The Art of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

classes with Saba Khan. They’re both on the tennis team. To Kendra, Saba isn’t just a name attached to a random tragedy in the newspaper.
    I wish I could say the auction was our idea, but it was my mom’s. My mom is . . . Put it this way, she’s a big dreamer. Freaking huge imagination. Just between you and me, she’s got a couple of screenplay drafts in a drawer somewhere, in case the whole “sales thing” doesn’t work out for her.
    So at breakfast the day after the fire, Kendra was reading one of the newspaper stories about the Khans. She just about spilled her OJ with excitement, and said something like, “Look, even her initials are the same as mine. Saba Khan, Kendra Spoon, just reversed. Doesn’t that seem like a sign?”
    I said it sounded like a flaky sign to me.
    â€œGood enough,” my mom said. “Flaky signs often guide us in the right direction.”
    And seriously, within minutes, the whole thing appeared in my mom’s head like a movie trailer, and she was literally
performing
for us while we ate our oatmeal. She was like, “Picture an auction scene, okay, which is always fabulous in a movie. Very suspenseful, right? And everybody is gathered in the school gym, a gigantic crowd, parents, students, teachers—”
    I mumbled to Kendra, “Maybe a few rich people, too.”
    Mom frowned at me, I guess for interrupting her flow. “Obviously rich people, Kevin, that’s the whole flipping point. Right? But the Khans would be sitting in the front row. The spotlight is on them, naturally, because
this is the day that will change their lives forever
.”
    Kendra said maybe we could take a dry-erase board from a classroom and set it up near the auctioneer so that someone could write down the sale prices with a gigantic red marker, adding them up in a column that would keep getting longer and longer.
    And Mom was like, “Yes, Kendra! Good! Can’t you imagine the faces on Saba and her family? Imagine the close-up where you can
totally see
in the eyes of these people how much this money is going to mean for them . . .”
    This was so typical of my mom. I mean, like I said, the woman sells air. I assumed this grand inspiration would blow over like all the others. But when we got home from school that night, Mom was still talking her way through the script. The funniest part was that, by then, in her mind,
Kendra and I
were the leads, not the Khans! We would lead the whole thing. Please tell me that’s completely normal “mom” behavior.
    Just to be clear: My sister may
look
like my mom, but that’s where the similarities end. Kendra’s not flaky at all. More than anybody I know, Kendra believes in her personal power to improve the world. She’s always been that way. I give her credit for taking Mom’s lunatic ranting and making it practical and real. And for making
me
believe that we could really do something to help.
    Also, for Kendra . . . I mean, there are other motives. It looks like our family will be in Chicago for a while, so Kendra may actually get three years at Highsmith. As sad as it sounds, and my sister will never admit this, Saba’s tragedy is Kendra’s social opportunity. It’s barely November and people know who my sister is . . . and they
like
her, you know? All because of this auction project.
    Wait—please don’t put that last part in the paper. That sounds cold. Best way to put it is, Kendra and I want to help this family. The whole school does. It’s no big mystery, it’s not crop circles. It just feels good to help people, right? It’s the decent thing to do. That’s where we’re coming from.

Th
e following day, in the faculty lunchroom, the ham salad of
    Wendy Pinch, Department of Physical Education,
    sits untouched so that she might get something off her chest, which is sizeable.
    Excuse me—if I may say something?
    Thirty years,