by Kirsten Rue
No... I’m not mad at you.
Truthfully, I’m not mad. It’s just . . . well, I dunno. Tina is my best friend, but lately I feel like I can’t get a word in edgewise. And there’s so much bubbling underneath the surface for me that I’ve been keeping back. I haven’t had the courage to talk about it yet. After school, instead of saying goodbye to Tina in front of her bus, like I always do before walking home, I went out the backdoor and avoided her instead. She must have looked for me for a while. I do feel kinda bad about that. See u 2morrow? Yep. See you tomorrow.
I know it’s cool to use “u” and “2” in place of actual letters, but it still bugs me for some reason.
Before I start my music again, I pause and listen to the conversation that’s happening in the kitchen. All I hear is mumble this and mumble that. It doesn’t sound like anything serious is happening out there. But how will I ever be sure? I close my eyes and try to lose myself in a wall of sound.
“Ugh, hi, Julian? Um, I heard from Dana that you’re . . . um, a good person to talk to.” This time it’s Joe Russo, the head of the Football Lardos. I just stopped to get a drink of water at the fountain, but that was my fatal mistake. My heart sinks just a little bit. Let me guess: Joe Russo has a secret that he wants to share with me.
“Do you want a stick of gum?”
By now, I know the name of the game. When other kids at Halsey offer me candy or the chance to copy their math homework, what they’re really doing is trying to buy my time. Still, I feel like my breath probably could use some freshening, so I pop a stick of gum in my mouth. Right away, these amazing little crystals of mintiness burst on my tongue. I forgot how truly delicious gum could be.
I can tell Joe Russo feels embarrassed about talking with me in the hallway. I mean, he’s a popular jock and I’m . . . well, I’m kinda on the uncool side. Plus, Joe is known for being super mean to other kids in gym class. I once saw him throw a nerf ball right at Tim Watkins’ head, another “uncool” kid. I usually try to keep my distance, especially because he’s notorious for looking over other kids’ shoulders in class. In math and science, I’d say, “You want to copy from me? It’s your funeral.” But I usually do okay in my other classes, and I definitely don’t want to get in trouble for having the same test answers as someone else.
“Ugh,” Joe mumbles. “A girl.”
I feel a little bolder than usual. Maybe it’s the fact that I had an egg for breakfast, I dunno. “Joe, dude, you’re going to have to give me a little more to go on than that. What girl?”
Joe looks around again. A drop of sweat slides down his forehead. This is the closest I’ve ever been to Joe, and I’m surprised to notice that he has wrinkles! Like, actual adult-sized creases in his forehead. Maybe the rumors are true and he’s really a twelfth-grader just pretending to be a sixth grader so that our football team wins.
“Pramila Singh,” he whispers hoarsely. Who’s Pramila Singh? I’ve never heard of her before . . . “Yes . . . ?”
Mumble, “crush,” mumble, “cute . . . d’you think I should tell her?” I swear, Joe doesn’t have an accent or anything, but I can barely understand him. What I can understand, though, is that his face is turning a dark shade of purple right this very second. I know what’s it’s like to have a big secret pressing on you, so I don’t want to be mean or anything. He must think that because I have a girl for a best friend means that I know everything about them . . . which is not exactly true.
“Have you ever talked to her before?” This seems like a fairly good place to start.
“Er, no.” Joe looks down, his face still bright purple.
“Well, why not, um, strike up a conversation with her sometime? Like in the hall or something?”
“Strike . . . a conversation?”
“Joe, that means just talk to her!”
He looks around nervously again and leans closer. I’m pretty sure he ate some onions or something for lunch, because Phew! “But . . . what . . . stuff . . . do you say?”
“Oh, like, ‘Hey, did you do the science homework?’ or ‘Hey, did you go to that Mystery Ball that everybody was talking about?’ Just questions about school. Or stuff that she’s interested in.”
“Um, I know that her dad drops her off in a red car.”
“Well . . . I guess you could work with that. Like . . . maybe ask her if she thinks it’s a good car? Or, if it drives fast?” Cars are not my best subject, that’s for sure.
“Okay.” Joe nods a little bit. “Hey, Pramila! Does your dad drive a Dodge?” He repeats it a couple of times. Practice makes perfect!
“Good start.” I give him the best encouraging smile I can muster.
Suddenly, Joe’s eyes narrow into two mean little holes in his face. “Julian, if you tell ANYONE . . .”
I cut him off. “Joe, don’t you know that I’m the best secret keeper in Halsey School?” I’m being a little bit sarcastic, but that goes WAY over Joe’s head. He just nods and holds out his hand for me to shake. Me shaking Joe Russo’s hand?! What exactly am I getting myself into? I have a feeling that the more deals I make with all these popular kids, the more it may backfire in my face . . .
News
“Um, why were you talking to Joe Russo during break time?” Tina has cornered me at my locker. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say “cornered.” I mean, we DO talk at my locker between classes.
“Oh, we were just talking about homework.” I hate lying to Tina, but I don’t know what else to say. I did make a promise to Joe, and one of the other things I hate besides feeling anxious, things getting dirty, or being late is breaking promises. It’s just messy in its own way—messy with feelings.
Tina still looks suspicious, though. “Hmmm . . . it seemed to me like he turned really red. I mean, would his skin change colors that much just from talking about homework?”
“Maybe he has a medical condition, too. With his skin.” Tina was born with this heart problem that sometimes makes her feel faint. I usually try not to bring it up because she doesn’t like people feeling sorry for her or thinking she’s a freak.
“No way,” she brushes off my suggestion. “I think he was telling you a secret.” She pokes my arm and grins. “I’m right, aren’t I? I can tell I’m right! I can always tell when I’m right because you look up through your bangs and won’t make eye contact with me.” She keeps poking me in the arm, crowing, “I’m right! I’m right!”
“Okay, FINE!” I give in. “It wasn’t about homework. But I can’t tell you. It’s a code of honor thing, okay?”
She nods in agreement. “Oh, yeah, well, obviously.
I really respect that and stuff. I definitely do.” She pauses. “But that’s for strangers! It’s a totally different code for best friends.” Tina leans in again, assuming I’m about to spill the beans.
“No, I’m serious. I can’t tell anyone. It wouldn’t be a code if I just broke it any old time, right?”
“But what about all the secrets I’ve told you?” Tina whines.
“Well,” I say, crossing my arms and trying to act very grown-up, “maybe you never should have told me those things. Have you ever thought about that?”
“Ugh, Julian, sometimes you are no fun at all!” She flips her heavy hair off her face and stalks off to drama class, one of the classes that we share. Okay, guess we aren’t walking there together.
You want to know my secret? My secret is that I’m tired of people telling me secrets!
Today it’s me at the bus stop, alone. I see Tina step onto her bus without even looking around. We were already in a fight earlier this year, and I’m sure we’ll get over this one eventually. If it IS even a fight. . . . Still, I’m on my phone just a couple of hours later, texting Are you mad at me? to Tina.
As usual, she writes back several texts at once.
I guess not. I don’t get why u talk to people like Dana & Joe. They r not very nice. Is it because they r cooler than me?
Tina, seriously? You know I don’t care about tha
t...
Just sayin.
Downstairs my mom calls me to dinner. I’ve started to really hate family dinners because every time I’m headed to the dining room, I picture that time when Mom called me to dinner several months ago. On January 24th, to be exact. I came down the hall, just like a normal kid on a normal day. I was whistling a song that I had just downloaded from the internet. I can spend hours going to band websites and listening to new songs. It’s pretty much my favorite thing to do besides maybe singing to myself.
Anyway, I walked down the hall, sat down, and right away, I knew something was different. Mom’s eyes were all red and swollen. Dad was looking down at his shoes. My mom broke the ice and started off with, “Julian, your dad and I have been talking . . .” From there, my memory gets blurry. It’s like when you make a smudge on a window with your thumb— I’ve kind of smudged out the rest of that talk. What I do remember, though, is how I felt. I felt I was lost and floating away like a balloon or something. Below me sat the earth and house and dining room that I’d always known, but the way I saw it was like a stranger seeing it. I could see all the flaws. For instance, I could see the way our kitchen linoleum was cracked and how the birdbath on the lawn did not look like a cute angel next to a tub, but more like an ugly, fat baby. I could point out the flaws in all of us, too. That was the worst part. I thought, I’m just from parents that don’t even like each other, and I’m clumsy, and everything
I like to do is not cool at all. Mom has a weird, high laugh, and she’s always forgetting her keys. Dad doesn’t like his job and he complains about it twenty-four seven. Those aren’t nice feelings—having your idea of yourself and your family pulled away, being forced to see yourselves in a harsher light.
So, can you blame me if family dinnertime isn’t exactly my favorite now? I sit down and eye the slimy-looking green beans on my plate. How come Tina always gets pizza and spaghetti nights at her house? I have to eat vegetables and more vegetables. Gross. Mom and Dad seem like they’re smiling more than usual. Mom even rubs Dad’s arm as she sets down more food on the table. I raise my eyebrows a little. It’s okay, guys, you don’t have to put on a big show or anything. It’s just me, your only son.
We start cutting our green beans in half as Mom dishes up the meal du jour. “Breaded eggplant,” she calls it. I kinda preferred Mom’s cooking before. We got to eat more macaroni and less stringy eggplant and black beans. Dad asks me about school and I tell him it’s fine. I ask him about work.
He stops and thinks for a minute and then puts on what seems like a fake smile and says, “Great!” Hmmmm.
“Actually, Julian,” Mom says brightly. “Have we told you our news?”
My heart starts to pound.
Fake smiles at the dinner table? Check.
Mom making a “nice” dinner? Check.
“Have we told you our news?” Triple check.
“Um, Mom?” I interrupt, looking at both of their faces. “I have a lot of homework tonight. Can I please be excused?”
They frown in unison, looking disappointed.
“But, this is really important for us to share . . .”
“Judy, it’s okay,” Dad says. “Let Julian get to his homework.”
I shoot a “thank you!” glance at my dad. Mom is still staring at me, looking a little sad. It’s all the warning signs that I’ve been afraid of.
When I get back to my room, I call Tina. That’s it. I need to tell someone about this! I need to calm down. Her phone rings and rings, though, and she doesn’t pick up.
R U there?
My hands are shaking a little bit and I can barely tap out the letters, even though normally I never shorten my words. No answer. I can’t concentrate on anything: not on my reading journal assignment from English or my multiple-choice worksheet from math. Even listening to all of my favorite songs one after another doesn’t help. A couple of times I hear my mom’s soft feet on the carpet outside my door. She taps, lightly. She always has been polite. Both times I pretend to be asleep.
As I finally start drifting off to sleep, my last two thoughts are Ew, I forgot to brush my teeth, and I hope I don t have any nightmares tonight. . .
Ripping Off the Band-Aid
The next day at school, I feel frazzled. I didn’t sleep well last night, I’m worried about the “news” Mom mentioned, and to top it all off, I can’t find Tina anywhere. This is pretty much the WORST time possible for someone else to track me down and tell me a secret, but what do you know? I leave the boys’ bathroom (the bathroom, I mean, c’mon, GEEZ!) and a dark-haired, thoughtful looking girl is standing there. I assume she’s just getting a drink at the water fountain, but as I start walking to my locker, I get the distinct sensation that she’s following me. I check behind me. Yep. Definitely following me.
Today is just not the day, and even though I know it’s rude, I stop in my tracks. She stops, too.
“What do you want?!” I say. “Do you want to tell me a secret or something, because if you do, I don’t want to be late to class.”
She blushes. I feel like I’ve probably never seen her before because she is kind of quiet and very petite. Now I feel bad for acting all mean and scary to someone I don’t even know. I guess stress really does bring out the worst in people.
The girl holds out a little Ziploc baggy of what look like homemade chocolate chip cookies. I have to admit, now that I know that there are delicious-looking cookies on the line, I feel a little less annoyed.
“I’m Julian,” I say, holding out my hand.
“Pramila,” she says back, holding out her own. “Everyone says you are a keeper of secrets.” Pramila? Where do I know that name . . . ? Ah, yes! Joe Russo’s crush!
Now, that seems odd to me, because Pramila looks more like someone who would be my friend. She doesn’t look like a Sweet or an aspiring Sweet. I thought those were the only girls anyone liked at Halsey School. I’ve got to give Joe Russo some credit. Maybe he has more depth than I thought . . .
“I’ll make this quick,” Pramila says. “My heart has been taken by someone, but if he were to find out, I would never recover.” She looks away dramatically. I can’t help but crack a tiny smile. I think she and Tina would probably get along.
“Hmmm, let me guess. His name is Joe Russo.”
Pramila’s face goes white. “How—how could you know this?”
“Um, a lucky guess?”
“Well, he can never, never know. Can you make me this promise?”
“Sure,” I say. “And, also, thanks for the cookies!”
Pramila nods at me, still looking very serious, and shuffles away to the library. Okay, well that was interesting. What do you do when two people basically ask you to keep the same secret?
At lunch, I track Tina down. She’s sitting alone, picking at her food like always.
“Oh, hey,” she says sulkily, not even scooting over to make more room for me.
“Hey,” I say, sitting down. “Um, Tina?”
“Julian, why are keeping secrets from me?” She breaks in, staring at me sharply. Woah, that kinda came out of nowhere!
“Well, it’s the honor code thing I told you about.”
“No, I mean YOUR secrets. That’s like the opposite of the honor code.”
“Tina, I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?”
“Fine!” she says, rolling her eyes. “But I know anyway.”
“You know . . . what?”
“Something about your parents.” She takes a drink of her milk.
“What?! I mean, how could you—I haven’t said.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you at the time,” Tina replies guiltily, “but my mom heard about it through some of your mom’s friends. And also, you think I don’t know how you act?! You’re my best friend! Actually . . . I was kinda worried that you might want different friends. I mean, I keep seeing you talking to all these people, and you NEVER tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Um, that’s not true,” I
reply weakly, but of course I know that she’s 100 percent right. “Hey, but wait, if you knew all this time, why didn’t you say anything? You were acting, I dunno . . . totally normal.” It’s true. I felt like the last few months, it’s been the Tina Show with occasional guest star Julian Marcos.
“Well, somebody had to fill those pauses! Geez, Julian! You KNOW how I hate silences!”
“Maybe I just haven’t much felt like talking.” I’m feeling sulky right now, too. “Everybody’s always asking me to listen. Nobody even asks what I’m thinking. Not even you!”
“OR, maybe you like to distract yourself with other people’s problems. Have you ever thought of that, hmmm?” Tina can be kind of a know-it-all sometimes, but then again, sometimes she can be right.
“Tina, I’m so weighed down with secrets right now it’s not even funny.”
She claps me on the shoulder. “Well, then let it go! Stop holding it all in. Also, I seem to remember a time when YOU reminded ME not to avoid things.”
She’s right. There was a time when I practically un-friended Tina just because she wasn’t dealing with one of her problems and it was driving me absolutely crazy.
With Tina’s advice still ringing in my ears, I decide I’m going to deal with this parent thing once and for all. Tonight. I work up some courage in my bedroom before dinner, listening to my “Power” playlist. It’s full of songs that sound brave—lots of strong bass lines and beats. And then I have some classical cello mixed in there just ‘cuz. What can I say? I like surprises. When I take my headphones out of my ears, I can hear my parents’ voices. They don’t sound angry or sad, so I guess that’s something. I don’t even wait for Mom to call me. Instead, I push my shoulders back, open the door, and head to the dining room.
Mom’s humming and it looks like Dad is cooking tonight. He stops and kisses my mom on her forehead.
Well, that doesn’t seem like two people who hate each other, does it?! I get my hopes up for a second that since Dad’s cooking, maybe we’re not having some weirdo vegetable dish today.
