30 Days of No Gossip by Stephanie Faris

be secret, but someone didn’t have to say that something was a secret for it to be one.
    Plus, speaking about it was gossiping, and not only was that breaking my promise to Vi, it might risk our chancesat being on 24-Hour Makeover . It wasn’t guaranteed yet, I assumed.
    “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “She wanted me to show her around.”
    And that was the truth. So what if I’d searched the Internet and learned a few things about her? It was still not 100 percent true unless she’d told me herself.
    “You have to know something,” Chelsea accused.
    I felt that little tug that had led me to start gossiping in the first place. Back when I was Fatty Maddie, Chelsea and all her friends were the pretty ones, looking down on me. I wanted so badly to be part of their little group, but no matter what I said, they didn’t like me.
    Then one day I found out Sarah Dooley’s dad had left. I heard one of the neighbors talking to Mom about it, which made sense since Sarah lived in my neighborhood back then. I didn’t mean to tell everyone, but I was sitting with Chelsea and Kathina during recess and they were asking why Sarah was out, so I told them.
    That was when I learned that knowing things and telling them made people like you.
    Well, they only liked me for a day or so, until they got more answers from Sarah than they could from me. But it was enough to show me what could happen if I saidsomething people wanted to hear. So from then on, I tried to find information and share it with others.
    Now here we were. Full circle. Sitting in first period, with Chelsea wanting to know what I knew. It wasn’t that I thought she’d like me if I told her. She’d make fun of me with her friends, and next thing I knew, I’d be Fatty Maddie again. She pretty much had no opinion of me other than the fact that I knew things. It was just that I was afraid if I didn’t answer her questions, she’d stop liking me.
    “I think she knows something,” Kimberly said to Chelsea. “You notice she’s not denying it.”
    “Seriously,” I insisted. “She hasn’t told me who she is. She just asked some questions about the language arts wing.”
    “She wants to redo the language arts wing,” Kimberly enthused. She looked over at Chelsea. “You don’t think—?”
    “I do,” Chelsea said. They both turned to look at me, and Chelsea said, “She’s here from one of those makeover TV shows, isn’t she? They wouldn’t just make over the school for no reason.”
    “They wouldn’t make over the school for a TV show, either,” I added. “That’s silly.”
    I felt a little panic growing deep in the pit of my belly. They’d figured it out. They’d guessed it. Now all that would have to happen was that they’d tell some people, it would beall over the school, and I’d be the one blamed for it. I had to throw them off the scent somehow.
    “She works for the school board,” I lied. It might be starting a rumor, but was it gossip if I was trying to fix a problem?
    “You just said you didn’t know who she was,” Chelsea reminded me with a frown. She gave me a challenging look. “I think you’re making stuff up now.”
    “Why would I make it up? She works for the school board. I’d make up something more exciting than that if I were making up things.”
    I paused to let that one sink in. Thank goodness it seemed to work. Chelsea still looked like she wasn’t sure, but Kimberly was nodding. She bought it.
    “It is a bad story,” Kimberly agreed. “Like telling someone you spent the weekend cleaning your room.”
    “I guess,” Chelsea said. “I don’t know why the school board would be looking at the school, though.”
    “Have you looked around?” Kimberly asked. “This place is falling apart.”
    I turned around in my seat and faced the front of the room. If I waited for class to start, they couldn’t talk about this with me anymore. As the final bell rang, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find