The Book of One Hundred Truths by Julie Schumacher Page A

with water balloons a hundred yards from the ocean? “Besides,” I said, dumping the rest of my cereal into the garbage, “my ankle’s bothering me. I think I sprained it.”
    “Did you hurt yourself, Thea?” Even though Nenna was hard of hearing, she seemed to have a grandmotherly radar that went on alert whenever someone was wounded. She turned around, holding Ralph on her hip. Together they looked like a strange two-headed creature.
She used to hold me like that,
I thought.
    “I must have stepped in a hole last night.” The lie seemed to burn its way up my throat. “People should fill those holes in when they’re finished digging them.”
    “Sit down over here and let me see it.” Nenna patted a cushion on the couch, and when I sat, she plopped Ralph down beside me. He immediately turned his pale head and started gumming my arm.
    “Is this where it’s bothering you?” Nenna squeezed my foot.
    I tried to wince. “Kind of.”
    She moved my toes gently, one at a time. “I don’t think it’s swollen. We’ll just keep an eye on it. Can I get you anything? Maybe some ice? Or a cold drink?”
    “No thanks, Nenna.”
    She patted my leg, then picked Ralph up (he had left a string of drool on my elbow) and carried him into the kitchen, singing “Three Blind Mice.”

    Truth #39: Gwen and I thought no one else was at the creek that afternoon. But we were wrong.

    “You didn’t tell me you went out on the beach last night,” Jocelyn said.
    “What do you mean?” I was feeling rattled.
    “You said you stepped in a hole in the sand.”
    I stood up and stretched, then opened the sliding glass door to the porch. Out on the beach, people were sunning themselves and playing Frisbee and swimming and eating watermelon in the shade of a hundred umbrellas. Sunlight was flashing across the ocean in liquid sparks.
    “It doesn’t look like your ankle hurts,” Jocelyn said. “You aren’t limping.”
    I thought about trying a limp or two, but I couldn’t remember which foot I had shown to Nenna. I went down the outdoor stairs and around the side of the house to the front sidewalk. Jocelyn followed me. Someone had left a folding chair by the mailbox. I tried to unfold it, but the hinge was stuck.
    “Austin says it isn’t true about the jellyfish,” Jocelyn said. “He doesn’t think you’re really allergic.” She watched me struggle with the chair. “You have to push that silver button. He says it isn’t true about the i-zone, either.”
    “Ozone.” I pushed the button she was pointing to and the chair sprang open. “It might not be completely true,” I said. “I might have been exaggerating a little.”
    A woman with a Chihuahua on a leash was coming toward us. The Chihuahua’s eyes stuck out of its head like giant marbles.
    “I knew that,” Jocelyn said. She watched the little dog trot past, his toenails clicking. “You wouldn’t exaggerate if it was something important, though. Like if you were talking about the secret.”
    I stuck my legs out onto the sidewalk.
    “Because you promised,” Jocelyn said. “That’s how I know. Because you promised to tell me what it was when you figured it out.”
    “I haven’t figured it out,” I said. “I don’t know anything about a secret. They didn’t tell me anything.”
    Jocelyn found a second folding chair beneath the stairs, dragged it out to the sidewalk, and put it next to mine. She opened it in about two seconds. “Do you mean Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen? Were they on the beach with you?”
    It was probably only nine in the morning, but I was exhausted. “Do you wear other people out like this?” I asked.
    She didn’t answer. I could tell she was willing to hound me all day.
    “All right, fine. I went for a walk with them,” I said. “They made me.”
    “What did they want?”
    “Well, first of all, they definitely want you to stop spying. Did you follow Ellen to the drugstore?”
    Jocelyn set a pebble on the arm of her chair.
    “And they