Uncovering Sadie's Secrets Read Online Free Page B

Marsha was a junior who was friends with Adam. She and Kerrie had been on Student Council together the year before and still talked from time to time. Marsha was very popular and knew everything about everybody. But you had to be careful talking to her because she would reveal what she heard about you as easily as she would reveal what she heard about others. It was just as well if Kerrie hadn’t been able to get hold of her. Talking to her twice in one weekend about Doug and me would surely switch the rumor mill into overdrive.
    “That’s okay,” I said, grabbing my morning books and putting my lunch bag in my locker. “I’ll figure out what’s going on. It’s not like Doug and I are going out, anyway.” Did Kerrie roll her eyes when I said that? I couldn’t tell.
    The morning bell rang and we went to our respective home rooms. It would be lunchtime before we were able to catch up with each other again.
    But I was true to my word. I spent the morning trying to “figure out what was going on.” Whenever I passed Doug in the hall, he smiled at me, a big open smile even in front of his friends.
    On a scale of one to ten, with one being “don’t want to be seen dead with her” and ten being “setting a date with the minister,” those smiles qualified as a solid five. Maybe even a five point five, depending on how you looked at it. Meanwhile, I didn’t see him send one grin Sadie’s way. Of course, I couldn’t see them together all morning.
    That changed at lunchtime. The cafeteria was in the basement of the old school building. Shock-therapy bright with white tiled floor and white walls and fluorescent lighting, it was as noisy as the inside of a drum at the end of the William Tell Overture. The sound of 100 kids chattering and clinking silverware and ripping open paper bags was enough to put any rock concert to shame.
    I headed for my usual table, near the door that led to the auditorium hallway, where Kerrie and Nicole were waiting for me. Carmen Smith was with them and so was Hilary Stone. Carmen was a black girl from Liberty Heights, and Hilary was from somewhere near the Pennsylvania border. She was absent a lot when the weather was bad. We all hung together in a loose group. We liked to think of ourselves as the “anti-clique clique” because, although we stuck together as shoulders-to-cry-on when things got tough, we didn’t always eat lunch or hang out together as a lockstep unit. In other words, we played well with others.
    “Hilary wants to know if we want to be in the school play,” Kerrie said, rushing past me to get in line to buy her lunch. She always bought her lunch while I always brown-bagged it.
    “Try-outs are this afternoon,” Hilary said, coming over to me. “And I thought we could be like moral support for each other.” Translation: Hilary wanted really badly to try out but she was afraid to do it on her own.
    “What’s the play?” I asked. “And what do you have to do?” I plopped my lunch on the table and started to open my bag. Peanut butter on whole wheat (thanks to Connie), apple, granola bar, bottled water. I started eating.
    “It’s a musical,” Carmen volunteered. She was already eating what looked like a ham sandwich with tomato and cheese and lettuce. Wow, it looked good. “ The Mikado .”
    “Gilbert and Sullivan,” Nicole said, nodding her head. “Don’t you have to sing something in the try-out?”
    “Yeah, but anything you want. Nothing special,” Hilary said. I suspected she had an audition piece she’d been working on for months. Hilary was really bitten by the stage bug. She even looked like an aspiring actress, with auburn hair in a pixie cut framing perfect features that (against school rules) she highlighted each day with mascara and eyeliner and a touch of rouge. She was so skillful with the make-up brush that she never got caught. “Mrs. Williston said we should try to get as many people to try out as we can. She needs choristers. And