Secrets Are No Fun

Chapter 3

I threw my blanket on the floor and flopped myself up and down in my bed. I sat up and leaned against my hard headboard and crossed my arms over my chest. It was 11:00 at night and Mom just called to tell me that she was almost home but stuck in traffic. I guess that explained where she had been for the past two hours, but what about the entire afternoon? I told myself to breath and try to let it go. If Mom had a “boo boo” then she had every right to miss one dinner. It shouldn’t be the end of the world. Though to me, it was. I tried to think about something else that would help calm me down. The first thing that popped into my head was the first day of fifth grade.

I was really nervous the first day of school. Everyone knows that fifth grade is a hard year. That’s why before I stepped onto the school bus on my very first day Mom gave me an extra big hug.  I knew I could handle the homework. Spelling tests were easy and math problems can be solved- especially after asking my genius brother for help. But there were a couple of things that I knew I just couldn’t handle and that’s what made me so nervous about being in fifth grade.

My friends started talking to boys. It wasn’t usually a problem because my school separated boys and girls. The boys were on one side of the school and the girls were on the other. Things were good that way. Everyone knew were to go and who to be friends with and it was never a problem. But during the summer my friend Tali became friends with a lot of boys and I knew that she was going to come back and make everyone crazy about them. That’s what Tali always did. She made a big deal about something silly like even a hairstyle and then she got everyone to wear their hair that way no matter how silly they looked. I didn’t know why things happened like that, but that’s how my grade worked. I was thankful to have Jamie my best friend because together we could make everyone realize that Tali wasn’t so special and her hair looked super dumb.

I knew I shouldn’t be afraid of talking to boys because they are very similar to girls, but I was completely and totally scared. And the weirdest part was that I always had boys at my house. You see my twin brother Sam was pretty cool. He always had friends over and most of the time they even slept over so he gave me perfect opportunities to socialize and be my friendly self. But I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of talking to them. And it was even worse that the boys he brought over got to see me every morning right when I woke up. Bad breath, messy hair and cutesy pajamas. And sometimes they got front row seats to a fight between my mom and me. So I should have felt comfortable in front of them, right? No, I didn’t.

Instead of being thankful to my brother for giving me any young girls dreams of having boys around all the time, I hated him for it! Instead of thinking that it was so cute that my brother and his friends left the kitchen a mess, I wondered why in the world the boys couldn’t put away their cereal bowls. Instead of wishing that Sam and his friends watched a movie with me, I hogged the remote control and watched romantic comedies- those girlie movies that even I thought were too girlie. And instead of talking to my brother and his friends on the couch in my living room, I stayed in my room wishing that his friends would leave.

So that’s how I felt. To me, boys were aliens. And I did not want to speak to them EVER.

And even worse than that was the Period Movie. This year we’d be watching the most horrifying movie in the entire universe. With my teacher. In English class. A movie about how your body changes and what you can do to stay clean and healthy. I mean, how many ways can you say that you’re going to grow boobs and hair in many different places without making kids laugh or, even worse, throw up? Add in the fact that my teacher was going to watch it with us and I think I could safely say that the hour-long movie would officially become the worst hour of my life.

           

Thinking about that started making me really hot so I got up and opened the window. That’s when I heard a car door close and the beep of the car locking. My entire body perked up as I realized Mom was home.

“MOM!” I ran to the top of the staircase and looked down. There she was. Standing in the doorway taking off her shoes. Dad came in behind her looking more tired then he did after a long day of work.

“Hi, sweetie.” Mom looked up the stairs at me. “I’m sorry I’m so late. Go to sleep please. We’ll talk in the morning. I love you.”

And for some reason I didn’t fight with her. Maybe I was just happy that she was home or maybe I was just tired of crying. I went back into my bed and stared at the ceiling for another hour. I tried not think about “boo boo’s” or fifth grade or boys or periods or anything that would make me nervous. Instead I came up with a plan: to find out what Mom’s “boo boo” was.