The Karma Club (2 page)

I look up again. “Yeah, I wrote that! I really did!” I beam.

“I know,” Angie replies again. “You only made me read the letter like fifty times before you sent it.”

“It’s funny, right? Do you think it’s funny?” I ask, suddenly paranoid about everyone in the world reading these lines and thinking I’m totally lame for saying “Chewy Runts Locating Device.”

“Yes,” Angie grudgingly reassures me. “It’s funny. It was funny when you wrote it. It’s still funny now.”

Somewhat satisfied, I turn back to the magazine. “When Mason Brooks isn’t spending time with his smitten, sweet-toothed girlfriend, he fulfills his duties as senior class president and a part-time chef at a local pizzeria. But don’t get too floured by this hunky dough boy, ladies. Mason and Madison have already made plans to attend the same college after graduation. It sounds like this perfect pairing was made to last.”

I stand in complete astonishment as I try to grasp everything that has happened in the last five minutes. My boyfriend, Mason Brooks, featured in
Contempo Girl
magazine! They even called him a “hunky dough boy.” Well, yeah, it’s a bit cheesy, but so what? This is
huge
! Every girl in the country is going to see this. Every girl in the country is going to be pining after
my
boyfriend.

Suddenly, I hear a high-pitched, overly excited shriek coming from the direction of the drugstore’s front entrance and I realize that I wasn’t the only person Angie called with the news.

“Where is it? Let me see it. How does he look? Oh my God, this is so exciting!”

Angie and I turn to see our other best friend, Jade, running into the store, completely red faced, her shoulder-length, sandy blond hair flipping wildly behind her. She scurries over to the register and tries to grab the magazine from my tightly grasping fingers. “Lemme see!” she squeals.

I pass the magazine to Jade and watch intently as her face lights up like a Christmas tree and her eyes skim the article.

Her head pops up. “They quoted you!”

My beaming grin never falters. “I know.”

“That’s so cool,” she muses as she continues reading. I watch her face for further reaction, and then finally she cracks up laughing. “ ‘Chewy Runts Locating Device.’ That’s hilarious.”

“You think?” I ask again.

Jade nods with decisiveness. “Definitely funny.”

Angie shakes her head at us and turns to help a customer who has just appeared at the register. Jade and I instinctively step a few feet away to spare the stranger the agony of listening to our intrusively loud, girlie shrieks.

“But Mason doesn’t work at the pizza place anymore,” Jade points out.

I simply shrug. “He did when I sent in his picture. But I doubt it matters.”

In fact, Mason quit his job at Brooklyn Pizza after only six months of working there. And honestly, I’m not really sure why he needed the extra money to begin with—his parents basically pay for everything he wants anyway.

Jade finishes the article, then looks at me in amazement. “Wow.”

I take the magazine back from her and hold it tightly in my grasp, as if dropping it would cause the whole thing to shatter into a million pieces and I might actually wake up from this crazy dream.

Angie finishes helping the older lady with her purchase of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner and a bag of cotton balls and steps out from behind the counter to join us.

Jade affectionately puts an arm around my shoulder. “This is big.” She sums up my feelings in three little words.

I gaze absently straight ahead. “I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

Angie laughs and shakes her head. “Well, Maddy,” she says in a serious tone. “The first thing you’re gonna do is buy that magazine because, honestly, you’ve already crumpled it all up with your sweaty fingers and it’s completely unsellable now. Then you’re going to go home and study for your European history test because, believe it or not, Mrs. Spitz is not going to take this”—she taps her finger against the magazine—“as an acceptable excuse for not knowing about Marie Antoinette and Louis the Thirty-second.”

“Sixteenth,” I correct her.

“Whatever. They’re all ugly with big noses. Louis le Grande Schnoz is more like it.”

I giggle. Angie’s one of those people that can always be counted on to stay calm and rational during any time of crisis or extreme excitement. If she had been on the
Titanic
when it started to sink, she definitely would not have been one of those women screaming and running around like headless chickens. She would have been one of the people organizing everyone else and telling them to shut up and get on the flipping lifeboat because screaming is clearly not going to get you anywhere . . . except the bottom of the ocean.

I reach into the pocket of my jeans and produce a few dollar bills, which I hand over to Angie. She walks back to the register, rings up the slightly mangled magazine, and holds out my change. “Thanks for shopping at Miller’s,” she says brightly and with only a hint of sarcasm.

I say goodbye to both my friends, mumbling something about my test, and then drive back to my house in somewhat of a daze. I immediately make a plan to go back to the drugstore tomorrow to
buy at least twenty copies of the magazine. Or however many my diminished bank account will allow. Because this is definitely the kind of thing you’d want to be able to show your grandchildren when you—Crap! I have to call Mason. He doesn’t even know that his face is plastered in magazines across the country, dressed in his sauce-stained Brooklyn Pizza apron with a smudge of flour on his left cheek. I chose that specific picture, as opposed to the generic shirtless picture that I’m sure every girl chooses, because I thought it made him look humble and down-to-earth and really captured his whole Mason essence.

I’m totally anxious to get home and whip out my cell phone. My dad has lectured me way too many times about the law in California that prohibits anyone from using a cell phone while driving, unless it’s with a headset. But if you’re under eighteen, you can’t even do that. And not wanting to risk losing my cell phone
or
my driving privileges, I always wait—rather impatiently, I might add—until I get to my destination before making or taking any calls. This can get really annoying with Angie’s habit of calling repeatedly until I pick up.

I press the first speed-dial button and wait for Mason to answer. It goes straight to voice mail. Oh, right. I forgot he’s still at soccer practice.

I am tempted to drive over to the soccer field and wait for him to finish practice so I can show him the article, but I know that my history book is waiting for me upstairs, and I
cannot
fail this test tomorrow. I need to keep my GPA up if I am ever going to be accepted to Amherst with Mason.

So I drag myself into the house, up the stairs, and into my bedroom. As I settle back into more reading about the French’s love
of the guillotine and the forming of the National Assembly, my phone rings again. This time it’s Jade, and I answer it using the justification that the French Revolution happened like hundreds of years ago and all this stuff is happening right now. And isn’t everyone always telling us to live in the now?

“Omigod,” she says breathlessly as soon as I answer. “I just realized what this whole magazine article thing means.”

“What?”

“It means we’ll finally be able to get into the
Loft
.” She pronounces the word
Loft
in a loud whisper, as if it’s the location of a top secret CIA drop point where confidential information is going to be exchanged at 0900 hours.

“You think? All because of this?” I ask, feeling skeptical.

“Of course!” Jade yells in my ear. “Hello? Mason is going to be like the most popular guy in school after this. And since you’re his girlfriend and
we’re
your friends, we’ll totally get in.”

The infamous “Loft” that Jade is referring to is actually a condo in downtown San Francisco that Spencer Cooper’s parents own but rarely use because they’re constantly traveling to much more glamorous places around the world. Apparently our little town just northeast of San Fran isn’t exciting enough for them to stay put for longer than two weeks at a time. This means that Spencer is often left alone with his brand-new BMW, a credit card with no limit, and most important, the keys to the Loft. Spencer Cooper is infamous for two things: being the richest kid in school and also being the most stuck-up. I’ve never actually had a conversation with him (and honestly, I’m not sure if I’d ever want to), but from what I’ve heard, he’s totally one of those guys who thinks he’s better than everyone else because his parents have money.
In seventh grade, it was rumored he paid his English teacher fifteen thousand dollars to change his grade from a C to a B. Honestly, I think that’s just bad business sense. If you’re going to pay someone that much money to change your grade, at least make it an A.

Anyway, Spencer began hosting parties at the Loft at the beginning of last year, and it quickly became the place to be and be seen for Colonial High. Everyone who’s anyone is at the Loft parties. People like Heather Campbell, the most popular girl at our high school; her best friend, Jenna LeRoux, who also happens to be Spencer’s current girlfriend; and anyone that Heather and Jenna deem worthy to hang out with them.

Up until now, my friends and I have never gone. We’ve only
heard
about how fabulous it is. Because it’s not the kind of party you can just show up to. There’s a list somewhere that indicates who is allowed in. Everyone else is turned away at the door. Unfortunately, we have yet to make it on that list.

I’m not exactly sure who controls or maintains this list, but its existence is undeniable. And I know this because we tried to attend this notorious party at the end of last year, after Mason won the election for senior class president, but we were harshly denied entry. It was a blow to the ego that I’d just as soon forget. Jade had insisted that Mason’s victory and my association with that victory as not only his girlfriend but also his campaign manager would assure us entrance. But apparently school politics don’t play a huge role in the popularity game at our school.

JFK probably wouldn’t have gotten into the Loft either.

“I don’t know,” I tell Jade hesitantly. “If they don’t let us in, I really don’t want to go through that humiliation again.”

“Impossible,” she insists. “As long as Mason is invited, which he totally will be once word of this article spreads, we’re golden.”

When I hang up the phone and try to refocus on my history book, my mind can’t help but drift back to what Jade just said. Could we really get into the Loft party just because of a stupid magazine article?

Maybe my fantasy wasn’t that far off after all. Maybe this one little article
would
make us the most popular couple in school. Maybe Heather Campbell would eventually start calling
me
up for advice about the new spring fashions and where she should go to get her nails done and how to snag a boyfriend as wonderful as Mason. I really wouldn’t blame her. I mean, I’m pretty much a published magazine writer now. Who wouldn’t want advice from someone whose words are in
Contempo Girl
magazine?

Suddenly, the French Revolution seems trivial compared to my own rise to the throne, and I abandon my textbook and wander into my closet, determined to pick out the trendiest looking outfit I own for tomorrow.

All my life
I’ve wanted to be popular.

I don’t know where the obsession came from, but from the time I was a little girl, the life of the high school “it” crowd always seemed more glamorous than anything else I could ever imagine.

Then in the sixth grade, I met Heather Campbell, and from the moment I saw her, I knew I wanted to be like her. Her hair and teeth were perfectly straight, her makeup looked like she’d just walked away from the M.A.C counter after a full-on demonstration, and her clothes were something straight out of a fashion magazine. She was just beautiful, in every sense of the word.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that in every single high school, in every single state in the country, there is always a Heather Campbell. The girl who is simply born with the popular gene . . . and
jeans
, for that matter.

My mom often tries to comfort me by saying that girls like Heather Campbell tend to peak early in life and then quickly fade.
That’s why she looks so much better than everyone now. But by the time I go to my ten-year reunion, I’ll be way prettier than she is. To which I always reply with the same statement, “I don’t want to be pretty in ten years. I want to be pretty now.”

Because what good is it to me now that I
might
or might not be drop-dead gorgeous when I’m twenty-seven? It’s not like I can go to school every day with a big cardboard sign around my neck that says, “Trust me, in ten years, I’ll look like this.” And then an arrow pointing to a picture of a supermodel.

Heather Campbell is simply a goddess, and I can’t imagine her being anything less . . . at any age. She has silky, long amber-brown hair and perfectly bronzed skin. Like her mother gave birth to her inside a tanning bed or something.

And I’m pretty sure she’s not a virgin. Not by at least a couple times over.

I, on the other hand,
am
still a virgin. I know, I’ve been dating Mason for two years, so what on earth am I waiting for, right? Well, I’m not exactly sure what I’m waiting for. I guess for it to just feel “right.” And up until now, it really hasn’t. Maybe I’ll feel different once we get to Amherst next year and I know there’s not a parental figure sitting in the next room.

In fact, Angie is the only one in our group who actually
has
lost her virginity. Jade came close last year, with her then boyfriend, Seth, but ever since the awful thing he did to her afterward, we try not to talk about it too often.

My friends don’t approve of my obsession with Heather. They think it’s juvenile and immature. Angie says Heather’s a bimbo and a waste of good skin cells. Jade says I should just be my own, unique beautiful self and not worry what other people are wearing
or doing or who they’re having sex with. And Mason says my energy would be better spent elsewhere since he doubts Heather has ever had one intelligent thing to say in her entire life. Which is completely untrue. I mean, she may not be a straight-A student, but I’m more than confident she has plenty of fascinating things to say.