The Julian Game (14 page)

I hated reading them and I couldn’t stop reading them. Checking the link like a bad habit for the first two nights. On the third night, when I thought things had died down, Ella refreshed interest by posting the first picture she ever took of me, dorky and sweaty and startled in my Hooter the Owl shirt. Not a big deal, really, but it kept them going until she stuck up a couple more from my “photo session.” They were both full-frontal and the camisole held less light, but my expression was horrifying, a cross between a cartoon duck and a Playboy pinup.

big surpize—
commented someone who’d named herself “nichole66.”

nerbs looking for her closeup
added “princesskate.”

The Group led the game, but other girls were starting to play, too. I was becoming infamous. By day, I ignored the stare-downs in the cafeteria. I kicked away the bottle of dandruff shampoo left outside my locker. I batted off the handful of plastic ants planted on my chair.

By night, I rehashed the day by reading all the comments that mocked the way I walked and talked and wore my hair, and how I supposedly hooked up with hundreds of guys and whether or not my breasts were good, bad or possibly deformed.

Friday, they’d thought up some new fun. If any teacher spoke my name, someone had to cough one of my nicknames right after. Toward afternoon, I just stopped raising my hand and kept my head down.

“Faulkner coughed eleven times during afternoon Chem lab, and by free study, when Mr. Davis took my name, at least twenty percent of the room coughed,” I told Natalya as we sat on the back wall, waiting for the bus to her house for the weekend. “Is name-coughing really that funny?”

“It is if you’re bored in Chem lab and free study,” Natalya answered. “Let it roll. You’ll get through it. The physical self is stronger than you might guess.”

Sometimes Natalya really did sound like her Syfy idol, Mr. Spock. But I was glad to be at her place for the whole entire weekend, where we’d decided to complete the entire
Midnight Planet
marathon—even though she’d seen it already.

Sunday morning, when I logged on to the Zawadskis’ kitchen laptop and saw that Julian sent me a note to say he’d been accepted for Presidential Classroom, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. At least he was still in contact with me.

I even let Natalya read it. “What do you think I should write back?”

She slammed down the screen with a look like I’d just asked her to shave my head. “Are you kidding? Don’t you dare reply anything,” she said. “This guy can’t treat you like dirt in life and then turn around and be your online valentine. Simple as that.”

“Right, you’re right.” Even if it was hard to hear it dissected in such harsh terms. Natalya was so sure; I felt silly that I’d thought any different.

I got home late that afternoon to discover that Dad and Stacey had concocted their specialty, turkey sausage chili, for dinner. The whole downstairs was fired up with chili spices, and Dad had put out the flowered china and cloth napkins. A bottle of champagne on ice confirmed it. I could feel the smile spreading over my face.

“Is this what it looks like?”

“Prepare yourself.” Stacey’s bounce was back. “You’re about to get a wicked stepmother.”

“Yes!” The happiness on their faces, and the way all throughout dinner Stacey overused her left hand—now set with a vintage chip of diamond—was kind of adorable. Whatever Dad and Stacey had discussed, and whatever was left to discuss, they’d finally made the jump together, and that seemed like a good thing.

For a while, I basked in their glow and left my problems on my brain’s back burner. But late that night, I logged on to my laptop and was greeted with another note plus attachment from Julian:
hey r. dont be a stranger—tell me watcha think about the PC itin?

My reply was quick. One line to congratulate him. Next line to tell him that his itinerary looked great.

He popped back a DJ Haute concert bootleg.

I sent him a
thanx
.

He sent me a Chappelle clip from YouTube.

I sent a
lol
.

He sent a note:
I miss u. thinking about sat & your wicked bod.

I sent nothing.

R. how about send me a private pic—w/ the blue wig. Wont show any1
✌

I sent nothing. Logged off with a dry mouth and a vague sense of having done something wrong. He was acting gross tonight, but maybe I was partly to blame for allowing those pictures? Or was I blameless, 100 percent victim? It was all a bit cloudy; the only thing I knew for sure was that Julian was still irresistible to me. Or I was too weak. Or some dread combination of both. But cutting off Julian wasn’t as simple as Natalya had insisted. It just plain wasn’t.

By the next week, I could honestly, thankfully feel Ella’s
crusade against me starting to wind down. There’d been one nasty stick drawing of me in a blue wig and fried-egg boobs on the math slide overhead. One package of diapers jammed in my desk. A pickle taped to my locker door. Although the school day didn’t exactly put a spring in my step, it was nothing I couldn’t handle—as long as I had Natalya.

“Do you hate to sit with me?” I asked her at lunch. “Do you think I walk like I’m wearing diapers? Seriously, tell me the truth.”

“Please. Your walk is normal, you don’t scratch yourself or pick your nose or any of those things, and FYI as your friend, your . . . chest . . . is totally normal, too. You just have to wait them out, until they find the next thing.”

“Right. What if they don’t?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How do you know how it works?”

“I just do,” Natalya answered firmly.

We ate in silence, until I heard it. “Tal, you’re making that sound.”

“What sound?”

“That humming sound of wanting to say something more personal but you don’t know how.”

She put down her sandwich. “Okay. Once back in sixth grade, Ella started a rumor that I was a hermaphrodite.”

“Wait, a hermaphrodite is . . . ?”

“You know, part boy, part girl.”

“Where’d she get that idea?”

“I used to wear Tom’s undershirts instead of a bra.”

“So why didn’t you just stop wearing undershirts and put on a bra already?”

“I guess I liked the undershirts. They fit. In sixth grade, I wasn’t ready for a full-on strap-’em-in situation. Anyway. After a month of buying me jock-itch creams and calling me Nub because they said I had like, a guy’s parts or whatever”—Natalya was talking fast through the memory—“Ella switched to Nanda Abrams. She said Nanda smelled like olive oil. So they brought in olive oil and poured it all over her books and on her lunch and in her hair.”

“God, poor Nanda.”

“Poor Nanda nothing. She’s fine. Nobody abuses her now, right? What I’m trying to say is this is how the Group works. Ella singles you out. Then they attack. Think sharks on a feed. They devour you, and then you all move on and forget about it.”

“Tal,” I said, “how does a person forget about being
devoured
?”

“Good point.” She smiled wanly. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

She’d only wanted to comfort me. But I took it as a warning: if Ella had stuck in her harpoon, my struggle was pointless. I was already dead meat.

I’d found the scrap of paper while searching for Mom’s reading glasses to bring to the hospital. I’d read it and replaced it, but then a couple of days later, I’d brought it to her.

“Oh, right.” She’d closed her eyes. “My fantasy bucket list. May I add to it one hot cuppa Lipton with two sugars?”

And then she’d smiled broadly when I delivered the Styrofoam cup of tea. “Sometimes I think it’s these little uplifts that count the most.” Her tone an attempt to fill up the hopeless inadequacy between all that we wanted and what we’d been given instead.

The next summer, Dad and I had picked Walden Pond for our vacation. We’d rented the canoe and let it drift us, and we’d sung Mom’s favorites—unfortunately, a lot of Manilow since Mom was the original fangirl, along with some No Doubt and Bob Marley, and then her fave, a Herman’s Hermits golden oldie that still gets a lot of rotation at our local Fresh Fields supermarket.

And then we’d watched the sun go down with the tune still in our ears.

Now I sat at the kitchen table wondering what advice Mom would have had for me as I stared into the crystal ball of my soggy Chex. She’d have been ashamed of me, probably. And she’d have been baffled about why I’d sold myself out to be friends with Ella, or put on that trashy wig or
still
furtively, desperately chatted online with Julian, even though he’d made no plans to see me in the real world and I couldn’t shake the dread suspicion that if I met him by chance out in public, he’d basically act the same way he had at Fulton—like I didn’t exist.

I’d been so easily led. It was like I’d turned into a smudgy outline of who Mom had hoped I’d become.

My Chex stared up at me.

“Eat.” That’s definitely one thing Mom would have said.

“Juice?” Stacey creeping up from behind me made me jump. She laughed apologetically. “Oops. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I bought grapefruits yesterday.” She held one up. “You in?”

“Sure.”

“Are you okay?”

“I was just thinking.”

She grunted as she lugged our prehistoric electric juicer from the bottom cupboard. “Yes, I’m being nosy, but you don’t seem like yourself these days. Did you and Mr. Beautiful break up?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, I’m all ears. If you want to talk about it.”

“Thanks, Stace.”

“Either way, you should refuel. No matter that it reminds you of dog food. Believe me,” she called over the chug of the juicer, “I’ve been nagging myself with the same advice. Feels like I’ve been living this week off pure adrenaline.”

Come to think of it, my Chex did look like kibble. I picked up my spoon. “Stace, I think my mom would have liked you.”

When I glanced up, she was intently fishing a grapefruit seed out of my glass. “Okay, that just shot to the top of my list of compliments,” she said softly, not looking up. “Because your mom sounds like she was helluva cool.” Then she smiled at me briefly as she plunked down my juice. “Customized with one ice cube, à la Raye.”

Sweet and tart. Just cold enough. A little uplift, but it counted.

“You bet.” Julian slid into the diner booth. Did he seem apprehensive or was it my imagination? “Nice move last night, with the bishop-to-knight block.”

“An old trick,” I answered. I hadn’t seen him since he’d visited Fulton. Tonight was Thursday. Twelve days since the start of the Death to Nerbit campaign. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Maybe so, but it got you the match.”

“Yeah, better luck next time.” Over the past week or so, we’d played seven chess games. He’d won four, I’d won three, and we’d planned a rematch for Friday.

But I hadn’t braved one single opening move in terms of letting Julian know what was going on at school. Which was why I’d tried to make a plan to see him in real life. Tonight was Julian’s first free time. Or so he claimed.

At the Villanova Diner, where we’d agreed to meet, I ordered fries and a Diet Coke. Julian ordered carrot juice and a tuna melt—which immediately made me want to reorder something less junky.

“Sorry I’ve been off the map. Getting ready for exams and lacrosse practice . . . anyway . . .” Julian yawned and stretched his arms over his head. I averted my eyes from his biceps. That sneak peek of belly button. He was like a Leonardo da Vinci sketch of the male physique.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Sure, echo back.”

“Did you go out Saturday night? With Alison and everyone?” Though I knew he had. I’d heard all the stories on Monday. The popular crowd, united as one.

“I don’t know why I get dragged to those things. Lame of me. I always want to be sure I’m not missing anything, and I never am.”

“Right. How was it hanging out with Ella?”

His eyes rolled, dismissive. “I wouldn’t call it hanging out. We have friends in common, but there was zero one-on-one interaction.” But then he slid his arm across the tabletop, his fingers reaching to close over mine, bunching them. “Look, Raye, let’s cut to it. I know why you wanted to meet. I heard that Ella’s giving you a hard time.”

“A hard time? She’s out for blood. She’s ruining my life.”

Julian frowned. “Seems a little extreme.”

“You haven’t spent a day at school with me.”
Don’t be pitiful
, I’d warned myself beforehand. But in person was so much harder than in theory. “You can’t even believe how out of control she is. Not to put you on the spot here, Julian—but why did you mention me to her in the first place on your Sunday night call? When you know firsthand that she can be such a total freak?”

“Hey hey hey. Chill your rant.” He let go of my wrist. “All I did when I called Ella that night was confront her about that fake catering job. Which she denied. But then I told her what she needed to hear—that I’d been a big-time jerk at Alison’s Sweet Sixteen. And then she admitted she’d set me up at Meri’s. She apologized for that, which is what
I
needed to hear. We kind of made a truce, and your name didn’t come up once. Not on my end.”

I leaned in. “What was she saying about me on her end?”

“C’mon, Raye. Let’s bury this.”

“No, please. Tell me?”