Ever since we were little girls, we have been encouraged to keep secrets.
I was raised a good girl, like most women in America, where instinctively we knew that a secret was sacred, I was taught to never betray a trust. The fact that a mishandled secret could endanger someone was shown to me by my mother, my aunts, my grandmothers, so I knew to believe this. I remember feeling special when someone shared a secret, and choosing carefully with whom I shared my secrets. By high school, secrets between girlfriends were a big part of the picture; who had a crush on whom, how far someone had gone with her boyfriend, who had been out all night while her mother thought she was sleeping at a friend’s house.