If I Tell

thing.
    “It’s a free country.” I sat up, not wanting him to see that his proximity made my nerves jump around like toddlers overdosing on sugar.
    “Yeah, I hear it is,” he said as he plunked down on the grass beside me. He switched his iPod off, pulling earbuds from his ears and letting the wires dangle in front of his shirt.
    “So you realize you’re sitting outside the school all by yourself, strumming and humming?” he asked in a conversational tone.
    “I do indeed.” I crunched my legs and hugged myself tighter.
    “Perhaps this is one of the reasons you’re considered a freak by some of our esteemed classmates.” He winked to take the edge off.
    “Perhaps.” Resting my chin on the top of my knobby knees, I studied him. “But an advantage of people thinking I’m a freak is freedom to act like one. No one thinks anything of it.”
    “I see your point. Unexpected privileges. So. What song were you playing?”
    “It’s just a song.”
    “I don’t recognize it.”
    “I guess not.” I held my breath a little as if I was about to tell him I wasn’t wearing underwear or something. “I wrote it.”
    “You wrote it?”
    I nodded, waiting for his reaction and realizing it mattered.
    “Cool.” He grinned at me like I’d done something amazingly clever. A better reaction than I’d hoped for.
    “You crack me up, you know,” he said. “Putting yourself out there with some things and trying to just blend into the scenery and not be noticed with others.”
    “What makes you think you know so much about me?”
    “I’m good at figuring people out. It’s a gift.”
    “That right?” I asked.
    “I know you work in a coffee shop but hate drinking coffee. I know that you’re obsessed with Neil Diamond, and I know you’re kind of a lone wolf. But how come I didn’t know that you wrote a song?” He leaned back, his hands pressing into the grass, and watched me.
    “Songs,” I admitted. “I’ve been writing songs for years.”
    He pushed off the grass and wiped his hands back and forth on each other. “Plural. You’re prolific. I guess I should have known.”
    My insides smiled at his easy teasing. He was so much easier to talk to now.
    “What’s it about?”
    The shine inside me dimmed, and I shrugged and glanced around us at the front of the school yard. “It’s kind of private.” The song and the content. I couldn’t tell him the inspiration for my bitter ballad. Seeing Simon and Lacey.
    Jackson picked a long blade of grass and stuck the end in his mouth and chewed on it. “That right? You still keeping secrets from me?”
    I studied the grass in his lips, wondering why he was chomping on the lawn but feeling envious of the blade nonetheless. I frowned at myself.
    “Hey, cheer up. They can’t be that bad.”
    I slowly breathed out and shrugged, pretending nonchalance.
    “That’s cool. I mean, that you write songs. I’m quite the singer myself.” He grinned at me and I smiled. He sang while we were working at the coffee shop. His voice wasn’t bad but he always goofed around, exaggerating high notes and wiggling his hips.
    “That song sounded kind of sad. Don’t tell me…let me guess. It’s about your one true love?” He grinned like a kid eager to share a silly knock-knock joke.
    I stuck out my tongue. “If I ever write a song about true love, please shoot me.”
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Because it doesn’t exist.”
    Jackson tilted his head. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
    “I’ve never seen it.” I’d thought my mom and Simon were in love like that. But look what he’d done to her. And true, Grandpa Joe and Grandma had been married for a million years, but it’s not like they were big on public displays of affection. Never mind that demonstrations of passion from my grandparents would have grossed me out anyhow. I couldn’t remember ever seeing them kiss or hold hands. Grandma was very proper.
    “Maybe you will. One day. Maybe it will even happen to you.”
    I studied the lawn to cover up the flutters in my belly, then picked a blade of grass and stuck it in the corner of my mouth the way he was doing. “My song isn’t about love. Kind of the opposite, really. It’s more about a secret that could destroy love, actually. A secret that can never be told.”
    He tilted his head. “Intriguing. Is it based on fact?”
    I shrugged, excited to share a tiny bit of what I’d been holding inside for months. “I have to protect someone