Circle of Secrets

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  I feel her fear and my own fear level rises, too, when she talks about bad things and warnings. “What’ll they do? And what’s your name anyway?”

  Her eyes go big like I just asked the worst thing in the world. I can’t help wondering why my questions seem to make her so scared.

  “I’m not tellin’ you. You’ll tell them.”

  Before I can say another word, she turns and flees, her skinny spider legs stuttering across the floor.

  I brush my damp hair out of my eyes. She sure is odd. Or is she right about those other girls? I don’t know what to think. Maybe she’s just jealous of Tara and Alyson, wants them to be her friends, and they ignore her instead. It is a sad but true fact that when it comes to school popularity, the prettiest girls never hang around the plain girls, or girls with unusual characteristics — like strange and ugly scars.

  I dig out the school map from my pocket, wondering which is the fastest direction to the playground. Wondering if I just want to go back inside the classroom and read the history book.

  Two seconds later, the school fire alarm goes off.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FIRE ALARM SEEMS TO GET LOUDER THE LONGER IT GOES on, seeping into my brain so I can’t think in a straight line. I need to get back to my homeroom, but I stand there in the middle of the corridor covering up my ears and feeling like I’ve just gone stupid.

  Classroom doors bang against the walls and the kids who’d made it back to class before recess ended start emerging again in long, snaky lines.

  My stomach is seesawing when I realize that I have no class to walk with, no buddy partner. I’m one of those lone fish, swimming in the wrong direction, looking for any familiar face.

  Suddenly, someone grabs my arms on either side of me — Alyson and Tara — and my feet start walking with them.

  “We won’t let you burn up,” Alyson says with a giggle, and then gasps as someone bumps into her and all three of us almost fall over.

  “Hey, watch it,” Tara mutters, holding out her arms so the crowd has to walk around her, like she’s the queen of the corridor.

  Maybe she really is.

  A teacher blows shrilly into a whistle behind us, and a bunch of boys start yelling up ahead just to hear their voices echo.

  “Boys are so silly,” Tara says, sighing like she’s a teacher. “They think they can get away with it because it’s so crowded and nobody will know who’s yelling.”

  Me, I just want to get out of the crush. “You mean there really is a fire?”

  “Nope, just a drill. Happens every month like an alarm clock.” Tara laughs as she flings her long, silky black hair over her shoulder and gives us a smirk. “Get it? Alarm clock?”

  “Oh,” I say, trying to smile back. “Right.”

  “Never saw a fire alarm on the very first day of school,” Alyson says. She leans in close. I can smell Tabasco sauce on her breath, like she pours it on her eggs for breakfast. “Hey, after school, our group is going down to the piers along the bayou. We play games and stuff. Want to come?”

  The voice of the scarred girl rings in my head. Her warnings about the piers. Almost like she knew this was going to happen.

  Finally, we get past the heavy doors and break through the mob.

  I can breathe again. Alyson and Tara drop their arms from mine and start whispering together, leaving me out of their conversation. I hear something about Jett and some other boys, but at the moment I’m just glad we don’t have class.

  It’s still cloudy, but there are breaks of hazy blue peeking through. Maybe it’ll stop raining finally.

  Since I don’t know anybody else, I follow Tara and Alyson out to the field where students are standing in clusters, talking or kicking at the grass. I see that Jett Dupuis kid running in circles yelling, “I’m free, I’m free!”

  Tara watches him from under her eyelashes.

  Alyson gives a happy sigh. “I love getting out of class.”

  I stare at the main road in front of the school. “Look at that!”

  There are sirens and fire trucks in the distance, coming closer every second. The noise on the field grows louder as everyone starts pointing and yelling. Teachers are trying to blow their whistles and keep their classes together, but it’s getting harder to keep everyone under control.

  Alyson’s big eyes get bigger. “Looks like there really is a fire.”

  Long red fire trucks pull up in the bus circle, followed by a couple of ambulances.

  “I wonder what happened,” Alyson goes on. “Don’t see no smoke.”

  “You’re lucky you started school today, Shelby,” Tara murmurs with a half smile, watching the cluster of boys who are now competing with one another to see who can jump the farthest.

  What am I supposed to do if school lets out early and Mirage is out in the swamp and doesn’t know to row back for me? I guess I could call her from the school office, but I don’t want to. A fire drill always feels like a free day. It did back home. And what if the office is on fire and the telephones are all burning up?

  A ripple of murmurs moves through the crowd of students. I notice that the first graders are sitting in a circle playing Duck, Duck, Goose. Teachers cluster in knots gossiping about the fire trucks.

  Jett breaks away from his friends and runs up to us, like he’s hog wild ecstatic to be the first to tell the breaking news. “Fire in the kitchen,” he says, not even breathless from jumping across the grass twenty times and running around like a maniac. “One of the cooks got burns from the oil.”

  “Oh, wow,” Alyson says. “A real fire.”

  “She’ll be okay,” Jett says, his eyes darting to Tara over and over again. I guess boys can’t help staring at the prettiest girl in the school every five minutes.

  But then Jett gives me a wink, real quick, his brown eyes smiling as he pretends like he didn’t do anything.

  Tara glances at me, like she’s not sure she saw what she just saw. I press my lips together, trying not to smile back at Jett. I know better than to make an enemy out of Tara on the very first day. I’m the new girl. I’m nobody. I’m just glad the most popular girls are even paying attention to me. Maybe the next few months won’t be so bad. Now if I could just figure out how to stay away from the swamp house and Mirage for most of the day.

  A few minutes later, the official announcement comes from Principal Trahan. She tells us that school is shutting down for the day, and the air is filled with whoops and hollers of joy. “Your parents are being informed and buses will be here shortly. The students who walk home will be allowed to leave as soon as you check out with Mrs. Benoit over here, who has the rosters.”

  Just like that. My first day at Bayou Bridge Elementary is over.

  “Well,” Jett says, grinning, “I think it’s a good day for the pier.”

  Tara laughs and Alyson hops up and down on her toes. “Yeah, it might be our last chance for a while.”

  I clear my throat, not wanting to get forgotten. “What’ll I do about Mir — my mamma — coming to get me? How will she know school’s canceled?”

  “Who is your mamma?” Jett asks. “Didn’t you just move here?”

  “Um.” I pause, not wanting to admit it. Real quiet I say, “Mirage Allemond.”

  “You mean that swamp witch lady?” Jett asks, throwing an arm in the direction of the bayou and gazing into my face like he’s figuring out the resemblance between the swamp witch and me. When he looks at me, I get funny tingles in my stomach. Like I just drank five fizzy sodas in a row.

  “She’s not a swamp witch,” I tell him, surprising myself by defending her. “Least I don’t think so,” I add, trying to sound intellectual. “I’m still studying the matter.”

  Jett laughs and Tara says, “You’re funny, Shelby.”

  “Does she do that hoodoo magic like in New Orleans?” Tara asks. “My mamma and my aunt took me to some hoodoo shops on our last trip for fun. And that voodoo museum in the Quarter.”

  Alyson is staring at
me, her blue eyes so big I swear they’re gonna pop out of the sockets.

  I picture Mirage the night Daddy dropped me off, circling the chicken pox on the boy’s arms and face with her finger, giving him medicine, saying her French prayers. “She’s more like a doctor and a priest combined.”

  “Didn’t know girls could pray like priests,” Alyson says, her forehead wrinkling.

  “Anybody can talk to God, can’t they?” I say, trying to think fast and hoping they don’t probe for details. I don’t want to admit that I haven’t lived with her for over a year, that she left me, that my own mamma is the strangest mother in town. “Men don’t have a monopoly on that.”

  “My mamma prays all the time,” Jett says, his hands on his hips, looking tough and cute all at the same time. “She drives me crazy with all that praying and crossing herself and going to Mass. Having a traiteur for a mamma can’t be worse than that, right, Shelby?” He grins real big and pokes me in the arm.

  Tara sidles closer to Jett, her eyes dark slits of green, like a cat. She tosses her hair again and carefully ignores me. What a princess.

  “Well, thank you very much for your permission,” I say, pretending to be indignant. That just makes Jett laugh even more. I feel embarrassed and brave and foolish all at the same time. Is this how other girls feel around boys?

  “Are you planning on becoming a traiteur, too?” Tara asks, bumping her shoulder against Jett like they’re best friends. Her eyes bore into mine like she’s examining my brain.

  I try to act indifferent. “Um, no. Why would I do that?”

  Tara arches an eyebrow. “Like mamma, like daughter.”

  I give a little shrug, like I don’t care what she thinks. I find myself touching the charm bracelet on my wrist, rubbing the little carved spell box and the cute silver snout of the baby gator. I don’t know what the charms mean, but they’re like an anchor to hold on to around these new kids.

  It feels like I’m treading on ground that’s gonna move out from under me without warning. Like a magician snatching at the tablecloth, but the trick doesn’t work and all the dishes crash to the floor in a hundred sharp pieces.

  “You gonna be president of the Garden Club like your mamma?” Alyson asks Tara.

  Tara looks startled, as if her own best friend just punched her in the arm. Like Alyson is talking back to her, or questioning her position as Pantene Princess aka Most Popular Girl in Bayou Bridge. She lifts her chin. “Only if I get to live in the biggest house in town.”

  “You already do live in the biggest house in town,” Alyson tells her with a giggle. “So we going or not, everybody?” she adds. “The whole school just about left now.”

  She’s exaggerating, but most of the students have returned to the front of the school, milling about as they wait for the buses to return and take them home.

  Parents are already pulling up in cars and trucks to pick up kids when we race back across the blacktop to retrieve our school packs from our classroom. Since the cafeteria is in a different building, the firemen allow the staff and students to get their belongings.

  “So how do I tell my mother to pick me up later?” I ask Alyson as we hit the main sidewalk of town. “I’m supposed to meet her down at the water.”

  “Just leave a note at the docks,” she suggests.

  “How do I do that? She probably took the boat back home.”

  “Just pin it to the pier. Come on, we’ll help you.”

  “You may not even need to,” Tara says. “We got hours before our folks expect us home.”

  “Good thinking,” Jett says, giving Tara’s hair a tug. “A girl with brains.”

  “Did you ever doubt it, Jett Dupuis?” She starts talking in a southern drawl. “Ah do manage to get straight As on mah report cards, suh.”

  “Are we allowed to play at the city piers?” I ask, thinking about the nervous scarred girl and her dire warnings.

  “We’re not talking about those boring old docks, Shelby Allemond,” Tara tells me, staring at me like she’s giving me a dare. “We’re going to a private pier — by the town cemetery.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AFTER WE LEAVE A NOTE TIED AROUND ONE OF THE CITY pilings where Mirage had docked that morning, a couple other boys join us, but I don’t recognize them.

  Crossing back over Main Street, we leave the neighborhood of the school. Soon we’re walking down a dirt road lined with giant oaks and no sidewalks, the Bayou Teche running lazy and muddy alongside, our backpacks bumping against our shoulders. When I stare down the road it seems to go on and on, no end in sight. Sugarcane fields stretch on forever.

  The edge of the narrow road slopes down to the water and a sweep of uneven grass leads straight to scraps of elephant ears hugging the bank.

  “See that forest of oaks way over there?” Alyson says, pointing out a cluster of giant-limbed oaks on the far side of a low wooden fence that disappears into the surrounding brush. “That’s the cemetery. It’s real spooky at night.”

  Now I wonder why the scarred girl didn’t warn me away from that place. A pier seems pretty innocent, but the graveyard looks terrifying. Dark and forbidding and gloomy, completely enclosed by bent and twisted trees that have probably been growing there for two hundred years.

  Prickles of dread start in my toes and run right up to my eyebrows. I quit staring at the graveyard and catch up to Tara farther along on the road. “So who is that girl in our class with the scarred face?” I ask her, curiosity not letting go. Her warnings were so spooky, I gotta find out more about her story.

  “Nobody. She was new last year. Don’t know much about her.”

  “How’d she get those scars on her face?”

  She shrugs. “Don’t know. She came like that. Maybe a car accident?”

  “Well, she has to have a name,” I say, my voice dropping off so I don’t look too weird asking over and over again.

  Alyson comes up behind me. “Her name’s Larissa, okay? Now can we talk about something else?”

  Larissa. I know her name now, but for some reason I don’t feel any better about her and what she told me about the cemetery pier and its danger.

  Suddenly, Tara runs ahead, yelling, “Turn right here!”

  The day is getting hot fast, muggy and sticky and suffocating. I’m sweating even in the shade.

  The path to the water slopes down through tangles of brush, and I follow the group, counting three girls and three boys, Jett and two friends he introduces as Ambrose and T-Beau. I skirt an old tire hiding under a pile of leaves.

  “It’s so dang hot, I can’t wait to jump in,” Ambrose says.

  A crawly feeling turns my stomach inside out. They aren’t going skinny-dipping, are they? Boys and girls together? Maybe this was what that girl was warning me about. Everyone jumping in the water and then stealing your clothes? I shudder at the thought.

  “Aren’t there gators in that water?” I ask.

  “Sometimes, but they won’t hurt you,” Jett says, pushing his blond hair out of his eyes. “Gators are so shy, they quick swim away when they hear us coming.”

  “Or they spy on us,” Ambrose adds with an ominous hiss, coming closer to me. “Sittin’ in that black water jest waitin’ for their supper. You!” he adds loudly, his voice punching the air.

  I jump, barely holding back a scream, but Tara and Alyson squeal as the boys thump Ambrose in the arm for scaring us.

  When we get to the edge of the water, I finally see the pier. It’s actually a bridge or a walkway, made of wooden planks and reaching out into the bayou like a long, straight arm.

  Except the bridge ends right in the middle of the bayou. Just ends, like someone forgot to build the rest of it.

  Across the water there’s a little island. At least it looks like an island, but the land and trees curve around the bend in the Bayou Teche and I can’t tell where it starts or stops.

  Staring hard as I can through the far-off groves of cypresses and oaks, I see the shadow of a little house se
t way back in the darkness of the trees. Just a clapboard wall, part of a porch, and the top of a chimney. From across the water, it’s like looking at a dollhouse.

  “There’s a house back there!” I say. “Who lives in it?”

  “Nobody no more,” Alyson answers. “It’s called Deserted Island. Always has been.”

  “Who used to live there?”

  “Some family long time ago.”

  “They just left their house?”

  Alyson shrugs. “Guess so, not really sure.”

  “How’d they get off the island into town?”

  “Boat, silly.”

  I feel stupid for asking the obvious question. I’m still not used to people getting around by boat everywhere.

  Tara shades her eyes from the sun as it bursts from behind a cloud. “The pier used to go all the way across the water so the family could walk across the bayou. So it’s really a bridge. They built the pier so they didn’t have to boat across all the time. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  I follow her and Alyson, watching the boys as they run hollering straight down the pier like there’s no tomorrow, stopping short of the end and peering into the water.

  After just a few steps, I’ve left the shoreline. Suddenly, there’s only water all around me. The long, snaky pier starts to quiver and sway. “Um, is it safe?”

  “Don’t be such a skeered-y cat, Shelby,” Tara says, tugging at my arm. “That’s part of the Truth or Dare game. We see who can go out the farthest before the bridge falls into the bayou another plank or two.”

  Truth or Dare game? The sound of that ain’t good at all. Isn’t, I correct myself inside my head. “So just how deep is it?”

  “Probably ten feet or so. Sorta rises and falls with the rain. See the watermarks on the pilings?”

  I take note of the dark line on the wood pilings indicating the potentially high water level. There’s a seasick sensation in my stomach as the bridge sways with the rushing movement of the bayou as the river runs south and disappears around the next bend, leaving the town of Bayou Bridge behind.