How to Keep a Secret

“Hi. Good to see you.” His smile was friendly and Mack had seen so few friendly smiles in the time since she’d started at the school, she decided she couldn’t afford to ignore this one.

“Hi.”

“You’re Mack. I’ve seen you around the boatyard with Scott.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say he’s my dad, and then she decided there was no point in inviting more abuse. For all she knew Sam might have reason not to like Scott.

“Yeah, he’s kind of a family friend.” She hoped her mom would forgive her for saying that. Truthfully she had no idea what Scott was really, but she was pleased he was around. After that time he’d taken her sailing, she’d taken to dropping round on her way home from school. Sometimes he let her help in the boatyard, so she’d left an old pair of jeans and a shirt there.

“He’s cool. He fixed my dad’s boat.” Sam scratched his head. “So what are you doing here?”

“I need to build a website. I thought I might try coding,” Mack said awkwardly. “This is the Coding Club, right?”

Sam stared at her.

“Hello?” Mack waved a hand in front of his face. “Coding Club? Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

“Sorry. We don’t get that many girls who want to code.”

“How many?”

“You’re the first. But that’s cool,” he said quickly. “Really great.”

It didn’t sound cool or great to Mack. She didn’t mind being in a minority, but did she really want to be the only one? “Maybe this isn’t going to work.”

“Hey, more girls should be able to code. Why not? It’s the future and there’s a huge gender gap in the tech world. It’s crazy. Coding is a basic life skill. I mean, you couldn’t imagine living in a world where you couldn’t read, could you?”

Mack flattened herself against the wall, slightly alarmed to be on the receiving end of such evangelical belief. “Well, I—”

“Exactly. Reading is something everyone should be able to do. It gives you access to opportunities. And so does coding. Technology is everywhere. Don’t you want to be part of it?”

She wanted to be part of something, that was for sure.

She had no friends at school and home was still pretty tense. Her mom was always sewing, or there was some new drama. Mack couldn’t handle her own drama, let alone extra. Sometimes she hovered in the kitchen for a few minutes, evading questions like how was your day? (answer: totally crap), but mostly she went straight to her room, where she sat on the bed and messed with her phone or stared out the window.

She missed the old days when she’d been able to talk to her mom about anything and everything.

She missed her old school and her friends.

She wanted to belong.

“I’ll think about it.”

“If you leave, you’ll think of a million reasons not to do it. And if you join, other girls might follow.”

Mack wondered whether she should break it to him that her influence wasn’t exactly impressive. Most days she ate her lonely sandwich by her lonely self in the cafeteria. The number of people lining up to spend time with her amounted to zero. If she was a role model then she knew nothing about it and she certainly didn’t see herself as a trailblazer.

This whole thing was a bad idea. Another bad choice among the millions she’d made lately.

She should have tried to teach herself to build a website by watching a video on YouTube.

“I don’t think this is for me.”

“One session,” Sam begged. “Stay for one session, and if you don’t love it I’ll never ask you again.”

“I have to build a website.”

“Not today.”