30 Days of No Gossip Read Online Free PDF

instant messenger and started typing.
    “Hey,” I typed, my fingers moving quickly over the keys before I could lose my nerve. “I know you’re, like, mad at me and all and not speaking to me, but I think Syd’s onto us.”
    I waited, watching the blank white screen, which seemed to burn my eyeballs. It said Vi was online, but it always said that. She had it set so people couldn’t tell if she was offline, idle, or typing away, so nobody could bug her when she didn’t want to talk. She was kind of antisocial when it was exam time.
    I waited a few minutes more but got no response. Ichewed my lip thoughtfully for a while. I imagined her across the room from her computer, not even looking in that direction. The Vi I knew would be furiously studying, buried in her work, only seeing her IMs later tonight, maybe right before she went to bed.
    If that was the case, it wouldn’t matter whether she responded to me or not. I could say what I had to say and she’d read it and think about it. So I thought for a second longer before I started typing again.
    “We were talking about the field trip tomorrow, and she noticed I wasn’t gossiping,” I wrote. “She asked who I was and what I’d done with Maddie. People are going to start to notice I’m not gossiping. I think we should tell them about our deal.”
    I sat back, rereading what I’d typed. If I knew Vi, she wasn’t even thinking about the field trip. She’d jump out of bed and head to school in the morning like it was any other day.
    That was when it hit me. I didn’t have to tell people Vi had made me not gossip. I could say I was trying to be a better person. It was my own idea. Still, people would freak out if they knew they couldn’t get information from me anymore. They’d try to talk me into gossiping and try to make it harder. It would be better if I could just changethe subject whenever someone tried to get me to gossip. They’d probably bug me about it, but they wouldn’t make me gossip.
    The answer came to me while I was staring at that blank instant-message screen. I had to figure it out myself. That was part of it. Vi wanted me to be a better person and to stop gossiping altogether, not just for thirty days. I knew that much. And if I was going to be the person she’d dared me to be—the person she thought I never could be—I had to learn to find a way to handle everyone throwing gossip at me without having her talk me through it.
    The phone next to my bedside rang, scaring the bejeebers out of me. I slammed the laptop shut and looked at the caller ID. Part of me thought it might be Vi, calling to talk to me about what I’d sent her. I knew better than that, though. If she did start talking to me again, it wouldn’t be because I’d IM’d her to tell her people were asking why I wasn’t gossiping anymore.
    It wasn’t Vi. It was Jessica.
    Deal with it myself. Okay. I could handle this. I picked up the phone and took a deep breath before blurting out a cheerful, “Hello.”
    “Well. What’s with you?”
    That wasn’t a good sign. The conversation hadn’t evenstarted yet, and already I was setting off Jessica’s “Maddie isn’t acting like herself ” alerts. I had to come up with something that wouldn’t mean the end of the Troy Tattler but would still explain my sudden change in personality.
    That was when it hit me. It was the perfect idea.
    “Just trying to be more positive,” I announced, smiling at the brilliance of my idea.
    “It’s about time,” Jessica said. “Life’s too short to always be so grumpy.”
    I started to agree before I realized what she’d said. “Hey!” I objected, sitting straight up on my bed and staring grumpily at the phone.
    “No offense,” she said.
    “I don’t think I’m that grumpy.” I caught my reflection in the mirror across the room, saw my frown, and immediately forced it into a smile.
    “Whatever.” Jessica paused a minute, then continued. “Are you going to tell me what’s