The Clique (21 page)

              “But what if Connor isn’t the same? What if he isn’t as good?”

              Aude laughs. “Maybe he won’t be. And then you can dump him too, and move onto someone else.”

              “This isn’t making me feel any better…” Kate sighs. “Is that all relationships are? Just a string of terrible guys?”

              “Well, hopefully not. Hopefully there are some good ones too.” Aude smiles. “But yeah, that’s kinda what dating is. You look through an endless stream of guys you don’t like, until you finally find one you do. And then you say ‘this one is mine,’ and you hold onto them forever.”

              “And Gabe? Is he that guy for you?”

              Aude shakes her head. “I don’t know, Kate. I don’t know.”

“You wanna sit down?” Jonah spreads a blanket on a patch of damp grass.

              Maddie peers up at the stars. “This was a great idea.”

              “I know, right? Late night picnic.” He inhales slowly. “You could almost forget we’re in the middle of the city.”

              “Maybe, if it weren’t for all the streetlights.” She sits down on the blanket.

              Jonah shrugs and opens the wicker basket. “True enough. I hope you don’t mind pb and j’s.”

              “Not at all.”

              “Good. They’re good, I promise. I brought some berries, too.”

              Maddie grabs one of the sandwiches and forces herself to eat slowly, even though dance practice left her with a huge appetite. Well, it wasn’t her idea to have dinner at eight at night.

              Jonah finishes his sandwich first; he leans back on both hands. “I love fall. Everything smells fresh. It’s like spring, but without the allergies.”

              “Yeah, ‘cause everything’s dying.” Maddie pops the last bit of pb&j into her mouth. “It’s actually kinda depressing, when you think about it.”

              “If you think about it that way, yeah. But next spring, we’ll have a bunch of new plants to look at.”

              “New isn’t necessarily better,” Maddie argues. “In fact, I think new is worse most times.”

              “I don’t know about that... I think new is almost always an improvement.”  Maddie can feel the heat of his breath against the side of her face. “Berry?” Jonah holds a strawberry up to her lips.

              “Yes please.” She takes a bite.

              “Ah, this is nice. It’s fun to get away from my family and all the commotion sometimes. You know?”

              Maddie shakes her head. “Since my mom moved out, there hasn’t really been any commotion. Just a lot of empty bottles.” She grimaces. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t mention that on the first date.”

              “Nah, it’s cool. I don’t drink, personally.”

              “Really?”

              “Yup.” Jonah watches a biker in neon clothes ride by. “I’ve been straight edge for a couple years now.”

              “Oh, interesting. I don’t really drink either. I mean, I’m not completely straight edge, but yeah—I’ve seen a lot of people do stupid things drunk.”

              “Such as?”

              Maddie shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it.”

              “You can tell me.” Jonah frowns. “No? How ’bout I tell you something about me? Secret for secret.”

              “Okay… Well, it isn’t exactly a secret, but this one time one of my friends had way too much and made out with three different guys. At the same party.”

              Jonah laughs. “Did they find out? Which one of your friends was it? The blonde one?”

              “Yeah, the blonde one.” One of the blonde ones, anyway. “Your turn.”

              “Yup.” Jonah rubs his jaw with a knuckle. “Alright, here’s a good one. When I was twelve I got in a fight with a high schooler. I knocked him flat on his ass.”

              Fantastic
.
Maddie suppresses a yawn. “My turn?” Jonah nods. “I’m glad my mom left, sometimes. It seemed like she was gone a long time before she actually left, and in a way, the fact that she’s actually gone doesn’t feel any different than the past few years.”

              “I know what you mean.” Jonah doesn’t explain; he stands up and brushes off his pants. “I was gonna bring ice cream, but then I realized it would have melted. You wanna get some now?”

              “Uh, yeah, sure.” Maddie stands up and helps Jonah roll the blanket. The grass crunches under her feet as they walk to his car.

“I think there’s a seven-eleven somewhere around here,” Jonah says.

“Yeah. You head toward Larkspur and take a right, and then you drive for a bit and it’s on the left.”

“Okay, thanks.” Jonah follows her directions, and in less than a minute he’s parking outside the 7-Eleven.

              There’s a stripe of white lights around the top of the store, and as Maddie steps into the store, her first impression is of how cheap it looks. The inside is like a collection of every convenience-store cliché possible: day-old hot dogs on a rolling steel sheet, a large Slurpee machine (complete with spilled slush on the counter beside it), and a heavy-browed clerk, who gives them both a nonplussed look. It must be close to closing time.

             
Jonah heads for the single freezer. “Häagen-Dazs or Breyers?” he asks.

              “Breyers. Häagen-Dazs is way too expensive.” Maddie glances at the clerk again, only to look away when she notices he’s still looking at her, his fingers playing a tap-dance on the register.

              “What flavor do you want?” Jonah asks, from across the store.

              “Uh, vanilla’s fine,” Maddie calls back.

              “Okay.” He picks out a container and brings it over to the counter.

              The clerk rings it up. “Three twenty. On the Visa, very good. Thank you, have a fantastic night.” He says the benediction in a way that makes it very clear he couldn’t care less whether or not Jonah and Maddie have a “fantastic night.”

              Jonah unlocks the car and drives back to the park. “Oh shit, I forgot. We need spoons.”

              “That’s alright. We can use the lid.” Maddie pulls the lid off and rips it in half. “See?”

              “Good deal.” He scoops a bit of ice cream off the top. “So, any other secrets to tell?”

              Maddie sighs. She decides to tell him the first one that comes to her mind. “Well, I’m spying on my best friend for someone I barely know, and who I’m sure doesn’t have her best interests in mind.”

              He give a nervous laugh. “You are?”

              “Uh huh.” Maddie looks down at the ice cream carton. “And he told me to tell her I saw her sleeping with my other friend’s boyfriend. He said it wasn’t a lie, but now we know that it was… And I feel really bad about it.”

              Jonah wrinkles his nose. “Damn. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. That’s screwed up.”

              “Yeah, well, I can’t really back out of it now. He’d tell my friends, and I’d lose them.”

             
“Damn,” Jonah repeats. “So you’re gonna keep spying on your friends and lying to them?”

              Maddie’s eyes fall to the leather console. She traces the stitching. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t have a choice. If I don’t, Devon—that’s the boy—he’ll probably tell them.”

              “That’s the right thing to do, though.”

              “He has my mom, okay!” The words come out more desperate than Maddie intended. “I told you she left! And then, out of the blue, she called me, because of him! If I don’t help him, she won’t ever talk to me again.”

              “How could he get your mom to call you?” Jonah asks.

              “Because she wants to be an actress and his dad got her a job.” Maddie looks away from him. “She called me because Devon made her. I know helping him is wrong, and I should stop, but—I dunno, I’m being stupid, I guess.”

              Jonah shakes his head. “Nah, it isn’t stupid. I get ya. If I were in that position, I have no idea what I’d do. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have judged.”

              “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Maddie taps the pint of ice cream. “I think it’s melting.”

              “Looks like. Here, I’ll just toss it.” Jonah pushes his door open and walks over to a forest green trash can. He returns. “What are you gonna do?”

              “Huh?”

              “I mean, what’s your plan? Down the road? You know your friends hafta find out eventually. What are you gonna do then?”

              Maddie shrugs. “Find new friends, I guess. I don’t know. I never really thought that far ahead. Maybe they won’t find out, like ever.”

              “No plan is a bad plan.” Jonah sighs. “I can tell you what I’d do, but I don’t know if you wanna hear it.”

              Maddie scowls. “Fine, what would you do, genius?”

              “Simple. I’d tell the truth, and figure out another way to get in contact with my mom. You know your friends will take it a million times better if you’re the one to tell them.”

              “I can’t do that. Look, you just don’t know what it’s like at my school. I’m one of the popular girls. I can’t just tell Aude, or her and Kate and everyone else would stop talking to me! And then I wouldn’t be popular, and I wouldn’t have any friends.”

              “You’re blaming your school? Maddie, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. We have popular chicks at Fairview too, and if any of them did what you’ve done, I’d tell ‘em what I told you. Like Coach always says, a good person does the right thing, even when it’s the wrong thing for themselves. I get that it sounds rough, ‘cause it is, but you have to set your selfishness aside.”

              “I’m not selfish!” Maddie huffs. “And besides, you hardly know me! How dare you presume
to give me advice, when you don’t know what my life is like!”

              Jonah stares at his steering wheel. Maddie can see his chest rise with a single, long breath. “Aude and Kate.”

              “What?”

              “Those are the friends you’re talking about?”

              Maddie frowns. “Maybe.”

              He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I was going to the bathroom at this party not too long ago, when a girl burst in, worried out of her mind about something happening to her friend. Turns out, her friend was about to get raped. She’d been pumping drinks into her, to get revenge for her boyfriend cheating.” He opens his eyes and finally looks at Maddie. “Wanna guess their names?”

              “Aude and Kate?” Maddie looks at Jonah, praying he’ll say no. Or maybe
Ha, just kidding!
And she can hit him and tell him the joke isn’t funny.

              Instead, he gives a slow nod.

Kate hears a knock on her door. She sets her homework down and jogs down the stairs. There’s another knock just as she reaches the door. She pulls it open. “Hello?”

              “Hey.” Devon’s lips turn up in a small smile. “I was hoping I could talk with you.”

              Kate looks at the setting sun. “Now?”

              “Yeah. It’s, uh, kind of important.”

              “Uh huh.” She purses her lips. “Well, what is it?”

              “Can we go for a walk or something? I feel kinda awkward just standing here.”

              “No, I don’t think so. It’s late.”
And
, she thinks,
I wouldn’t feel safe walking with you.

             
Devon frowns. “Please. I just wanna talk.”

              “Then talk.”

              “Not here. Just walk with me, it’s a good night for it.”

              Kate glances at the closet. Her mom keeps some pepper spray in there, somewhere
.
“Just a second.” She closes the door and rifles through one of her mom’s purses, a black one with silver trim, only to come up empty-handed. Maybe it’s—oh, wait, duh. She checks the shelf above her head, finds a compact red bottle behind the sunscreen, and shoves it in her pocket. “Okay, let’s go.”

              “Okay.” Devon waits while Kate locks the door. He takes the lead, turning right at the end of her driveway.

              “So what did you have to talk about?” Kate asks.

              Devon sighs. “I wanted to know why you’re so—why you don’t hang out with me anymore.”

              “I have a project.”

              “Kate, I know that isn’t true.” Devon kicks a rock on the sidewalk. “Here, let’s go across the street. Look, you freaked out on Monday. I just wanna know why, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

              “I dunno, I just felt bad about what we did to Aude. I mean, can you imagine having to go to a doctor to prove your innocence?”