Top 8 (9 page)

I spun my own combination and glanced over at her. Liz looked distinctly worse for wear. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and it looked like she hadn't slept in days.

After the reception I'd gotten from Jimmy, I wasn't particularly eager to talk to her, but I did want her to know I hadn't intentionally tried to derail her relationship.

“Liz,” I said, before I lost my nerve, “listen. It wasn't me, the profile thing. I got hacked, and someone else blogged that stuff.”

Liz turned and glared at me. “I'm so sure, Madison,” she said. “You were the only one who knew about my hookup with Matthew.”

“I'm so, so sorry,” I said. “But, um, Matthew knew, right? So maybe he told someone…”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “So you never told anyone about the Matthew hookup?”

I felt my face get hot again. What was with all the third degree today? “Not exactly,” I said, looking down at the floor. “But I swear I didn't tell that many people, and I never would have put it on the internet, I promise —”

Liz just shook her head and started rifling through her locker again.

“I know that Jimmy's really sorry about the breakup, Liz…” I actually didn't know this for sure, but it certainly seemed like it by the way his voice had sounded when he'd said her name. “I don't think he's doing too well. He seems really upset.” I saw her face soften for a moment, but then her angry expression returned.

“Well, if he's so broken up about it, he can just find some tennis-playing
skank
to comfort him!” Liz slammed her locker shut, and a few papers fluttered out of it.

I bent down and picked them up, and I couldn't help noticing they were graded papers from AP Physics and several receipts from Frank Dell for services rendered. I had a similar receipt somewhere in my bedroom.

“Did you get your computer fixed?” I asked, handing her back the papers. I was just hoping that she'd start talking about something else, and forget why she was really, really mad at me.

“Yeah,” she said, shoving the pages into her bag. “Like, two months ago. And I don't know what he did, but it's acting weirder now than it ever was before.” After saying this, Liz seemed to remember that she was pissed, because she glared at me again, turned on her heel and stalked down the hall.

“I'm going to fix this!” I called after her. I didn't know just how yet, but I would. Then the last bell rang, and I realized I was now late for history.

History passed without major incident, except that I had forgotten to do the reading over the break, and therefore was wholly unable to answer a single question about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff. But when in the future was I ever going to need the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (whatever it was)? That's what Google was for.

After Latin, in which I had to decline to decline the verb
duco
because I'd also forgotten to do my reading for that class, I headed to detention, knowing that I was going to be late to
Dane
rehearsal. This production — a musical version of
Hamlet
, set in Denmark, Kansas, in 1928 — was complicated enough to require a lot of rehearsal. Rehearsal I was supposed to be on time for.

And it was extra frustrating, because I just knew that Sarah Donner would use my tardiness as a reason why I didn't deserve to have the lead role of Felia. She had been presenting arguments like this to the director, Mr. Allan, ever since the cast list went up. She'd seemed really upset about losing out on this part — much more so than usual.

I fortified myself with a Diet Coke and headed down to the lower-level classroom where detention was held. I gave my slip to the teacher at the desk and scanned the room for semifriendly or familiar faces, making a mental note to sit, this time, as far away as possible from the arson kid. I spotted Glen Turtell slumped over his desk in the back row, and I slid into the seat next to him.

I'd been kind-of friends with Turtell since fourth grade when he was the short, fat kid who got beat up every day. Since I had a very firm sense of right and wrong back then, and was a foot taller than everyone else, I defended him. I didn't need to do this the next year, when he shot up and became the biggest kid in the class and subsequently started stealing his former tormentors' lunch and money.

We didn't really hang out at all, but we always said hi in the halls and sat together whenever I had detention — because Turtell
always
had detention. Basically, I knew he had my back, which is always a very nice thing to know about someone.

“Hey,” I said, nudging him.

He sat up and blinked at me. Turtell was pretty cute, if you looked at him objectively. But he'd always been like a brother to me. That is, a brother I actually liked, not the Demon Spawn I was related to. He had short brown hair and dark brown eyes, and was a nice six feet with broad shoulders. And though I hadn't
seen
any of his tattoos, I'd gotten descriptions of all of them. “Hey Mad,” he said. “Sup?”

“Not much,” I said, glancing at the clock and beginning the countdown. Since I only had twelve minutes, it seemed futile to go into the hacking saga. “What are you in for?”

He scowled down at his desk. “Nothing,” he said.

“Glen,” I said, leaning forward on my elbows. “Seriously, hit me. I've got eleven-and-a-half minutes.”

“No, really,” he said. “I didn't do anything. But people have been reporting locker thefts, so
of course
they blame me.”

“That's not fair.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “Plus, on top of that, Shauna and I broke up.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said, trying to make it sound convincing. Since Turtell basically dated the same girl over and over, it was really no surprise it never worked out. But I listened attentively to the story of how Shauna had broken his heart and stolen his Metallica CDs. “Glen,”
I said, glancing quickly at the clock — one minute to go — “I think you need to date a different type of girl. A
nice
girl. One who's not going to steal from you. One who's going to be there for you. You know what I mean?”

Turtell blinked at me again, then held my gaze. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I think I do know what you mean, Mad —”

“MacDonald?” the teacher at the front of the room called.

“Yes,” I said, grabbing my stuff.

“You're done,” she said, signing my detention slip.

“Thanks,” I said. “Take it easy,” I said to Glen, who for some reason was still staring at me. Then I grabbed my slip from the teacher and raced down to the theater for the
Dane
rehearsal I was now thirteen minutes late for.

As soon as I walked into the green room to drop my stuff, Ginger Davis raced up to me, eyes wide. Ginger always did wardrobe and makeup and was one of the sweetest, most even-tempered people I knew. Until she got drunk, that is, on nonalcoholic beer at every cast party.

“Omg Mad,” she said in a stage whisper, appropriately enough. “Are you okay? Everyone is saying you had a breakdown or something. Do you think you can still do the show? Because Sarah was saying you probably couldn't —”

“No,” I said, trying not to get frustrated with Ginger. Even though she could be a little bit annoying sometimes and
way
too chatty, I couldn't alienate her. She was my closest theater friend.

The theater kids were nice, but they had far too much of a tendency to start breaking into soulful renditions of Jason Robert Brown songs—in public—for me to be super tight with most of them. And I almost never sat at the theater table at lunch, unless I really felt like joining in on a Sondheim medley. Of course, I'd told my friends and Ginger and maybe some other people my real feelings about the theater kids, but I would never tell
them
. They were way too emo to handle it.

“I'm fine,” I told Ginger as I dropped my bag in the corner of the green room and fished around for my script. “My Friendverse got hacked, that's all. I didn't write any of that stuff.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting on the floor next to me. “So did Schuyler Watson really get a nose job? Because I totally thought so, and
everyone's
wondering.”

“Um, I'm not sure,” I stalled as I flipped through my script, realizing just how many lines I had and how few of them I'd learned. “I'm actually late for my scene, so —”

“Oh that's okay, I think Sarah's handling it,” she said cheerfully.

Great. That was what I had been afraid of. “But I —”

“Hi
Ginger
,” Mark Rothmann said pointedly as he passed us on his way out the door, not acknowledging me at all.

“What was that about?” I whispered to Ginger as soon as he was out of earshot.

“Well,” she said, leaning forward, “you kind of wrote a lot of mean stuff about the theater kids in your Friendverse profile.”

“What?” I asked, horrified by how far this hacker's reach had gone.

“Yeah,” she said. “You wrote a blog making fun of the whole emo, black-wearing, reading-Chekhov-for-fun thing. You know, the kind of stuff you've told me before. When I saw it on Friendverse, I thought it was kind of strange, but if you were hacked, I guess it makes sense….”

I tuned Ginger out and looked around the green room (which was actually beige). Sure enough, most of the heavily eyelinered eyes, both guys' and girls', were narrowed at me.

“But I didn't write any of that stuff!” I protested. “This whole thing is a misunderstanding!”

“I believe you, Mad,” Ginger said. “But do you still think you'll be able to do the show? Because Sarah said —”

“Felia!” the assistant stage manager called, sticking her head in the classroom.

“Here,” I said, scrambling to my feet.

“We need you onstage,” she said.

“Right,” I said, grabbing my script and heading to the blackbox, my head spinning.

This hacker had clearly done their research. Since I didn't really hang out socially with the theater kids, not everyone knew that I was even involved in all the plays. When I'd told Justin on one of our first dates that I was a thespian, he'd misunderstood me and there had been a lot of confusion that didn't get cleared up until our makeout session later that night.

I walked through the lightlock and onstage, where, luckily, my scene hadn't started yet. Sarah Donner, sitting in the front row in her “rehearsal clothes” — overalls and character shoes — with her long brown hair pulled back with a bandanna, narrowed her eyes when she saw me. Clearly, she'd been hoping I wouldn't show at all.

It might have been better if that had happened. My first scene was with Mark Rothmann, who was playing Larry, my brother. And after I'd had to call for line three times, Mr. Allan told me to just hold the book. As I pulled out my script, face red with embarrassment, I saw Sarah smirking, and looking — was I imagining it? — kind of satisfied.

After rehearsal, exhausted and grumpy, I stopped at Stubbs for a quick restorative latte. I wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath and forget about hackers
and Friendverse and detention and vindictive under-studies and evil future prom queens.

As I finally pulled into our driveway, I noticed there was a strange SUV in our turnaround. I remembered, as I looked at the car, that my mother had told me something about coming home early. But she really should have known that things didn't fully sink in until I'd had my morning Stubbs latte.

I walked into the house, noticing it was cleaner than usual and that the classical CD that only ever played when we had Company over was on. Also, there didn't seem to be anyone in the kitchen or study.

“Hello?” I called, dropping my bag in the hall. I heard low laughter from the dining room and headed over that way. I pushed open the swinging door, and the conversation stopped.

I stared around the room as my mother said, “And here's Madison — finally — you remember her, of course!”

Sitting at our dining room table were two older people I recognized from the Galápagos trip and, in the seat that was normally mine, the kind-of cute guy.

It turned out that the kind-of cute guy had a name: Jonathan. Jonathan Ellis. And that he was more than kind of. Cute, that is.

Also, that it was incredibly difficult to eat chicken paillard when there was a kind-of-more-than-kind-of cute guy sitting next to you, and your Demon Spawn brother kept kicking you under the table.

“Madison?”

I looked up from my plate — I seemed to have less difficulty transferring food from my fork to my mouth as long as I stayed focused on the plate — to see my mother looking at me expectantly.

“Um, what?” I asked, seeing Jonathan look over at me and simultaneously feeling my face get hot. And was
it my imagination, or was he smiling? Like, trying-not-to-laugh smiling?

“Mrs. Ellis,” my mother said, a definite edge in her voice now, “asked you a question.”

“Oh,” I said, looking at Mrs. Ellis across the table. Now that I'd been sitting across from them for twenty minutes, I'd remembered the Ellises from the trip — Mrs. Ellis was The Lady Who Always Asked Too Many Questions On Expeditions and Mr. Ellis was The Man Who Always Had Extra Purell. Jonathan, of course, was The Kind-Of Cute Guy Who Was Always Taking Pictures. “Sorry,” I said to Mrs. Ellis. “Would you mind repeating it?”

Mrs. Ellis laid her fork across her plate and smiled at me. “I just asked what grade you were in. You're at Putnam High, right?

“Yes,” I said, glad this was a question I could answer easily. “I'm finishing up my junior year now.”

“Oh,” she said, then nodded and picked up her fork. Silence fell at the table.

Feeling the need to pick up some of the conversation slack, I turned to Jonathan, trying not to look at him too directly. “Do you go to Putnam?” I asked, knowing the answer was no. Putnam High was big, but my friends and I had made it our mission to know who the cute guys were.

“Stanwich High,” he said, referring to the town one over from Putnam.

“Oh,” I said intelligently, “neat.”

“I'm a senior,” he added.

“That's great!” I said with far too much enthusiasm, and saw him smile that trying-not-to-laugh smile again. Luckily, at that moment Mr. Ellis began talking about the most recent round of golf he'd played, and I saw my father's eyes glaze over before I returned my concentration to my plate.

After the adults had talked golf, the housing market, how amazing the trip had been, how incredible it was that we'd ended up meeting in Ecuador, since we'd never met in Connecticut, and the dollar versus the euro, conversation seemed to die.

“What's for dessert?” Travis asked brattily after the plates had been cleared, tugging at the neck of the polo shirt my mother had clearly forced him into for the dinner.

I saw my mother blanch, but since she was always so composed, she did even this subtly, and I doubt anyone else picked up on it.

She looked over at me, smiling, but with a definite air of desperation, and said, “You know, since we've all just gotten back, I haven't had a chance to restock the treats. Madison, why don't you and Jonathan run out and pick up some ice cream for dessert?”

I could tell from my mother's expression that this wasn't really a request.

Well, at least I could get out of listening to any more golfing stories. But why did she have to include Jonathan in the ice cream run? I glanced sideways, as discreetly as I could, to try and gauge his reaction.

He placed his napkin along the side of his plate and stood up, so he must not have had a huge problem with it. “Sure,” he said.

I led the way out of the dining room, grabbing my sweater and my purse where I'd dropped it, and out to my car, which I'd parked slightly haphazardly.

“Nice Jetta,” Jonathan said, folding himself into the passenger seat.

I got in as well, and pulled my seat belt on. “Judy,” I said automatically, then realized I sounded like an idiot. “The, um, car's name, I mean.”

“Judy,” he said thoughtfully. “Judy…Jetta-son?”

“Right,” I said, completely surprised. I looked over at him, and before the automatic lighting dimmed, I got my first close-up glimpse. And up close, he was even cuter. He was tall — and being tall myself, I'd always had a weakness for tall guys — easily 6'3”. He had eyes that were either hazel or light brown — the automatic lights had started dimming, and I couldn't get a good look. But he had thick, dark brown hair that curled up a little at the ends and was slightly shaggy. He was dressed in a
style that Lisa would have called emo, and at first glance, with his pin-bedecked messenger bag and cream-colored Cons, it seemed to fit. But with his button-down and non-skinny jeans, he put a slightly preppy twist on the emo thing that I found really intriguing.

I glanced away from him quickly, starting the engine and heading down the driveway.
Justin
, I reminded myself.

“Who is this?” Jonathan asked, and I was jerked out of my reveries to see him frowning at my iCar.

“Um, Stockholm Syndrome,” I said, turning the volume down slightly. He continued to frown, and I raised my eyebrows. “Do you have something against Swedish guitar bands, Jonathan?”

“Nathan,” he said firmly. “Well, really, everyone calls me Nate. Only my parents call me Jonathan.”

“Nate,” I said, trying it out. I liked it. It seemed to fit him better, somehow. “Nate the Great, right?”

“Yeah,” he said with a small sigh. I got the feeling he'd heard that before.

“Nate the Great,” I said, trying to remember, “the boy detective.”

“That was Encyclopedia Brown,” he said. “But close enough.”

“Right.” I was beginning to worry about the next song that was going to come up on my shuffle setting. If he had a problem with Stockholm Syndrome — which
was some of the cooler music on my iCar — I could only imagine what he'd think about my Kelly Clarkson.

“So is it just Madison?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, my friends call me Mad or Mads.”

“Got it.”

“I mean, they used to,” I said after a moment of silence, punctuated only by Olaf's soulful wailing. “Back when I had friends, that is.”

We pulled up to Gofer Ice Cream, which was in the same complex as Putnam Pizza, where Dave worked. I scanned the parking lot, but didn't see his car parked anywhere, so I figured he must not have been working. The song changed just as I put the car into park.

“Is this Kelly Clarkson?” Nate asked incredulously.

“Um, no,” I said as I killed the engine quickly. I got out, locked the car, and headed into Gofer just behind Nate, trying not to notice how cute his butt looked in his dark-wash jeans.

I picked up what my mother usually kept on hand — pints of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, and raspberry and lemon sorbets. And for the ride home, I got a cone of hazelnut gelato. To my surprise, Nate ordered himself a cone of mint chocolate chip. It wasn't until I walked out of the store that I realized I should have ordered a cup. It was going to be impossible to drive and eat my gelato at the same time.

I suddenly felt like an idiot. Ruth, no doubt, would have foreseen this and ordered a cup. Actually, she probably wouldn't have gotten anything for herself and would have brought the ice cream directly home for the hungry people who wanted dessert. But whatever.

There was a little patio just outside the store, with benches and chairs. I gestured to it. “Mind if we sit for a moment? I don't think I'm going to be able to handle this cone while driving.”

“Sure,” Nate said, and we sat down next to each other — but not too close — on the bench. “What did you mean?” he asked after a moment of silent ice cream consumption. “That thing with your friends?”

“What thing?” I asked, my mouth full of gelato-y goodness.

“You said that your friends used to call you by your nickname — back when you had friends.” He took a bite, eyebrows raised. “Care to explicate?”

“Oh,” I said, trying not to swoon at the SAT vocab word usage, “that. It's kind of a long story.”

“It's kind of a big cone,” he said, gesturing to his quickly melting mint chocolate chip.

“Well,” I said, thinking. I was a little bit nervous about sharing this much of my life with someone who was pretty much a stranger. And a lot of the details were pretty embarrassing for me. But I did want to talk about it, and with someone who wasn't involved at all. And
there was just something about Nate that made me think I could trust him. “Okay.” I took a bite of gelato for strength and launched into the whole Friendversegate saga.

“And,” I concluded a few minutes later, trying desperately to stem the flow of my melting gelato with napkins. I hadn't had much time to eat during the story — because I'd been talking — and my cone was overflowing. Nate, on the other hand, was practically done with his mint chocolate chip, and at this point was just eating the waffle cone. “That's about it. So, to make a long story short —”

“Too late,” Nate interrupted.

“Excuse me?” I asked, offended, as I drank some of my gelato.

“No,” he said quickly, perhaps noticing my expression, “I was just quoting. It's from
Clue
.”

“The board game?”

“No, the movie.”

“They made a movie about the board game? What, is it like a documentary of people playing it or something?” I took another drink.

“No,” he said again, a little more serious-sounding this time, “it's a classic comedy. Pretty much required watching, in my opinion.” He finished his last bite of waffle cone and brushed his hands off. “I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. You should check it out.”

“Maybe,” I said a little huffily. I mean, just because I hadn't heard of some obscure movie, there was no need to make me seem like an uncultured idiot. Justin had never recommended movies to me.

Well, that might have been because Justin had only seemed to like movies in which there was an explosion every five minutes and girls who got naked for reasons that always seemed to defy logic.

“So anyway, that's the story,” I said, trying to figure out what to do with my gelato-soaked napkins.

Nate didn't say anything for a moment, but he did take my napkins from me and threw them out in the trash that was right next to him. “I just don't get why it's such a big deal,” he finally said. “The whole hacking thing, that is.”

I stared at him. Maybe I'd used too many small words, and hadn't
explicated
properly. “It's a big deal,” I said slowly, “because my life is over. Because I'm now held responsible for my friends' breakup. Because everyone hates me. Because my identity was stolen, and by someone who can't spell my last name correctly.”

“Your profile was hacked,” he said. “It really doesn't have anything to do with you or who you are.”

Had he not understood the story? It seemed like he'd been paying attention; he'd been looking at me pretty intently, after all. “It has everything to do with who I am. That profile was my life!”

Nate shook his head and leaned back against the bench. “It isn't your life,” he said. “It's your online list of bands you like and pictures of you and your friends.”

“It's more than that,” I said, hearing my voice rise slightly. “My boyfriend broke up with me because of that profile. Or, that is, he believed that I broke up with him. And as a result is now dating the soon-to-be prom queen. But that's another story.”

“If he allowed himself to be broken up with over Friendverse, without talking to you about it first, you're probably better off without him.”

I just shook my head. Nate was only saying that because he had no idea what a great kisser Justin was or how good he looked with his shirt off — facts I was actually pretty glad he wasn't privy to. “You just don't get it,” I said, finishing off the gelato soup and starting in on the cone.

“I don't,” he agreed, leaning a little closer to me and looking at me intently.

And I'll admit it, my heart gave a little excited
thump
, the kind it hadn't given since Justin and I first started making — I mean, going — out. I noticed in the fluorescent light of the bug zapper that Nate's eyes were a light, amber-y brown. And that he smelled good, not of cologne like Justin, but of boy-soap and cinnamon gum and mint chocolate chip.

“I have a Friendverse profile,” he continued, “but it's not my life. I only check it about twice a week. And if I'd been hacked, my friends would have thought it was a huge joke. They wouldn't have believed it.”

“Well, not everybody believed it,” I said slowly. “My best friend believed me. And after I told my two other best friends it wasn't true, they believed me too.”

“Maybe that should tell you something,” he said. He held my gaze for just a moment longer, and my heart started beating triple-time. But that was probably just because of the sugar.

“We should probably get back,” I said, breaking our eye contact and looking down at my
Gofer To Go…fer!
plastic bag. “The ice cream's going to melt.”

“Right,” he said. He followed me out to the car and I unlocked it. Before he got in, though, he turned back to Gofer and pulled a small camera out of his pocket. He held it up and pointed it toward the large blinking ice cream cone just outside the store. He took a couple of shots, then closed his camera and looked over at me.

“What was that?” I asked.

Nate shrugged, holding his camera, looking a little embarrassed for the first time that night. “I don't know,” he said. “I guess I just have a weakness for things that are beautiful.”