Things I’ll Never Say (27 page)

I know that what I'm doing is wrong. Certainly against school rules. Still, with Mr. Townsend's hall pass in my back pocket, I creep to Roxie's locker. It's the same pink padlock she's always used.

It's even easier to unlock her phone.

From what I can tell, her mystery guy is saved as “G.” In his texts, he calls her Roxanne.

I open the photo gallery app. Most of the pictures are crap — fuzzy, oversaturated selfies of Roxie looking all boobilicious. Being the yearbook photographer has spoiled me — now I refuse to snap anything with my cell phone.

I keep scrolling and finally get to the good stuff. A boy's chest.

No. A man's chest. Big, hairy, and muscular. Nothing like Tracy Merrill's body.

Two pictures later, I see a face and I almost drop the phone.

Geoff Sumner.

Roxie was right. He isn't at our school, but he used to be last year.

He was our counselor.

Roxie shows up at the coffee shop five minutes early. She buys a cup of coffee — black — then walks to the table.

“I can't believe you broke into my locker,” she says after sitting down across from me. Her voice is surprisingly normal. I wonder if I'm the first person she's told about this.

“Well, I can't believe you're sleeping with a teacher.”

“Counselor.”

“Whatever.”

“He works at another school. In another district.” She shrugs. “I checked. It's not against the rules. Anyway, I'm eighteen. I'm an adult.”

“It's gross. He's, like, thirty-five. He has gray hair.”

“Well, he's incredible in bed. He's so experienced. He's —”

“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.

It may be an eighteen-year-old's version of a date, but today it sounds perfect.

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.”

A
NN
A
NGEL
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.

K
ERRY
C
OHEN
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.

L
OUISE
H
AWES
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!

V
ARIAN
J
OHNSON
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.