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Teachers & SchoolsSecrets
Teenagers are really good at keeping secrets when they want to, and are even better at spilling the beans and gossiping about those beans to anyone they can. In A Great and Terrible Beauty,Gemma and her friends keep secrets from each other and from many other folks—secrets having to do with magic, sex, disease, drug addiction, suicide, misunderstood motives… it's a long list. Keeping secrets is one way the girls can both feel powerful and maintain power over others, and one way they try to protect—or claim power over—themselves.
Gemma keeps secrets about her power and about her mother's death because she is scared.
Gemma would rather not have any secrets because they take so much effort to keep.