All the Little Secrets (English Prep 2)

Ah, yes. Didn’t think about that. I wasn’t going to let that happen, though. “Relax, I’ll talk to him.”

“You will not!” she seethed. “You’ll probably just threaten him, too!”

“Now, listen. The only thing I told Cole was to lose your number. He’s a shady guy, Piper. I don’t fucking trust him. Do you?”

She threw her arms up, clenching her phone in her hand. Her voice was hushed as she looked around at the line picking back up. “Of course I don’t trust him!”

“Then, can you blame me for wanting to protect you?”

Piper’s lithe body was quaking with anger, her cheeks so flushed it started to creep down her neck. I had to bite my tongue to keep my gaze trained on her eyes. “Ugh!” she finally ended up saying. She turned on her heel and stormed off to the mashed potatoes again.

I did the same, following after her.

We both stayed silent when we put our hairnets back on and began dishing out more food to the line that was picking up. I wasn’t sure of what to say. I liked pushing her buttons, but for some reason, I felt myself pulling back. I might have felt a little bad.

“I’ll talk to Andrew, okay?” I whispered, nodding my head at a man who looked to be around one hundred years old.

“Do not talk to Andrew. I’ll fix this.”

More silence passed between us. She put up a good front, though, smiling and laughing with the homeless, but anytime she would catch my eye, she would scowl.

I sighed and continued handing out mashed potatoes, trying to find a way around the anger she was throwing my way. I should have welcomed the familiar feeling, but instead of it feeling like a comfort, it felt…heavy. “So,” I started, dipping my ladle into the container, “do you just volunteer here for fun, or...?”

Piper glanced at me for a millisecond before reluctantly giving in. “I’ve been volunteering since I started at English Prep. Headmaster Walton said volunteering would look good on college applications.”

“Aren’t your college applications already in?” I asked, glancing up at her every few seconds.

“Yep.”

“Then, why are you still volunteering?”

Piper paused, her hand stilling on the ladle. “I guess because I don’t have anything else to do. It’s something I look forward to. And”—she shrugged—“I like helping people.”

Piper was definitely the type of girl you brought home to your parents at the end of the day. Nice, sweet, caring. It really irked me that her parents were never home.

“I’ve actually been here before.”

She looked over at me, a crease evident on her forehead. “What? Like, to volunteer?”

I lifted a shoulder. “I guess you could say that.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

I nodded my head at an older male as he shoved his shaking Styrofoam container in my direction. “My mom used to bring Christian and me here before she passed. One Saturday a month, we’d hand out food or whatever.”

“Really?” Piper reached under the lip of the metal container no longer holding mashed potatoes and lifted it up, her arms straining with the weight. I quickly put my ladle down and grabbed it.

“Refill? Where?”

She nodded back toward the kitchen, her lips slightly parted. I quickly took it back and found the other metal container full of mashed potatoes and came back, placing it down. Piper switched spots with me, her shoulder brushing over my chest.

As soon as we were back in our rightful spots, continuing to fill people’s containers, she asked, “What made you guys stop coming?”

I swallowed back a lump, feeling the tightness in my chest return. “Well,” I started, clearing my throat, “I kind of just forgot about this place after my mom died, and…” Do you really want to go there with her, Ol?

Piper’s soft voice floated all around me, almost luring me to tell her all the things I kept buried. “And what?”

I focused on the half-lumpy cloud of mashed potatoes resting on the end of my ladle. “And when I got here this morning, and the memory started to come back to me, I realized that my mom wasn’t exactly here to volunteer.”