The Secret Six

Chapter 10: For your Entertainment

"If he's dumb enough to walk away, be smart enough to let him go." --Anonymous

Chapter 10

“Hell yeah we are.”

I was so stunned silent, I barely even heard Caleb. The sounds and sights around me like I’d be swept in a whirlpool, and I had no escape. I tried my best to think clearly again, and I looked around, seeing everyone with pensive faces, as if they were decided upon my fate silently in their minds.

“Don’t tell her so blatantly!” Eloise barked angrily, a low growl in the back of her throat.

“Well, she already knows.” Caleb defended, crossing his arms indignantly, as if he were appalled she yelled so willingly at him.

From a few feet away, I heard a low chuckle that could’ve only come from Haydon, “I guess she’s really in the group now, huh, El?”

Eloise would normally have ripped his head off, but she was too hysterical to comprehend Caleb’s words. Her face burned a dark crimson, and her scowl ripped her face in halves. “You got lucky you stumbled upon our little secret, pest. But if you tell anyone, I swear to god, I’ll rip off your legs and sell them on the black market—”

“Enough, Eloise,” Dulcie interrupted, leaping off the desk and sashaying over to me, her dainty feet taking elegant strides across the linoleum floor, “you’re not being nice to our guest.”

Still confused beyond words, I was searching my mind for answers. How could they be The Secret Tellers? Why were they The Secret Tellers? I didn’t understand the feasibility of any of this, and it was tearing my mind apart.

“W-Wait. I still don’t understand—I can’t believe you guys are the Secret Tellers—”

“Believe it,” Alex said, patting me on the back, “it’s the truth.”

With a frown, I looked up to him, my eyes narrowed. How could Alex be a Secret Teller? How would he have the grace to find out all these secrets so discreetly? This was the boy that had the grace and agility of a fork lift. There was no way in hell that this nonchalant, pretty boy was the school’s undercover villain.

“But how?…and why?” I asked, looking around at all of them for answers.

Dulcie smiled her perfectly angelic smile, and I could only think that there was no way in hell such a perfectly innocent child had the potential to be so secretively diabolical. For God’s sake, I could practically see a halo around her perfect little blonde head.

“A year or so ago, I did something bad,” she began, and although she started off on such a sour note, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her smile so wide, “I vandalized the back of the school with my artwork.”

I nodded, remembering being told such a thing. I crossed my arms, confused, “I know. Maeve Ballou told me. But how does that—”

“The entire school was watching me. About a thousand students or so had gathered me. I skipped the entire day of school just to do it, and by the time the last class ended, people had began to notice, and they crowded around me,” she reminisced, glancing out the window, looking out at a tree that bent back and forth, swaying in the soft wind, “someone tattled on me, and they got every school official out there to stop me.”

I frowned, still confused. What did her playing paint-by-numbers on the back of the school have to do with starting the Secret Tellers?

“The week before that, Scarlett and Alex broke up. For good,” Dulcie continued, glancing at her step-brother with a look of sympathy, “I was devastated. I always hated Scarlett, and I knew she’d be the one to end things badly. That was why that, as they were towing me away, and they stopped by the security camera room to identify the tape of me vandalizing the wall and to confirm that it was indeed me, I secretively grabbed their key to the room.” She said, and a small smirk was tugging at her lips, and all of the information started to flood into my mind like a train had run me right over, spilling realization all over me. “I came back on the weekend because I wanted to destroy the tape—they couldn’t put it on my permanent record if it was destroyed. But as I was looking for it, I noticed all the other tapes. I found one of Scarlett, and I was furious. It was a stupid idea, but I collected every last one of the girl’s secrets that she spilled onto the tape, wrote them down, and posted the flyers everywhere. She was mortified, but with time, the school had forgotten, and they wanted more gossip.”