The Karma Club (20 page)

The next Monday
I’m sitting in the school’s auditorium waiting for the auditions for
Little Women
to begin. Obviously, it’s not
me
who’s auditioning. Especially after that whole I’m-just-getting-the-mail-from-the neighbor’s-house performance on Friday. Jade is trying out for the lead. It’s a really big deal for her. Because if she gets the part, there’s a good chance she’ll go on to get a huge scholarship to UCLA’s drama program. I told her I’d come to the auditions for moral support. Plus, I’ve been feeling pretty guilty lately with all the lying I’ve had to do every time I hang out with Spencer. So I was partially just trying to relieve my guilt.

It’s a little weird now that Spencer and I are kind of a couple. I made him swear to keep us a secret at least for another few weeks. And then after that, I’m not really sure.

I know that each and every day I don’t tell my friends about him, I’m digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole. Because
when I do eventually tell them, it will have been one more day that I lied to them. A betrayal stacked on top of more betrayal. But I
can’t
tell them. They wouldn’t understand. I don’t even know if
I
understand what’s happening yet.

Mr. Kent, the director of the drama department, gets onstage and welcomes everyone. I glance around the auditorium, looking for Jade, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I guess she could be hiding out backstage, running through her lines one final time before it’s her turn to audition.

It isn’t until Mr. Kent tells everyone trying out for the role of Jo to sit in the front row so that he can call them up one by one that I realize something is wrong. Because Jade is still not there.

I send her a quick text message but get no response. So I decide to go looking for her.

First I check her seventh-period classroom, thinking maybe she got caught up in a conversation with her teacher and lost track of time. But the room is empty. Then I check the hallway around her locker. Still nothing. With each minute that passes, I grow more worried. If she doesn’t get her butt down to that auditorium in the next half hour, she can kiss the part goodbye. Not to mention her chance at that UCLA scholarship. It’s not like Jade to be careless and irresponsible. Especially about something that means so much to her.

I stick my head back in the auditorium to see if she snuck in at the last minute, but there’s still no sign of her.

Okay, now I’m really worried. I mean, what if something truly bad happened to her? What if she fell down the stairs, got knocked unconscious, and was hauled off in an ambulance? Or maybe she was kidnapped! She was making her way down the hall toward
the auditorium, and out of nowhere someone stepped out from behind a locker, threw a bag over her head, and tossed her into the back of a van!

I’ve managed to get myself totally riled up now, and I’m starting to panic. I look helplessly down the first-floor hallway, trying to decide which direction to go in next, and then I see two girls coming out of the bathroom and one of them is saying, “Oh, God, that’s disgusting. I mean, if you’re going to be bulimic and vomit your brains out, don’t do it at school, where everyone can hear you.”

And instantly I know that Jade is in there.

I hurry into the bathroom and check under each of the stalls. In the very last one, coincidentally the same stall where I overheard the news about Jenna’s locker graffiti, I see Jade’s back. She’s kneeling on the floor in front of the toilet. And she’s puking.

It’s funny; I never thought Jade would be the kind of girl who gets stage fright. She’s always so confident and composed up there. Like she was born to be on the stage.

“Jade?” I ask, softly tapping on the stall door.

“Maddy? Is that you?” she calls from the other side. And her voice sounds like she’s been waiting a lifetime for me to come find her.

I hear a faint shuffling sound, and the door unlocks. I push it open, step inside, and close the door behind me. Jade is still on the floor, her knees curled up to her chin. To be honest, she looks god-awful. But I don’t mention that. The worst thing you can do when someone is sick is to tell them that they look sick. So instead I say, “What’s the matter? Are you nervous?”

Jade shakes her head, and I can see beads of sweat appearing
across her forehead. “No. I don’t know what’s happening. I started feeling sick during seventh period. So I grabbed the pass, ran to the bathroom, and started throwing up. I’ve been here ever since.”

I glance down at the floor and see Mr. McCauley’s infamous hall pass made out of an actual toilet seat. Whoever decided to give the teachers creative freedom when choosing their hall passes needs to be severely punished.

“Was it something you ate?” I ask, crouching down next to her and pushing her damp hair away from her forehead.

She considers this. “I guess it could be. I can’t remember ever feeling this sick.”

“Maybe it was sabotage. Maybe one of the other girls auditioning for the lead poisoned you!” My mind races with thoughts of conspiracy.

Jade shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, no one gave me anything to eat. I just ordered my usual turkey chili in the cafeteria.”

And then, upon hearing her own voice say the words
turkey chili
, Jade’s eyes grow really big, she covers her mouth with her hand, and turns back to the toilet. I look away. Less out of wanting to give her privacy and more just wanting to keep myself from joining her puke fest in the next stall.

I had food poisoning once in the tenth grade, and I know from experience that the thought of whatever it was that made you sick will trigger another wave of nausea. This means Jade’s turkey chili was definitely the culprit. But why would anyone poison the chili? Or maybe it wasn’t poisoned. Maybe it was made with bad meat today. I wouldn’t be surprised with the suspicious stuff
that goes on in that kitchen. In fact, I’m surprised Jade takes her chances with cafeteria food at all.

Jade pulls her knees back up to her chest and rests her forehead against them. She looks like she’s ready to collapse at any minute, and I wonder if I should call an ambulance or something. “Do you remember anything unusual today about the . . . um . . . the . . . you know what?” I ask, avoiding any mention of the c-word.

Jade shakes her head. “No, it looked fine. But it’s not like I inspect my food before I eat it.”

I rack my brain for another possible answer.

“There was a new woman working in the cafeteria,” Jade says. “But I doubt that had anything to do with it.”

“I guess you never know. If she was new, it’s possible she didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe she messed it up.”

I see tears well up in Jade’s eyes. And I know she’s not crying about the chili.

“Can you still audition?” I ask hopefully. “I’m sure if you sneak in there right now, Mr. Kent will hardly even notice.”

Jade sniffles and wipes her nose against her jeans. “No. There’s no way. I’ve thrown up every three minutes for the past hour. And my audition monologue is four minutes long.”

Soon after, I make a decision to call Jade’s mom, and she comes to pick us up. Jade is diagnosed by her mother as having just an everyday case of food poisoning, and the only thing you can do about it is allow your body to purge all remnants of the poison from your system. Sometimes that takes a few hours, sometimes as much as a few days.

Jade doesn’t talk the whole ride home. She sits in the front seat,
holding the plastic shopping bag that her mom brought for her in case she gets sick in the car, and stares out the window. I can tell she’s thinking about UCLA and how one stupid bowl of chili has probably blown her chances of going.

Jade’s mom drops me off at home, and I promise Jade I’ll call her later tonight to check up on her. When I get inside the house, I find it eerily empty. I check my watch. It’s four o’clock. At this time, someone is almost always home. Emily, my mom, the housekeeper even. But it’s totally quiet. Like an emergency evacuation has been ordered and no one told me.

I search everywhere for something that might clue me in to my family’s whereabouts, but there’s nothing. Not even a note taped to the fridge.

I pour myself a bowl of cereal and take a seat on the couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table and turn on the TV. It’s not every day that I have this place to myself, so I guess I might as well make the most of it.

I’m barely two bites into my cereal when the phone rings. For a minute, I consider not answering it because it’s never for me anyway. My friends always call me on my cell phone. But given the unusual absence of people around here, I decide to pick it up.

“Hello?” I say, swallowing a mouthful of Lucky Charms.

“Maddy? It’s Dad.”

“Hi, Dad,” I say, relaxing back against the couch. “If you’re calling for Mom, she’s not here. No one is. It’s really weird actually.”

“Maddy,” he says again, and this time there’s an urgency in his tone that makes my heart beat faster.

“Yeah,” I say cautiously.

“Listen,” he begins, his voice on edge. “I need you to come down to the hospital.”

Oh, no. Not another one of
these
phone calls. What on earth could have happened this time? First Angie calls me from the police station, and now my dad is calling me from the hospital?

“Why?” I jump up to my feet, almost spilling my cereal. “What happened? Is it Mom? Is she okay?”

“Your mom’s fine,” my dad assures me.

I sigh loudly. Thank God. But then I ask, “Who is it?”

The answer nearly knocks me off my feet.

“Your sister’s been in an accident.”

Okay, all of
this just doesn’t happen to one group of people in the same week. A mathematician would say that it’s not statistically possible. First, Angie gets held up by a bunch of guys in ski masks, then Jade gets food poisoning and misses her audition, and now my little sister is in the hospital with a broken leg.

Fortunately, that’s all it is. She was hit by some punk kid on a bicycle after she got off the school bus. Afterward, the guy took off. He didn’t even stop. How ridiculous is that? I mean, really? A bicycle hit-and-run?

What are the odds that these things would happen within mere days of each other? Not very high, I can tell you that. It’s like things are spiraling out of control and I have no idea what or
who
is next. Is it me? Will I suddenly burst into flames for no apparent reason? Or will the ground suddenly split wide open in front of me and I’ll fall into the hot, fiery center of the earth?

First thing Tuesday morning, I decide to investigate. I need to
figure out why all of this is happening to us. Because the only logical explanation is that someone has found out about the Karma Club and has sought out his or
her
own revenge in return.

My first step is to interview the new cafeteria employee. The one Jade remembers serving the chili that made her sick yesterday. As I head down the hallway to the cafeteria at lunchtime, I make a mental list of our suspects and their possible motives.

SUSPECT #1: Heather Campbell—Somehow she figured out her acne medication had been swapped out for Crisco, linked the crime to us, and has decided to initiate some harmful revenge schemes of her own.

 

SUSPECT #2: Mason Brooks—After doing research on the name Catherine Linton, he learned that she is a character from one of my favorite books and then traced the entire scandal, including the whole revelation of the SAT cheating thing, back to me.

 

SUSPECT #3: Ryan Feldman—While visiting a hypnotherapist, he remembered seeing me out of the corner of his eye darting suspiciously around the racks of bras at Eve’s Closet, thus linking the shoplifting charge to his ex-girlfriend Angie and me.

 

SUSPECT #4: Seth Taylor—After tracking down one of the women that so desperately wanted to sleep with him, he tied her to a chair and used torture devices to get her to admit that she met him on an Internet dating site.
Then he hired one of those computer geniuses who work for the CIA to track down the e-mail address used on the profile and link it back to Jade’s father’s high-speed Internet account.

Clearly some of those scenarios are a little more plausible than others, but I am determined to get to the bottom of this. If someone has discovered us, they have to be stopped. Not that I’ll strap concrete blocks to their feet and drop them into the San Francisco Bay or anything. More like I’ll speak to them rationally and try to talk them into stopping.

When I get to the cafeteria, I don’t notice anything unusual. The same lunch ladies seem to be going about their business of serving up hamburgers, mac and cheese, and very suspicious-looking taco meat. I pull a tray off the stack and make my way down the line. I attempt to blend in and pretend that I’m just another hungry customer, trying to decide which delicious delicacy I’ll order today. All the while, I’m scanning the kitchen for someone who looks new. But really, how the heck am I supposed to know who’s new? It’s not like I’m a regular here. I always bring my lunch. And after getting a whiff of that mac and cheese in front of me, I’m reminded why.

I decide to take a more direct approach. “Hello,” I say to the woman who’s waiting impatiently for me to make a decision. “What happened to that new girl who was in here yesterday?”

The woman stares at me with this blank expression, and for a minute I think that she’s not going to even answer, but then she goes, “Fired her.”

I blink my eyes in disbelief. “What?”

“She screwed up one of the batches of chili on her first day. A couple of kids got sick, so we had to let her go.”

Well, there you go. Culprit found. But the information is not terribly helpful, as it doesn’t link the food poisoning back to any of my suspects. I try to think about what a detective on one of those popular TV crime dramas would do at this point. He would definitely ask more questions. So I do.

“Hmmm,” I say curiously, surveying my lunch options. “Everything looks so good, it’s hard to decide.”