The International Kissing Club (48 page)

“Guys who don’t all smoke!” Piper added.

“Amen to that.” Izzy shuddered in disgust.

Mei didn’t have to give it much thought. “Food. And having only one person in the school who hates me.” Then she asked, “Piper, you never said what you missed besides us.”

Piper’s gaze raked over them. She just shook her head as she smiled. “You know what? That was it. Just you guys. That’s all I missed.”

Izzy felt her guilt rise up to choke her. She was a bad friend. A bad, bad friend. She’d always thought Germaine was a turkey buzzard, but now she knew it was really her, picking over the remains of other people’s relationships.

She’d betrayed Piper by befriending Germaine. She’d betrayed Germaine by kissing Tanner. What were her chances of making it to Christmas break without being smothered by her own regrets?

Piper dropped her spoon. “You know what we need?” Her tone was overly bright. “We need to go into Dallas this weekend. Do some Christmas shopping. Maybe meet some guys.”

Resentment reared up to give Izzy’s guilt a firm shove onto the back burner.

Piper needed more guys? Tanner wasn’t enough? Sebastian wasn’t enough? Half the guys in France weren’t enough? Piper still needed more? Here she was feeling guilty about kissing Tanner, and Piper was planning to extend her kissing campaign to Dallas.

Izzy threw down her spoon and pushed back her chair. “Screw this. I need a burger.”

She snatched the still-full yogurt cup off the table and dumped it in the trash on the way out. Even though there was a recycling bin just beside the garbage can. Five inches away.

“What the hell?” she heard all three of her friends squeal from behind her.

Izzy stopped outside the yogurt shop and surveyed the familiar stretch of Clarksville Street. The nearest hunk of charred cow flesh could be had about a hundred yards down the road at the Dairy
Queen. She set off at a brisk pace. She heard Mei, Piper, and Cassidy spill out onto the street behind her.

She wasn’t entirely sure if all the exclamations of confusion were coming from them or from the voice of reason in her head. She didn’t care.

Naturally, Cassidy caught up with Izzy first. She didn’t try to stop her, just fell into step beside her. “Is this going to be another diving-into-the-pool incident?”

“Nope. This is just going to be an eating-a-burger incident. An I’m-tired-of-making-sacrifices-when-everyone-else-gets-to-do-whatever-they-want incident.”

“Fair enough.” Cassidy stepped forward and opened the door to the Dairy Queen for Izzy.

She marched up to the counter. Ryan, who had graduated from Paris High the year before, was manning the register. She tried to smile at him, but it felt like a snarl instead. “I want a double bacon cheeseburger.”

Ryan stared at her blankly for a second, then asked in a nasally voice, “You mean the half-pound bacon Grillburger?”

“Whatever,” she snapped. “And I want a side of those fried steak things.”

“Those don’t come as a side.”

“Whatever,” she repeated.

Ryan frowned. “So do you want the steak fingers or not?”

Cassidy leaned forward, speaking slowly—since Ryan was clearly an idiot. “Is there some sort of legal limit to how much beef one person can have?”

“Um … no,” he stammered.

“Then place the order.”

In that instant the door swung open and Piper and Mei came stumbling in.

“OMG,” Piper screeched. “Is she really doing it? Is she really going to eat a burger?”

“She will if this idiot ever rings it up.” Cassidy glared. Ryan started typing.

“A real burger?” Piper’s eyes were huge with disbelief. “With beef in it? From an actual methane-spewing cow? Not some hippie, vegan burger made of spelt but an honest-to-God burger? That a real person, with actual taste buds, would want to eat?”

Izzy gritted her teeth and slammed her cash down on the counter.

Then she spun to face Piper. “One time I made veggie burgers for you, one time, and you’re still pissing about it a year later.”

“
What
is wrong with you?” Piper asked, annoyance making her voice low and clipped.

“I just …” She blew out a breath. Trying—really trying—to find words to explain. It was really, really hard. “I just,” she tried again, “had a hard time being alone. And …” Okay. Here it was. The horrible truth about her three IKC points. The points she never should have posted, won from the lips she never should have kissed. She swallowed again. “The thing is, I—”

But before she could force the words out of her mouth, the door to the Dairy Queen swung open and in marched Germaine.

She stopped dead just inside the doors. A bevy of minions followed in her wake, fanning out on either side of her like a league of pom-pom wielding supervillains. Her icy gaze swept over Izzy, and a disdainful sneer settled onto her face. There was something so cold, so dismissive about that look.

Oh, crap. Her desperate bid to keep the fronts separate hadn’t worked. The perfect storm was about to make landfall.

Somehow Germaine had found out that she and Tanner had kissed. Germaine knew and she was going to make Izzy pay. Pay big.

Piper and Mei both swung around. Cassidy stepped forward so the three of them stood almost shoulder to shoulder. Only Izzy hung back, dread supergluing her feet to the floor.

“Well,” Germaine sneered. “If it isn’t Piper. Finally back from Paris.”

Piper stiffened. “Don’t bother making any pig jokes,” she spat. “I think the World Wide Web is past that now.”

Germaine arched one perfect eyebrow. “If you’re referring to your little kissing club, you don’t have to act so coy. We all know about it.”

Cassidy took a step forward, but Piper spoke before she could act. “I bet it was really dull around here for you without me to torture. You probably missed us while we were gone. And there I was, off in the real Paris, shopping at designer boutiques and flirting with French guys so hot they make Texas boys look like, well,
pigs
.”

For a moment, real annoyance flashed across Germaine’s face, and she had to visibly swallow it back. “If you didn’t miss us, then you sure went to a lot of trouble to make sure I knew about it.”

Piper smirked. “You can’t imagine how much sweeter it was being kissed by a hot guy at the foot of the real Eiffel Tower, knowing you were stuck here in
this
Paris. Why wouldn’t we have wanted you to know?”

Germaine smiled in a way that sent shivers of dread down Izzy’s spine. “It’s not me you should be worried about. It’s your parents. And the school staff. Don’t you think they’re going to be concerned when they realize you were kissing all those boys?”

“You wouldn’t!” Izzy gasped.

Piper’s jaw jutted out in defiance. “Oh, she can try. But I’d like to see her prove that we have anything to do with the IKC.”

But in that moment, Izzy knew that Germaine would find a way. She would twist some computer geek around her little finger and get him to hack the page for her. Something. Izzy didn’t know how she’d do it, but she would.

“Germaine, please … ,” she began.

Germaine narrowed her gaze and spoke in that icy-cold voice. “You think I’m going to do you any favors after you kissed him?”

Mei gasped. Of course. The genius IQ would be the first to put it together.

Piper just looked confused. “Izzy, what is she talking about?”

“I’m talking about her three measly little points on the fan page for the International Who-Would-Have-Guessed-You-Could-Be-So-Skanky Club.”

Piper looked from Izzy to Germaine and back again. “You kissed Tanner?”

“What, your plucky little sidekick didn’t tell you she’d been poaching? Where do you think her three points came from? Tanner heard that she hadn’t scored at all.” Germaine’s confidence may have wavered a moment ago, but she was back. The look she sent Izzy was equal parts pity and disdain. “I can’t really blame him for feeling sorry for you. It is pretty pathetic that you couldn’t find
anyone
in town to kiss.”

Though time had slowed to a crawl for Izzy, it seemed to have stopped entirely for Piper, who was still staring, openmouthed, at Izzy. “You kissed Tanner and you didn’t tell us?
He
was your points?”

Tears sprung up in Izzy’s eyes. All she could do was shake her head. But she didn’t know what she was denying or who she was crying for. Because if Germaine knew about that kiss, it could only be because Tanner had told her.

“You know what’s really pathetic about you, Izzy? If you hadn’t gone and kissed Tanner, then we could have stayed friends even after they came back. But you chose to earn points for your stupid little IKC page instead. I rescued you from Loserville. I let you eat lunch with us. And this is how you repay me?”

Izzy could hardly hear past her thundering heart. “I … I …”

Germaine rolled her eyes, feigning boredom with the conversation, despite her obvious glee. “I know he just felt sorry for you. But really,” she slowed down to enunciate each word. “I. Don’t. Share.”

Then, surveying the wreckage, Germaine smiled, looking truly happy. And why wouldn’t she? She’d destroyed them all. That pig stunt had only bound them closer together, but this? This would scatter them like the wind.

“Come on, ladies,” she purred to her minions. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

And with that, she spun on her heel and pranced out, leaving stunned silence in her wake.

Piper and Mei just stared at Izzy in horror. Cassidy—looking like she seriously wanted to kick some ass—kept glaring at the door through which Germaine the Hurricane had left.

Izzy couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

From behind her, Ryan said, “Um … Izzy, your burger’s ready.”

She turned around to see him holding out a tray, the burger, steak fingers, and fries wedged into red plastic baskets. Suddenly the scent of charred flesh hit her and her mouth filled with bile.

Shit.

This was proof. Karma was real. Nine-hundred million Hindus had it right: you shouldn’t mess with cows. The burgers would bite back.

Chapter 28
Mei

After all the times something tiny had thrown Piper into hysterics, all the times she’d cried over a broken heel or a smudged painting, all the times the most innocent slight had her in tears, Mei would have thought that this betrayal would have sent Piper over the edge. Straight into we-need-a-tranq-gun-stat loonyville.

The fact that it hadn’t made Mei very nervous.

After one agonizing moment of silence, in which Ryan kept trying to hand a tray of food to Izzy while Izzy actually turned green, Piper merely stalked to the exit in silence. Mei had to run to catch up to her.

At the door, Piper glanced back, her expression distant. Then she met Cassidy’s eyes from across the room. For a second, doubt flickered across Piper’s face. She waited. Mei’s breath caught, but Cassidy didn’t leave Izzy’s side.

Then they were out the door, marching back down the road to Piper’s car parked in the yogurt shop lot.

They’d just reached the Honda when Izzy called out from behind them. “Wait! Listen to me. It’s not the way she made it sound.”

Piper stilled beside Mei but rather than looking up, busied herself with digging through her purse for her keys. Mei turned around. Izzy lingered at the edge of the parking lot, hands clenched, skin still tinged with green. Cassidy stood just behind her.

That was the weirdest part of it all, seeing Cassidy hang back.

Cassidy, who jumped into the fray faster than any of them. Who’d been leaping to Piper’s defense since kindergarten. Was Cassidy actually taking
Izzy’s
side?

“Are you just
ignoring
me?” Izzy demanded.

Piper didn’t say anything. And Mei couldn’t. She and Izzy had always been close, but she couldn’t side with her on this one. What she’d done was indefensible.

“So that’s it? I don’t exist to you anymore?” Still nothing from Piper as she dug through the bag. Izzy stalked a few steps closer. “You know, she said it would be like this.” Piper stilled at Izzy’s use of the word
she
. “That once someone gets on your bad side, you’re done with them. No second chances with you, huh, Pipes?”

Piper swung around, her oversized purse whacking Mei in the hip. “
She
said that? That’s what Germaine said about me? About
me
? The person she’s tormented since the seventh grade? And you didn’t just eat lunch with her, now you’re taking friendship advice from her, too? What. The hell. Kind of friend. Are you?” Her purse slipped and she let it fall to the ground unnoticed as she stepped closer to Izzy. “At any point, when you were off making friendship bracelets with your new BFF, did it occur to you that she’s my sworn enemy?”

“At any point, when you were off kissing half of Europe, did it occur to
you
that I was here. All alone. With no friends. At all.”

“Okay. You were lonely. We get it. But how do you go from
that
to hanging out with Germaine?”

Izzy’s jaw clenched noticeably, but then her chin bumped up. “Is this really about Germaine? Or are you just pissed off that Tanner kissed me? That after years of you mooning over him, he picked
me
?”