No One Needs to Know (9 page)

“It got stolen,” I say, opening my eyes again and glancing over at Olivia, trying to gauge her reaction.

Trying to gauge her pity level, really.

“Oh.” She grips the steering wheel tighter but says nothing.

“It was too small, anyway,” I add. “She’d had the same bike since, like, first grade.”

“We have some of my older ones in our storage unit,” Olivia offers. “There’s one that will probably fit her. And it’s red.”

“It’s fine,” I say, my face warming. This is exactly what I don’t want. From her. From Liam. From anyone. “You don’t need to give us anything.”

Carolyn’s silent in the back seat, but I swear I can feel her hot gaze on the back of my neck. She wants a bike more than anything. She’s had it on her Christmas list for two years.

“See, the thing is … ” Olivia reaches over and taps the down button on her window, then sticks her hand out, letting it wave up and down in the wind. “My dad’s been bugging the crap out of me to empty out the storage room for, like, months. If you take the bike, it would be one less thing I have to haul to Goodwill.”

And then my seat kind of shakes as Carolyn grabs it. “Say yes, say yes, say yes.”

I want to hang on to my protests, to deny Olivia the ability to give me anything, but faced with Carolyn’s enthusiasm, my resistance dies away.

“Um, okay. Sure.”

Olivia flashes me a smile, like she just single-handedly convinced General Lee to surrender in the Civil War. “Cool. Thanks for doing me a solid.”

Right. She knows it’s her who’s granting the favor, making Carolyn happy.

“Sure,” I say, going along with the farce.

“If you want to test it out,” Olivia says, glancing back at Carolyn again, “we can use the big patio along the water. It’s private for the residents.”

“YES!” Carolyn says, bouncing up and down, kicking my seat. “Awesome.”

Twenty minutes later, after Olivia goes into a storage unit somewhere in the labyrinth of their parking garage, Carolyn has her new bike.

Olivia and I sit on the stone ledge of a huge flower planter as Carolyn wobbles back and forth on the bike, gliding past us like a girl out of practice.

“Thank you,” I say quietly, once she’s out of earshot.

Olivia smiles at me, and when I look into her eyes, it’s not pity or charity or anything like that. It’s simply kindness.

“Sure. Any time.” She watches Carolyn make another pass, and then adds quietly, “And thank you, too.”

“For what?”

“For ensuring I didn’t spend my birthday alone.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say.

“It is. You’re the only one who cared. And I’m not even sure why. I haven’t been very nice to you.”

“I don’t know. It just didn’t seem fair. For you to be alone on your birthday, you know?”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to work on our project once she gets tired of this?” Olivia asks, nodding toward Carolyn. “We can use my dad’s office and she can watch movies on our big-screen in the den. We’ve got Netflix and cable and everything.”

“That sounds great,” I say. “My backpack’s in the car. I made some notes earlier for what I want to cover.”

“Cool. I’ll watch your sister, if you want to go get them.”

It’s not until I walk away that I realize it’s the first time anyone else has offered to watch Carolyn—the first time I’ve ever been able to walk away and know that she’s safe.

OLIVIA

“I think your sister likes the surround-sound,” I say as I step into the office space, where Zoey is already spreading out her notes.

“Oh yeah?” She doesn’t looks up from her notes, just chews on her lips and says nothing else.

“Her eyes got big as saucers when the movie started.” I grin. “We have a really cool popcorn maker, too. I flipped it on for her. Hope that’s okay.”

I still can’t believe Zoey showed up today. Can’t understand why she chose to rescue me from the downward spiral of my thoughts. Maybe she’s not who I thought she was. Maybe there’s more to her than the hard looks and the quasi-punk rock style.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure.” She glances at me briefly, and it seems like something in her eyes has shifted. Like I’ve said the wrong thing.

“Something wrong?” I ask, pulling out a chair across the table from her.

“No. It’s fine.”

I narrow my eyes. “So then why do you sound so ann-
oyed?”

Moments tick past, and neither of us speaks. I can just barely hear the low hum when the bass from Carolyn’s movie hits. If I closed the door, we’d be sitting in silence.

“It’s nothing,” Zoey says. “Let’s just work on our assignment.”

“
Okaaaay
,” I say, trying to figure out what’s up with her mood flip. She seemed pretty happy twenty minutes ago, on the patio. “Um, let me see your notes.”

“Why? They’re not about a wealthy person,” she says. “You probably can’t relate.”

I stare at her. “Jeez, what’s your deal all of a sudden? Do I need to call off our BFFdom?”

Zoey slumps in her chair. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a mood. Seeing Carolyn here … how excited she was when she saw that big screen … you have no idea how much you have at your fingertips. How many things are just
handed
to you. If I didn’t have to work at Burgerville all the time, if I didn’t have to help with rent and utilities and think about a thousand things … ”

Oh. That’s what this is? “Look, I know we come from two different … backgrounds,” I say. “But I can’t change that.”

“Whatever,” she mutters under her breath, but her anger has clearly fizzled out. Now she just sounds resigned “Let’s just work, okay?”

“Sure.” The room falls silent and I stare at my empty notebook. “Uh, were you really not going to let me see your notes, though? I’m not sure where to start.”

“I didn’t write them with anyone else in mind,” she says. “They were for my eyes only.”

I stare right at her, and she meets my gaze. And I get the feeling she’s afraid to show me her papers. Like I’m going to laugh at them or judge them or something.

And it’s the strangest thing, but as I stare back, I realize that I
want
Zoey to trust me, that it’s suddenly the most important thing. I want her to see there’s more to me than the things she keeps mocking. I want her to know that I know she’s kept my secret—what little she saw of it—and I’m willing to keep all of hers.

Without breaking eye contact, she slowly lets go of the notebook and I slide it toward me.

The notes don’t appear to be organized, and her writing is frenetic, angled, scribbled in haste. Like she was taking notes about a movie without taking her eyes off the screen.

Dawn to Dusk. Research working environment—hot like Burgerville? First Aid kits?

Hierarchy—supervisors also lower class like Rita is at Burgerville? Is that what they are destined for in 1790, too—no ability to claw up? Lower class for life?

Any way to escape future—opportunities? Or are they stuck like me?

RESPECT—any from upper class? Or are they all like Olivia?

I swallow as I keep scanning the notes. This one page is like seeing her innermost thoughts.

It’s like seeing how she sees herself. The down-trodden, the trapped, the stepped on.

“I just got an idea,” I say.

“And?”

“Instead of writing our parts as factual essays, we should write a fictional account from two people.”

“Like, a short story?”

“Yeah. And our characters should know each other,” I say.

“Why would they know each other?”

“Because the factory where your character works is owned by my character’s family,” I say, for some reason getting excited. “So my character can visit the factory, and she’ll actually see your character working.”

“And mine would see your character, too … ” Zoey says, her voice trailing off.

“Exactly,” I say. “So not only do we, as writers, compare and contrast the characters, but they’ll see the differences between them themselves.”

“And we could alternate the narrative. Start big picture, the basics of their day. The luxuries or lack thereof,” Zoey says, warming to the idea. “And then once they actually get to the factory, they’ll see each other from afar, and make assumptions about one another. And then we’ll slowly boil it down, from those first impressions to the dreams and desires of women back then.”

I grin. “Exactly. Almost like a feminist approach to everyday life—these two girls, trapped by who they are, taking control of their own lives. We could cover a single, fictional day, going back and forth between their points of view, ultimately building toward the moment when they realize they have more in common than they ever thought.”

She sits back in her chair, staring at me like she can’t believe I thought that up. “I like it.”

“I thought you would,” I say, pushing her notebook back toward her. “It’ll delve much deeper than what we’d originally thought. The papers will no longer stand alone as comparisons; they’ll be pretty intertwined.”

“Then I guess you’d better quit slacking and start putting together some notes.”

“I will. But this is going to take more collaboration. You know that, right?” I say.

“You start brainstorming, and I’ll write my first scene and email it to you,” Zoey says. “If you think it works, you add yours and send it back. Each scene should just be a couple of pages, and we’ll each have to write one every other day, to keep it moving and finish on time.”

“Okay.” I dig a pen out of the front pocket of my backpack. “Here’s my email address. Once you send me your scene, we’ll go from there.” Just as I finish writing the dot com part, I glance up at her and scribble down a little more. “And my cell number. In case we need to get together, or you want to ask about my character.”

“Okay,” Zoey says. “I’ll get it to you tomorrow, after my shift.”

“Ugh, you have to work on Sunday?
Again
?”

She nods. “I don’t always, but one of my coworkers talked me into swapping.”

“Oh. Okay, well, I’ll start brainstorming.”

“Sounds good,” Zoey says. “Anyway, I should probably get back home so my mom can use the car.”

“Sure you don’t want to let your sister finish the movie?”

“Some other time, maybe?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

Ten minutes later, I’m in the office alone, scribbling down notes. My pen flies across the page, word after word, idea after idea.

It’s easy to think of all the ways my character would be different than hers.

ZOEY

Olivia’s been on my mind all day while I clean the stupid fryers and run the tomato slicer and sweep the floors, all things that have nothing to do with her.

The mere idea of Olivia herself doing such chores, actually, brings a funny picture to mind. I bet she could rock the visor, though.

The thing is, there was something in that look she gave me when she said she wanted to read my notes. It was this long, lingering gaze that I could practically
feel
, like a heavy blanket draping over me. In that one crazy moment, I would have given her whatever she wanted, my notes included.

She probably uses that look a lot to get what she wants. She could use it on teachers and boys and daddy dearest.

And so I let her see my notebook. I let her read my unfiltered thoughts, the things I’d been scribbling down at Burgerville the day before. The despair and the frustration as I watched the minutes of my break tick away, as I smelled the grease leaching into my clothes, as I listened to the horrible pop music crackling through the overhead speakers.

I’d braced myself for some kind of uncomfortable laugh. For her to look up and smile and shove it back at me with a look that said she felt sorry for me.

But the strangest thing happened instead.

It was like she understood me. Like she knew exactly how I’d felt as I scribbled those things down.

And her new idea for the project is genius. It’s just too bad I have to stay up late tonight to finish it. All I really want is to crawl into bed.

I shove a bag of fries and unsold burgers into my backpack. Carolyn won’t be awake, but she’s not opposed to eating reheated fast-food for breakfast, so I’m not about to let them go to waste.

I’m the last out the door tonight, just like on a lot of other nights. No one likes the closing shift because of all the cleaning, so I get it more often than others.

After zipping up my jacket, I pull my backpack over my shoulders and walk over to the alarm. I glance outside for the first time in more than half an hour—it took that long to wipe everything down and mop—and my heart sinks.

It’s pouring.

I pull my hood over my head, punch in the code, and hit
arm.
And then I dash out onto the sidewalk, locking the door behind me.