Rules for Secret Keeping (23 page)

I RUN ALL THE WAY HOME. IT'S TWO
miles, and I am not a runner, not even close, and so by the time I get home, my legs are on fire, and the bottom of my jeans are completely soaked and muddy. The worst part? Now I have the super fun task of figuring out how to finagle this whole thing with my dad and Tom for the
You Girl
dinner tonight. I'm hoping I can spin it as some sort of weird, last-minute mix-up.

But when I get to my house, no one's home, and there's a note on the counter:

Dear Samantha,

Tom is working late, but will be home around six, so that should give you plenty of time to still get to the banquet on time. He will change into his suit at work, and pull into the driveway and honk for you, so please be watching and ready to run out to the car. Good luck! I will be with you in spirit. Please call me as soon as you find out and text me lots of pics!! I am so, so, SO proud of you no matter what, always.

I LOVE YOU,

Mom XXXO

Great. I guess I'll have to tell my dad first. He's going to be heading to the banquet right after work, and he thinks
I'm getting a ride there from Tom. That part isn't a lie; he just doesn't know that Tom is going to be staying there with us. But when I try his cell, I get his voicemail. Figures. I hang up without leaving a message. I mean, what would I say? “Oh, hi, Dad, just so you know, Tom's going to the
You Girl
banquet even though I know you hate him and last time you talked to him you hung up on him, see you tonight, kisses!”

I really wish Taylor were here so we could talk about all of this, but she has cheerleading. I think about texting or calling her, but she won't get it until practice is over, and by then Tom and I will probably be on our way to the banquet. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I trudge upstairs, where I spend the next hour getting ready and trying not to think about what just happened with
Emma and Daphne. I soak myself in a bath filled with bath bombs and glitter bubbles, then pull my hair back into a sleek ponytail. I have a simple black shift dress to wear, with black shoes that have a little bit of a heel. I wanted to wear a red dress, but my mom and I agreed this was more professional. Not that it really matters, since we picked my outfit over the weekend, way before the whole Barb-at-my-school debacle and before I realized there was no way I was going to win the
You Girl
award, red dress or not.

Once I'm ready, I go downstairs to wait for Tom. I eat a blackberry yogurt and then reapply my lip gloss. And right when I'm putting on my third coat of gloss and starting to feel really sorry for myself, I have an idea. A completely, totally, crazily brilliant idea!

Maybe there's a way for me to keep them apart! Neither my dad nor Tom knows that the other one is going to be there. So maybe I don't even have to tell them! That way, my dad won't know that I invited Tom first (or at all), and Tom won't feel like some kind of charity case I couldn't uninvite! Of course, it will take some finagling on my part, and Nikki will probably have to help me, but . . . it could definitely work. Feeling cheered, I dump the empty yogurt container in the garbage.

The sound of Tom's horn honking comes through the
window, and I take a deep breath, then run out of the house and into the car.

The lobby of the King Tower Hotel is absolutely insane. Seriously. Complete and total chaos. I've never
seen
so many people—the
You Girl
staff, all the finalists and their parents, some photographers from the magazine (no sign of Tony, though; I guess this banquet is too important for freelance), and a bunch of girls who are too young to qualify for this year's contest but won their way in as spectators. Everyone is all dressed up. My mom would be happy to know that it seems like a lot of the finalists brought their moms, since she thinks that business is a male-dominated industry. I take a couple pics of girls standing with their moms and text them to her, trying not to feel sad that she's not here.

“Well!” Tom says, looking around and taking it all in. He's practically beaming. I feel a little sorry for him, actually. It's like he thinks I'm some kind of celebrity or something. “There's the check-in desk,” he says. “We should get you all checked in.”

“Good idea,' I say. I'm looking wildly around the lobby for my dad. Luckily, he is late to pretty much every single thing I've ever invited him to, so hopefully I'll be able to sneak Tom in, get him settled in at a table, then somehow
get back out and grab my dad. And then, you know, get
him
settled in somewhere. Preferably somewhere far, far, away from Tom.

“Yes, hi, I'm Samantha Carmichael,” I tell the woman who's in charge of checking everyone in.

“Let's see,” she says, peering over her large glasses. She takes our tickets and then starts going through this box of file folders, one with each finalist's name on it. “Carmichael . . . ,” she's muttering, moving at about the speed of a snail. Obviously she doesn't know my dad could get here at any moment.

I spot my folder, then reach over and pluck it out of the box.

“Got it!” I say. “Thanks so much!”

The woman looks a little stunned, but honestly not as stunned as she would be if my dad showed up and there was some kind of huge scene. My folder says I'm at table six, so I hustle Tom through the doors of the banquet room and over to our table. In a wonderful stroke of luck, table six is buried in the back corner. On the table is a little card that has “Samantha Carmichael” written on it in silver calligraphy. Next to it, there's a matching card with my dad's name. “Richard Carmichael,” it says. Oops. I pluck it off the table and drop it onto the floor.

“That was a little rude, Samantha,” Tom says as he sits
down. “To grab your file folder like that right out from under that woman's nose.”

“Uh, sorry,” I say. “I was just anxious that we were going to be late!”

“You were?” Tom asks uncertainly. He looks around the empty banquet room. A few people are scattered around, talking and sitting, but for the most part, we're pretty much the first people in here.

“Anyway!” I say. “I gotta go to the bathroom! You stay here so that I don't lose you.” I give him a pat on the shoulder.

“Okay,” Tom says, still sounding uncertain. Hopefully he's writing my insane behavior off as nervousness. I mean, people do crazy things when they're nervous. Like all those people on
American Idol
who forget the words to their songs, or the way Olympians can totally choke at the last minute. Grabbing a file folder out from under some lady's nose is nothing when you really think about it.

I head back into the lobby and find the bathroom, where I've made plans to meet up with Nikki. She's already there, looking gorgeous in a navy blue dress. Her long dark hair is held back on the sides with two jeweled clips, and the rest falls to her shoulders in loose curls.

“Hey, Samantha!” she says when she sees me, enveloping me in a hug. She smells really good, like some kind of
fruity perfume.

“You look gorgeous,” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she says. “So do you.” She rummages around in her sapphire clutch and pulls out her extra ticket. “Here you go,” she says, handing it to me.

“Thanks,” I say. I look down at the ticket, my mind racing.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say, “It's just . . .”

“Oh, no,” she says. “You didn't tell them they were both going to be here!” She gives me an exasperated look, but not in a mean way. It's more of a Samantha-what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you? kind of look.

“Not exactly,” I say. Nikki knows all about all the drama between Tom and my dad. I told her in our emails. Although how she knows I didn't tell them they were both going to be here is beyond me. She must be pretty intuitive. I guess you have to be, to be successful in business. And from what I can tell, unlike mine, Nikki's business is booming.

“Well,” she says, sounding determined. “You'll just have to make sure that you sit them on completely opposite sides of the room.” If she's fazed by the fact that I've invited two guests and not told them about each other, she doesn't show it.

“Right,” I say, thinking about it, “but the problem is,
there are place cards.”

“Place cards!” She says it like it's the craziest thing she's ever heard.

“I know, right?” Seriously. It would be such a shame if place cards were the death of me. It just doesn't seem right.

“Well, we're going to have to get rid of them,” Nikki says.

“Well, I already ditched my dad's,” I say as we head out, hoping no one steps on it and then ventures down to see what it is. I've had enough of people stepping on papers they're not supposed to see and ruining my life, thank you very much. “And the good thing is, I'm sitting all the way in the back.” And at that moment I spot my dad, standing over in the corner of the lobby. He's wearing a black pinstriped suit and standing with his back to me, looking out through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the hotel. Probably looking for me. Crap, crap, crap.

“That's my dad,” I say. “And my stepdad is already in there.”

Nikki bites her lip. “Didn't you say your stepdad is cool?”

“Ye-es,” I say slowly.

“Well, maybe you could tell him that your dad just showed up here or something. You know, like you didn't invite him but he just came. You and your dad can sit
wherever I'm supposed to be sitting, and I can sit with Tom.”

“Ohmigod!” I say. What a brilliant idea! I can tell Tom that my dad just showed up, like some kind of weird crazy person, and that it's totally embarrassing, and now I need to keep him happy by sitting with him. That way, Tom won't have to know that I actually invited my dad, and my dad won't have to know that Tom is here at all!

“You're brilliant,” I tell Nikki, grabbing her in a hug and spinning her around.

“Hey, hey,” she says. “Careful of the dress.” She smooths down her hair and smiles. “And besides, you can't call me brilliant until tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?” I ask.

“Because that's when I'm going to be sending you a mock-up of your new website,” she says. I squeal.

Then Nikki and I sneak back into the conference room to break the news to Tom. (The file folder lady totally gives us a suspicious look as we go by, which, in my opinion, is kind of not necessary. I mean, you grab one folder and she, like, holds a grudge.)

“Hey,” I say to Tom.

“Oh, hi.” Tom's drinking something out of a fluted glass. It looks like sparkling water. Leave it to Tom to order a water when we're in a super fancy banquet room with free
drinks.

“Tom, this is my friend Nikki.”

“Hello, Nikki,” Tom says.

“Hey, Tom.” She hops into my chair.

“Tom,” I say, looking at him seriously. “We have a bit of a . . . situation here,” I say, lowering my voice, hoping I can convey the seriousness of it. “Um, my dad's here.”

Tom looks around.
“Richard's
here?” he asks wildly. His eyes sweep across the room, like he's afraid my dad might be stomping through the door, about to start threatening him or something.

“He's in the lobby,” I say. Then I shrug. “He just showed up here; I didn't even know!” I almost add on “honest,” but decide that would be going too far.

“Well, you're going to have to tell him to leave,” Tom says. He nods his head and takes a sip of his water.

“Yeah,” I say. “I could do that. Or . . . or I could just, um, sit over there with him, in Nikki's seat.”

Tom looks across the room to Nikki's table, which is filling up fast. Then he looks at Nikki, who gives him a grin. And then he looks at me. “At Nikki's table?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, that way there wouldn't have to be a big scene. We could still spend time together, don't worry, I could change seats back and forth.” Of course, I can't really do that (how would I explain it to my dad?), but
I'm hoping Tom won't call my bluff.

Tom hesitates. “Samantha, I hate that you have to be put in the middle like this.” He chews his lip, and for a second, I'm afraid he might insist on calling my mom. “So I suppose it's okay.” He sighs. “And why don't you just sit with your dad for the whole night?”

“Are you sure?” I ask, trying to seem like I'm at least a little bit sad. Which I actually am, since I would much rather be sitting with Tom. Especially when they announce the winner and that winner isn't me.

“Samantha, the important thing is that I'm here to see this moment with you, and I don't have to be right next to you to do that.”

He squeezes my hand and I head out into the lobby to get my dad, pushing down any feelings of guilt I have left.

My dad is annoyed because he had to wait in the lobby for so long. Even though
he's
the one who's always late, he's annoyed with
me,
who was on time. The first one in the banquet room, even! Of course, he doesn't know that.

“Sorry, Dad,” I say, breathlessly. “I just got here.”

“Why couldn't Tom get you here
on time
?” my dad asks as we make our way through the throng of people into the banquet room. “What was he
doing
? Probably spending all
his time putzing around, with no regard for anyone else's schedule.”

How about working late and then getting settled in at table six? But I don't say anything. We take a seat at our (Nikki's) table after I do a quick , covert sweep of the place cards. I order a virgin pina coloda (yum) from our waiter, and soon after, the lights dim and the program starts.

“Hello,” Barb says from the podium. “And welcome to the sixteenth annual
You Girl
Young Entrepreneur of the Year banquet.”