The Karma Club Read online

  “What’s the matter?” I ask. “You’re not looking forward to the big Hollywood party?” I don’t really care what his answer is, I’m just trying to push his buttons and see if I can get a reaction that fits his disagreeable reputation. Because, in all honesty, he has not done or said anything even remotely snobby since we started these tutoring sessions.

  I can see from the look on his face that my question has struck some kind of nerve. But he shakes his head and says, “No. I’m not going, actually.”

  Not going? I think immediately. To the big glitzy party that everyone is talking about? That seems pretty strange. Especially since he already said his girlfriend has been talking about it all week. What’s even stranger is I have this odd feeling that the reason he’s not going has something to do with me. I’m not sure why, though, because when I really stop and think about it, that whole rationale seems absolutely ridiculous. It’s not like Spencer would refuse to go to Mason’s birthday party just out of respect for me.

  Wait, would he?

  I want to press him for more information, but I stay quiet and direct my attention to the half-conjugated verb on the paper in front of us. I do, however, take the opportunity to steal a quick glance at Spencer’s face. Like, I really look at him. And what I see is entirely unexpected. He looks kind of pained . . . hurt, even.

  But then he looks up at me, and I quickly look away, mumbling something like “Yeah, I’m sure the party will be totally lame anyway.”

  He nods in agreement and goes, “Yeah. Totally overhyped.”

  And I don’t really get any more insight into what he’s thinking because, after that, the conversation is apparently over.

  Later that night, after I help my mom with the dishes from dinner, get a head start on my weekend homework, and help my sister brainstorm ideas for her upcoming science fair project, I boot up my computer, go directly to my Facebook account, and click through to Mason’s profile. This has become my nightly ritual. Sometime before I go to bed, I stare at his page. I know it’s really masochistic and sad, but I guess I’m just secretly hoping that tonight will be the night it will finally have changed. That Heather Campbell’s name will no longer be occupying the coveted “Relationship Status” spot that used to be mine.

  I remember signing on a month ago and seeing her name there for the first time. It was right after I saw them show up to school together. That night when I logged in, she was magically there. And I was magically gone. It was like I had vanished right into cyberspace or something.

  That had made the whole thing painfully real for me, as ridiculous as it sounds. I mean, how sad is it that I needed a freaking Facebook profile to tell me that my boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend? As if Facebook is the official record keeper of relationships and you have to confirm all breakups and hookups with this sacred online registrar before you can consider them certified and approved.

  Unfortunately, tonight is no different. Heather’s name is still there. And when I click through to her page, I see her sparkling brown eyes and perfect, blemish-free skin practically laughing at me from the screen. They remind me, not so subtly, that I am failing in my quest for revenge.

  Suddenly, I feel very angry. The frustration is boiling up inside of me. There has to be a way to put a stop to this. Something that we haven’t yet thought of. The breakup scheme of all breakup schemes.

  And it has to happen now!

  I close Facebook and open up Mason’s e-mail account. I start scouring his in-box like a jealous girlfriend. But I’m really just searching for inspiration. Maybe we were too quick to rule out another e-mail exchange between Mason and Catherine Linton. Maybe if we make this round dirtier and even more incriminating it will do the trick. Heather is not likely to stand for a raunchy round of cybersex between the two of them, is she?

  But just as I’m about to click on “Compose New Message” and try my hand at some romance paperback–worthy correspondence, I notice a new e-mail pop into the in-box.

  It’s from someone whose name I don’t recognize.

  Leonard Palmer.

  Hmm. I repeat the name over and over again in my head, trying to figure out if I’ve ever heard it before. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I click on the e-mail and start reading.

  As my eyes skim over the text, my lips slowly part and my mouth eventually drops open.

  Oh my God. This can’t possibly be real. I can’t believe what I’m reading.

  I feel like a miner who’s been digging for gold for months and months and yet returns home empty-handed every day. And then one evening, as I’m trudging home, feeling discouraged and ready to throw in the towel, I toss my pick violently over my shoulder in a defiant display and it embeds itself randomly into the side of a mountain.

  When I turn around to see where the pick has landed, I blink in utter disbelief.

  I’ve struck gold.

  GOOD NEWS TRAVELS FAST

  I know I could simply call my friends and tell them what I’ve just read in Mason’s e-mail from the mysterious and life-saving Leonard Palmer, but this kind of breakthrough is so much better shared in person. I clasp a printout of the e-mail in my hands, tell my parents that I’ve decided to spend the night at Angie’s, jump into my car, and peel out of the driveway.

  As soon as I’m on the main road, I pick up my cell phone to call Jade and ask her to meet me there. With one hand firmly on the wheel, I flip open my phone with the other and speed-dial Jade’s cell. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to be driving and talking on the phone at the same time. It’s against the law, blah blah blah. Obviously the law has to have some kind of loophole in case of emergencies. And although no one is actually dying or anything, this is still arguably a big freaking deal.

  She answers the phone, and I immediately go, “Listen, I can’t explain now but there’s been a Karma Club breakthrough and I need you to meet me at Angie’s in”—I look out the window to check which street I’m passing—“five minutes.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  I pound the accelerator to make it through a yellow light. “I can’t tell you. It’ll be better if you hear it in person. But trust me, it’s good.”

  Jade is quiet, and I can picture her trying to do some sort of calculation in her head in an attempt to figure out what my so-called breakthrough could possibly be. When she comes up short, she says, “Okay, I’ll leave now.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of bright light. Like the kind you see when celebrities are making their way down the red carpet and the paparazzi are taking pictures of them. I wonder if there’s a celebrity in town, but I don’t dare look behind me because I’m already driving with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding my phone, and I can’t really afford to crash into a telephone pole right now.

  “Okay, see you soon,” I say before hanging up and tossing the phone onto the passenger seat.

  Five minutes later, I arrive at Angie’s house and look into my rearview mirror to see Jade’s headlights pulling in right behind me. We hurry up the front steps and knock on the door.

  Mrs. Harper answers, wearing her nightgown and an untied bathrobe over it. She looks at us and then looks at the clock on the wall. “Jade and Maddy, it’s almost eleven o’clock. Isn’t it a bit late for visits?”

  “I know, Mrs. Harper,” I say. “I’m sorry it’s so late, but we really have to talk to Angie.”

  Mrs. Harper sighs deeply and steps aside, letting us pass through the open door. Then she calls to the back of the house. “Angela, your friends are here to see you.”

  Angie appears wearing a pair of old boxer shorts and a T-shirt. “Did someone die?” she asks sarcastically.

  “Not yet,” I say, flashing her a mischievous smile.

  Angie catches my hint. “Right, okay. Let’s go to my room.”

  We follow her, and once we’re safely behind her closed door, I rip out the e-mail and shove it into Angie’s hands, hardly able to contain my excitement. “Read this,” I command.r />
  Angie takes the page and starts reading it while Jade hovers over her shoulder, trying to get a good look.

  Angie’s eyes start to widen, and a few seconds later, Jade’s follow suit. They’ve arrived at the good part. The clincher. The sentence that is going to assure us a Karma Club victory bigger than we ever imagined.

  Angie finishes reading first and looks up at me. “Is this for real?” she asks, her face covered with disbelief.

  I nod slowly but confidently. “Yep. I found it in Mason’s e-mail. It arrived while I was logged in. And since he’s at his big, flashy birthday party, he probably hasn’t even seen it yet.”

  Jade looks up at me next. “Cheated?” she confirms. “On his SATs?”

  I nod again. “According to this Leonard guy,” I say, tapping the page. “Mason hasn’t yet paid him the other half of the five thousand dollars that he promised to give him in exchange for taking the SATs in his place.”

  Jade covers her mouth with her hand. “This is huge!”

  “I know!”

  Angie’s face flashes with realization. “And this explains why he had to take the test at another school, where no one would know that it wasn’t him.”

  “Yes!” I say. I’ve already figured this out in the time it took me to get here, but it’s almost as fun rediscovering it all over again with my friends. “I mean, this Leonard guy obviously looks enough like Mason. All he had to do was lend him his school ID and voilà! Leonard is Mason for the day, Mason scores a whopping 2350 on his SATs and receives an early acceptance letter to Amherst College.”

  Jade just shakes her head in disbelief. “I always thought that was a pretty big jump from a 1900.”

  “It was!” I exclaim. “But he told me he went to one of those Kaplan classes after school to help raise his score. When really he was actually paying this guy five thousand dollars to take the test for him . . .”

  And right then another realization hits me and I gasp. “That’s why he got the job at the pizzeria. He needed the money to pay this guy, which also explains why he quit a few months later.”

  I never thought Mason would be capable of pulling off something like this. I dated him for two years, and suddenly it feels like I don’t know him at all. And now I’m starting to wonder if I ever did.

  “So, what are we going to do with this?” Jade asks, her eyes buzzing with excitement.

  “Duh,” Angie says, flashing her a look. “We’re going to send it to Amherst.”

  I grin and bite my bottom lip in anticipation. Mason Brooks will never survive an SAT cheating scandal. He’ll get kicked out of Amherst’s incoming class. Our high school will revoke his status as class president. He’ll be totally humiliated in front of everyone. And best of all, Heather Campbell will want nothing to do with him.

  The most hilarious part is this isn’t even really revenge. He brought this upon himself! This universal imbalance was obviously decided by a much higher force than just us. All we’re doing is making sure it becomes public knowledge.

  And it’s really too bad . . . for Mason, I mean. Because had he not completely tossed me aside for Heather Campbell like I was a moldy piece of stale bread, I might have looked upon this little discovery a bit differently. I might not have felt the desire to anonymously share it with the Amherst College admissions office.

  But I guess that’s water under the bridge now. Ironically, though, it’s the same bridge that Mason felt such a strong desire to burn the moment he finished crossing it.

  At this point, it becomes pretty obvious to me whose side Karma is on. And what kind of birthday present it has in mind for Mason Brooks.

  BATHROOM STALL CONFESSIONS

  Monday morning, during the break between first and second period, I’m in one of the stalls in the girls’ bathroom, daydreaming about what will happen when the two envelopes that we dropped anonymously in the mailbox this morning reach their final destinations of Amherst, Massachusetts (home of Amherst College), and Princeton, New Jersey (home of the College Board, which oversees the SAT). My daydreams are quickly interrupted, however, when I hear the door open and the sounds of high-pitched, girlie laughter flood into the tile-covered room. Which, by the way, does not make for the best acoustics when it comes to keeping your conversations to yourself. And this much is obvious when what I immediately recognize as Heather Campbell’s voice says, “Yeah, she is such a loser. It’s hard to imagine anyone still respecting her.”

  Now, I’m not normally a paranoid person, but you can understand, given recent circumstances, why I might have a sneaking suspicion that Heather is talking about me. And for that reason, I stay quiet, thankful that I chose the very last stall.

  “I mean, can you believe she even has the nerve to show her face at school?” Heather asks her bathroom companion.

  “Totally not,” I hear the other person, whom I can only assume to be Jenna LeRoux, say.

  But then I hear Heather say, “And I still have to hang out with her, you know, for the sake of looking like the supportive friend, but her reputation is totally toast.”

  Okay, so now I’m sure she’s not talking about me because I definitely don’t remember Heather and me ever hanging out.

  “It’s so sad how Jenna thinks that just because she hangs out with me people actually like her,” Heather continues.

  My jaw immediately drops to the floor. Why is Heather bashing her best friend? Okay, that is not Jenna in here with her but someone else entirely. And this is how she talks about her friends? I can’t even imagine the stuff she must have said about me over the past month.

  “Yeah,” agrees the mystery girl. “She’s totally lame.”

  I immediately find this hilarious because it’s pretty obvious from what I’m overhearing that Heather will just as likely walk into another bathroom on another floor after another period and start saying nasty things about this girl to someone else. So the fact that she’s so faithfully pledging her loyalty to Heather Campbell is really somewhat comical.

  Comical as in in-my-head funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny. Obviously.

  “Yeah, and you know, just because she dated Spencer Cooper doesn’t automatically make her prom queen or anything,” Heather continues.

  Wait a minute. Dated Spencer? As in past tense? When did they break up? This is news to me. Is that what Spencer was talking about on Friday when he said he wasn’t going to Mason’s birthday party?

  I instantly feel totally stupid for even entertaining the thought that his reason for skipping the party had anything to do with me. Clearly it didn’t. It was about Spencer not wanting to be around his now ex-girlfriend.

  “Well, that much is obvious,” the other girl faithfully replies. “There’s no way she would ever beat you for prom queen.”

  “Especially after what Spencer did to her last night,” Heather whispers, conspiratorially. It’s one of those whispers that’s only used for emphasis, not because you’re actually trying to hide what you’re saying from anyone.

  What? What did he do? I immediately wonder.

  “Wait a minute. What did he do?” the other girl asks as if she’s able to hear my thoughts through the stall door.

  Heather giggles. “You mean you don’t know? I thought everyone knew.”

  I shake my head while inside I’m screaming, I don’t! I don’t know!

  “Omigod,” Heather begins in a low, traitorous voice. And I can tell just from the tone of it that she’s more than happy to retell this particular story about her supposed best friend. I lean closer to the stall door, anxious to hear every word that’s about to be said. “So last week Jenna tried to break up with Spencer because she said that they really weren’t a very good match. You know, because he’s kind of spoiled and all, with his parents owning like ten houses or whatever. Anyway, he got really pissed off that she was breaking up with him and because she told him he was uninvited to Mason’s birthday. So on Friday night, while the rest of us were at the party, he snuck into the school and wrote something
totally awful on her locker.” She pauses in anticipation. “Jenna and I saw it when we got to school this morning.”

  “What did he write?” the other girl asks with unbridled eagerness.

  “It’s so terrible, I don’t even think I can repeat it.”

  She does repeat it. Except, despite the fact that I’m leaning so far forward I’m close to falling over, all I can hear are incomprehensible whispers.

  “Poor Jenna,” the mystery girl replies solemnly.

  “Yeah,” Heather says, trying her best to sound sympathetic. “Can you believe he did that to her?”

  It is actually really hard for me to believe that Spencer would do that. I mean, it seems so petty and immature . . . whatever it is that he wrote. I know he has a reputation for being a jerk, but after tutoring him for these past two weeks, I’ve kind of gotten to know him, and he just doesn’t seem like the type of guy to write something nasty on a locker, no matter how pissed off he was.

  My thoughts about Spencer are brought to a screeching halt when I hear Heather change subjects and say, “Ugh, I don’t know why I’m suddenly breaking out! I’ve gotten like three pimples in the past week!”

  My face brightens, and I sit up a bit straighter on my throne, which I’m sure has now left a semipermanent red ring across my butt, but I don’t really care. I debate reaching into my backpack and taking out my cell phone to text Angie and Jade, but the thought of dropping it on the floor and being discovered after hiding out in here for the whole of this conversation makes me decide otherwise. So I bite my lip to keep from breaking out into joyous laughter and listen as Heather’s new friend tries to fulfill her civic girl duty by telling Heather that she looks perfect and the pimples are hardly even noticeable.