Free The Book of One Hundred Truths by Julie Schumacher Page A

sink.
    “Are you throwing up?” I could tell that Jocelyn was standing about an inch away from the door. Her whispery voice was like a needle.
    “No. I’ll be out in a minute.” I looked in the mirror over the sink and saw that my face was red from coughing. Normally I was sort of pale, my skin the color of new cement. My hair was an in-between shade that my mother called auburn. I wiped a splotch of chewed-up paper off my cheek.
    “I have to use the bathroom,” Jocelyn said.
    “Go use a different one.” I coughed again, then rinsed my mouth out with water.
    “Are you still throwing up? Should I go get Nenna?”
    “I am
not
throwing up,” I said. “Just use a different bathroom.”
    “But—Thea?”
    “Go. Away. Jocelyn.” I heard a gentle scraping against the door.
    I dried my hands on the back of my shorts and picked up my notebook. To eat it or not to eat it? The paper was thick, with little specks of something running through it. Maybe they were wood chips? Or leaves? What if they were poisonous? I ran my hand over the cushiony blue cover, then fit my index finger into the center of the star on the front.
You’ll feel better if you use this,
my mother had said.
    I picked up a pen.

    Truth #30: The world record for holding your breath is over eight minutes.

    I closed the notebook, using my finger to hold my place. Did I feel any better? On the other side of the bathroom window, seagulls were gliding toward the ocean on an early breeze.

    Truth #31: Gwen and I tried to hold our breath by plugging our noses. We timed ourselves by the clock in her kitchen. I only got to forty-three seconds, and I felt like my head was about to explode.

    “Thea?” It was Jocelyn again. “The downstairs bathrooms are both full. Somebody’s using them. Nenna’s taking a shower.”
    I turned the page and clicked the little plastic button on the top of my pen.

    Truth #32:

    “I have to go to the bathroom
right now,
” Jocelyn whispered. “I can’t wait.”
    “Hold your horses.” Reluctantly, I shut the notebook. Thirty-one truths. Sixty-nine more to go. Maybe when I got to one hundred some kind of door would open in my head and I would never again in my entire life have to think about—
    “Thea!”
    “Okay, I’m coming.” I ran some water in the sink, then opened the cabinet underneath it to look for a towel. And there it was, as if I’d been searching for it all along: the perfect hiding place for my notebook. Behind the extra rolls of toilet paper and the boxes of tissues and the bars of soap and the stack of hand towels, there was a broken board. The back wall of the cabinet was cracked and loose. I wrapped the notebook in a garbage bag to keep it clean, then slid a piece of the board aside and hid the notebook between the cabinet and the wall. For added security, I plucked two hairs from my head and set them on top of the broken board. I closed the cabinet again. Like magic: no notebook. Then I unlocked the bathroom door and opened it as if inviting an honored guest into my home.
    Jocelyn stood on one foot in the hallway. She peered into the bathroom. “What were you doing in there?”
    “Just using the bathroom. I thought you were in a hurry.”
    “I am. But why were you in there for so long if you aren’t sick?”
    “I was smoking cigarettes.” A purple lie—diversion. “I didn’t want anyone to see me.”
    “Oh.” Jocelyn hurried past. “Cigarettes aren’t good for you.”
    I told her I was trying to quit (“It’s really hard once you get hooked on them,” I said), and she shut the door.

    During the next couple of days, we rode our Granda’s trike all over Port Harbor. I pedaled Jocelyn to the harbor lighthouse (it wasn’t open, but we walked around it), to the broken-down fishing pier (also closed), and to the Fairyland miniature golf course, where a life-sized Snow White and the seven dwarfs danced in a circle around the eighteenth hole. At Jocelyn’s insistence, we also spent some