The Julian Game (12 page)

“I can’t stand it when I whine about nothing.” That smile was stuck on with superglue. But his voice was tight, and I didn’t want to press a point.

So I changed the subject. “You’re healing.” The welting purple was lifting to a shade of strawberry that didn’t look quite as angry.

“Someone gave me Neosporin,” he said. “Works like a charm.” He had that tease-voice that he’d used on Alexa. At least now, thankfully, it was turned on me.

“See, I’ve got your back.”

“You’ve got more than my back.”

The late afternoon sun had crept down, flooding the shop with a warm light bath. Julian wedged his chair closer so that he could drop a leg over mine. “Good times. Except for my chaperone over there. So don’t try any moves.” As he squeezed my kneecap, which made me giggle, and then suddenly he leaned forward, his mouth brushing mine.

“Your mom . . . ,” I protested.

“Nah, she’s in the zone.” Julian held up a finger. “Listen.”

I tuned in his mom, from the back of the shop, speaking softly, quickly into the phone. “And if we start with the shrimp, then we can put the crostini in the oven for ten minutes so it’ll be ready to pass with the Norwegian salmon.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “She’s been on nonstop today.”

“She sounds excited.”

“She is. Big order. Mostly she caters faculty cocktail parties at Drexel or Villanova, but this one’s a biggie. A wedding. Over a hundred people.”

“That’s awesome.” I took a sip of his drink. One of those crazy-sweet iced teas that Dad forbid in the house.

Now his mom laughed. Her voice sounded girlish. “Fantastic. I can do a pickup in an hour.”

Julian twined a strand of my hair through his fingers. “It’s a lot to pull off,” he told me. “They need filet and caviar and all this posh gourmet. The wedding’s at eight, out in Kennett Square. Mom’s filling in since there was some last-minute crisis with the other catering company.”

My heart tripped up on itself, and I almost choked on my tea.

He gave me a look. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you think that sounds like a practical joke or something?”

“A joke?” Julian repeated. “Like ha-ha, no wedding?”

“Right, exactly.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Only because . . .” Crap. I’d screwed up. I’d blurted when I should have kept quiet. I should have been smarter. Led Julian right up to it. Then manipulated it so that he might have figured it out himself. “Because, um, we get hoax stuff at the Exchange sometimes,” I fumbled, panicking a little. “Copies of paintings and . . .”

“What are you talking about?” Julian was staring. “You think this sounds like a hoax? Raye, that’s completely paranoid.”

“Not really.” I blinked. “Think about it. An eight o’clock wedding, isn’t that a little late? And Kennett Square is a forty-five-minute drive. Why wouldn’t they have contacted someone local? You should have double-checked the order before—”

By now, Julian had shoved up onto his feet. Swerving to the back of the shop. I counted thirty seconds before I followed.

“But I don’t get it. What kind of creep would want to scam us?” With the phone clamped to her ear, his mother sounded more mystified than anything. “No, I can’t believe this. The young woman was so—bride-y. She gave me a huge story about how her wedding planner confused the date and she couldn’t—okay, nobody’s picking up.”

Julian looked like he wanted to break down doors. “Don’t do another thing on this wedding, Ma. Not till you get a human voice on the other side.”

I was retreating to the other end of the shop, where I paced up and down, looking at crackers. Stone wheat, caraway, rosemary dill, salted, sesame, low-fat, butter—Julian. He was waiting for me at the end. I hadn’t even heard him.

“You know something,” he said. “Spill it, Raye. My mom’s fronted almost two thousand dollars on her credit card.” He moved toward me, fast. Gripped my shoulders so hard I winced. He let go.

“It’s just common sense, it’s not like I can say anything for certain . . .” I was embarrassed by my terrible lying skills.

“You owe me. I cut you a break, didn’t I? I never asked for one single detail on your nutjob friend from camp. But it’s the same girl, am I right? Someone I know? Was she at the party? Just spit it out, Raye. Does she go to Fulton?”

I was paralyzed. As in, I literally did not have the presence of mind to move a muscle. Something in Julian must have sensed this. “Listen to me.” He spoke softly, confidingly. “I know you feel like you’ve got to protect her. But you owe me something, too.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You can.”

“Please don’t put me in this situation.”

“No, you can’t play the victim here. My mom just took that hit.” He glanced over the shelves, his voice dropped an octave. “How about if I say a name, and all you have to do is nod. Fair?”

I didn’t answer. I fixed my eyes just off to the side, to the Pepsi sign above the fridge. The yin-yang of blue and red.

The red like my berry lipstick.

“Ella Parker.”

The blue like my wig.

“It’s Ella Parker, right?”

What a mess this was.

“That’s the only girl I know who is ruinously pissed with me,” said Julian. “Ella Parker, that freak. She’s the one.”

I nodded.

That night, I hung out at Julian’s house. A continuation of
our not-really-maybe date. Splitting pizza pies with his family, even his gentle, frayed dad and Silas, who sported black nail polish and bleach-tipped hair. Eccentric but not the “major screw-up” that Ella had judged him. His younger brother, Matt, was surprisingly unbratty for a fifth grader. Although neither brother had Julian’s superstar quality, they didn’t seem to hold it against him.

After another hour of calling the cell number, everyone had agreed that the wedding was a sham. Julian didn’t mention that the attack was personal. The general Kilgarry consensus was that it was a fraternity or sorority prank. Once this was decided, they treated it as a big joke. It seemed Julian wasn’t the only Kilgarry who knew how to cement on a happy face.

The butcher and the pastry chef both agreed to reimburse the order, but the florist had already made the table arrangements, so that was a loss. Silas picked them up when he went to get the pizzas and stuck them all around the house.

“Okay, I think one of you boys needs to get married tonight,” said Julian’s mom, “so these gorgeous roses and hyacinths don’t go to waste.”

“Not Julian,” said Silas. “He’s the shittiest type of heartbreaker—the unintentional kind.”

“Yep. Julian’s the heartbreak kid,” added Matt. “If we were a brothers band, he’d be the lead singer.”

“If we were a brothers band, then we’d
really
be broke.” Silas snorted.

I could tell Julian didn’t like that Silas had mentioned the Kilgarrys’ financial situation in front of me. A little too much truth, maybe.

Mostly, though, Julian was distracted. Possibly deciding what he was going to do about Ella as the rest of the family scooped bowls of gelato and picked a movie. We went with Matt’s Syfy channel choice that Natalya would have seconded in a heartbeat. So in a way, I ended up with the same Saturday evening I’d always had.

Except for later that night, as his family one by one disappeared off to their rooms, we had time alone. But by then, Julian didn’t want to discuss the Ella issue. Julian’s T-shirt smelled like mustard, and his eyes gleamed like a wolf’s in the dim light of the outside hall. He showed me his tattoos, the crossed lacrosse sticks inked on his left thigh, the delicate green shamrock on his opposite shoulder.

I laid an ear to his bare chest and listened to his heart beat, he traced my mouth with the tip of his finger, and I let him unhook my bra, my breasts free for him to explore in the semi-darkness, first with his hands and then with his tongue, just like I’d seen a zillion times in movies. I was all racing heart and gooseflesh and held breath, startled and delighted that I wasn’t messing up or being outed as having never done this before.

It wasn’t until Julian unbuttoned the top of my jeans that I made him stop, a simple gesture that he understood immediately, as if he’d been expecting it, and when he rolled the pressure of his weight off me, he kept his legs over mine, which made me happy since it didn’t feel so much like I’d lost him as just temporarily deactivated him.

“What are you thinking?” he whispered.

“I’m thinking I’m glad I don’t have to wait too long to see you again.”

He laughed. “What makes you so sure?”

I nudged him in the ribs. “I meant, aren’t you coming over to Fulton on Monday for that forum meeting about journalism?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, the whole staff is going. But way to scare off the moment, Raye. Talking about the school paper.” His hand encircled my wrist and locked it lightly. “Confess. You’re a little bit of nerd, aren’t you?”

“I’m not a nerd.” My voice was sharp. Now I really had scared off the moment.

“I didn’t think so, but that’s what my sources tell me. Not that you’re the mayor of Geek City, but you’re most definitely leasing space near Nerdtown—paid for by the Fulton scholarship fund, right?”

His tone was kidding, and I shouldn’t have gotten so prickly about it, but I did. I’d been lying against the couch cushions with Julian stretched on his side and facing me, one elbow propped and his chin resting in the heel of his hand. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable. I squirmed up on my elbows. “So what? So I’m not flunking out of Fulton and I’m not BFFs with the Group. Does that bother you?”

“Obviously not. I’m just messing with ya.” He shifted up, too, adjusting his angle to fit mine. “It’s a bonus to be with a girl who doesn’t waste time gossiping about our whole stupid crowd. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” But I was bothered. I’d never thought about it before, all those different conversations Julian shared with other girls. The Fulton-MacArthur alliance, and me not in it.

“Something.” As he rolled up and over, pinning his body against mine. “Chill. You need your blue wig, Elizabeth.”

“Ha ha.”

“That reminds me, I was meaning to ask . . . what happened to that wig?”

“It’s in my bedroom.”

He put his lips close to my ear to whisper. “I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”

“Why?”

“It’s a kick-ass disguise, right? And . . . you look pretty hot in it.”

“And then I could reenact all your fantasies for you?”

Now he grinned, wolf teeth to match his eyes. “All I’m saying is if you remember it next time, I wouldn’t complain.”

Next time. That was the phrase I held on to, long after the local news came on and we realized how late it was, and Julian dragged Silas out of his bedroom to give me a lift home, the guys in the front and me in the back.

Next time meant the future. Next time meant being alone again, with Julian.

But next time also meant Monday morning. When Julian would walk onto Fulton’s campus and everyone would know he was mine, and not just for a Sweet Sixteen or a week at Club Med. And if Ella went ballistic and made a scene, so what? Who cared about Ella? Who cared about anything past this night, the best Saturday night of my life that made up for all the other, nothing ones?

Meanwhile a thousand tiny intimate moments now stretched into a hazy infinity of daydreams that would keep me going until I saw him again.

That Sunday afternoon as soon as I arrived at Natalya’s,
her mom steered me into the kitchen for borscht.

“Hooray for Raye,” she said. “I didn’t want to go a whole weekend without seeing my second daughter.”

I always loved the way Mrs. Z could diffuse tension in the room. Now she was taking my nearly two weeks’ absence from her home and making it all right again with her warm voice, her homemade borscht and the casual, comforting press of her palm between my shoulder blades as Natalya plunked down my glass of Welch’s white grape juice and took the seat opposite.

But Natalya was annoyed about something. She muttered in Polish, and I turned to her brother, Tom. “One dollar if you translate.”

“Keep your cash. She said you’ve got a boyfriend. And that’s why you won’t tell her the truth about where you were last night.”

I picked up my spoon and started in, ignoring Natalya’s stare-down.

Later on, lounging in the rec room, Natalya huffed. “What’s with the secrecy? Aren’t you even going to give me a hint about where you were last night? Is it that Conestoga guy with the artichoke hair? Why would you keep him under the radar?”

“I’m not seeing that guy . . .”

“Fine, Miss Clandestine. But I’m onto you. I’m going online.”

“I’m taking a nap.” And I curled up on the Zawadskis’ nubby Barcalounger and closed my eyes, picking and choosing from my palette of Julian daydreams, injecting myself with them like an addict.

Across from me on the couch, Natalya was clicking away on her laptop. Then, a pause. “Here’s randomness. I’ve been invited to a chat group. It came into my Fulton account. Do you know someone named [email protected]?”

“Nope.”

“It’s to a link.” Something about the silence made me look over again. Natalya was squinting at the monitor. “Death to Nerbit, it’s called.”

I opened my eyes and was with her in a pounce. “Let me see.”

“Did you get one of these?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I rarely checked my boring Fulton e-mail on weekends. It was mostly reminders about things like jazz quartet auditions, or bake sales or sports.

“Looks like it was sent to our whole class.”

Natalya and I stared at the screen.

“Seems kinda spooky,” Natalya said. “Maybe it’s viral. I don’t want to pick up something that destroys my hardware. Should I enter?”