The Secrets Between You and Me

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The Secrets Between You and Me Page 23

by Shana Norris


  I looked up and noticed Molly studying my reflection in the mirror. “I mean for my dad. For the bills. I don’t like for him to worry so much about money.”

  “I have two hundred dollars saved up that I could loan you.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, but I can’t take your money. I know you’re saving it for a new computer.”

  Molly shrugged. She ran her fingers through her hair and then straightened the sparkly silver belt buckled around her skinny jeans. “There will be plenty of new computers in my future. The offer stands if you need it. Now, if you don’t have any further complaints about Elliott, I’m going to go catch up with him and tell him my answer. You coming?”

  I shook my head and pretended to be extremely interested in the contents of my backpack. “No, I have to find something. You go ahead.” The last thing I wanted to do was watch Elliott and Molly flirt.

  Once the door had closed behind her, a toilet flushed and one of the stalls opened. Hannah Cohen walked out, carrying her backpack over one shoulder. She silently stepped up to the sinks, and the faucet squeaked as she turned the knobs. I immediately regretted not tagging along with Molly to meet Elliott—anything would be better than being stuck in a small space with Hannah. I frantically tried to zip my backpack closed so I could make my escape, but before I could, Hannah turned to me and said, “Hello, Avery.”

  “Hi,” I said, my hand still tugging on my backpack’s zipper pull. My guard immediately went up. Hannah never talked to me, unless it was to ask me something during a meeting.

  Hannah smoothed out a wrinkle in the red cardigan she wore despite the hot day outside. The white roses along the bottom edge matched the white rose on her headband. Her dark brown hair fell in perfect curls around her shoulders and her skirt was the exact knee-length required by the school dress code. Hannah was the very example of the model student.

  “Nice job on that history quiz last week, Avery,” Hannah said, her perfectly white teeth gleaming as she continued, “You even got the bonus questions. Bravo.”

  “Stop sneaking peeks at the teachers’ grade books,” I responded. “You wouldn’t want to get caught and ruin your perfect reputation.”

  Hannah gave me a fake smile. “At least I have a reputation to worry about. Does anyone outside of student council or the math club even know who you are?”

  I was in no mood to stand there all day and admire the witchy green tone of Hannah’s skin in the bathroom’s horrible lighting. “It’s been nice chatting with you, but I have to go.” I moved toward the door, finally zipping up my backpack and throwing it over my shoulder.

  “Wait,” Hannah called out. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “You’re not my type,” I said, glaring at her teardrop diamond necklace, which glittered brightly, despite the dingy lighting.

  Hannah sneered. “Ha ha. I mean a business proposition. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I know how upsetting it would be if you missed your chance at being a hero, helping all those poor, sick people.”

  Panic spread through me, tingling in my fingers and toes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” How had Hannah found out about my trip? I hadn’t even told my family or Molly!

  “Sure you don’t,” Hannah said with a smirk. “I know all about your trip to Costa Rica. You dropped one of those brochures as you were leaving calculus a few weeks ago. It sounds exactly like something you would do, making yourself feel better by hanging around people whose lives are worse than yours.”

  “That’s not why I’m going,” I snapped. “Unlike you, I want to help people.”

  Hannah’s mouth narrowed into a thin, straight line as she looked at me. “You always have liked helping people, haven’t you?”

  I sighed, rolling my eyes toward the ceiling. “Can we forget the games and get to the point? What do you want?”

  “I want you to steal my boyfriend.”

  It took several moments for what she had said to sink into my brain, and then my mouth dropped open and my head felt like it was on the verge of exploding. “You want to break up with Zac?” I exclaimed.

  Hannah scowled. “Think you could say that any louder? Yes, I want to break up with Zac. But I want him to be the one to dump me. That’s where you come in.”

  My head spun with questions, but I asked the first one I managed to force out. “Why are you breaking up with Zac?”

  Hannah shrugged. “That’s my business.”

  “Okay.” I shifted my backpack farther up my shoulder, gripping the purple strap tight. “So why not break up with him yourself?”

  “Oh, yes, because that would be great for my reputation, wouldn’t it?” Hannah said, frowning and once again readjusting her red cardigan. “In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of people around here really like Zac. There’s talk that he may be voted junior king. If I dump him right before the junior queen vote, I’ll be ruined.”

  Junior queen? Hannah didn’t want to risk losing our school’s biggest, stupidest, end-of-the-year popularity contest? Class king and queen didn’t even mean anything; I doubted Yale cared whether or not Hannah won class queen for the third time.

  That was exactly why I didn’t believe in love. Zac Greeley had no clue Hannah wanted to break up with him. You could go through each day thinking everything was perfectly fine with your relationship and that you loved each other so much, when in reality your significant other was plotting ways to get rid of you.

  “Can’t you get him to dump you on your own?” I asked. “I’m sure if you show him your true personality, he’ll drop you in a second.”

  Hannah’s laugh echoed off the mint green tiles around us. “Don’t you think I’ve already considered that? I’ve tried for the last two months to get him to break up with me. I’ve been rude, I’ve canceled dates, I’ve ignored him. He doesn’t take the hint. Getting him to fall for you is my last resort.”

  I leaned against the wall, the cool tiles offering some relief to my flushed skin. “And how will helping you break up with Zac help me?”

  “I told you, it’s a business proposition,” Hannah repeated, tossing her brown hair over her shoulder. “You do this for me, I’ll make sure you get the money you need to make it to Costa Rica. We both get what we want.”

  No way. There had to be catch. Why would Hannah Cohen do anything to help me get something I wanted?

  I glanced at the heavy bathroom door, aware that at any moment someone else could walk in and overhear this entire conversation. This wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted spread around the school, especially not to Molly. “Why me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “Can’t you find someone heartless enough in this school to do this for you?”

  “Aren’t you heartless enough, Avery? You certainly acted like you were that day in Elliott’s basement.” She shrugged and waved a perfectly manicured hand, brushing off my question. “You already have experience in stealing my boyfriends. This will make us even.”

  “I didn’t steal Elliott from you,” I said as I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans.

  “No, but you ruined everything,” Hannah said in a low voice. “It wasn’t just your friendship with the two of us you killed that day.”

  My fingernails dug into my palms. I would not cry in front of Hannah. She would not have the satisfaction of seeing that she still had this effect on me, even four years later.

  “Go find someone else to do your dirty work,” I grumbled, trying to push past her toward the door.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve grown a conscience now,” Hannah said.

  I started to pull the door open, but her next words stopped me. “If you don’t do it, I’ll tell Molly all about your make-out session with Elliott back in seventh grade.”

  I turned around to face her, heart pounding against my ribs.

  Hannah smirked. “She doesn’t know, does she? She’s head over heels for him and yet she has no idea why you hate Elliott so much.”

  I sucked in a few deep breath
s as I twisted the zipper pull on my backpack between my fingers. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me. You owe me, Avery. This is your chance to make amends for your mistake.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you in or out?”

  I shook my head, but then Hannah played her final hand, the one she knew I couldn’t refuse.

  “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”

  I froze. Did she say five hundred dollars?

  Hannah pulled her red and white leather checkbook from her matching purse. “Two hundred now, three hundred when the job is done. Prom is in a week and a half, and I plan to be single when they name me junior queen. You have until then to win Zac over. Last chance. In or out?” She opened the checkbook and eyed me, her pen poised over the paper.

  Five hundred dollars. It was probably nothing to her. Hannah used to live across the street from me, next door to Elliott’s family. But a couple years ago, the bank her father owned went national and made him a ton of money. Now the Cohens lived in a big house in a gated community within Willowbrook’s wealthier district. For Hannah, five hundred was a small blip in her bank account.

  But five hundred dollars was everything to me. It was the difference between getting on a plane to Costa Rica and wearing a giant hot dog all summer, again, just to keep my clunker car alive.

  So who was Zac Greeley to me anyway? Just a guy I went to school with. We weren’t friends—I don’t know that’d we’d ever had a real conversation.

  I licked my dry tongue over my lips. “I’m in,” I croaked out.

  Hannah wrote out the check and ripped it from the checkbook, a triumphant smile on her perfectly powdered face. “That’s what I thought.”

  The bell rang and I walked out of the bathroom, letting the heavy door slam behind me.

  The check for two hundred dollars sat snugly in my pocket as I made my way down the hallway. I suddenly felt wide-awake, my body buzzing with excitement. One step closer to Costa Rica. All I had to do was get Zac to break up with Hannah. How hard could that be?

  Chapter Three

  “For the next two weeks,” said my history teacher, Mr. Freeman, “we will be conducting an experiment.”

  Most of the class groaned at his words. US history wasn’t exactly a class where you expected to do experiments. Everyone liked Mr. Freeman, who was only a couple years out of college and had a laid- back style of teaching, but nowhere in the course description was there anything about experiments.

  Mr. Freeman held up his hands. “It won’t be that bad. Over the past month, we’ve studied the economic collapse of the Great Depression. Now you’ll learn firsthand about the ins and outs of running a company and see how well you could do during turbulent times. You will be splitting into pairs. Each pair will create a business from the ground up. You’ll write a business plan, prepare a loan proposal, and receive daily reports about how your business is doing. Along the way, you’ll have a few twists thrown in, which I will decide randomly.”

  I tried to focus on Mr. Freeman’s explanation of the project, but my gaze kept drifting over to Zac Greeley, who sat a couple of rows away. I needed to figure out a way to win him over so I could get the rest of the money from Hannah, but I didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin. I didn’t exactly have much experience with guys.

  My stomach twisted deep in my gut. I was going to lose the deal with Hannah. This whole plan would fail and I’d once again be short on the cash I needed.

  “I will be taking volunteers for this assignment,” Mr. Freeman said. “Or else I can assign pairs for you.”

  His words shook me out of my thoughts and I shot my hand up in the air. Molly looked at me and winked. I knew she was already thinking she’d be my partner.

  I couldn’t meet Molly’s gaze as I said, “I’d like to be paired with Zac Greeley.”

  There was a murmur of surprise around the room. I knew what the rest of my classmates were thinking. Zac was the class clown and I was serious about my schoolwork. They couldn’t imagine why I would want to be partnered with him.

  Zac turned to look at me from his seat a few rows away and gave me the thumbs up sign. I smiled back weakly, trying not to notice that his brown hair was messy and one shoelace was untied. I doubted he’d take this seriously, which meant my perfect grade point average was in jeopardy. Plus, I’d probably have to keep track of all of the materials because he’d probably lose or drop something in a puddle. I wrinkled my nose as I took in the sight of his dirty Converse. The bottom of his left shoe was held in place with duct tape.

  I was mentally preparing to do the entire project myself so it would be done well, but it would be worth it to go to Costa Rica.

  Mr. Freeman took a few more partner volunteers before he began assigning pairs at random. I crossed my fingers that Molly would be paired with someone she could easily work with, still feeling guilty that I didn’t choose her.

  “The final team,” said Mr. Freeman, “is Nathan Thompson and Molly Pinski.”

  “I demand a redraw!” Molly exclaimed. She looked over at Nathan, who was a skinny boy with huge glasses. He was my treasurer in the math club and was a nice, though very quiet, guy. “No offense, Nate,” she told him, even though Molly knew for a fact that Nathan hated to be called Nate. His forehead scrunched into a scowl over his glasses.

  The rest of the class passed by in a blur, and when the bell rang signaling the end of class, Zac came over as I gathered my books.

  “Hey, partner,” he said, smiling wide.

  “Hi,” I said, unable to resist smiling back at him. Zac had one of those smiles that was infectious.

  “So I guess we should set up a time and place to meet so we can brainstorm,” Zac said. “I have a few ideas already, but you can tell me if they’re stupid. Because sometimes I come up with these crazy plans and I don’t even realize how crazy they are until I’m riding down the sidewalk on a skateboard attached to a pack of miniature poodles. Which, trust me, isn’t exactly the best method of transportation.”

  “Well, we can—” My hands froze in midair, my history book only halfway inside my backpack, and my head snapped up to look at him. “Wait. What?”

  Zac laughed. “Just something I tried to do a couple weeks ago. My neighbor’s dogs didn’t appreciate it. Neither did my neighbor.”

  I shook my head to clear away the image of Zac riding a dog- powered skateboard. “What if we meet after school today, in the library?”

  Zac nodded and brushed at his long dark bangs, which flopped right back down in front of his eyes as soon as he moved his hand. “Sure, I can do that,” he said, as we walked toward the classroom door, where Molly was waiting for me. “See you around,” he called, waving at me.

  Molly and I left the classroom and started down the hall, where glittery posters advertising the prom lined the walls. The work of Hannah, I was sure. She was chairperson of the prom committee.

  “Why would you pick Zac as your partner?” Molly asked, flicking a pink braid off of her cheek.

  “I can’t tell you right now,” I said.

  Molly made a noise of indignation. “You can’t even tell me, your bestest friend in the entire universe?”

  Molly’s hurt tone made me feel even guiltier. The heaviness on my shoulders felt like I was dragging around a two-ton rock behind me. But I couldn’t explain it to Molly right now. I had to do this on my own.

  “I have to go,” I said, speeding up to get away from Molly. “I have to run by my locker and then the library before my next class.”

  “But—”

  I didn’t give her a chance to say whatever it was she was about to say. If I stuck around, the guilt might make me spill everything. I knew Molly wouldn’t approve of the deal I’d made with Hannah, so I had to keep it a secret right now, just until I got the money.

  I waved quickly and then disappeared into the mass of students, leaving my best friend behind.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day avoiding Molly as m
uch as possible, skipping lunch and hiding out in the band room instead. I knew Molly would never think to look for me behind the huge tuba cases. I spent the hour looking up any information I could find about Zac on my phone. While his online profile had funny quotes and pictures, I couldn’t find anything that really tapped into Zac’s inner self.

  Once school ended, I kept a close watch for Molly’s familiar pink and blonde hair as I slipped into the library. I let out a sigh of relief when I didn’t see Molly anywhere.

  Zac waved to me from a table nearby and stood as I approached.

  “Ready to get started?” I asked. I wasn’t sure which made me more anxious—working with Zac on this project or convincing him to break up with Hannah.

  “Actually, I’m pretty hungry.” Zac clutched his flat abdomen. “I can’t think on an empty stomach. How about we get something to eat?”

  My own stomach growled at the mention of food. Skipping lunch had not been a good idea.

  Zac grinned and poked the sleeve of my black-and-white striped shirt. “Sounds like you could use a good meal too. How about we go over to Perfect Pepper?”

  “Where is that?”

  Zac’s mouth dropped open, his brown eyes wide. “You’ve never been to Perfect Pepper?”

  I shook my head, wisps of red hair tickling my cheeks. “Never heard of it.”

  He clasped his hands over his heart. “I don’t think I can survive a tragedy of this magnitude. Perfect Pepper is only the best place to eat in all of Willowbrook,” he proclaimed loudly, earning a glare from the librarian, who was shelving books nearby.

  I gave Zac a skeptical look. “What do they serve?”

  But Zac shook his head, scribbling the address on a scrap of paper and handing it to me. “If you’ve never been there, I’m not telling you anything about it. I don’t want you to get any preconceived ideas before you try it.

  Fifteen minutes later, I thought I must have had the wrong address. I stared at the crumbling, seedy strip mall through my windshield, working up the nerve to actually get out of the car. I couldn’t imagine myself ever voluntarily entering this place, let alone being willing to eat in a restaurant there. Several of the storefronts were empty, with broken windows and doors latched shut with heavy chains. The stores that were still open didn’t look much better. The sign over Perfect Pepper was only half lit and the last R had fallen off. I imagined giant cockroaches scurrying around in corners and unwashed cooks rubbing their dirty hands in the food.

 

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