Call Me Charlie

Issue 325

You guys,

I’d been entrusted with a secret I never wanted to know, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

One week earlier, 12-year-old Eva had asked Sam if he would be a contestant in her competition—a recreation of the reality television show, The Mole. This was Eva’s Boundless Project, a staple of Boundless Life in which the older kids work all cohort-long on a project of their choosing and present it to everyone at the Final Celebration on the last day of school.

I knew, because I’d befriended Eva’s parents, that this was Eva’s second go at recreating The Mole, a show in which contestants work together to solve problems in order to win a grand prize, but the hitch is that there’s a mole among them, trying to sabotage their winning. Eva did the same project in her first cohort in Greece. Things had not gone so well then because the mole, who is supposed to keep it a secret until the very end when Eva reveals who they are, told all the contestants she was the mole before the contest had even begun. Eva announced to everyone that she had to change the mole right before the competition, and the whole exchange created tension between her and the girl who’d blabbed. In a final twist, Eva kept the mole the same person.

For this cohort, Eva wanted another chance to do it better. She wasn’t going to tell anyone who the mole was—not even her mom—and she would choose a person she could trust. So when 12-year-old Cary approached me on the playground after school, five days before the competition, and asked if I wanted to know a secret, the answer was a hard no but I gave her a shoulder-shrug sure.

“I’m the mole,” she said, her eyes wide. I had felt she was going to say it but hearing the words still surprised me.

On my walk home from school I texted Eva’s mom, Tina:

Soooo saw Cary on the playground and she was like can I tell you a secret? And I said sure even tho I REALLY didn’t want to know… she told me she’s the mole. I hate having this information! Should I tell Eva? Who else has Cary told? Who else is she going to tell? Nooooo!

For the next two days, Tina and I sent secretive voice notes to each other—whenever I was far from Sam—about what we should do. The real kicker was that Eva and Cary had become close friends. They held hands as they walked to school. Tina and I concluded that this couldn’t be malicious—Cary was a sweet girl. But still, we had to do something. I volunteered to tell Eva, but logistically it was difficult to find an inconspicuous moment to pull her aside. There was also Cary to consider. How would she feel when Eva let her know that I’d ratted her out? Maybe we should sit them down together. Should we involve Cary’s mom, too?

I wondered if I was making too big a deal of this, especially since neither girl was my daughter. I thought of my experiences in two Boundless cohorts, and how in both I’d been drawn to the 12-year-old girls, like I saw myself in them, like twelve years old was the year right before everything changed, before I became obsessed with boys and self-conscious about my body. There is something so innocent and real about that age, and I want them to know how amazing they are right now, and I want to instill in them some kind of confidence and knowing that they don’t need to change or be any different than the person they are, and they should dream big and follow their interests even if they’re not practical. And perhaps, more than anything else, they should value authentic and open communication, because if they don’t, they will become bitter and angry and they’ll hold all of it inside until it manifests into anxiety, and the anxiety will turn into real physical pain, and nothing will improve until they learn how to communicate in healthy, transparent ways. This was bigger than Eva’s Boundless project. This was about two friends working together through a conflict. It was nothing I had any history of doing successfully but I wanted it desperately for the two of them.

Three days before the competition, Tina told Eva the news by showing her the first text I’d sent. They were walking to school, and met up with Cary on the way. Eva asked her if she told me she was the mole. Cary said yes. Eva asked her if she told anyone else. Cary said no. The girls linked arms and continued on their way to school, and once there, Eva chose someone new to be the mole. Tina reported back that everything was great, and everybody was fine.

On Friday, two days before the competition, I threw an arm around Cary’s shoulder as we both walked onto the playground. “Hey!” I said cheerfully. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” she said, and then, looking up at me with skepticism, as kids do, “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said. “I didn’t want you to feel like I ratted you out.”

Cary looked at me blankly.

“About the mole,” I whispered.

“Ohhhhh,” she said, “Yea, it’s fine, Eva picked someone else.”

“Right,” I said. “I just didn’t know if you knew everything that had happened in Greece when Eva did this the first time, and how she picked a mole and then that person told everyone she was the mole and then there was all this drama. So I just didn’t want that to happen again.”

“Oh, no I didn’t know that,” Cary said, “but she picked someone else, so it’s all good. Right Eva?”

Eva was nearby, and having heard her name, came over to us.

“You picked someone else to be the mole, right?”

“Yea, I picked someone else. We’re good,” Eva said, and the two girls went off to their classroom together.

On the day of the competition, I watched as Eva hosted The Mole with confidence and enthusiasm. And at the very end, when there were only three people left, she announced Cary as the mole.

—

Until next week,

Charlie