Page 14 of Dear Hattie

Disappointing Daughter

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Dear Hattie,

We looked it up, and there ARE calories in some brands of bottled water!! Check your facts!!!! We expect better from you.

Determined Dieter

Nine

Harriet

Imeet secretly with Wesley Tanaka every workday for the next three weeks. We make out when we’re alone in the elevator between floors, steaming up the mirrors. We rendezvous in the concrete stairwell after lunch, where Wesley pushes me against the wall and brings me off with his hand—rubbing me through my clothes until my cries bounce off the stone floors and he has to muffle them with his sleeve.

We kiss until we’re breathless behind a potted palm on the fifth floor.

We despoil several nap eggs.

One night when everyone else has gone home, Wesley lays me out on a ping pong table and crawls on top of me, then grinds us both to oblivion.

And every time I walk past the lobby ball pit, I blush hotter than a neutron star. It’s sohotsneaking around like this, meeting my arch nemesis for desperate embraces in hidden alcoves. It’s fun, too. When was the last time I laughed this much?

“You’ve got a secret.” Simone narrows her eyes on my tablet screen, sipping her mug of sugary coffee and watching me closely. She’s at the kitchen table in her new home, surrounded by farm-life kitsch, but I swear I canfeelher eyes boring into me like lasers. I laugh weakly and nibble on my pretzel.

“What? Of course I don’t.”

“You do. You absolutely do.” My bestie scowls and leans forward. “I know you, Harriet Fry. You get all fizzy and constipated when you’re hiding something.”

Constipated? I clear my throat, glancing around the break area to check whether anyone heard that—then remember I’m wearing earbuds.

They’re all absorbed in their own conversations or lost deep in their phones anyway—no one cares about the tablet I’ve propped against a napkin holder. Not even with the Marilyn Monroe lookalike on screen.

“I’m actually very regular, thank you. Like clockwork.”

“Gross,” Simone says, but she’s smirking. She leans back and drums her fingernails on the scrubbed wooden table, and how are they so perfectly manicured even now? When she digs up vegetable gardens every day? “Spill, Harriet. I know you’re dying to tell someone.”

I am. I really, really am. Some nights I think I might burst with all these new feelings and hopes and fears. Makes me want to sprint three times around the parking lot and howl at the stars. Makes me want to commandeer the loudspeaker and just yell: “WESLEEEEEY!”

But I can’t say the words out loud, can I? Not here. Not now. Not in the middle of the Pretzel Media break out area, surrounded by shameless gossips with nothing to do except eavesdrop.

So I jerk my head at the nearest table, widening my eyes. Simone hums, tapping her fingernail against her front teeth. “Oh yeah, I forget you’re in public. Want me to guess? Ooh, that’s fun. Let’s make it a game.”

I shrug and gnaw on my pretzel. She can guess if she likes, but there’s no way she’ll figure this one out. Wesley Tanaka and I hooking up together… it’s unthinkable. “What do you get if you win?”

“The warm, fuzzy feeling of always being right.”

I snort. “Okay. Go on, then.”

“It’s about a guy,” Simone says immediately. I nod, cheeks pink, and she beams, so beautifully triumphant. “Well, then it’s Wesley, obviously. Wesley Tanaka.”

Um. Excuse me? I gulp down my mouthful of bread.

“What do you mean ‘obviously’?” I ask, shifting in my metal chair. My mouth is suddenly dry from the pretzel. “Wesley and I hate each other. Or we did, anyway. Everyone knows that.”

Simone guffaws. “Yeah, right. So what is it? Are you finally ready to admit you’re crushing?” She inhales sharply, leaning close to the camera, and I feel like a bug under her microscope. A blushing, squirming bug. “Wait, are you two hooking up? Oh my god, you are. Atwork?”

My mouth opens and closes, but no sounds come out. Nothing but a tiny, strangled croak. Simone whoops and punches the air.

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