Read Online Super Secret Series (Book 1): Super Model by Princess Jones - Free Book Online Page B

exactly what happened. Audrey’s eyes got big when I told her about the run-in with Lindsey in the elevator and even bigger when I got to the part about seeing the Pisces constellation in my partial answers. By the time I got to the part where I scored in the top percentile, she was practically all eyes and completely speechless.
    “I need a beer,” she said when she could finally speak again. When she got back from kitchen, she took a long gulp but still didn’t say anything. She just sat on the couch next to me and looked lost in thought.
    Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Well? What do you think? I’m freaking out!”
    “It’s a sign.”
    “A sign of what? That I need to cheat?”
    “No, that you need to do whatever it takes. That’s what you told me right? That you’ll do whatever it takes? This is what it takes.”
    “But. . . I don’t know how I feel about all of this lying. My dad wasn’t a liar. I don’t think this is what he wanted.”
    “But didn’t he tell you to lie to your mom?”
    “No, he said that secrecy was part of the Oath. He didn’t say to lie.”
    Audrey shrugged as if I was worried about nothing. “Secret. Omission. Lie. It’s all the same thing. And you need to get used to it if you’re actually ever going to be a Super.”
    Over the last week or so, I’d heard a lot of people tell me that maybe Audrey wasn’t the best role model for me. It was finally starting to sink in that it might be true.

* * * * *
    “Where have you been?”
    Mom blew up my phone the entire time I was at Audrey’s house. I finally texted her that I was on the way home from the library. I skipped Poco entirely and just went straight upstairs to our apartment. I figured she’d be working and I could take a shower and settle in before seeing her.
    But Mom was sitting in the dark living room. She didn’t have the TV on and she wasn’t reading a book or anything. She was just sitting there in the dark. I turned the light on before I even realized she was even there. Her face looked tired and worried.
    “At the library,” I repeated the lie I’d texted her earlier.
    “No, you weren’t.” Mom is such a loud person. She was always talking and fussing and kissing. Dad used to call her passionate. That had always been her way. She only got scary when she got quiet.
    “Mom—”
    “Don’t,” she cut me off. “Don’t lie to me again. That’s all you’ve been doing lately. I went to the library. You were not there.”
    “Um—”
    “I called your school to ask where the SHSAT study group was meeting. They said there wasn’t one.”
    “But—”
    “They said you hadn’t even signed up to take the test. You’ve been lying this whole time, haven’t you?”
    She finally paused for me to get a word in, but I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to just spit out the whole story. Keeping all of this to myself was hard. And I wasn’t sure this is how I wanted to spend the next seventy years of my life.
    Mom took my silence for defiance. “Oh, are you at a loss for words? Are you thinking up another lie to tell me? If your father were here to see this, he—”
    “If Dad were here, none of this would be happening,” I blurted out. “You keep acting like everything is fine but it’s not. All you do is work, work, work. I hear you crying in your room at night. You’re not happy. You’re not OK. You’re lying every single day, every single time you talk to me. And you’re just focusing on this school thing to distract yourself.”
    Mom closed the gap between us with a couple of steps. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare tell me how to how to grieve. I am the mother. You are the child,” she pointed at me, poking me in the chest hard. “Now you tell me where have you been all of this week?”
    “I’ve been looking at a new school.” That was kinda true.
    “A school? But why didn’t you just tell me?”
    “Because it’s a boarding school. I want to go away to school.”