Society of Gossipmongers

“Did I tell you about the cheating?”

Jessica’s head snaps up from the ladybug she’d been inspecting out of boredom. “What?” 

“Oh, yes.” The girl responds absently, her gaze fixed on the science homework in her hands. “She was so mad afterwards.”

Jessica’s eyes rove her friend’s face eagerly—hungrily—for more gossip. “For real?! Who was it? C’mon, tell me. I’m all ears.”

Ella’s smirk is so small that only her best friend—which Jessica just so happens to be—can possibly notice it. Jessica, however, is too blinded by excitement to notice it. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. There’s only been the one test recently, after all. It’s really quite sad because now we have to take the test again. Now that I think about it, though, Ms. Dulfer would’ve been quite terrifying had she been just a few inches taller.” 

Jessica groans. “El! I thought you really had something there!” Jessica punches the other girl on the shoulder, but that tiny quirk on her lips doesn’t diminish in the slightest. Even the small, precise handwriting continues unblemished across her paper. “Traitor,” she mutters under her breath.

“What do you mean?” Ella finally looks up, eyes perfectly clear and innocent, as if she hadn’t just raised Jessica’s hopes for nothing. That tiny quirk spreads a touch. “I wasn’t the one who cheated. It was probably that guy who always sleeps in class. Y’know, I would die before I had to cheat on a test. That would just be so embarrassing.”

Jessica sighs and begins probing the grass on the school lawn, searching for her ladybug. “Oh, shut up, you terrible tease.”

Ella laughs.

*****

Jessica guzzles the smoothie as quickly she can. A mild suspicion is niggling in the back of her mind saying that the tall glass on the kitchen table probably isn’t for her, so she knows that she has to finish the drink as quickly as possible or else that niggling suspicion will guilt her out of doing so.

She finally slams it back down on the table, satisfied to the fullest. De-licious. 

That satisfaction, however, is incredibly short-lived when she suddenly hears her sister in the other room, promising her friend on the phone that she will “certainly bring the smoothie, don't you worry!”

Jessica, on a spur-of-the-moment instinct, stuffs the empty glass down the nearest hiding place she can find and sits down on a flat surface, casual-as-can-be.

Not a moment too soon, either, as the next moment, Delaney is bustling into the kitchen, purse in hand. She freezes the moment she sees her sister. “Jessie…why on earth are you sitting on the trash can?”

Jessica blushes profusely. “It’s comfortable,” she mutters in a high voice. A pregnant silence follows, broken by a slightly maniacal laugh from Jessica.

Delaney rolls her eyes and begins glancing around the room. “Hey, sis. Did you see where I put the smoothie? I made it myself and I wanted to ask Steph to give it a taste.”

Jessica somehow manages to turn even redder, completely disregarding the laws of physics. “I dunno. Probably grew legs and ran. You know how our cups can be sometimes.”

Delaney’s eyes sharpen as she turns to glare at her sister. “Don’t tell me you drank the whole thing in the—oh—twenty seconds you’ve been in the kitchen.”

“Uh…I…speaking of eating, did you know I accidentally ate a ladybug at school?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I got an A on my English essay.”

“I think I already know that, seeing as I, as your TA, helped grade your English essay in the first place.”

“My science teacher’s dog is cute.”

“Jessica…”

Jessica is really beginning to freak out—even her toes are blushing now. Digging for some juicy, distracting something, she finally blurts, “El cheated. I mean she was cheated. I mean no, she—well, El of course didn’t cheat, she would rather die than cheat, but she did tell me all about it, and apparently she was really mad except too bad she’s so short.”

Delaney stares. Jessica is beginning to fear for her own life when: “Ella? You mean that goody-two-shoe nerd friend of yours?”

Distraction tactic: success! Jessica isn’t quite sure what she’d said in desperation, but still, she almost laughs with relief. “Yeah! I bet she really wants to chew out that dude who cheated.”

Delaney’s eyes begin to glitter dangerously in anticipation. Oh, how Stephanie was going to love this new little tidbit.

*****

“Where’s the smoothie?”

Delaney waves the question aside as she slips through her friend’s front door. “Let’s just say that my sister looks good with a strawberry mustache when it’s worn with a guilty conscience and a stomach full of secrets.”

“Ooh, what’d she tell you?”

“She heard it straight from the source, mind you.” Delaney wallows in a petty glee as her friend hangs onto her every word.

“Go on.”

“You know Ella Dubinsky?”

“Ugh, not her. She’s that nerd, isn’t she? Anything she can have can’t possibly be good.”

“Oh no, it’s good. It’s damn good.” Delaney takes a breath, leans toward the other girl, and then says in a secretive whisper, “Her boyfriend cheated on her.”

“What?! She has a boyfriend?”

“Not anymore, Steph.” Delaney smirks. “Not anymore.”

“This one really is a doozy.”

“Mmhm. She’s real mad about it, too. Dead murderous, really.”

“Really!”

“Really.”

Steph laughs meanly. “I bet it was a real shock to that rule-follower.”

“To be fair, I would be shocked too. She is the last person in the world who I could imagine being cheated on.”

“Of course. But only because no normal hot-blooded male would ever date that ugly duckling in the first place. And how can you be cheated on without a boyfriend?”

Delaney laughs and chastises lightly, “Steph, be nice. Jess would go ballistic if she heard the way you’re talking about her precious El.” 

“It’s true!”

“It is,” she concedes, snickering. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? You would expect any guy who dated her to actually like her.”

Stephanie catches on. “And you wouldn’t think that an angel like that would cheat, would you?”

The two sigh in commiseration.

“Guys suck,” Stephanie summarizes breezily.

Delaney nods. “Every Tom, Dick and Harry is the same.”

*****

“Did you hear the latest?—Yeah, there’s been another one.—That little freshie girl, Ella Dubinsky—I know right? I was surprised too. How did she get a boyfriend? I think it’s some Tom or other. The girl says he’s a hairy dickhead.—She’s on a murdering rampage, or so says my source.”

*****

“Guess what? Guess who has been taken this whole time!—He’s not just my crush! He’s my man! My soulmate! My future husband!—Yeah, some Ella girl has been dating him for months. He cheated on her, though. Good riddance—Teaches her to steal mine. I bet she’s an ugly witch who forced him to go with her…probably fed him a love potion.—Oh, I must go find my love: she will come looking for uncalled-for revenge.—I must go now and protect my one and only!”

*****

“They say that cutie Thomas Anderson has horrible taste. Honestly, horrible. He dated Nerdz-Ella (who probably made him watch Godzilla ten times) and then cheated on her with that witch girl, the one who always goes around in black. It just goes to show that brawn doesn’t mean brains—or taste, eh?”

*****

“That whiny girl did the deed with Ella Dubinsky’s then-boyfriend, now-top-of-the-murder-list, Thomas Anderson. Pass the tea, please.”

*****

“Ella Dubinsky is going to murder Thomas Anderson for cheating on her with Thawani, Gloria. Thank you very much. Go back to your food now.”

*****

“Ella Dubinsky is going to murder Thomas Anderson for cheating on her with Gloria Thawani!”

Jessica’s head snaps up to stare at the girl slipping into the seat next to her on the bus. “Excuse me?”

The brown-haired girl blushes. “Sorry. I know you don’t know who I am and I don’t know who you are but I just had to say it to someone. A girl at the diner stood on a table and shouted it for everybody to hear. She said it was a dare. I just couldn’t keep it in! I’m sorry, I’ll go!”

Jessica stares in patent disbelief at the girl’s receding back. There was someone she needed to grill, and fast.

*****

“Listen, Ella.” Jessica slams her hand on the desk and turns to glare at the girl in question. “You’re my favorite person in the world.”

The girl in question looks up in bemused bewilderment. “Thank you.”

“And I trust you.”

“What happened between now and yesterday that necessitated this conversation?”

Jessica ignores her. “But trust is a two-way street with clear signs and well-paved sidewalks so nobody crashes. Do you understand me?”

Ella blinks owlishly and replays the girl’s words again in her mind. After a pause, they still sound completely bizarre. She shakes her head. “Not particularly, no.”

“I mean, you can trust me. Don’t you trust me?”

“With anything other than science homework and juicy gossip, yeah.”

“I know it’s hard but—hey! That was mean.” Ella grins unrepentantly. Jessica sighs and sits down next to Ella. She gazes deep into her soul, wondering if this heart-to-heart is really worth the effort. Finally, she decides that, however annoying Ella is, the poor girl needs her right now. Steeling herself for a painful and difficult conversation, she begins anew, slightly softer and more compassionately. “Look. I know that sometimes I’m not great at keeping secrets—” 

Ella snorts and mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like “Understatement of the year.” Jessica ignores her. 

“—and sometimes I might seem to care too much about other people’s lives, but no matter what, if you need me, I’ll be here for you. I’ll even be here if you don’t need me. I’ll keep your secrets for you however hard it may be to rein in my precious gossiping instincts, I’ll help you plan formidable revenge schemes, hell, I’ll even read a science textbook for you!”

Ella stares at Jessica with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

“But I can only do all of that if you ask, okay? I can only help you if you tell me when you need help! This time, it turned out fine because the school’s gossip network is just so extensive that a full fourteen people have told me the particulars in the three hours since school started today. But we might not be so lucky next time.”

Ella finally closes her mouth and then proceeds to open it again. “Are you feeling okay, Jess? You’re not making any sense.”

Jessica sighs at her friend’s attempts to gloss over her words. “Ella! I know everything! Watching Godzilla—and, by the way, I’m hurt, because you never wanted to watch the movie with me—and Gloria Thawani and everything. I’m here for you, as your shoulder to cry on in this difficult time. I know the breakup must’ve been difficult.”

“What?”

“Thomas Anderson is a jerk. He never deserved you in the first place and to cheat on you with Gloria Thawani of all people…forget the dickhead!”

Ella blinks a few more times at Jessica. Then, finally: “WHAT?”