Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

second?”
    “I’m actually kind of busy right now.”
    He looks at the bucket of ice cream, almost empty now. “Please. It’ll only take a second.”
    “Can’t you tell me now?”
    “We’re all ears,” Wes says, sitting up straight in his seat.
    “I was actually hoping we could talk in private.”
    “What difference does it make?” Kimmie says. “We’re her best friends. She’s going to tell us just as soon as you leave, anyway.”
    I kick Kimmie under the table, thinking about the note again.
    “It’s okay,” I say, finally. “But I only have a minute.”
    “Thirty seconds until I polish off the rest of this bucket,” Wes says, scraping his shovel along the bottom of the pail.
    Ben leads me to a booth in the corner, and we sit down opposite one another.
    “How come you’ve been avoiding me?” he asks.
    I take a deep breath, wondering where I should begin, noticing the urgency in his voice. His face is flushed, and he’s leaning in close.
    “Because it isn’t practical,” he continues. “We need to work together. How else are we going to do our labs?”
    “This is about chemistry?”
    “No.” He sighs. “It isn’t.”
    “Is it more about how something horrible is supposed to happen to me?”
    “This isn’t fun for me,” he insists. “And this isn’t some excuse to try and get close to you.”
    “Then what?”
    “You know what. So, maybe the questions we need to ask ourselves are who and why .”
    “Wait,” I say. “I’m a little confused.” I glance over at Kimmie and Wes. Kimmie licks down the length of her shovel, trying to get me to laugh.
    “I make you nervous, don’t I?” His eyes draw an invisible line down the center of my face, lingering on my neck as I swallow.
    “Just tell me,” I say. “What do you want?”
    “To help you,” he reminds me.
    “Help me with what? I don’t need any help.”
    “Look,” he begins, “I know this sounds crazy, but if you don’t let me help you, something really bad is going to happen.”
    “Like what?”
    “Not here,” he says, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one’s listening in. Let’s go someplace and talk about it.”
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “Please,” he insists.
    I glance back at Kimmie and Wes. Wes, clearly aware that I’m upset, looks ready to pounce. Kimmie’s practically sitting in his lap trying to hold him back.
    “What do you say?” Ben continues. “Will you come with me now?”
    “And then you’ll leave me alone?”
    “I can’t promise you that. But I can try and make things more clear.”
    I shake my head, telling myself this isn’t a good idea.
    But I decide to go with him anyway.

29

    I tell Kimmie and Wes to wait for me at Brain Freeze while I give Ben exactly fifteen minutes to state his case.
    They’re not crazy about my going, but since the beach is only at the end of the street, and since I make them promise to come and look for me if I’m not back in twenty minutes flat, they finally agree.
    And I go—part of me relieved to get this over with, another part scared to death of what Ben has to say.
    We walk in silence down the main drag, until the ocean begins to come into view. Just as I expected, there are plenty of people sprinkled about—a throng of fishermen casting their lines out on the pier, a few dog-walkers along the shore, and a handful of kids playing on the swings.
    Ben leads us to a spot up on the rocks, where we can look out at the ocean and still hear the rush of cars speeding by on the road behind us. We sit down facing one another, but Ben keeps looking out at the water, as if seeing me now is even harder for him to deal with than whatever he has to say.
    “So, we’re here,” I venture, giving a nervous tug to my ponytail.
    Ben nods and looks at me finally, his expression changed—less frantic, a mixture of resolution and sullenness, maybe.
    “What is it?” I ask, noticing how his eyes are liquid gray.
    “It happened at a place like this,”