Forget Me Not (From the Files of Madison Finn, 21) (11 page)

“So, we each pick these out of this hat,” Chet said. “And whoever gets the
X
has to be the assassin.”

“This is so cool!” Lindsay said. “I haven’t played this in forever.”

“Me, neither,” said Dan.

“I remember playing this at camp once,” Lindsay said without taking a single breath. “And this kid who was the assassin actually forgot he was the assassin, and so we kept playing, but no one was dying, and then finally someone said, ‘What’s going on?’ and so we had to start all over again, and it was funny because …”

Chet made a face as if to say, “Who is this crazy person?” Madison wanted to laugh. Lindsay was off and running, or rather, off and talking. But Dan didn’t look bothered one bit by Lindsay’s talk. He listened attentively.

Madison glanced over at Fiona and mouthed the words
How sweet is that?

With a flourish, Chet placed the scraps into a hat and shook it dramatically.

“Ta-da!” he announced. “Okay, Fiona. Pick first.”

Fiona grabbed her scrap. She made a funny face. “Aha!” she declared.

“Wait!” Chet barked. “Don’t give anything away.”

“Hey, moron,” Fiona barked back, “I’m just playing the game. Relax.”

Everyone else took their scraps, too, and stared at them.

Madison’s scrap didn’t have an
X
. She crushed the paper in her palm, however, and tried to act as if maybe—just maybe—she were the real assassin. As she scanned the circle for the true assassin, Madison tried not to make eye contact with any of her friends for too long. The whole point was not to get winked at immediately.

After five minutes, however, three people were out of the game: Fiona, Lindsay, and Aimee. Fiona went into the kitchen to check on the cookies. Aimee crawled over behind Madison. Lindsay simply sat back on the sofa, grinning and (Madison noticed) staring at Dan.

Madison was the only girl remaining. There was no one left to give a clue to the true assassin’s identity. Madison was on her own.

By that point, the room had dissolved into silence. Madison glanced quickly at Hart and then Chet.

Drew made a joke and fell backward. “I am so dead,” he said, getting back up to join the others.

“Maddie, are you the assassin?” Hart asked. He stared at Madison for a second and then glanced over at Dan.

All at once, Dan tumbled on to the sofa—right on top of Lindsay.

“Oh,” Dan said, scrambling to sit back up again. “I’m so sorry.”

By now, Lindsay had turned four shades of purple. Madison had never seen her blush like that before.

That was when Madison turned back to the circle and pointed a finger at Chet. “You want everyone to think you’re the assassin!” Madison said. “But the assassin is … YOU!” Madison turned to Hart.

Everyone laughed out loud, including him.

“You got me, Finnster. I thought for sure I could trick you.”

“Snack time!” Fiona cried as she walked back into the room carrying a basket of the just-baked chocolate-chunk cookies. The basket was steaming.

The boys leaped from where they sat to grab fistfuls of the cookies.

Dan got there first. He always got to the sweets and snacks before everyone else. But then he did something surprising.

He took one cookie and handed it to Lindsay.

“For you,” Dan said softly.

“Oh, boy,” Madison thought. Dan was actually giving up a freshly baked chocolate-chunk cookie for Lindsay?

Although almost everyone in the game had been assassinated, Dan was the true goner.

Madison came home from Fiona’s to find Mom still busy working in her office. Mom sat in practically the same spot where she had been sitting when Madison had left earlier that day.

“Hey,” Madison mumbled as she smoothly slid past the office.

“Huh? Maddie?”

Mom barely had enough time to poke her head out from behind the computer—let alone say anything in response.

“Oh, Maddie! I’m so glad you’re home, because I need to—”

Madison didn’t hear the end of the sentence. She was already upstairs in her room, booting up her laptop. She opened a new file.

Games


Rude Awakening:
It’s not how you play the game. It’s whether you win or lose.


I’m the Assassin champ today. But how do I win the game I’m playing with Mom?


It’s so hard not to obsess about this stuff that’s going on with Mom and the school video and Julian Lodge. My head is spinning, spinning. I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. Why did the film crew have to come to OUR school? The worst part is that I can’t talk to Mom about her job without her getting upset and defensive and weird. I can’t ask her personal questions either, like whether she’s seeing Mr. Bigshot Film Guy Julian. I mean, I can always talk to Dad about things like that. Why is Mom so hard to get through to?


“Maddie, why didn’t you stop in my office to say hi?” Mom said, appearing at the doorway to Madison’s bedroom.

“Mom!” Madison cried, nearly falling backward off her chair. “How long have you been standing there?”

“I just walked up. What’s going on? You just walk in the door and sweep past my office like that?” Mom asked.

Madison shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Mom continued. “How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“Were all your friends there?” Mom asked.

Madison nodded. “Mom, we need to talk.”

Mom nodded. “Mmmm. We do.”

“Yeah,” Madison said, mustering her courage. She needed to tell Mom what was really on her mind.

“Oh, Maddie, I’d love to talk. But right this moment I need to dash out of here just to run an errand. Would you be okay here by yourself for an hour or so?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Madison said, sounding disappointed.

“Honey bear, I promise to be back in a flash,” Mom said, turning away. “How about I grab some Chinese or pizza on the way home? We can talk over dinner.”

“Takeout?” Madison said to herself. “Great.”

“Great!”

Madison heard Mom rustling through her papers downstairs. Then the door slammed.

Madison stood up from her desk and closed the laptop. Phin danced around her feet as she walked across the room.

“Why does Mom never find time to talk?” Madison asked him.

“Rooooowwwwf!” Phin growled.

“It makes me mad, too,” Madison barked back.

Together they trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Madison pulled open the refrigerator door and grabbed a can of root beer that had been on ice for a while. Really cold root beer always tasted so good.

The door to Mom’s office was wide open. From where she stood, Madison saw piles of papers and unmarked DVDs. She carried the can of soda into the office, collapsed into Mom’s whirly Aeron office chair, and spun around.

What had Mom been so busy working on?

The computer hummed steadily. A freeze-frame of the exterior of the school glowed from the screen. Along the bottom, Madison read the words
JUNIOR HIGH ISN’T ALWAYS EASY
.

Madison had to laugh. She leaned in toward the computer keyboard. She remembered Mom’s rule about never touching anything, especially when Mom was in the middle of a project. (One time, she’d sneaked into Mom’s office and almost deleted an entire set of files.) But her fingers grazed the keys even so.

The screen went blank. A menu appeared, asking Madison if she wanted to share, save, pause, or continue.

Madison quickly weighed her options. She examined the file name on the screen. It read:
SCHOOL EXTERIOR
. Madison glanced at the dozens of other DVDs on the desk and floor.

Share or save? Pause or continue?

Out of the corner of one eye, Madison saw another DVD label with a name she recognized:
DALY—DUNMORE, 7
.

Madison snatched that DVD and shoved it into the machine. Was this Daly the same Daly as
Poison Ivy
Daly?

The video took a minute or two to load; but then a familiar face appeared.

“Take four,”
a voice said before clapping down a marker that showed how much footage had been shot to date.

This was the right Daly. Poison Ivy sat there, facing the camera, her red hair looking a lot frizzier than usual.

Madison turned up the volume. It looked as though Ivy’s lips were moving faster than the sound was coming out; but Madison could hear every word perfectly. Ivy talked nonstop about everything, from boys to science to love/hate relationships with teachers.

And then she did something extraordinary.

Ivy began talking about
Madison
.

Ivy on Video


Rude Awakening:
Sometimes the truth hurts but most of the time it just FREAKS ME OUT.


I’ve said this a million times, but sometimes Ivy is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the way she says the meanest, most obnoxious things and then all of a sudden she comes right out and says something NICE.


On the video B-reel that I was watching, Ivy got asked all these quasi-personal questions about school and life. She actually said that the only thing she really regrets about being in junior high is losing some of the friends and memories she had from elementary school. And then she named me. Me? ME! Whoa.


Well, she didn’t actually use my name, but I just know it was me she was talking about. She said something like, “I used to be friends with this girl in my class but things have gotten really ugly in junior high and we’re so different now and we hardly speak and sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we hadn’t stopped being friends.”


I had to replay the question and answer just to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. Not only did Ivy say what she said, but at the end she confessed that she thought maybe we’d be friends again one day. LOL. As if!


I know the real deal. She probably just wants to come across as sympathetic so she can kiss up to Julian for whatever reason and become the star of this dumb movie even though it’s not a real movie. ARGH! This whole scene has just gotten so out of


Knock, knock. Rattle, rattle.

Madison’s head shot up. The doorknob clicked again. Madison had locked the door so no one could come inside.

“Madison, are you in there?”

It was Mom—and her voice sounded pretty tense. Madison was feeling a little tense, too, after everything she’d seen on the video. She gnawed on a fingernail.

“Mom?” Madison said.

“Maddie, open this door, now. I mean it. I told you earlier this week …”

“Yes, yes, I know. Don’t lock it. I’m opening it right now,” Madison said.

She turned the knob.

Mom gave her a stern look. “Where have you been while I was out?”

“Um …” Madison shrugged. “Here. There. Everywhere.”

“Like, my office?”

“Oh. Yeah. But just for a minute,” Madison said. “I went in to borrow a … piece of … um … a paper clip.”

“A paper clip?” Mom said. “Maddie, don’t lie to me. Please.”

“I wouldn’t … um … lie,” Madison said, crossing her fingers and toes at the exact same time.

“I don’t even have any paper clips,” Mom said.

“I didn’t know that,” Madison said.

“Madison, I trust you when I go out,” Mom said. “And I don’t understand why you feel the need to deceive me when I ask you a very simple question.”

“Mom, I just said I don’t—and I didn’t—lie.”

Mom raised her eyebrows and held up an empty DVD slipcase. “Then would you mind telling me how the copy of this Daly-Dunmore footage is now in the player? I wasn’t watching this when I left.”

Madison gulped and started chewing on the same finger. “You weren’t?”

“Look, Maddie, is there something you need to tell me?” Mom asked.

“Er … no,” Madison said quietly. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe something like ‘I’m sorry I was poking around your office materials, Mom’?” Mom said. “I leave you for two minutes and you ransack my entire room?”

“Ransack?” Madison asked with disbelief. “I only sat in one chair….”

“Is that so?”