. In fact, it sounds kind of horrible. Jemima starts putting something hot and sticky on one of my brows. Well, maybe I should consider this a lesson. Like how people are always saying that you should learn from every experience. And I’ve learned that I should definitely not try plucking my own eyebrows. How will I ever learn to eye flirt with Jake if I can’t even keep my eyebrows in the right shape? In fact, I should probably—

  “Oww!” I scream. A burning sensation is radiating from my eyebrows all the way down my face. Jemima has just ripped my skin right off my forehead.

  I’m so loud that Tom comes running over from where he’s been reading Vogue. “Are you okay?” he asks. He looks at Jemima suspiciously, but she calmly takes another dab of hot wax and starts putting it on my other brow.

  “She’s fine,” Jemima says. “She’s just not used to the sensation.”

  “Yeah, if you call ripping skin off my face a sensation.” Ow. That really hurt.

  “You can stop if you want, Samantha,” Tom says, narrowing his eyes at Jemima, like he thinks she’s some kind of torturer.

  “She can’t really,” Jemima says cheerfully. “Then she’ll be uneven.”

  “There are worse things to be,” Tom says, “than uneven.”

  “I’m fine,” I tell him, and after one last look, he turns and walks back to his chair. Okay, no big deal. I’ll just concentrate on breathing in and out, like I learned when I took yoga in gym last year. It was all about relaxing. We even had a—

  “Owww!” I scream as Jemima does the second eyebrow. I watch as she throws a little piece of paper with eyebrow hairs attached to it into the garbage. “Aren’t you supposed to at least warn me? So I can, you know, prepare myself?”

  “Next time,” she says. “Now, listen. Since you’re a self-plucker, the waxing has left you a litt
le sparse. So you’re going to have to shade a little bit.” She pulls an eyebrow pencil off a cart on her left and opens it. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Of course,” I say. “It’s an eyebrow pencil.”

  “Good.” She nods. “Now, look in the mirror, and watch what I’m doing.” I watch as she moves her hands in little flicks over my eyebrows, shading them in until they’re perfect. Wow. Jemima’s an artist.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “You can have this pencil, but it’s only a trial size,” she says, handing it to me. “You should buy one at the front desk.”

  I hop out of the chair and practice wiggling my eyebrows in front of the mirror. I will most definitely be able to convey meaningful looks with these brows. These eyebrows will be able to say I miss you as more than a friend and Let’s hold hands and You should ask me to the dance, Jake. These are the eyebrows of someone who knows how to flirt like an expert.

  I’m spending so much time admiring my new brows that when Jemima clears her throat behind me, I jump. “Oh,” I say. “Um, I was just making sure they were even.” I clear my throat, like I was totally checking up on her work instead of admiring myself.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she says, sighing. “I’ll meet you up front so I can show you what kind of pencil to buy before you pay.”

  I walk to the front of the salon, resisting the impulse to check myself out in the mirrors that are lining the walls. When I get to the waiting area, my mom is talking to a tall woman with long blond hair. Probably someone who works here. My mom is constantly befriending salespeople.

  “What do you think of this?” Tom asks me. He’s abandoned his chair and his magazine, and now he’s holding up a shampoo bottle that says “Man Mane—Make Your Hair Luxuriously Sexy and Touchable.” There’s a picture of an older man with a full head of hair smiling widely on the bottle. Besides the obvious fact that it’s very disgusting to think of my stepfather wanting to be sexy, Tom is almost completely bald. I think maybe he should be concentrating on getting his hair back, rather than trying to make the few wisps he has luxurious.

  “Why do you need new shampoo?” I ask.

  “It’s on sale,” he says cheerfully, as if that explains it.

  “Well, good idea,” I say. He opens the bottle and takes a sniff. A little bit of shampoo ends up on his nose.

  “Uh-oh,” he says, wiping it away with his hand. “Good thing I was planning on buying this.” He wanders back over to the shampoos, mumbling something about “You break it, you buy it.”

  “Samantha!” my mom calls, waving me over to where she’s standing with the blond woman. I trudge over reluctantly.

  “This is my daughter Samantha,” she says to the woman standing next to her. Great. Now my mom is introducing me to the employees by name. I prefer my humiliation to be anonymous, please. “Samantha, this is Joan Clydell. She has a daughter who just started seventh grade, like you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I say politely. And then I realize Joan isn’t a saleswoman, but another shopper who my mom has randomly started speaking to. We’ve been in the salon about fifteen minutes, and already she’s met someone. She probably thinks they’re going to be BFFs. Actually, my mom could use a friend her own age. Her best friend, Bibsy, just had a baby, so she’s not around as much, and her other best friend, her sister Joanne, moved to Texas so she could start her own cattle ranch. (Total family scandal.)

  “Nice to meet you, Samantha,” Joan says, giving me a big smile. Hmm. Her teeth have that fake look to them, you know, like the celebs have? I wonder if they hurt. “Let me just find my daughter; I’m sure you’d love to meet her.”

  Not really. “Of course!” I say brightly. “Um, but Mom, we have to pay for my, um . . .” Somehow saying “eyebrow waxing” sounds kind of gross. Waxing should not be talked about. At all. “. . . My procedure.” Hmm. Somehow “procedure” sounds even worse. Like something medical or disgusting.

  “Oh, fine, fine,” my mom says. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Emma!” Joan Clydell is now yelling her daughter’s name into the salon, where a bunch of people are getting their hair cut. “Emma, over here!”

  And that’s when the red-haired girl from this morning shows up! Little Miss Pink Beret is Joan’s daughter! She comes running into the lobby, her newly cut hair shining and bouncing behind her. I should have known her mother would have fake Hollywood teeth.

  “Come and meet Samantha. She’s in your grade at school,” Joan says. Why do mothers always assume that if someone is in your grade at school, that automatically makes you friends? I’m expecting Emma to snub her nose at me, but to my surprise, she shoots me a huge smile.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says. She looks like she got her hair straightened. Or maybe it’s just the way it’s been blow-dried. Either way, she looks like a model. I wiggle my new eyebrows at her to keep up.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I say, narrowing my eyes. She’s obviously putting on a show for the moms. Two can play at this game.

  “Did you have a good first day of school?” she asks.

  “Not bad,” I lie. The moms have moved on, and are now talking about something else. Tax rates in our school district, I think. Does the fact that I make money on my secret-passing business mean I’m going to have to pay taxes? I didn’t last year. Am I going to jail? My dad’s in finance, so that would be super embarrassing for the whole family, especially since I’m about to be in You Girl and everything.

  “That’s good,” Emma says. She surveys the rows of nail polishes that are on the side rack across from the shampoos. She pulls out one that’s called Plum Dusk. “What do you think of this one?”

  “Um, cute?” I hate when people ask me what I think about something. I never know what to say, since it’s always a trick. They either want you to gush about how great whatever they’re asking about is, or they want you to commiserate about how bad it is.

  “Totally cute,” she says, putting it in my hand.

  “Oh,” I say. “You mean do I think it’s cute for me?”

  “Of course,” she says. “I can’t wear purple, it clashes with my hair.” She sighs, pops the top off the nail polish, and paints my pinky nail. Right there in the store! With a nail polish that’s not even hers. Then she pulls me over to the mirror and holds up my hand. “See?” And she’s right. With my new eyebrows and my new nails, I look fab. “Don’t you love it?”

  “Yes.” And I do. I do love it. I concentrate on conveying this with my eyebrows.

  She smiles and looks pleased. This is turning into a very weird day. Getting waxed. Buying nail polish with a girl who was super mean to me just hours ago.

  Emma looks over at the moms. “My mom talks to every random person she meets. It’s sooo embarrassing.” She rolls her eyes. Her eyelashes are so light you can hardly even see them. She’s dusted them with sparkle powder, so it looks like little flecks of glitter are hovering around her eyes.

  “Mine does too,” I say.

  She looks at me. “Are you really going to be in You Girl?”

  “Yup,” I say. “I’m going over to the photo shoot right after this.”

  “I love that magazine. Did you see the feature they did on Miley Cyrus last month?” She pulls a round brush off the rack and runs her fingers over the bristles.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think you’ll get to meet her?”

  “Maybe.” It’s not exactly a lie. I mean, I could technically maybe meet her. They didn’t really say anything about getting to meet celebs at the photo shoot, but there might be some hanging around. Not Miley, of course, since she was already in the magazine, but maybe someone else. Like maybe the cast of Twilight.

  “Oh my God, that is so cool,” Emma says. She leans in closer to me, and I can smell the shampoo on her hair. “Hey, do you want to sit with me and Charlie tomorrow at lunch?”

  “Sure,” I say, shrugging.

  “Oh my God.” Emma grabs my arm. “Look at that guy!” S
he collapses into giggles and I look where she’s pointing. To my horror, I see Tom over by the shampoos, where Jemima is now helping him pick one out. “I hope that’s hair-replenishing shampoo. How embarrassing,” Emma says.

  “Totally,” I agree, grabbing her hand and pulling her back toward the rack of hairbrushes. “What do you think of this one?” I grab the closest thing to me, a black plastic comb. “Um, no,” Emma says, looking confused. “Only if you’re, like, forty. And a man.”

  “There she is!” Tom’s voice says from behind me. “There’s my stepdaughter Samantha. She knows about these kinds of things.”

  Emma looks at me. “You know that guy?”

  “Um, not really, that’s just—”

  My mom pokes her head around the rack of combs. “Samantha! There you are!” She sounds perturbed. “Is it true you agreed to buy a twenty-five dollar eyebrow pencil? That’s a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?”

  I sigh. So much for being cool.

  “BEAUTIFUL, CANDACE,” JAVIER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, is saying, clicking his camera. “Gorgeous!” In front of the camera, Candace smiles and blows a kiss to Javier. Candace is the girl who won You Girl’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year award last year, the one who made bracelets (they’re called “peace bracelets,” she told me when I got here) and raised all that money for Darfur. She’s trying to “bring attention to the genocide that has left more than 200,000 dead from violence and disease in this region of Africa and aid in the effort to stop this tragedy through knowledge, monetary aid, and international intervention.” I did not know she was going to be here. Apparently they’re doing a “Where is she now?” segment on her. And she gets to come to the You Girl banquet and give a speech before she hands over her title. Kind of like Miss America or something.

  “Do you think we’re going to have pose like that?” the girl sitting next to me on Javier’s cream-colored couch asks. Her name’s Nikki, and she’s here because she runs some kind of website-building company. In front of the camera, Candace smiles and blows another kiss to Javier.