The Karma Club

“Jade’s getting ready for the play auditions all week, and Angie works after school!”

  But there’s not an ounce of sympathy on my dad’s face. He just stands there and shrugs. “I guess the bus it is, then.”

  TRUTH BE TOLD

  Fortunately, I only have to take the bus home from school because Jade offers to drive me in the mornings.

  On Friday afternoon, I’m on the school bus when my cell phone vibrates in my pocket. I answer it, and Angie instantly launches into this totally breathless retelling of a story about how she spotted her ex-boyfriend riding his bike home from school.

  “What?” I say, feeling rather satisfied that at least I’m not the only one who has had to find alternative methods of transportation lately.

  “I know,” Angie replies. “Word on the street is that Ryan’s parents recently took his car away too!”

  “No way!” I exclaim as I lean back and prop my knees up on the seat in front of me.

  “Yes,” Angie confirms. “After the whole shoplifting thing.”

  I let out a hearty laugh. “That’s awesome.”

  “Not only did he lose his spot on the varsity team but he lost his car too. And for much longer than a few weeks. They told him that if he wants his own car, he’ll have to save up and buy one himself. So he could be riding that bike for a while!”

  “Oh my God, that’s classic.”

  “This is definitely something to add to the Karma Club notebook.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “I’ll get right on it.”

  After I hang up the phone, I check to make sure that no one is watching and pull the official club notebook out of my bag. I open it up and flip past several pages containing the various mission updates we’ve recorded over the last few weeks: Heather’s breakout, Ryan’s removal from the baseball team, the newspaper article about Mason, the discovery that Seth’s parents were making him see a shrink to help him deal with his unusual obsession with older women. When I eventually arrive at a blank page, I take out a pen and write “Ryan Feldman Update #2” across the top. Underneath, I record today’s date, followed by the latest breaking news that Ryan is now minus one very important piece of automotive machinery.

  Not like I’m one to judge or anything. I mean, I’m writing this very update while riding the school bus. But the difference between Ryan and me is that he’s a cruel, selfish jerk who broke Angie’s heart and therefore deserves everything that has come to him. I mean, his universal imbalance was epic. Catastrophic. I’m just trying to balance everything out again. I’m doing the universe a favor. And in the process, I somehow got caught up in a small stroke of bad luck. That’s all.

  I’m just finishing the update when my cell phone rings again. This time it’s Spencer. I can’t help feeling small butterflies in my stomach when I see his name on the caller ID. I know we’re only supposed to be having fun and he’s not my boyfriend, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get a little bit excited when he calls.

  I close the notebook and put it on the seat next to me. Then I answer the phone.

  “What’s up, cutie?” Spencer’s voice comes through the phone and I can almost feel my heart melting in my chest.

  He does that sometimes. He calls me “cutie.” And I won’t lie, I absolutely love it. What girl wouldn’t? But don’t worry, I’m being completely responsible about the whole thing. Because every time he does, I quietly remind myself not to get too excited. I’m totally on top of this. After all, I’ve already seen what this guy is capable of doing to his girlfriends. And I’m not sure I can handle another public humiliation this year.

  “Not much,” I reply. “Just heading home.”

  “Do you wanna hang out?”

  Okay, this is one of those questions that you really don’t have to think about before you answer, so I don’t. I just say, “Sure,” even though what I actually mean is “Yes! Definitely! Without a doubt! Where do I sign up?”

  “Cool. I’ll leave my house now. How about I pick you up at your place in ten minutes?”

  “Okay,” I say. “See you then.” And then I hang up without even thinking to check and see how much longer of a bus ride I have. Because apparently “How about I pick you up at your place in ten minutes?” is another one of those questions that you don’t have to think about before you answer. Except, I probably should have thought about it. If I don’t make it home before Spencer gets there, then without a doubt he’ll see me stepping off this bus, and there’s no bigger turnoff than seeing the girl you’re about to go make out with step off a big yellow school bus surrounded by a sea of metal-mouthed freshmen.

  I quickly take out my cell phone again and call Spencer back, but he doesn’t answer.

  Crap! Okay, I have to play this smart. If I see Spencer sitting in my driveway when the bus turns around the curve in front of my house, I’ll just ask the driver to drop me off at the next stop. Then I’ll run back to my house and tell Spencer that I went for a jog. Jogging is sexy, right? It’s like athletic and sporty and stuff.

  But why would I be jogging in my school clothes? And with my backpack? I wouldn’t. Okay, that option is definitely out.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to think of any alternatives, because before I know it, the bus is turning around that curve, and when I glance anxiously out the window I can spot Spencer’s convertible driving right in front of us.

  The driver stops the bus just as Spencer’s car pulls into the driveway. I quickly grab my backpack and head up to the front. The best I can do is attempt a daring duck-out maneuver and then sneak up behind Spencer’s car and act like I’m coming back from checking the mail or something.

  So that’s what I do. When the doors open right in front of my driveway, I bend down as low as I can, trying to avoid being seen in Spencer’s rearview mirror. The bus driver shoots me a strange look, but I hardly care at this point. If I have to choose between impressing a bus driver and impressing Spencer Cooper, forgive me, but I think I’d have to go with Spencer every time.

  The doors close behind me, and I stay low and drop behind a bush. I can’t very well approach his car right after the bus leaves. That would be too obvious. So I wait a good five minutes and then casually saunter up to his driver-side door.

  “Hey,” I say in my best casual, just-out-for-a-leisurely-stroll-down-the-street voice.

  Spencer jumps slightly upon hearing my voice. “Hey, I didn’t see you come out of the house. Did you ride the bus?”

  I laugh nervously (and unfortunately, very loudly) and toss my hair back over my shoulder. “God, no.” Then I throw in a snort for good measure. “I mean, who rides the bus after ninth grade? I was just taking a walk. You know, checking the mail and stuff.”

  Spencer looks at me funny and points to the small slot in the front door of my house. “Isn’t that your mailbox?”

  Oh right, my mailbox is in the door. I reach up and tug nervously at my ear. “Yeees,” I say slowly, drawing out the word to an unnatural length in a bid for more time. “Yes it is. But you know . . . um, sometimes the mailman delivers our mail to the neighbor and my mom sends me over to check. So that’s what I was doing.”

  Nice save! It seems the whole lying thing gets easier with practice.

  “Cool,” Spencer replies. “Wanna get in?”

  I nod and open the car door, tossing my bag into the backseat. “Are your parents home?”

  Spencer shakes his head as he starts the engine and reverses out of my driveway. “No, but I thought maybe we’d go out for something to eat. You know, like a real date.”

  A lump forms in my throat, and I do my best to swallow it. “A date?” As in out in public for everyone to see?

  He looks over at me and grins. “Yeah. All we do is make out. Don’t you want to go out and talk or something?”

  No. Not especially, no.

  “Um, I’m not super hungry,” I respond hastily. “Let’s just go back to your house.” I’ll admit there’s more urgency in my voice than I would have liked. I know S
pencer can hear it too, because he gives me this look like he’s not really buying the whole I’m-not-hungry thing and says, “Honestly, Maddy, what’s the big deal if people know about us?”

  I start chewing on my thumbnail, something I only do when I’m uncomfortable or nervous. What I really want to tell him is that I’m afraid. Afraid of getting too close. Afraid of him writing something about me on the face of a locker. But mostly . . . I’m afraid of that feeling. That sinking feeling of hopeless heartbreak. The one I felt the very moment I walked in on Mason and Heather at the Loft. And every moment after.

  The one I still sometimes feel when I lie in bed at night.

  But I don’t tell him that. I can’t. Instead I shrug and say, “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Obviously it is if you insist that we keep everything a secret and you refuse to even be seen in public with me.”

  I don’t respond. I really don’t know what I would say if I did, so I just sit there and don’t say anything.

  Spencer turns the car onto the main road. “Look, Maddy,” he says, his face completely serious. “I like you. I want to spend time with you. But you obviously have reservations about us.”

  Us? As in him and me? As in boyfriend-girlfriend? No. No, no, no, no, NO.

  “Is this about Mason?” Spencer suddenly asks.

  I turn my head and look out the window. I don’t understand why we can’t just go to his place, make out for a couple of hours, and be done with it. Why can’t he be satisfied with that? I mean, seriously, what is this guy’s problem? Isn’t that supposed to be every man’s dream? To hook up without any attachments? Without any complications?

  Without any locker spray painting!

  Spencer reaches out and places his hand on my leg. I like the way it feels even though I still don’t look at him. “Maddy,” he says gently. “I would never do to you what Mason did.”

  I can’t contain myself any longer. The frustration is boiling over. I can’t handle this good-guy, holier-than-Mason act for another second. So I face him and go, “No, you’ll just spray-paint my locker and be done with it!”

  Spencer is completely taken aback. He even pulls the car over to the side of the road and throws the gearshift into park. He looks at me, his eyes squinting against the afternoon sun, which is blazing down on us. “Do you really think I wrote that terrible thing on Jenna’s locker?”

  Okay, he’s pissed. I can tell. Maybe blurting that out wasn’t such a good idea. But whatever, I’m pissed too. And I have a right to be. So I give him this expectant look. “Didn’t you?”

  Spencer bows his head shamefully, and I know that I’ve cornered him. He’ll have to fess up and spill everything. He’ll have to admit that he’s not such a great guy after all. And that I was right to have reservations about dating him.

  Then he says blankly, “No. I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, right.” I don’t try to hide the fact that I don’t believe him.

  Spencer doesn’t respond to that. He simply shakes his head and goes, “This is why I hate high school.”

  Which is really pretty cryptic, if you ask me. Not to mention totally evasive. So I get right to the point and ask him, “You mean you didn’t spray-paint that on Jenna’s locker after she tried to break up with you?”

  “No!” Spencer says in a rather exasperated tone. “And she didn’t try to break up with me. I broke up with her!”

  I furrow my eyebrows in confusion. “You did?”

  Spencer nods, and I can tell by his pained expression that he’s telling the truth. “You can’t believe everything Heather Campbell pumps through the rumor mill, Maddy.”

  “Then who wrote it?” I immediately ask.

  “I have no idea. If I had to take a guess, I would probably bet on Jenna.”

  “Okay, that’s ridiculous,” I snap back without even thinking. “Why would Jenna write something like that on her own locker?”

  Spencer throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t know, but it makes the most sense.”

  My head is starting to hurt. “Why on earth does that make sense?”

  “Think about it, Maddy. The last thing Jenna wants people knowing is that I broke up with her. She’s obsessed with stuff like that. All of them are.”

  Something about the way he pronounces the word them kind of mystifies me. Like they’re part of some underground cult that he has nothing to do with. I mean, I know Spencer is different than Jenna and Heather, but I guess I never completely separated him from that group. Even after we’d started making out. In my mind, and I think most people’s minds, the name Spencer Cooper just has an automatic affiliation with the popular clique.

  I contemplate his logic. After a little while, it doesn’t sound as crazy as it once did. “Let me get this straight. If she spray-paints her own locker, then her version of the story sounds more credible?”

  Spencer shrugs. “I suppose so. I don’t know. It’s so screwed up, I can hardly follow it. That’s just the way she thinks.”

  Surprisingly, though, I am able to follow it. Maybe it’s because I’m a girl. Or maybe it’s because I spent the better half of my high school years studying Heather Campbell and her entourage from afar. One thing I do know, the relief I feel right now is overwhelming. I have to restrain myself from jumping into Spencer’s lap and throwing my arms around his neck.

  But as honest as he’s been in the last ten minutes, I’m still harboring a very huge secret: the real reason why Jade and Angie can’t know about us. I’m definitely not prepared to share that with Spencer. So I tell him I guess I am still upset about Mason and that’s why I’m not quite ready to go public with our “relationship” yet.

  He seems to understand, or if anything, he acts understanding. So we go back to his house. But we don’t do what we normally do. Meaning we don’t head straight into his room and start making out. In fact, we barely kiss at all. Instead, we curl up on the couch in his upstairs den and watch a movie on one of the dozen flat-screen TVs owned by the Cooper family. And I have to admit, right now, it feels even better than kissing.

  BEWARE OF THE TURKEY CHILI

  The next Monday I’m sitting in the school’s auditorium waiting for the auditions for Little Women to begin. Obviously, it’s not me who’s auditioning. Especially after that whole I’m-just-getting-the-mail-from-the neighbor’s-house performance on Friday. Jade is trying out for the lead. It’s a really big deal for her. Because if she gets the part, there’s a good chance she’ll go on to get a huge scholarship to UCLA’s drama program. I told her I’d come to the auditions for moral support. Plus, I’ve been feeling pretty guilty lately with all the lying I’ve had to do every time I hang out with Spencer. So I was partially just trying to relieve my guilt.

  It’s a little weird now that Spencer and I are kind of a couple. I made him swear to keep us a secret at least for another few weeks. And then after that, I’m not really sure.

  I know that each and every day I don’t tell my friends about him, I’m digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole. Because when I do eventually tell them, it will have been one more day that I lied to them. A betrayal stacked on top of more betrayal. But I can’t tell them. They wouldn’t understand. I don’t even know if I understand what’s happening yet.

  Mr. Kent, the director of the drama department, gets onstage and welcomes everyone. I glance around the auditorium, looking for Jade, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I guess she could be hiding out backstage, running through her lines one final time before it’s her turn to audition.

  It isn’t until Mr. Kent tells everyone trying out for the role of Jo to sit in the front row so that he can call them up one by one that I realize something is wrong. Because Jade is still not there.

  I send her a quick text message but get no response. So I decide to go looking for her.

  First I check her seventh-period classroom, thinking maybe she got caught up in a conversation with her teacher and lost track of time. But the room is empty. Then I check the hallway
around her locker. Still nothing. With each minute that passes, I grow more worried. If she doesn’t get her butt down to that auditorium in the next half hour, she can kiss the part goodbye. Not to mention her chance at that UCLA scholarship. It’s not like Jade to be careless and irresponsible. Especially about something that means so much to her.

  I stick my head back in the auditorium to see if she snuck in at the last minute, but there’s still no sign of her.

  Okay, now I’m really worried. I mean, what if something truly bad happened to her? What if she fell down the stairs, got knocked unconscious, and was hauled off in an ambulance? Or maybe she was kidnapped! She was making her way down the hall toward the auditorium, and out of nowhere someone stepped out from behind a locker, threw a bag over her head, and tossed her into the back of a van!

  I’ve managed to get myself totally riled up now, and I’m starting to panic. I look helplessly down the first-floor hallway, trying to decide which direction to go in next, and then I see two girls coming out of the bathroom and one of them is saying, “Oh, God, that’s disgusting. I mean, if you’re going to be bulimic and vomit your brains out, don’t do it at school, where everyone can hear you.”

  And instantly I know that Jade is in there.

  I hurry into the bathroom and check under each of the stalls. In the very last one, coincidentally the same stall where I overheard the news about Jenna’s locker graffiti, I see Jade’s back. She’s kneeling on the floor in front of the toilet. And she’s puking.

  It’s funny; I never thought Jade would be the kind of girl who gets stage fright. She’s always so confident and composed up there. Like she was born to be on the stage.

  “Jade?” I ask, softly tapping on the stall door.

  “Maddy? Is that you?” she calls from the other side. And her voice sounds like she’s been waiting a lifetime for me to come find her.

  I hear a faint shuffling sound, and the door unlocks. I push it open, step inside, and close the door behind me. Jade is still on the floor, her knees curled up to her chin. To be honest, she looks god-awful. But I don’t mention that. The worst thing you can do when someone is sick is to tell them that they look sick. So instead I say, “What’s the matter? Are you nervous?”