Tell Me a Secret Read Online Free PDF Page A

him now, before I even take the test.
    Kamran balanced two jobs, AP classes, homework, practice tests, spent every lunch period in the library, all to fulfillhis dream—which may or may not include me. If I told him, what would he do?
    If I haven’t gotten it by art class .
    “Yeah, just thinking about classes and stuff. How I’m going to fit everything in.”
    It had to be a mistake. Any second my body would return from its trip through hormonal haywire and the hall would quit spinning. I reached out for Kamran’s arm.
    “You okay?” he asked. Of course he was concerned. Because before the cabin trip, before he met Delaney, we had a deep, tangled connection. Was it possible to go back?
    “We should hang out later,” I said. “I’ve got…we haven’t really had a chance to be together since…”
    “Yeah, about that—I can’t meet after school today. I’m studying to retake the SATs, plus I’ve been trying to hook up with this MIT graduate who does student interviews…” He trailed off. “But you’re right, we should hang out. We haven’t really had a chance to talk all summer.”
    I said nothing, but my disappointment must have shown on my face. “What about lunch? School just started—you can’t have homework yet?”
    “Aren’t you going to hang out with Delaney?”
    That’s how it had been all last spring—my life divided into two separate trajectories: getting to know Kamran and spiraling further into a friendship with Delaney.
    With Kamran, I had my own con leche . When he wasn’t working one of his jobs or studying for one of the manyentrance exams for MIT, we explored Seattle together, talking about time and space and possibilities, where wormholes and labyrinths collide. I told him about Xanda, but never about the way she died. It was too personal, too secret. It was that Andre, even though I didn’t want it to be. Afterward, sitting under the rhododendrons, I would taste the fruit on his lips and the spice in his skin.
    With Delaney, I became more than just an actor in someone else’s script, the good daughter holding the weight of the family. Delaney led the way as my sister would have. She broke through closed doors into impenetrable circles, while Essence slipped further into my past. Any attempt to reconcile them resulted in a paradox—Essence the old friend, Delaney the new, with the old me and the new wrestling for control.
    All this time, Delaney and Kamran never met. Somehow I knew if they crossed, my future would never be the same. And they didn’t, until that night at the beginning of July, after school got out and we were all going out to party at Delaney’s cabin, and Delaney pestered me about bringing along “that hottie,” and Kamran accused me of shutting him out. In the end, I had no choice but to let the two halves of my life meet.
    Everything changed that night.
    Then a few days later, my parents packed me up for nine weeks at the kiddie camp, just like nothing had happened.
    Delaney’s ears must have been burning at the sound of her name—she came out of nowhere to pounce on Kamran and me at my locker. “So where are we going for lunch? BroadwayGrill? Bauhaus?” A slow grin spread across her face. “Café Shiraz?”
    I glanced at Kamran. Had he taken her to his parents’ restaurant or just told her about it?
    “I can’t—gotta study.”
    “During lunch period?” She turned to me. “Is that where you were hiding him all last year?”
    Kamran laughed, showing off the tiny gap between his teeth and looking like he’d get a perfect score on a purity test. People like Delaney, like my sister, could do anything, say anything, and everyone still loved them. People like me just looked paranoid.
    “Fine, then. I guess I’ll see ya later,” she said to no one in particular, sauntering away and disappearing into the stream.
    I could hardly wait for my last period art class.
     
    AP art was like coming back into myself, in a room I knew well. The bank of