The Book of One Hundred Truths Read Online Free PDF Page B

away, my whole foot’ll swell up and I won’t be able to walk.” I pinched my thumb with a clothespin. “It’s called jell-itis.”
    Jocelyn studied me. “I never heard of that.”
    The sheets were flapping behind us in the breeze.
    We didn’t have anything else to do, so once I was finished with the laundry, I suggested that we walk to the Ocean Market, a candy, magazine, and grocery store a few blocks down the beach. We went upstairs to get our sandals and some money. Jocelyn insisted on bringing her purse.
    We climbed over the bulkhead and walked down the beach, past the lifeguard stand, which was bristling with signs that said, NO DOGS. NO PLAYING BALL. NO SWIMMING OUTSIDE THE GREEN FLAGS. NO TALKING TO GUARDS . The lifeguards both wore dark glasses. They stared at the water as if hypnotized.
    “Do you think you’ll ever show it to anyone?” Jocelyn asked.
    “Show what to anyone?”
    A man with a sunburned belly the size of a beach ball walked past us and tipped an imaginary hat.
    “Your secret notebook,” Jocelyn said. “Will you ever let anybody read it?”
    “Let’s talk about something else,” I said. The sand was warm on top but cool underneath; I took off my flip-flops.
    “You’re not the only person here who’s keeping a secret,” Jocelyn said.
    We saw a boy about Edmund’s age sitting on a towel with a mountain of seaweed in a bucket beside him. He was popping the rubbery brown bubbles between his fingers.
    “I guess you want me to ask you who has a secret,” I said. “Okay—is it you?”
    “No.”
    “Is it Nenna or Granda?”
    “No. It’s Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen. I heard them whispering. They were in the kitchen and they didn’t see me.”
    “They could have been whispering for a lot of reasons,” I said. I remembered Ellen sifting through the mail, then tucking a single envelope into her purse. “Anyway, it isn’t polite to eavesdrop.”
    “I’m good at eavesdropping,” Jocelyn said.
    We watched two girls in matching red bathing suits playing lacrosse at the edge of the water.
    “Do you want to know what Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen were whispering about?” Jocelyn asked.
    “No.”
    The taller of the lacrosse-playing girls dropped the ball and had to run into the water to find it. I imagined the two of them going shopping together and seeing the bathing suits and deciding to buy them.
    Jocelyn touched my arm. “Are you going to have friends here?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, if you have friends here, then you’ll spend time with them. Edmund already has a friend named Brian. He lives next door.”
    When I was little—Jocelyn’s age—I used to play in the sand with any other kids in Port Harbor who were building castles or digging holes or dragging water around in buckets. But I was too old for that now. “Maybe you’ll have friends here,” I said.
    “No, I won’t,” Jocelyn said. “I don’t have very many friends.”
    We left the beach, climbing the splintery stairs that led over the bulkhead. “Why don’t you have very many friends?”
    Jocelyn stopped to put on her sandals. She seemed determined to brush every single grain of sand from her feet. “Because I just don’t.”

    Truth #11: I’ve never had very many friends, either.

    “Some of the girls at school say I’m bossy,” Jocelyn said.
    “Are you bossy?”
    “Kind of.”

    Truth #12: I used to have a best friend.

    Truth #13: And her name was Gwen.

    We had reached the street. Leaving the beach and going into the town of Port Harbor always felt strange to me. It was like opening a door and finding an entirely different world on the other side.
    “Do you think you’ll find out what the secret is—the one that Celia and Ellen are keeping?” Jocelyn asked.
    “No.” I shook a pebble out of one of my flip-flops. “I really doubt they’re keeping secrets, Jocelyn.”
    We pushed through the door of the Ocean Market. The air was cold. It smelled like the inside of a cardboard