Top 8 (6 page)

“I noticed it about two days after spring break started,” Lisa said.

“That was the first time I got kind of a weird comment,” Schuyler confirmed.

Ruth nodded. “That also was the first time I noticed anything,” she said. “But…”

“Right,” I said. Ruth was one of the least computer-literate people I'd ever met. She only checked her vitals a few times a week, not multiple times a day, like the rest of us. “Okay. So it must have been someone who knew I was away. Because otherwise, I would have noticed the damage immediately.”

“Right,” agreed Lisa.

“And whoever did it was really out to get me,” I said. “For some reason. I mean, they tricked Justin into thinking I broke up with him, they talked about Schuyler's nose job —
sailing accident
,” I finished quickly, seeing her look, “and they tried to make everyone think I was hitting on Dave.”

“More than that,” Lisa said. “I mean, everyone thought you went crazy or something, Mad.
Complètement folle
. The fallout has been extensive.”

“What?” I asked, looking around at my friends' grave expressions. “What else? Most everybody defriended me, so I couldn't see what the comments were.”

Lisa frowned and pulled out her cell. “Shy, give her the basics,” she said, as she fiddled with her phone.

“What?” I asked, growing more nervous by the second.

“It's pretty bad,” Schuyler said, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.

“Twirling,” Ruth said. Schuyler had turned to twirling in an effort to stop chewing her hair, and Ruth and I were trying to get her to stop, as it made her look pretty ditzy. And frankly, Schuyler didn't need any more help in that department.

“Thanks,” Schuyler said, sitting on her hands again. “Okay, ready?”

“As I'll ever be,” I said, figuring that I had seen the worst of it, and I could handle what was coming.

I was wrong.

As Schuyler told me about the damage the Fake Madison had wreaked, Lisa was accessing Friendverse on her cell phone, trying to find the actual comments that had been made.

It was
really
bad.

Jimmy and Liz, who had been together for six years, except for their tiny rough patch freshman year, had broken up acrimoniously. This was due entirely to the fact that my hacker had written a blog post spilling their secrets.

Jimmy and Liz might be going for Class Couple King and Kween, and present a happy face, butt the reality is something different! Liz and Matthew Reynolds
were all over each other at BMM's last partty! And she didn't confess this hookup to her “soulmate” either! But turnabout is fair “play” right? Just ask Jimmy and his mixed doubles partner at tennis camp, who found love
off
the court…

I looked up from Lisa's phone, feeling sick. “God,” I said, “this is just terrible. Who would have done this to them? And really, what's with the spelling mistakes?”

“But it's true, right?” Ruth asked me.

I felt a little guilty squirm in my stomach as she said that, but I quickly put it down to too much latte on an empty stomach. The fact was, it
was
true.

Liz had confided in me about her hookup with Matthew, and Jimmy had told me about his fling with his mixed doubles partner. Both of them, separately, had assured me they'd made huge mistakes and had realized the error of their ways, and I had sworn never to tell anyone. And I hadn't told
that
many people. And all the people I'd told had promised that they'd never tell, either.

“Well, yes,” I said. “But that doesn't mean it's okay to blog about it. I mean, I never would have done that.” I looked around at my friends. “They're really broken up?” Jimmy and Liz were such a unit, it was impossible to imagine them apart.

“
Oui
, they're broken up,” Lisa confirmed. “
C'est la vie
.”

“What else?” I asked, steeling myself.

Looking incensed, Schuyler told me that I'd thrown myself at Connor Atkins in his comments section, and Lisa provided the evidence.

Hey Connor, howzit going hottie?;) I wuz thinking maybe we could get 2gether next weekend and discuss “strategy”…want to be my running mate?;)

“What does that even mean?” I asked, handing Lisa her phone back. “I mean, ew, first of all, but really, what does that even mean?”

“I don't know why someone would want to drag Connor into this,” Schuyler said, looking furious. “I mean, whoever this is is just toying with his affections! And he doesn't deserve that!”

“Also, it's gross,” Ruth said, looking at me. “I second that ew.”

“Kittson Pearson has been really mad at you, too,” Lisa said, scrolling on her phone. “But I guess I can understand why.” She handed it to me.

Kittson, I think u should use spring break to come up with a GOOD prom theme. You kno, one that might get people to actually GO to the prom, if you havent wrecked it with your supa lame decision making skillz. Think you can do that?

“Oh my God, she's going to kill me,” I said, staring down at Lisa's display.

“She's not going to kill you,” Ruth assured me.

“She might,” I said. “You should never insult the future prom queen. I mean, just look at
Carrie
. And have you seen her nails? She totally could.”

I slumped back against my chair. This was awful. Seeing the proof brought the whole thing to a new, terrible level of reality.

Lisa took back her phone and continued scrolling. “I think that might be all I can access,” she said. “I mean, I think most people have deleted your comments. Because most of them were
beaucoup
insulting.”

“So,” Schuyler said hesitantly, “there's also the whole thing with Justin.”

I waved that off. “It's not a big deal,” I said to my friends, who for some reason looked rather stricken.

“Well, um, it kind of is —” Schuyler started to say.

“No,” I said, shaking the ice in my plastic cup. “Because Justin will understand. We have a
connection
.”

Justin Williamson and I had met almost entirely by accident. Ruth had been tutoring him in an after-school program, Bunsen Burner Buddies, that pitted advanced science students with students who needed some extra help. I was giving Ruth a ride home that day, because her car was in the shop. My rehearsal had ended early, and I headed to the library to find Ruth. And there he was, looking so cute and broad-shouldered and blond, chewing on his pencil. I normally
didn't go for jocky guys, but Justin was special. He played football in the fall and rugby in the spring, and luckily I'd only had to suffer through two rugby games before he asked me out and I could stop pretending I cared about it.

I knew as soon as I finished with my friends, I would call Justin and explain, and everything would be okay again.

“It'll be fine,” I assured them. “Justin's not really going to believe that I would break up with him over Friendverse.”

“I think he does, Mad,” Ruth said slowly, looking sorrowful. “Because he's going out with Kittson Pearson.”

“What?” I stared at Ruth. “I mean, what?”

“
Oui
,” Lisa said sorrowfully, with a one-armed shrug that I knew for a fact she had never done before she watched
Chocolat.
“It's true. Apparently, they first hooked up two days after you broke up with him, and yesterday…”

“What?” I asked, looking around at my friends. “What happened yesterday?”

“They both changed their profiles to ‘Taken,'” Ruth said gravely. “I'm so sorry, Maddie.”

Only Ruth was allowed to call me Maddie, and only in very dire circumstances. The use of the nickname would have told me how serious this was, if I'd failed to get it from the whole my-boyfriend-dating-the-future-prom-queen thing.

Because the changing of the profiles was major. Ruth had written a paper in AP Psychology about how the “Taken” status on Friendverse was the modern-day equivalent of “pinning” or “going steady,” and she'd gotten an A on it, so it must have been somewhat accurate. At Putnam High, it was the definitive marker of a relationship. The fact that Justin had done this with Kittson was threatening to make my latte come back up. I tried not to think about what
else
they might have done.

So he'd believed it. Justin, my boyfriend of a whole seventeen days, had believed that I had broken up with him on Friendverse, and then without even talking to me about it, had gone off and started dating one of the most popular girls in school.

“I can't believe this!” I cried. “I mean, I bought him tortoises.”

My friends all looked at me. “Is that code for some fooling-around thing you guys used to do?” Lisa asked. “Because I really don't want to know about that.”

“No,” I said. I took the bag of souvenirs out of my purse and dropped it on the table. “Souvenirs.”

“Ooh, presents?” Lisa said, grabbing for the bag.

“Yeah,” I said, slumping back against my seat again as Lisa pulled out the gifts. “I was going to take one, and I was going to give him one. Because tortoises mate for life.”

Everyone stared at me with raised eyebrows.

“We didn't!” I said quickly. “That's a major, major step in a relationship. And plus, we'd only been going out for seventeen days.”

I had never done much more than making out with my past boyfriends and party hookups. I had hoped to do a little more with Justin — I'd even bought a really cute lacy bra in anticipation — but now it was apparently completely useless. I hoped I still had the receipt.

“Also,” I added, “don't you think I would have told you guys? We tell each other everything.”

As I said this, I saw Schuyler suddenly look down at her hands, hiding her face with her hair. As far as I knew, my friends were in the same boat as me — none of them had Done It with anyone yet. Schuyler kept going out with whoever asked her, but then breaking up with them after two weeks, when she realized she actually didn't like them at all.

Ruth had never had a serious boyfriend at Putnam High, but claimed to have had one at her Gifted Students' Science Camp last summer. Schuyler and Lisa and I had endless discussions when Ruth wasn't around about whether this Mystery Science Boy actually existed.

Lisa and Dave had been going out all year, and she'd told us that they were planning to Do It, but that she wanted to wait until Bastille Day, because she liked the symbolism of it. I hadn't asked her what about the
symbolism she liked, because I was pretty sure I didn't want to know.

“Ooh, cute! I mean,
mignon
!” Lisa said, holding up her tote bag. “This is for me, right?”

I nodded, and gave the stuffed bird to Schuyler and the Darwin to Ruth.

“Thanks,” Schuyler said, smiling, apparently over whatever it was that had been bothering her a second ago.

“Yeah, this is great,” Ruth said, bobbling Darwin's head.

I looked sadly down at the carved tortoises. “Now what am I supposed to do with these?”

“Bookends?” Schuyler suggested.

The sight of the two forlorn tortoises suddenly filled me with determination. “No,” I said, putting them back in my purse. “I'm still going to give one to Justin.”

“Okay,” Lisa said. “You mean as a breakup gift or something?”

“No,” I said. “As his girlfriend. Because I'm going to get him back.”

“Oh,” Schuyler said. “Okay.” She took a sip of her drink. “But, um, why?”

“It's not that he isn't totally cute, Mad,” Lisa said quickly. “Because he is. But honestly, I never really got what you saw in him.”

I was happy to see that Ruth looked as affronted as I felt. “We have a
connection
,” I repeated. “You guys don't know. But there was something real between us…” I sighed. I had really felt this, during our last makeout session. And we hadn't needed to talk about it — in fact, we'd never seemed to need to talk about anything — but that just showed that our understanding was so deep and profound, it went beyond words.

“Oh,” Schuyler said. “Okay then.”

“So,” I said, trying to get my thoughts clear. It had really been an exhausting afternoon. “Let's figure out who could have done this.”

“I'm making a list,” Ruth said, bending over her notebook.

“Project!” Schuyler said, clapping excitedly.

“So,” Lisa said, “it can't be that many people, right? It had to be someone with information.”

“Right,” Schuyler said, sticking her hair in her mouth.

“Hair,” Lisa and I said.

“Thanks,” Schuyler said, taking it out of her mouth. “Because somehow they had to know about all the things they wrote, right? Like somehow they found out about my sailing accident.”

“You really need to let that go,” Lisa told her.

“Someone with information,” Ruth repeated, writing furiously in her notebook.

“Also motive,” I reminded her. “For whatever reason, someone wanted to break up Jimmy and Liz, and break me and Justin up. Not to mention that they wanted to make everyone think
I'd
done these things.”

“I think it was Kittson,” Lisa said definitively.
“La femme dangereuse.”

I shook my head. “I can't see her caring enough about me to do this,” I said. “Also, she doesn't have enough imagination. Her first idea for our prom theme was ‘Prom Night.' And not in the awesome eighties horror movie way.”

“Maybe it was Connor!” Ruth said, suddenly, looking up from her notebook. “You know, getting revenge for the whole you-beating-him-twice thing.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Interesting. And maybe he was messaging himself to throw me off the trail. Which makes it extra creepy, but effective…”

“It wasn't him!” Schuyler burst out angrily. We all stared at her. “I mean…it just doesn't seem like something he would do. Not that I know. Because I don't. Just…you know, a feeling.” She blushed, and, muttering something about cleaning up, collected our empty cups and brought them to the trash.

“She's acting
comme une folle
,” Lisa observed.

“Seriously,” I said, remembering her earlier weirdness.

“Done,” Ruth said, ripping a page out of her notebook and handing it to me.

The list, written in Ruth's neat, curly handwriting, read:

 

Mad's Friendverse Hacker/Possibilities:

I stared forlornly at the list. “Not that much to go on,” I said.

“Don't worry!” Lisa said. “
Ne pas t'inquiete
! I'm sure we'll find lots of other people who don't like you.”

“Thanks, Lisa,” I said. “Really.”

“
De rien
,” she told me cheerfully. Then she stretched and looked at her watch. “Oh
mon Dieu
, I should get going.”

“Me too,” Schuyler said, returning, and glancing down at her most recent replacement phone. “I didn't realize it was so late.”

The four of us gathered up our stuff and headed outside. Schuyler climbed into her SUV, Lisa got into her convertible Bug, and they headed away, the sounds of Edith Piaf wafting out from Lisa's car as she drove off.

Ruth and I stood together by our cars, and she gave me a quick hug. “It'll all be okay,” she said. “We'll get to the bottom of this. After all, we've got a
list
.”

“Right,” I said, laughing. “And I'll get Justin back.”

“That too.”

“You're the best,” I said quietly. “Thanks for believing me all along.”

“Of course,” she said, with an I'm-you're-best-friend-it's-my-job-silly eye roll. “And thanks for my Darwin.”

“Talk to you later?” I asked.

“Talk to you soon,” she replied.

This, dorky as it was, was our sign-off, whether we were online or in person. When we were in sixth grade, we had thought it was the coolest thing ever, and now we just did it out of habit.

We hugged once again, and then Ruth got into her silver Volvo and pulled away.

I stood for a moment alone in the parking lot, trying to digest everything that had happened that day.

Someone, somewhere out there in Putnam hated me—hated me enough to hurt my friends, hated me enough to try and mess up most of the good things in my life. A sudden gust of wind blew by, and I unlocked my car and got in. The night was still a little bit cool. Spring hadn't totally arrived yet, and I felt myself shiver slightly.

Then I put Judy in gear and headed home.