by Ann Angel
“No details,” I say, although that’s exactly what I’m dying to hear. I pick up my drink, a mocha frappe with whipped cream. “How long has this been going on?”
“Maybe a month and a half. He popped up at our last Quiz Bowl tournament. He’d come to cheer us on. Said he wanted to support his favorite past students. We kept in touch, and then . . .” She takes a sip of her coffee, even though it’s radiating steam. A smudge of her bright-red lipstick remains on the rim. “And then it just happened.”
I must have been giving her some crazy look, because she says, “Michelle Packer, I’m not some virginal sacrifice. I know what I’m doing. Geoff didn’t trick me into having . . . into becoming intimate.”
She calls him Geoff.
“What do y’all do?” I ask. “You know, other than sex?”
“We discuss news and books. We eat all types of food. Thai. Indian. Sushi. We drink wine and —”
“He gets you drunk?”
Roxie gives me a bored sigh. “You remember how much it takes to get me tipsy, right?”
She’s right about that. Neither Maurice nor I could keep up with her when she was chugging tequila shots.
“Chelle, he’s so amazing.” Roxie leans into the table. “I hope you find a man like him in college.”
My fingers tighten around my cup. “Maurice and I don’t plan to break up.”
“Oh? I thought you and Maurice were just hanging out for the rest of the school year. Having fun. I didn’t know y’all had really gotten back together.”
“Things changed.” I play with my straw. “We’re going to try to make it work.”
She arches her eyebrows but doesn’t say anything else. For this, I’m grateful. She told me that she didn’t think I had the guts to break up with him long-term, and I hated proving her right.
“So what happens after you graduate?” I ask. “Are y’all going to stay together? Are y’all going to tell people?”
“We’ll see. Dallas is only a few hours away.” She grins. “If you and Maurice can make it work, maybe Geoff and I can, too.”
Mr. and Mrs. Wesley are at a business dinner, so of course I’m in Maurice’s room, his body pressed against mine, our legs tangled together. This is the part I love the most. Just lying here. In a real bed. With real sheets.
I glance at his alarm clock. I’ll have to go soon. Maybe it’s different for Roxie, but for me, sleeping over at my boyfriend’s house is not allowed — eighteen or not.
I keep telling myself that it’ll be different in college, but the only times Maurice and I will see each other is when I’m back in Clear Lake. When we’re sneaking into his bedroom or making out in my car.
Maurice is the only boy I’ve ever slept with. He’s good to me. Kind. But is that enough?
He knocks on my forehead. “You there?”
“Just thinking.” I snuggle against him and kiss his shoulder. “Do you remember Mr. Sumner?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have gotten into U of H without him.”
I play connect-the-dots with three acne scars on his shoulder. Mr. Sumner had helped a lot of students, including me. He was the one who kept pushing me and Roxie to take all those AP classes. He also told me that once I got to college, I’d need to “seriously reconsider my social network.” I knew he had been talking about Maurice — who’d just been written up for mooning the tennis team.
“Did you ever hear any rumors about him?” I ask. “Like maybe he was a little too friendly with students?”
Maurice turns onto his back. “Yeah. Once. Last semester, one of the cross-country guys told me that Karen Doyle blew Mr. Sumner to get a recommendation letter.” He laughs. “At least that’s one skill she can use in college. Lots of professors at Tech.”
I thump his arm. “Not funny.”
He frowns. “Since when do you care so much about Karen? She was a bitch. You said so yourself.”
No one had liked Karen — her mission was to make everyone feel like they were beneath her, but still . . . “Forget it. Let’s talk about something else.”
His fingers find my thigh. “You want to talk? Or . . .”
I squeeze his hand — both to reassure him and to stop him from inching toward my crotch. I’m sore from his fingers — all bones and joints. “I’m a little tired. Okay?”
“Yeah. No problem.” He sits up, pulling the sheet with him. “It’s getting late. My parents will be home soon.”
He slips on his jeans and walks away. I glance at the clock again. Even though I have twenty minutes, it’s time to go.
The next day, Roxie and I set up a time to get together. But on Saturday, a few minutes before she’s supposed to pick me up, she sends me a message saying that she has to cancel. When I text back, she doesn’t respond.
I’m beyond pissed.
She doesn’t come to school on Monday — I figure she’s avoiding me. But when Wednesday rolls around and she still isn’t there, I head to her house.
She smiles a little after cracking open the door. Her hair is pulled into a loose side braid, and she’s abandoned her contacts for glasses. The skin around her eyes is dark and sagging. “Hey, Chelle. Sorry about canceling. I’ve been under the weather.” She shrugs. “But I’ll be at school tomorrow.”
I wait for her to let me in, but she doesn’t. I want to turn away, accept the answer she’s given me, ignore the dried tears on her cheeks.
But we have six years of history. She’s still my friend. I have to ask.
“Roxie, are you . . . ?” My gaze falls to her stomach. She’d had a scare before. She had promised to be more careful. But mistakes could still happen.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can tell me.”
I lock onto her eyes as she pieces together my question. Her mouth drops open. “No. God, no! I’m just . . .” She steps onto the porch and pulls the door closed behind her. “Geoff broke up with me. I mean, it was mostly mutual, but still, I didn’t want to be around anyone.”
“What happened?”
She looks at her feet. Her toenails sport a fresh coat of sparkly pink polish. “Some woman answered his cell last week. He said it was his sister, but he must have forgotten that he’d already told me he was an only child.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “I don’t blame him,” she says. “He probably wants someone older. Someone more sophisticated. More experienced.”
“Or maybe he’s a dick.” Or worse.
“The last time I talked to him, he told me I should forget about him and go off to college. Be with people my age.” Her eyes begin to tear. “Maybe he wants to do the same.”
I step closer to her and take a deep breath. “Have you thought about talking to someone about — ?”
“Michelle, how many times do I have to tell you — I knew what I was doing.” She crosses her arms. “When Geoff and I started seeing each other, he asked me if I was mature enough to handle a real relationship. I told him I was. There’s no way I’m going to prove him wrong now, just because it’s over.”
“Roxie . . .”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.” Her eyes, even filled with tears, are cold and hard. “And you aren’t, either. Right?”
I slowly nod. “Right.”
When I get home, I go straight to my iMac. It only takes a few seconds to find the pictures from Mr. Sumner’s going-away party. I locate the photo of him and the Quiz Bowl team. Roxie is on his left. Beaming. His arm is low around her waist, his fingers curled between her hip and thigh.
Mr. Sumner’s other arm is around Travis, but safely at the boy’s shoulder.
In the photos where Mr. Sumner is hugging students, he’s mostly giving the safe, sideways, one-armed hugs that teachers always give. That is, except when he’s hugging Roxie. And a girl named Trish. And Karen Doyle. Those are full-frontal contact.
I continue looking through the files until Maurice texts me, asking if I want to come over to play his Xbox.
The next morning, during first period, I knock on Ms. Noel’s door and enter her classroom. This is her free period, but she’s used to me coming in to do stuff for yearbook.
She holds out her hand, waiting for the hall pass.
I shake my head. It’s like something is stomping on my chest, making it hard to talk. Hard to breathe. I’ve felt like this for the past twenty minutes, ever since I saw Roxie at her locker. Staring at her phone.
Maybe Mr. Sumner really did break up with her for someone older. Someone more sophisticated.
But what if he didn’t?
“I don’t have a pass,” I finally manage to say. “I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t take a chance . . .”
Ms. Noel rises from her chair. “Michelle? What’s wrong?” Whatever she sees in my face makes her frown.
I think back to the roommate application I turned in last month. I don’t know who I’ll be living with, but it won’t be Roxie. Not after this.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” I hand her Roxie’s phone. “Actually, there’s something I need to show you.”
ANN ANGEL is the author of the 2011 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing, among many other biographies. Previously she served as contributing editor for the anthology Such a Pretty Face: Short Stories About Beauty. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA program in writing for children and young adults, Ann Angel directs the English graduate program at Mount Mary University, in Milwaukee, where she lives with her family. She was drawn to the idea behind Things I’ll Never Say because she believes that the secret self is often the true self.
KERRY COHEN is the author of nine books, including three young adult novels, Easy, The Good Girl, and It’s Not You, It’s Me, and the best-selling memoir Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Kerry Cohen practices psychotherapy and can be found writing about all her secrets in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with the writer James Bernard Frost and their four children.
LOUISE HAWES is the author of two short-fiction collections and more than a dozen novels. Her work has won awards from the American Library Association, Bank Street College, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New York Public Library, the Children’s Book Council, the Independent Booksellers Association, the International Reading Association, and the American Association of University Women, among others. She helped found and teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA program in writing for children and young adults. Louise Hawes is the perfect person to share your secrets with, since she can’t remember lunch dates, doctor’s appointments, or the punch line to a single joke!
VARIAN JOHNSON is the author of four novels, including My Life as a Rhombus and Saving Maddie, a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the year. His first novel for younger readers, The Great Greene Heist, was published in 2014. He has always been intrigued by the secrets we keep from others and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
ERICA L. KAUFMAN lives in Providence, Rhode Island, in an old, tilted red house with her needy cat and her less-needy husband. Originally from New Hampshire, she earned her BFA from Emerson College in writing, literature, and publishing and her MFA in writing for young people from Lesley University. She says, “One of the most vivid and complicated aspects of adolescence is having to constantly decide, often based on instinct alone, which parts of our lives are safe to reveal to others. As a writer, I was particularly interested in the theme of secrets as a way to examine closely how adolescents cultivate and possess many fractured identities at once. I approached the idea of secrets as synonymous with the idea of survival. I focused on the secrets we keep that, if revealed, would dramatically alter the current place we hold in the world.”
RON KOERTGE writes fiction for young adults and poetry for everybody. Among his books for young adults are Coaltown Jesus and Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses, and his books of poetry are Fever and The Ogre’s Wife. He loves to bet on Thoroughbred racehorses, but only four days a week. “Secrets have always intrigued me,” says Ron Koertge, “but that’s my only secret and now everybody knows.”
E. M. KOKIE is drawn to stories about characters on the cusp of life-changing moments. Often those moments involve revealing the secrets we keep from others and discovering the secrets we keep even from ourselves. Her debut novel, Personal Effects, involves both kinds of secrets. Personal Effects was chosen as an American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults selection and an Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Top Ten selection.
CHRIS LYNCH is the author of several young adult and middle-grade novels, including Hit Count and Killing Time in Crystal City. He is also the author (pseudonymously and otherwise) of several other novels. He teaches in Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing. Chris Lynch believes that we should all be granted a certain number of badnesses that we are allowed to keep close and take to the grave with us. “Seven,” he says. “Seven sounds about right.”
KEKLA MAGOON is the author of the young adult novels Camo Girl, 37 Things I Love, Fire in the Streets, and The Rock and the River, which won the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award for New Talent. She also writes nonfiction on historical topics, including Today the World Is Watching You: The Little Rock Nine and the Fight for School Integration, 1957. Raised in a biracial family in the Midwest, Kekla Magoon teaches writing, conducts school and library visits nationwide, and serves on the Writers Council for the National Writing Project. She says, “Secrets are a kind of power. There’s a rush that comes from knowing something no one else knows, and when you share your secret, you give someone a means to either understand and connect with you or reject or hurt you.”
ZOË MARRIOTT lives on the blustery east coast of England with a growing library of more than ten thousand books, which will eventually bury her alive. Her first young adult novel, The Swan Kingdom, was published to international critical acclaim when she was twenty-four, and she has since written four more, including the Japanese-influenced Cinderella retelling Shadows on the Moon, from which her short story in this anthology grew. “When I was a teenager, part of my process of growing up lay in realizing that my secrets didn’t have to be weaknesses — in fact, they had the potential to make me stronger. But only if I had the courage to turn them inside out and wear them proudly.”
KATY MORAN lives in the Welsh Borders with her husband and children. She wrote her first novel at the age of ten and became a published author later in life, inspired by a piece of jewelry given to her as a present. The brooch was sold by an antiques dealer as a fake but turned out to be a thousand years old. For Katy Moran, it acted like a time machine, taking her back into the mysterious past of the British Isles. “What I love most about secrets is their ambivalence — keeping them or not can lead to such devastating consequences. Do our friends and family always have the right to know the truth about our actions, or sometimes is it kinder to leave people in ignorance? Can telling the truth even be actively selfish — more about salving our own consciences than about the best interests of those we love? Do we have the right to decide what is in the best interests of others? Secrets are thorny and complicated.”
J. L. POWERS is the award-winning author of three young adult novels, The Confessional, This Thing Called the Future, and Amina; editor of two collections of essays, Labor Pains and Birth Stories and That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone; and a picture book, Colors of the Wind: The Story of Champion Runner and Blind Artist George Mendoza. She has some secrets but will usually divulge them over a cup of coffee to a friendly person.
MARY ANN RODMAN is the author of two middle-grade novels, Yankee Girl and Jimmy’s Stars, as well as a number of picture books. As the daughter of an FBI agent, she learned that people have reasons for secrets lives. She lives her own un-secret life with husband and daughter in Alpharetta, Georgia.
CYNTHIA LEITICH SMITH is the best-selling
and award-winning author of the Feral and Tantalize series, both set in the universe featured in “Cupid’s Beaux.” You can look for more of Joshua and Quincie, and get a glimpse of Jamal, in those novels. Cynthia Leitich Smith says, “Writing is the boldest way I share glimpses of my secret self. I’m never more honest, more exposed, than in my fiction for teen readers.”
ELLEN WITTLINGER is the author of fourteen young adult and middle-grade novels, including Hard Love, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and a Lambda Literary Award winner. Her book This Means War! was a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the year. She has also taught in the Simmons College MFA program. Ellen Wittlinger says that if you want your secrets to stay secret, don’t tell her. After all, she’s a writer.
It is no secret that it takes many creative people to produce an anthology, including writers, editors, designers, and the people who inspire us. My gratitude goes out to all who helped make this anthology possible. First shout-out goes to senior editor Hilary Van Dusen, who saw such possibility in the theme of secrets. She eagerly championed and connected writers so that our anthology could reach wide audiences with diverse stories. Thank you, Hilary.
Gratitude also goes out to agent Tracey Adams, who also embraced the theme of secrets and was quick to champion the writers and the collection even as she started to come up with marketing ideas for the complete book.
Assistant editor Miriam Newman’s incredible knowledge of fantasy and fairy tale as well as contemporary realism ensured that each story is accurate and rich in detail. Designers also brought their talents to this work: Nathan Pyritz developed the interior designs while Pam Consolazio created the jacket design. When I learned that collage artist Wayne Brezinka would be creating the cover for this anthology, I couldn’t have been more excited. His bold designs and bright colors are extraordinary.
The writers on these pages proved eager to challenge themselves with stories of secrets. Their stories allow readers to witness moments of unexpected honesty and to recognize the cost of hiding our true selves behind our secrets. Among the writers in this anthology, debut writer erica l. kaufman was inspired to write a heartbreaking story of family secrets. Erica was invited to contribute by Chris Lynch, who advised and mentored her in the MFA program at Lesley University.