The Fruit of My Lipstick (12 page)

I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment, as well as that of our staff. As a result, I very much regret to inform you that if the perpetrator is not brought to light by the time finals begin on March 23, the entire junior class will be held responsible. This means that you will all receive Fs on your examinations. You will repeat your term and be forced to make up the spring term’s work during summer session.

I leave it up to you to do the right thing. I am confident that Spencer’s values of loyalty and intellect will triumph, and you will force the person responsible out into the light to take the consequences of his or her actions.

Sincerely,
Natalie Curzon, Ph.D., M.Ed.
Principal, Spencer Academy

Chapter 11

M
Y JAW DROPPED
. I glanced over at Lissa, who was at her desk doing e-mail as well. “Did you see this?”

“The message from Ms. Curzon? Oh, yeah. Some of the kids were talking about it in fifth period.”

Whereas I had not been talking. I had been under Ms. Modano’s critical eye, doing crunches and laps at the gym, and had had no breath for irrelevant activities like talking.

“But how can they do this? It’s not fair to punish all of us for the crimes of a few.”

“Of course it isn’t. It’s idiotic.”

“My parents would have matching coronaries if I came home with Fs. They’d never get over it, no matter what the reason was.”

I tried to imagine my dad at some board meeting and someone asking how I was doing out there in California. He’d have to lie, wouldn’t he? He certainly couldn’t admit to his Type-A, driven buddies that his Type-A, driven daughter had gotten a full slate of failure.

Even if it wasn’t her fault.

And my mom? She and the women on her charity boards—not to mention the mah jongg ladies—would be twittering about their kids and she’d die of shame before she’d admit the truth.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Lissa said, clicking rapidly through her messages. “Keep our ears to the ground and flush the guy out of the bushes.”

At least it wasn’t a marine metaphor.

“Easier said than done,” I said, a little hopelessly. How could we do that if the administration couldn’t? “What if it’s a senior? We don’t hang out with them much.”

“If they thought it was a senior, they’d have threatened the senior class,” she pointed out with crystalline logic.

“Good point. I vote we tackle Rory Stapleton and hang him up by the thumbs until he tells us who he got his eighty-two percent from.”

We looked at each other. “Ewwwwww,” we said together, and laughed.

My iPhone chimed and I fished it out of my bag. A 212 area code flashed on the screen. “Oh, no,” I groaned. Just what I
didn’t
need.

“Miss Chang?” my dad’s executive assistant said. “I have the Chairman of the Formosa-Pacific Bank for you.”

I rolled my eyes. Megan Tam had been working for my dad since I was eleven and she’d never called me by my name yet. I knew she knew it, though, because when flowers came from him, they were addressed to “Gillian,” and you can bet a term’s worth of grades that he didn’t toddle down to the florist’s to order them himself.

“Thanks, Megan,” I said. “Put him through.”

“Jiao-Lan?” my father said as soon as the line clicked through. “What’s this I hear?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I said cheerfully, despite the fact that my heart had just bounced off my shoelaces. He never called me Jiao-Lan unless he was massively upset. “How about yourself?”

“Don’t try to change the subject. I just received an e-mail from your principal. What is this nonsense about your grades?”

Good grief. You get an Incomplete in one class and they notify your parents? What kind of police state was this? “I switched classes at the last minute, Dad. It’s no big deal.”

“You get an F for switching classes? Are you insane, or is the administration?”

“No, no. I don’t get an F, I get an Incomplete. I’m just going to take it again next term and it won’t affect my GPA. The instructor told me so last week.”

“That’s not what this message said. It said you were going to fail all your classes. Not Incomplete.
Fail.
I want an explanation. What’s going on out there?”

My neurons, as exhausted as the rest of me, finally got themselves into line. “Did Ms. Curzon send all the parents a note as well? About failing the junior class if these guys who are selling exam answers don’t turn themselves in?”

“What?”

I explained, using as few polysyllabic words as possible.

“That’s outrageous!” my father exploded. “Giving universal Fs is simply unacceptable. I’m calling that woman right now and pulling you out of there. They’d never try something like this at Brearley.”

“Dad. Calm down. All the juniors are in the same boat.” Time for a little improv. “All of us are banding together to find out who it is. It’ll never get to the point of us all failing. It can’t.”

“It better not. I’m certainly not going to be explaining it to the family—not after the New Year’s debacle. Your Auntie Jen-Mai and Uncle So send their love, by the way. They’re visiting New York from Taipei this week.”

Nai-Nai’s sister and brother-in-law, with whom we stayed when we were in Taiwan. Dad had a palatial corporate apartment there, of course, but it would have caused a couple generations’ worth of offense if he came to town and didn’t stay and visit at length with his family.

“Give my love back to them. How are Mom and Nai-Nai?”

“They’re both fine. Your mother says to call. She wants to know if you want anything from the Shanghai Tang spring collection. I didn’t know you were interested in porcelains.”

I grinned. She must be ready to speak to me again if she was holding out clothes like an olive branch. “Shanghai Tang’s a designer, Dad. Clothes, not china. I’ll let you know how this exam thing turns out, okay? I’ve gotta go.”

“I’ll be waiting. ’Bye, now.”

Lissa eyed me as I tapped the phone off. “He freaked, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. Big time. But he was pretty calm by the end.”

“We have to figure out how to find these guys in, what?” She glanced at the calendar hanging over my desk. “Three weeks?”

“I know. I’m open to ideas.” I lowered myself slowly into my chair, but in spite of myself, a groan leaked out from between my teeth.

“Are you okay?” Lissa asked, frowning.

“Oh, sure. Just a little stiff from gym class.” Thirty laps and a hundred and fifty crunches over the Blue Ball of Brutality. But who’s counting?

“A little stiff. You can hardly move. Volleyball can’t be that strenuous.”

“It’s not volleyball. I have a personal trainer now. And she’s kicking my rear.”

“When did you start being a Phys. Ed. major? Yuck.”

“Last week. I dropped Graphic Arts so I could do this instead.”

She stared at me. “Did you go off your meds? Or are you trying to get into the military?”

I started to laugh but stopped short when it involved using my aching diaphragm. “Just trying to get in shape.”

“So you dropped art to major in pain? I thought you liked that class. Kaz says you’re really good.”

“I do like it. Caldwell is giving me an Incomplete so I can take it again next term.” I nodded at my phone. “That’s what I thought Dad was calling to bellow about.”

She stared at me for a second. “I don’t get you. Most people would just run around the block or go on a watermelon fast, not drop a class they liked to take something that hurts this bad.”

“Painful, maybe, but effective.” I snapped the waistband of my yoga pants. “These are already getting looser.”

“Okay,” she said in an it’s-your-funeral tone, and turned back to her laptop. “You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. Let me know if you need some Tylenol.”

I’m no dummy. I took her up on it.

Consequently, when Carly sent out a group IM a little later asking if Lissa, Shani, and I wanted to skip dinner and grab a cab over to a new California Mex place she’d heard about down in the Marina, I was feeling almost human again. Well, at least not broken in three or four places. The wonders of modern pharmaceuticals.

But when we got our food (a tortilla salad for me, without the tortilla strips or guacamole, which is really a travesty, but what are you gonna do?), Carly and Shani weren’t nearly so generous.

“Are you nuts?” Shani asked bluntly, her dark eyes disbelieving under a new braided ’do. I swear, that girl changes her hair every week.

“Not according to my therapist,” I said, deadpan.

“But why would you give up something you really like for Phys. Ed.?” Her face crinkled with distaste. “I mean, blech!”

“I like Phys. Ed.,” Carly put in, nibbling on a chip. “I know you hate volleyball, but not all of us do.”

“We’re not talking about volleyball,” Shani retorted. “We’re talking about laps around the gym and chin-ups and crunches. Paramilitary torture tactics.”

“That’s a bit extreme.” I forked up my boring salad and tried to keep calm. “You guys are taking this way too seriously.”

“It’s not the trainer or what she’s having you do. It’s the reason you’re doing it,” Lissa said gently.

“And what would that be?”

The three of them looked at each other.

“Lucas,” Lissa said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. So what if I want to look good for him? It’s not like you haven’t been fixated on exactly the same thing before.”

“I do not get fixated on my looks,” Lissa protested with dignity.

“Last term you did. All you could think about for weeks was what to wear for Callum McCloud.”

She flinched as if I’d reached over and slapped her, and without so much as a comeback, she dropped her gaze to what was left of her shrimp-stuffed chile relleno. I felt like slapping myself. But instead, my mouth kept talking even though my brain said stop.

“I don’t get why you guys are making such a big deal of this. It’s just a class. Get over it.”

“That’s not the point.” Eyes on her plate like the secrets of the Bio final were written on it, Lissa wasn’t letting go. “It’s a big deal because you’re giving up something you love to look good for a guy.”

“And we all know what
Cosmo
would say about that,” Shani said, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

“Be honest, Gillian,” Carly said. “Is hanging onto Lucas worth this kind of pain?” She held up a hand. “Don’t give me that look. I saw how you were walking on the way here.”

“Like every muscle hurt.” Shani nodded in agreement. “Guys give you enough pain. You don’t have to go looking for it, girl.”

“Thank you, Dr. Hanna,” I said, and now it was her turn to look hurt. “I so appreciate your support.”

“Now, just hang on a minute.” Lissa grabbed my wrist as I reached for my bag. “Sit down. We need to do something.”

“Like what? Tear apart the way I practice piano?”

“No.” I had to hand it to her. She hung in there where lots of girls would have let me storm out long ago. “We need to pray about this.”

The waiter whisked our plates away. All around us, couples and businesspeople and random college kids chowed down, oblivious to us. Not that it mattered. I’m not afraid to talk to the Lord in public.

“Sure,” I said, and got comfy with my elbows on the table. “Let’s do that.” I closed my eyes. “Father, thank You for Carly’s idea to have dinner together in a public place.”
So that they can pick me apart politely and I can’t do anything that would cause a scene
. “Thank You that everyone is so comfortable about telling me exactly how they feel.”
And not listening to my feelings at all
. “I pray You would fill them with grace.”
Because they sure don’t have any right now
. “And help us all to be better friends. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

I opened my eyes to find all three of them staring at me. “You call that a prayer?” Shani turned to Carly. “I’m not a Christian or anything, but I always thought there was more to it than that.”

“Oh, so you’re judging my prayers now?” This was new. Not unexpected, but new.

“We’re not judging anything, girl,” Shani said. “We’re your friends. We’re trying to help you.”

“If you weren’t so crazed about this guy, you’d see that,” Lissa pointed out. And she thinks I’m a bulldog. “Since you’ve started going out with him, you’ve ditched us, ignored us, and now you’re getting hostile at us just for telling you what we’re seeing.”

“Love is patient, love is kind, and all that,” Carly said.

“You’d know,” I snapped. Enough was enough. “I guess you’d have to be the most patient person on the planet to wait for Brett Loyola to notice you.”

“All right.” Lissa ripped her credit card out of her bag and snatched up the check. “Come on, Carly. Shani, you too. If Gillian wants to make herself miserable, that’s fine. But she doesn’t need to make us that way, too.”

And they left me sitting there, in the middle of the noisy restaurant, where I’d never felt so alone.

Chapter 12

T
HERE ARE TIMES
when you just need to hear a kind voice, and this was one of them.

I scrolled to Lucas’s number, and even the sound of the call ringing through made me feel better.

“Hey,” he answered. “I was just thinking about you.”

A smile spread all over my face, and I pushed the door of the restaurant open out onto the street. “Likewise. So I called.”

“Sounds like you’re outside.”

“I am. I’m down in the Marina. I just had a fight with my friends so I’m trying to find a cab.”

“Sorry to hear that. Want me to come and get you? I have an experiment to finish, but—”

I shrugged even though he couldn’t see me. What a sweetie. I waved, and a cab swerved to a stop in front of me. “No biggie. They’ll get over it. So what are you up to?” I settled into the back seat and the cabbie took off as though his sedan ran on jet fuel.

“I just got off the phone with my dad. What are you doing Saturday?”

I thought fast. “The usual. Studying. Practicing. And I have to work on my Comp term project sometime. Like, soon.”

“Comp? Like, English composition?”

“No, music composition. I have to compose two to four pages of music and perform it, either solo or in ensemble, for the final. If you do it in ensemble you get extra credit because it means writing out however many parts you have instruments for and rehearsing them and stuff.”