Things I’ll Never Say

Introduction

The We-Are-Like-Everybody-Else Game

ELLEN WITTLINGER

Cupid's Beaux

CYNTHIA LEITICH SMITH

Partial Reinforcement

KERRY COHEN

When We Were Wild

LOUISE HAWES

Lucky Buoy

CHRIS LYNCH

For a Moment, Underground

KEKLA MAGOON

Storm Clouds Fleeing from the Wind

ZOË MARRIOTT

Choices

MARY ANN RODMAN

Quick Change

E. M. KOKIE

Call Me!

RON KOERTGE

A Crossroads

J. L. POWERS

Little Wolf and the Iron Pin

KATY MORAN

Three-Four Time

ERICA L. KAUFMAN

We Were Together

ANN ANGEL

A Thousand Words

VARIAN JOHNSON

About the Contributors

Got a secret? Want to share? Two can keep a secret. I
swear.

Or maybe not.

We've all tried to keep secrets — our own and those of our friends. We've crossed our hearts and
promised
that certain words would never pass our lips. But keeping secrets isn't that easy. Sometimes we slip up and a secret comes spilling out before we realize we're the one revealing it. Other times we deliberately reveal secrets with the intention of helping, or maybe even hurting, another.

By nature, secrets are exclusive. Private. Being the holder of a secret gives us tremendous power over the decision to share a secret and let someone into our inner circle or not. By making a friend a confidant of our secrets, we grant power and esteem. There's no question that, even if we gain
more
power by bringing someone else into the circle, we are also betraying ourselves or someone else by revealing that secret to others. But the fact that secrets so quickly find their way beyond a circle of friends indicates our natural desire to belong and our urge to spread what we know despite the risks.

I'm not a secret keeper myself. It's just too hard to keep track of who knows what. So I tell my family and friends not to share things with me if they don't want them repeated.

Still, being in that circle of secrecy intrigues me so much that although I say I don't want to know, I really do. During a writing workshop aptly named “Untold Stories,” I recognized that warning others away from sharing secrets with me might protect their secret selves, but it also left me out, as if I was the only one without status updates or a Twitter feed. I was suddenly ready to swear to silence if only I could hear one friend's most private confession. It was probably at that moment that the idea for this anthology of secrets was born.

Writers are a tell-all bunch, so when I asked potential contributors if they'd want to write about the topic of our secret selves, they seized the theme and poured out tragic, dramatic, and funny stories of our secret keeping and revealing. They gave me stories of those turning-point moments when a kept or disclosed secret reveals an innermost fear. I read about secrets shattering lives and secrets saving a life or a soul.

Some of the stories included here show how we can be motivated and propelled by self-protective secrets. Kerry Cohen, Louise Hawes, Mary Ann Rodman, and debut writer erica l. kaufman share stories of teens whose secrets may shape their future lives. In contrast, Ellen Wittlinger and Ron Koertge look closely at how secrets can be so deep that we keep the truth from ourselves. Varian Johnson takes another turn and looks at the ways in which choosing either secret keeping or telling might betray a friendship. Katy Moran explores how secrets might play out in a fairy tale.

Although there are moments of humor in “Lucky Buoy,” Chris Lynch demonstrates the darker side of secrets, as do J. L. Powers, Kekla Magoon, and E. M. Kokie, who take readers on life-altering flights from the truth of our secret selves. Zoë Marriott creates a magical dance of secrets and truth in “Storm Clouds Fleeing from the Wind.” Secret keeping can also give us a sweet ride, as in Cynthia Leitich Smith's “Cupid's Beaux.”

The stories on these pages are an exciting journey of discovery into the many different and surprising secrets people keep. I enjoyed considering the diverse ways the teens on these pages keep secrets, bring confidants into the secret circle, or purposely betray a friend. With each tale, these writers are inviting you into their characters' inner secrets. Come on in and share their stories.

Ann Angel

“Of course we're going!” Claire says. She tosses her head that way she does, which means
Don't be stupid. I'm right!
Her ponytail bounces from side to side as if it's barely attached to her head.

“But we don't have dates,” Maya says. “At my other school —”

“You're not at your
other
school anymore,” Claire says. “At Throckmorton all the sophomores go to the Sophomore Semi. You don't need a
date.
” She screws up her face as if a date is something disgusting you might have to scrape off the bottom of your shoe, even though I happen to know that Claire would give her left earlobe for a boyfriend.

“Well, not
all
the sophomores go,” I say, although not very loudly. Maya smiles at me in an encouraging way. It's been a long time since I've had any other friend but Claire, and I'm enjoying the triangle we've become since Maya started at Throckmorton this fall. I guess over the years I forgot that a person could actually disagree with Claire, that you didn't have to pretend that she was always a hundred percent right.

Claire rolls her eyes. “
Most
of them do. God, Lucy, do you have to pick apart everything I say? Are you trying to start an argument?”

“Sorry,” I say, backing off. I've never been able to stand up to Claire. She's the only person who knows what goes on at my house, and she's kept the secret for years.

“I'll go if Lucy goes,” Maya says, which surprises me.

“Of course she's going,” Claire says. “We're all going.”

“What do you wear to a semiformal?” Maya wants to know.

“Any pretty dress,” Claire says. “You know, short, sleeveless, that kind of thing.”

Maya nods. “That's easy enough.”

It doesn't sound easy to me, which, of course, Claire knows. She narrows her eyes at me, and I can read the message clearly:
I'll help you figure something out. But you owe me.
I always owe Claire. I probably always will.

Mom is still at work when I get home from school. She works part-time at a library, keeping the books organized on the shelves, which is hilarious if you think about it, which I do.

I go in through the garage door because it's the only one that opens all the way. You can't get in the front door at all anymore. It barely opens wide enough for a cat to slip through due to the stacks of magazines on both sides of the hallway, four feet high and getting deeper all the time. Mom tries to pile them higher, but the top ones keep sliding off onto the floor, where they stay, a carpet of
New Yorker
s and
National Geographic
s on which we slide into the kitchen.

The kitchen is the worst room. For some reason there are more things that can't be thrown away in the kitchen than in any of the other rooms. And some of those things, because they once held food, stink. There's no place to eat in there anymore — the table and chairs and countertops are stacked with papers, old clothes, empty food containers, all sorts of useless garbage. The sink is always full of dirty dishes. I used to wash them, until I realized there was no point to it. If the sink wasn't full of dishes, Mom would just start storing something else there — books, cloth napkins, half-burned candles. Now I just wash two plates, two glasses, two forks, the basics we need to eat a meal.

Here's the thing: Stuff that's trash to other people — junk mail, cash-register receipts, empty Entenmann's coffee-cake boxes, baby clothes that haven't fit me in fourteen years — all of it is important to my mother.
Essential.
If she notices anything missing from one of her piles — and she
does
notice — she starts to panic and cry. Which makes me cry. Anything that comes into our house has to
stay
in our house.