Top 8 (8 page)

“Thanks,” I said, unwrapping the wrap. I looked Schuyler's way again, but she was still looking down. I decided that I'd try and talk to her later.

“David,” Ruth said, smiling at Dave and sitting next to me. “Good spring break?”

“Hey Ruth,” Lisa said with incredibly false casualness, “who was that you were talking to out there just now?”

To my surprise, Ruth flushed a little. Maybe she
did
like Frank. I mean, Dell. Which…okay. I might be able to get my head around it. In time.

“Oh, just Frank,” she said. “He and Liz Franklin and I are working on a project for AP Physics.”

“That reminds me, I should talk to him,” I said, mouth full of salt and vinegar goodness. “I don't think my computer's totally fixed yet.”

“He asked how it was holding up,” Ruth said.

“It's a WIP,” I told her. Four blank faces stared back at me. “Work In Progress,” I translated.

“Well, obviously,” Dave said. “You do realize, Mad, that when you need to translate all your abbreviations, it actually takes more time than saying the real words?”

Before I could reply, the bell rang, and I remembered what I'd have to go back to. I sighed and packed up the remainder of my lunch.

“It'll be okay,” Ruth said as we climbed down. “It'll all blow over in a day or two.”

“You think?” I asked.

“Sure,” Dave said, swinging Lisa down and around in the way she had demanded he do ever since she saw
An American in Paris
. “A day…a month…same thing, right?”

“I hate you,” I told him as we headed inside.

“Oh, I think my profile says something different,” he said as he slung his arm around Lisa's shoulders.

I was telling my friends goodbye and heading toward English when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Justin.

My heart sped up a little bit at the sight of him, so cute and determined-looking, walking down the hallway. I knew I had to talk to him immediately. I had to make him understand what had happened, so that he could dump Kittson and we could get back together.

“Justin,” I breathed. “Gotta go,” I said quickly, waving at my friends and hustling after him.

“Godspeed, MacDonald!” I heard Dave call after me.

“
Bonne chance
!” Lisa added.

“Wait, who was that?” I heard Schuyler ask.

“Mad, you'll be late for class!” Ruth yelled.

“Talk to you later!” I called.

“Talk to you soon!” I heard her reply, out of habit. I didn't stop to look back, but hurried down the hallway toward Justin.

“Justin!” I called, and he stopped halfway down the hallway, turned around and looked at me. I tried to read his expression, but it seemed pretty blank. “Hi,” I said, a little breathlessly.

I looked at him, feasting my eyes after two weeks of starvation. He looked just the same, but almost a little better. He had short, blond hair in a crew cut that was crafted into perfect tiny spikes (helped by a lot of gel). He had pale blue eyes and broad shoulders and a dimple that showed up whenever he laughed. Which didn't happen all that often, so it just made it more special when it did.

“Hi Madison,” he said. He leaned back against a bank of lockers. “What's up?”

What's up?
Like I was just trying to get the history homework from him or something? Even though we'd never had a class together, just parallel PE classes.

But maybe this was Justin's way of coping with his heartbreak, by pretending it wasn't bothering him at all. Unless his way of coping had been to go out with Kittson Pearson. But whatever, it would all be cleared up in a minute.

As the final, You-Better-Move-Quickly-Or-You're-Going-To-Get-A-Detention bell rang, the hallway emptied out. Ruth, as usual, had been right — I was going to be late for class. But I didn't care. I had much more important matters to deal with. It seemed like either Justin also didn't care, or he had an open period, because he didn't seem to be in any hurry to get to class.

“So,” I said. I looked at him and tried not to think about how cute he looked, and how I'd really thought that when I saw him again, we'd be talking (well, I'd be talking and he'd be listening) and kissing, and I'd give him his carved tortoise. I didn't think it'd be in the hallway, when I was supposed to be in English class, before I'd really worked out what I wanted to say. But since the other option didn't seem to be presenting itself, I decided to jump right in. “So. Okay,” I said, trying not to notice how far away from me he was standing. “About the Friendverse thing —”

“It's okay,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “I mean, you wanted to break up, so we broke up. No big.”

He was doing such a good job of disguising his heartbreak, it was breaking
my
heart a little. “No, that's the thing,” I said, taking a step closer to him. “I
didn't
want to break up. It wasn't me that broke up with you. My Friendverse got hacked.”

Justin blinked at me, and I smiled at him and waited for the declaration of love and renunciation of future prom queens that was sure to come. But instead, he looked down the hallway and said, “What?”

I tried not to get frustrated. I remembered that it usually took a couple of explanations for Justin to get things. Which was fine. He just liked things to be clear.

“My Friendverse,” I said, speaking a little more slowly. “It got hacked. Someone pretended to be me. And then broke up with you. And speaking of,” I said, warming to my theme, “I would have thought that you would have at least waited to
talk
to me before you started dating —” I stopped and took a breath. “But whatever. That doesn't matter now. The point is, I didn't want to break up with you. In fact,” I said, taking another step closer to him and looking up at him — well, trying to, since we were almost the same height, but slouching a little so that I could look up at him — “I still don't.”

“But, um…” Justin looked down the hallway again. “But you did break up with me, Madison. Or someone did. So then when Kittson asked me out…”

“Wait,
she
asked
you
out?” I couldn't help feeling a little relieved that it hadn't been Justin's idea at all, but Kittson's. But what a hussy! I mean, who asks someone out two days after they've been dumped by their girlfriend on Friendverse? Really.

“Yeah,” Justin said. “And since we'd broken up, well…”

“But…” I said, trying to get my head around what he was saying. “But since it was all a misunderstanding…” my voice trailed off.

“I know that now,” he said, running a hand through his spiky blond hair and getting it stuck, but just for a second, in the gel. “But I can't stop going out with Kittson just because you got hacked, can I?”

“Yes, you can!” I said, glad we were finally on the same page.

“Madison,” he said softly. “I mean…if this hadn't happened…”

“Yes?” I asked, hanging on his every word.

“Justy!”

I turned in the direction of the voice to see Kittson Pearson sauntering down the hall toward us. She was also wearing jeans and a V-necked T-shirt, but unlike me, she appeared to have an actual C-cup and not just a
Victoria's Secret water bra. As she came closer, I paused to wonder how, on such an incredibly humid day, she had managed to get her blond hair so stick-straight. After watching it for a moment, I concluded that it was probably a wig.

“There you are!” Kittson cooed, walking up to Justin. She stopped when she saw me standing next to him. “Oh. Madison.” She looked me up and down. “Don't forget we have a committee meeting tomorrow at four.”

I gaped at her, hoping that some incredibly clever retort would come to me. But as I watched her twine her arm through Justin's and smirk at me, all words, clever or otherwise, left my head. “Um,” I said, brilliantly.

Ruth had told me that Justin was going out with Kittson. Justin had told me. I had known it, intellectually. But it hadn't sunk in until I saw them together, looking annoyingly well-matched and J. Crew-y and blond, that they were going out. That there was no more Justin and Madison. That it was Justin and Kittson now. I knew it was only a matter of time before they became Jittson.

“So we should go,” Kittson said, still wearing her incredibly frustrating smug expression. She tugged on Justin's arm, and, seemingly without protest, he turned and followed her down the hallway, leaving me standing and staring after the two of them.

I had just slung my bag over my shoulder when Justin stopped and turned around. “See you around, Mad,” he said, smiling at me. “I'm glad you're back.”

I smiled in return, but I didn't know if he saw, because Kittson scowled at him, tossed her hair at me, and continued dragging him down the hall. Frowning at Kittson's back, I pulled out the list Ruth had made for me at Stubbs, found a pen, and added to it.

 

Mad's Friendverse Hacker/Possibilities:

Well, Kittson might have Justin now — she might have ensorcelled (SAT prep word) my very sweet, if somewhat naïve, boyfriend into going out with her, but it wouldn't last. Because Justin clearly still had feelings for me. He'd practically said as much. It was only the fact that he was such a gentleman — not wanting to dump Kittson right away because of a misunderstanding — that we weren't already back together.

I stuffed Ruth's list back in my bag and vowed that I would get him back. He was my tortoise, after all.

“MADISON MACDONALD!”

I looked up and saw my English teacher, Mr. Underwood, throw open the door to our English classroom and stride down the hall toward me, toupee flapping.

“Hey Mr. Underwood,” I said, trying to come up with an excuse as quickly as I could. Mr. Underwood was a tyrant about punctuality, and if you were late to class, he made you stay in detention for as long as you'd been tardy. The reality of which hadn't seemed important at all when I was talking to Justin, but was now starting to hit me. “I was just, um —”

“Twelve minutes late for class!” he thundered. He headed back to the classroom and I followed quickly in his wake, wishing that he would slow down a little, because at the rate he was going, I was terrified the toupee would fly off, and there would be a horrible moment where we would have to pretend I didn't notice anything while he picked it up off the floor.

“Twelve?” I asked, looking at my watch, thinking of the detention time to come. “I think it's really more like ten. Or eight…”

By this point, we'd reached the classroom door with the toupee, happily, albeit precariously, still attached. I noticed an upswing in the whispering the second I entered the classroom, and quickly slid into my seat in the third row, next to Jimmy Arnett. Jimmy's usual happy expression was gone, and he looked drawn and tired.

“Hey,” I whispered to him.

Jimmy glared at me with an expression of such loathing that I flinched a little. Then he turned his back on me as far as he could while still being able to see the board.

“Now that Miss MacDonald has deigned to join us,” Mr. Underwood said from the front of the classroom, “let's continue our discussion of
Death on the Nile
. So, in this book, we can see how Christie sets up the suspects slowly. When she does this…”

I tuned Mr. Underwood out, but trying to look like I was paying attention, I scribbled down random words as I caught them. Motive. Means. Intent. Red herring. Decoy.

Our English class had been concerned about Mr. Underwood's mental-health status all year, but now most of us were just hoping that the fact he had clearly come unhinged would make him an easier grader on the final exams.

We'd heard that Mrs. Underwood had divorced him over the summer, causing his breakdown and botched hair-plug operation. Due to the stress of this, he had apparently been unable to teach us the English literature most juniors learned, like
The Great Gatsby
and
The Ballad of the Sad Café
. Maybe to help ease his own anguish, Mr. Underwood had only been teaching us his favorite books. The entire first semester, we'd done P.G.
Wodehouse, which had been a lot of fun, but probably wasn't going to help me pass English next year. Now we were on to mysteries, and there had been a rumor that we were going to do all the seminal John Grishams before the end of the year.

I kept trying to make eye contact with Jimmy throughout the rest of the class, but he refused to look at me. I felt horrible about the whole breakup — and I just couldn't
understand
it. Clearly, whoever had hacked me had wanted to mess up
my
life. Why also involve Jimmy and Liz?

“So,” Mr. Underwood boomed as class was five minutes away from ending, “don't forget to read
The Mousetrap
for Thursday. And I want a five-hundred-word essay on the Holmes-Watson relationship by Monday.”

“Mr. Underwood?” Jimmy raised his hand.

“Yes, James?”

“Could we please read a book about an evil, vindictive woman who callously betrays a friend's trust, ruins his chance for happiness, and then dies a gruesome death?”

Mr. Underwood blinked at him, and I felt the gazes of my classmates swing over toward me.

“Well,” Mr. Underwood said, adjusting the top of his toupee, “I don't think you read
Hedda Gabler
until next year, so…”

As he said that, the bell rang and everyone jumped up, gathering books and papers and heading for the door.

“Do your homework!” Mr. Underwood yelled after them. Then he placed the dreaded yellow slip of paper on my desk, requiring me to show up for twelve minutes of detention after school.

I groaned but simply took it, knowing from experience that he wouldn't reduce the time or change his mind. Plus, I wanted to try and talk to Jimmy before he got too far away.

I caught up to him just outside the classroom door. “Jimmy,” I said, standing in front of him and trying to block his path. “It wasn't me, I swear it! My Friendverse was hacked. And —”

“Oh?” Jimmy asked, still glaring at me. “So you're telling me that you never told anyone about me and Anna at tennis camp?”

I felt myself flush. “Well,” I said haltingly, “no. I mean, I did tell a couple people. But I never would have blogged about it, I swear —”

“You know what, Madison?” he asked, cutting me off. “I don't want to hear it.” He stepped to the side of me and started to walk down the hallway.

“But,” I said quickly, following after him, “I'm sure that if you talked to Liz —”

“Liz,” Jimmy said, with a slight tremor in his voice, “can go talk to
Matthew Reynolds
.” With that, he pushed past me and continued down the hall.

I sighed, hoisted my bag over my shoulder, and headed off to AP History — a class, thankfully, I didn't have with any close friends. So hopefully, I could avoid waves of hatred coming from my classmates for at least one period.

I swung by my locker to pick up my history textbook, and saw Liz Franklin. Our lockers were right next to each other, and our chats in front of them was one of the many reasons I was frequently late to classes. But having lockers so near had been one of the great perks of our friendship — I knew her combo, and she knew mine, and I could grab stuff for her when she needed it, and vice versa. This time, though, when Liz saw me she just frowned and went back to searching for something.