S.E.C.R.E.T. Revealed (Secret 3)

“Okay, yeah. But not this week. And maybe bones out next time.”

We went through the salads carefully, since produce was expensive in February and Mardi Gras week demanded crowd-friendly fare.

We were concentrating so hard I barely noticed Claire crossing the kitchen to head out back for a cigarette, alarming for two reasons: I thought she had quit smoking, and she seemed to be in a zombie trance.

“She’s a moody little thing,” Dell said.

“She’s a teenager. They’re all moody little things. You still are,” I said.

Since the restaurant opened, I’d been spending less time with Claire, which might be why I hadn’t noticed her gradual drop in energy, or that dark cloud that now followed her everywhere. I grabbed a cardigan hanging on a hook and threw it around my shoulders to follow Claire out back. I found her blowing smoke through the fence.

“Brrr, it better warm up before the parades or I’m skipping them.”

“I know, I know. I’ll wash my hands after my cigarette,” she said, not looking at me.

“I know you will. What’s going on? You seem down.” I sounded like the guidance counselor in an after-school special.

She turned to face me. It’s funny how you can look at someone without really seeing them. This time I saw her face pulled gaunt and made shadowy from bad sleep. She looked older, haunted. She could have passed for a preoccupied thirty-year-old mom. Maybe she was pregnant!

“Can I leave a little early today, Cass? Maureen can close the Café on her own,” she said, her voice quavering.

I noticed orange and yellow stains on her fingers, the chain-smoker’s affliction. It wasn’t just sadness in her eyes; there was something else too. Something like terror.

“What is going on, Claire? Spit it out.”

“Forget it,” she said, tossing the cigarette and storming past me.

I grabbed her upper arm, which was thin and startlingly cold to the touch. I wouldn’t let go.

“Stop. Okay? I need you to tell me what’s going on. Is it school? Olivia? What?”

“Just some kids at school. It’s nothing.”

“What are they doing now?”

She looked around the vacant back alley as if half expecting her tormentors to be hiding here.

“They’re making my life a living hell,” she said, bursting into tears.

She was a toughie, a dreadlocked, tattooed teen swaggerer who beneath it all was just a deeply sad little girl. I threw an arm around her and let her cry. I knew what it was to be bullied and to feel small. When I was her age, if my sister Lila wasn’t picking on me at home, there were a pack of mean girls whose sole job on the planet seemed to be to find my most tender spot and push against it until it bruised.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said as her sobs subsided. “Is this about that whole Ben thing?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking astonished that I remembered the name of a guy she’d been spending time with. “I thought it was over. But they’re fucking harassing me.”

“Who is?”

“All of them. The girls. Olivia … the others. Her friends, who used to be my friends. Ben showed them a picture. It was meant … just for him. God! I was the nothing girl, then I was the new girl. Now I’m the dirty fucking whore.”

I winced as she recounted how the girls had posted this picture online. It involved, I assumed, some nudity. That was followed by taunting posts labeling Claire a filthy slut and whore, asking her to move back to Slidell where she belonged. I would have thought a creative arts school would be populated by more progressive, open-minded kids, but it seemed the cruelty of youth knew no bounds.

“Have you told your uncle?”

“Right, so he can go talk to their parents and embarrass the shit out of me and make things even worse? If he knew how bad it was, he’d tell my dad and my dad would make me move back to Slidell, and I don’t want to. I love it here. I love living with Uncle Will and working here with you guys. I don’t want to go back to the boonies. I wanna stay here. Dell’s teaching me stuff.” Her body vibrated like a little bird’s.

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“What can I do? How can I help you?”