Dirty Little Secrets

dear,” she said. Her voice was shaking and her eyes were darting around the room. “Are you girls going out?”

“I was just telling Elaina that she can’t use the bathroom. Because of the remodel.” I sent Mom messages with my eyes to please, please go along with me. She hated lying, but she hated having people in the house even more.

Mom couldn’t keep her hands still, and they flew around her body like they were possessed. She reached out to touch some of the newspapers and to smooth the cover of a National Geographic that had gotten bent, but until she opened her mouth, I wasn’t sure what she would do. “Right. The remodel.” I was afraid Elaina would see my relief. For once, Mom was on my side. She looked directly at Elaina for the first time. “Perhaps we can go next door and ask Mrs. Raj if you can use hers?”

Elaina took one last look around, memorizing the piles of junk that reached almost to the ceiling. “That’s okay,” she said. “I guess I can wait.”

I grabbed my bag, and all three of us slipped out of the house. I didn’t dare look at Elaina, but Mom cut her eyes at me like she’d never been so angry in her life. I knew she’d blame me for letting Elaina in on purpose, even though I spent all my time trying to keep people away. I was glad I was going out, because then maybe she’d cool off by the time I got home.

Mom followed us down the driveway and plastered on a normal-looking smile as she waved to Elaina’s mom in the driver’s seat. “Hi, Victoria,” she said as she reached the van. “Thanks so much for taking Lucy with you.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” Elaina’s mom said.

I pulled the back door open and strapped myself into the van. I tried to stare straight ahead and listen to their conversation, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Elaina had seen. I started to breathe faster and had to will myself to calm down. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. Maybe Elaina would just think the place was a little messy, is all.

After what seemed like an hour and a half, Mom stepped back from the van with a wave. “All set?” Elaina’s mom asked.

“Yup,” Elaina said as the van pulled away from the curb. She watched out the front window as her mother drove, but kept sneaking glances back at me as she talked. I swear I saw her nose wrinkle just a little. That whole afternoon, Elaina seemed normal but distant. There was no way I was going to bring it up, so we just acted like nothing had happened, and I’d hoped that was the end of it. I found out at school on Monday that it was nowhere near the end of it.

The balled-up piece of notebook paper hit me in the back of the head to the sound of giggling from the back of the room. It landed near my right foot, so I bent down to pick it up. As quietly as I could, I straightened it out in my lap so that I could see the cartoon of what was probably supposed to be me, with boogers dripping down my face and flies buzzing around me. I was sitting on top of a mountain of junk and underneath the whole thing were the words “Garbage Girl” written in big black marker.

I looked toward the back of the room, but everyone was staring at their desks, pretending to write in their journals. It could have been anyone, really—aside from Elaina, I didn’t have any real friends. Maybe now I didn’t have any friends at all.

“Lucy, do you have something to share?” The voice from the front of the room echoed in the stillness.

“No, Sister,” I said, and tucked the disgusting drawing away in my notebook.

To my left, Curtis Swanson coughed loudly, but I swear I heard the words “Garbage Girl” come out of his mouth. Over the next couple of weeks, I was going to hear it a lot. Elaina avoided me like I stunk, and I got notes and drawings stuffed in my locker almost every day. I finally told Phil about it after I’d said I had a stomachache and stayed home from school for three straight days. For once he wasn’t a jerk—he was the sympathetic brother I’d always wanted sticking up for me. Now that he was older, Mom treated him more like another adult. Maybe she knew he was on his way out.

I don’t know how he did it, but Phil got Mom to let me go to public school right after that. She said it was because Catholic school was too expensive, but communication wasn’t a strong point in our family. I was just glad the whole “Garbage Girl” episode hadn’t followed me this far. Yet.

I glanced back at the front counter where Josh was helping some more customers. He wasn’t even looking in my direction. I’d missed my chance and he’d already moved on. Probably relieved that I’d changed my mind.

Kaylie picked up her coffee and walked back to the table, squinting at the display on her phone, trying to read a text. “So it looks like I’m meeting Vanessa at nine—are you sure you can’t come?”

I nodded quickly and took another sip of coffee.

“I’m sorry I got all mad at you on the phone. Is it your mom’s head again?” she asked. She looked sympathetic, but that was probably because she had Vanessa as backup. Maybe Kaylie was moving on too.

“Yeah,” I managed, grateful that she’d remembered my lie. Over the past couple of years, I’d told people that Mom had a brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, kidney failure, and irritable bowel syndrome as reasons for why I couldn’t do something or have them over. I always felt a little guilty saying it, like I was jinxing Mom somehow. Maybe I was.

“I thought the brain surgery was supposed to cure the seizures,” she said.

“It will,” I said. “But the doctors said it might take up to a year. She’s… she’s not doing so good right now.”

“That sucks,” she said. She glanced up at the counter where I didn’t dare look again. “I just think Josh would be so good for you, you know? You need to have a little more fun in your life. You’re always so serious.”

I couldn’t answer her. I just looked down and studied my fingernails.

“I mean, I know you don’t let guys rule your life and everything,” she said. “And you don’t care what people think about you. But still.”

All I could do was look at her and nod at this totally distorted image of me that she seemed to have. I’d love to let guys rule my life, if my life was normal. The fact that she thought my hiding from the world was some display of maturity was actually a little sad.

“Are you okay?” Kaylie asked. She leaned her face in closer to mine. “You look funny.”

I plastered a smile on my face. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Maybe later I could come and help you, so that you could get out of there,” she said. “You never let me come over to help, even though you’re all alone with her.”

As she said that, the backs of my eyes started stinging, like I was going to start bawling. The worst part was there was nobody who could help me—nobody that I could even tell. Dad had made it clear that sending money every month was about as much involvement as he wanted with us, and all he’d do was tell me to call 911. Or worse, call them for me. He’d probably be relieved if I could persuade Phil to move back in with me afterward so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it, but I wasn’t convinced that Phil would see things my way. What if I told him what had happened and he called the police? Sara would definitely not see things my way and would have the house surrounded by flashing lights in no time. I had effectively been an orphan for the past eight hours or so, and I had to keep the biggest secret of my life all to myself.

“No. Thanks,” I said. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Kaylie looked at me like she wanted me to say more. “Why… why do you even bother?” I finally asked.

“Bother with what?” Kaylie looked genuinely confused.

I was sure that my nose was bright red by now and that I looked even more pathetic than usual. Luckily, nobody around seemed to be listening. “With me,” I said quietly, wiping my nose to make sure there was nothing dripping. “You’ve got Vanessa and all of your other friends. I just wreck your plans.”

She sat back in her chair. “Are you serious?”

I didn’t say anything else. I knew that I sounded like a whiny pain in the neck, but it might be easier if I just got rid of everyone—all two of them—in one quick afternoon. Maybe after all this was over I could make new friends—have a boyfriend, even, but things were getting too complicated right now.

“First of all,” Kaylie said, “you don’t wreck everything. Okay, yeah, you bail on me sometimes, but you’ve got a lot going on. Do you remember art class last year?”

Of course I did. Kaylie sat at the next table while my partner was the annoying Miles Harris, pitcher for the baseball team and all-around idiot who threatened to ruin my favorite class. I tried to ignore him, and all the girls in the class who would always find excuses to come by our table, by drawing pictures of the house I was going to design someday. Kaylie started talking to me toward the end of the year, first asking to borrow a pen or some paper and later asking me to tag along with her when she went out on the weekends.