The Julian Game Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  forty-one

  forty-two

  Also by Adele Griffin

  Sons of Liberty

  The Other Shepards

  Dive

  Amandine

  Overnight

  Where I Want to Be

  My Almost Epic Summer

  Vampire Island

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS • A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2010 by Adele Griffin.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Summary: In an effort to improve her social status, a new scholarship student at an exclusive girls’ school uses a fake online profile to help a popular girl get back at her ex-boyfriend, but the consequences are difficult to handle.

  [1. Bullies—Fiction. 2. Online identities—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Peer pressure—

  Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.G881325Ju 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2010002281

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19830-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Nancy Paulsen

  one

  “This is the craziest idea you ever had,” said Natalya.

  “My idea?” My heart was racing. “What are you talking about? It was your idea.”

  “Fine. Our idea. Do you think we’ll get caught?”

  “Don’t be a baby. Nobody can trace us.”

  “And it’s not like we’re even breaking the law,” Natalya added. “Right?”

  “Right. We’re not doing anything illegal.”

  Not illegal, but maybe a little bit wrong—although tonight had started as tame as every other Saturday at the Zawadski house. First a sit-down dinner of political debates while the meat loaf got cold, followed by Natalya and me whipping up a pan of Duncan Hines milk chocolate brownies, then enjoying a warm square of brownie à la mode while watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of Island of the Undead on the Syfy channel.

  The third episode was about a zombie who collected the bodies of her victims. That’s when we decided to do it—to make Elizabeth, our very own man-eater. A girl who’d lure in all the guys we’d never dare approach for real.

  “Only we won’t really kill them,” Tal said. “Unless, of course, they deserve it.”

  The whole thing was a joke. Or a dare wrapped in a joke, but with each layer we added to Elizabeth’s profile, she became more human.

  Now it was past midnight. Natalya’s house was dark except for the glow of her laptop in her bedroom. The casts of Lost, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica stared down on us from their posters as we put our last touches on Elizabeth. From her nationality (Krakow, Poland) to her school (we made her a freshman at Moore College of Art, in Philadelphia) to her picks and preferences.

  Slowly, Elizabeth breathed life. She liked Coldplay and Anne Hathaway and Van Gogh and shrimp scampi. She missed her kid brothers Boris and Drugi, who lived in Poland—and we’d even found stock images of two gap-toothed grade-school boys to stick in her photo album. We’d set up her e-mail from Natalya’s mom’s Yahoo account that she checked about twice a year. The final task was to find her profile photo, which was why we were browsing modeling websites.

  “Elizabeth needs to be cute,” I said, “so that guys sit up and pant.”

  “But not too cute or they’ll think she’s a lie.” Natalya clicked through images like a Hollywood casting agent. You could never tell what sort of random project might catch Natalya’s interest, but this one had. “Girl-next-door pretty. Like how you could look, Raye, if you weren’t always rocking the double ex-el sweatshirt.” She paused. “Hey, what if I snapped a—”

  “—that would be a no.” I yanked up the neck of my sweatshirt so it hid my face. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Why not? It’s not like any prime MacArthur guy would recognize you.”

  I peeked out. “Gee, thanks.” But I knew what she meant.

  Socially, we were both pretty much invisible, though Tal did stake one claim to fame as the older sister of Thomas Zawadski, MacArthur Academy’s varsity-letter freshman, All-American lacrosse goalie, and unofficial Duncan Hines milk chocolate brownie pig.

  “How about her?” I pointed. Heart-shaped face and skinny black tank.

  Natalya nodded. “And she even kinda looks like you.”

  We watched in silence as her photograph uploaded.

  “It probably is illegal to borrow someone else’s face,” murmured Natalya. “This whole thing is insane.” But I could tell she was enjoying herself.

  “Insanely brilliant, maybe.”

  “Whatever. Okay. Now for the personal message.” Natalya rubbed her hands together. “Here we go. ‘Hello, I am Coach Fernier’s niece and just came to this country for art school. Want to please to make some American friends?’”

  “That’s good. Now. Who’re we friending?”

  “Who’s on your wish list?”

  “I guess anyone the Group dies for. The best guys. Chapin Gilbert and Julian Kilgarry and Frank Senai.” My cheeks burned to say t
heir names.

  Natalya nodded, but she was chewing the edge of her pinkie. We’d raised the ante and we weren’t going back. “So we’ll start with them. Nobody’ll deny Coach Fernier. Thomas says he walks on water. And then we’ll mix it up with some of Nicola’s friends, for authenticity. Nic won’t care.” Nicola was Natalya’s cousin, who really did go to Moore College of Art.

  “Sounds good.” My heart was still pounding. Elizabeth Lavenzck excited me. She was us but not us, she was real and a lie, and soon she’d be friends with guys we’d only dreamed of talking to. “This is more fun that I’d thought.”

  “Uh-huh.” Though Tal didn’t sound convinced. “But Raye, what are we going to do with her? If she works?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. I really couldn’t think about it past this point. Now I stared into Elizabeth’s heart-shaped face, her Mona Lisa smile. The options seemed endless. “First let’s see who we can get.”

  two

  If your spring sport at Fulton wasn’t tennis or lacrosse or crew, then you took Health & Fitness. This was not cool. It could have been inked into the school ledger: Any student participating in Health & Fitness is hereby decreed, for the duration of this scheduled activity, to be kind of a Loser.

  But Health & Fitness was no joke. You could get suspended for blowing off the timed bar hangs or fencing parries or whatever was on the menu three afternoons a week in the north gym. Almost worse than taking H&F was the H&F uniform: blue nylon short-shorts and a maroon T-shirt with our antiquated class mascot—Hooter the Snowy Owl—cupped unironically over the left boob.

  Non-athletic Natalya and I put in a major effort to keep a low H&F profile, so when Tal’s shorts’ elastic snapped right in the middle of kickboxing that following Thursday, she panicked.

  “S.O.S. and Coach says you can come with,” she whisper-yelled as she jogged up, her hands cinched at her waist. “I don’t want to run around dealing with this alone.” In my lame-ass H&F uniform, she meant.

  My turn at boxing had made me really sweaty, and I was conscious of my shiny face and the wet circles under my pits as we swung past the Administration desk for safety pins before bolting to the locker room. All my friends at my old school had joked that I wouldn’t care how bad I looked in a school of just girls, but that had turned out not to be true. Girls looked and judged, same as guys. Sometimes worse.

  “If I pin on each side and one in the back, I think I’m okay.” Tal sighed. “Hey, are you still coming over this weekend?” she asked. “We can update Elizabeth.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Although the Elizabeth experience had been sort of a dud. Every guy we’d asked had accepted, even Tal’s crush, Tim Wyatt, who was captain of MacArthur’s debate team. But then everyone had declined to answer more than a few words.

  I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but I know I’d been hoping for better.

  “Hang on. Now that I’m pinned in, I need to pee.” Tal ducked into a stall. “Stay?”

  I dropped on the bench outside the showers. A few more minutes sweating in my Hooter uniform wouldn’t kill me.

  Then the Group barged in, and I thought maybe it would.

  Lindy Limon, Faulkner—named for her famous relative—George, Ella Rose Parker, Alison Sonenshine, and Jeffey Makinopolis. Not a single girl from my old school came close to the Group’s fabulous factor. As a unit, they were terrifying.

  I stared down at my wristwatch, noting every aspect of it, as they stripped off their lacrosse uniforms while discussing a party Lindy might be throwing on Saturday.

  Alison, the Loud one, was dominating the conversation as she turned to Ella. “Get past it. If they come together, so what? Him and Mia McCord have been hooking up since kindergarten. It sucked what happened to you, but it didn’t suck anything special.”

  “Are you still talking about Jay-Kay?” asked Faulkner. She was the Sweet one of the Group, the only one with classroom crossover appeal—example, she was our class president.

  Jay-Kay was Julian Kilgarry, new VIP friend to Elizabeth Lavenzck. Though I’d never met him personally, girls gave his name when they wanted an extreme. As in, “The lead singer was amazing, like an older Jay-Kay.” Or “He was a hottie, but not Kilgarry hot.” My one sighting was last fall, when Natalya pointed him out at MacArthur’s Homecoming game. In a word: drool-worthy. Iron jaw, inky Irish curls, and eyes the precise color of a June sky at sunset. In the last picture I’d ever taken of my mom, framed next to my bed so I can see it every day, that same blue is diffused behind her.

  After Homecoming, I’d become temporarily obsessed, clicking Julian’s “View My Complete Profile” on Facebook several times a week to see what he’d updated. I knew all his passions (lacrosse, chess, journalism), seen all his pictures and tags, and read every line of text he’d ever thought to post.

  “Kilgarry’s like the king of hit it and quit it.” This from Lindy, the Ditzy one, the Party Girl, who never said anything unless it was a cliché.

  “Oh, like you know,” said Ella, the Beautiful and Quirky one, which also made her the most Fascinating since I wasn’t as used to her peculiar habits as the rest of the class. For example:

  1. On the first Wednesday of every month, Ella baked cookies for both sections of homeroom.

  2. She owned at least a dozen pairs of paper-thin kid leather gloves, in an array of rainbow colors, that she wore to protect her hands from the sun.

  3. She always claimed the third desk in the third row of every classroom she ever sat in. And apparently, she always had.

  Ella’s oddness seemed as natural to her as her long legs and gold-link charm bracelet, but the real reason she got away with it was because she was so beautiful. You can’t be that strange unless you’re that gorgeous.

  Now Jeffey—the Gazelle, tall and skinny, who was signed with a New York modeling agency—gave Ella a long blink, as if she didn’t get it. “Then why’d you ask him to Alison’s?”

  “Because he’d dropped so many hints,” Ella answered. “It was more that he asked me to ask him.”

  “Convenient.” Alison snorted. “Since you worship him.”

  Ella, wrapped in a towel and on the way to the showers with the rest of the Group, had stopped to thumb through her cell messages. Suddenly she raised her phone and snapped a picture of their mirrored reflection. “So you claim.”

  “Looze!” Faulkner squealed. “I hate having my picture taken. You know that.”

  Ella clicked again. “Why? Because you’re secretly revolting?”

  “Because I’m in a towel, for one. Dumbass.”

  “One more,” said Ella. “I always end on odd numbers. It’s my thing. You know that, Useless.” Mimicking Faulkner as she clicked in her face. Mean nicknames was another Group trademark: Tard, Donut, Zero, Looza, Useless, Dumbass, Lardass, Dali Lardass. And if what Natalya said was true, the Group had secret nicknames for everyone.

  “I know mine, but only because I’ve been here since kindergarten. I’m Zaweirdski and the Wad and Nub,” she’d once confessed. “One day I’ll tell you more about that last one.” She’d looked slightly flustered. “You’re something, too. Whatever it is, that’s the only thing they call you. Don’t worry, though. You’ll never find out.”

  Tal was right. To our faces, the Group was vaguely, indifferently polite.

  “Did you hear Julian’s father’s car dealership is kaput?” Lindy broadcast as I rapped on the door for Tal to hurry. I knew she was holed up on purpose, hoping to wait them out. So unfair. It was a hundred times more awkward to be here on the outside than safe in a stall. “Kilgarry Saab. Tragic. I hear they’re totally poor.”

  “That’s a tacky rumor,” said Ella with chilly authority. “And you should shut up, Looze. People are listening.”

  Instant silence.

  Ella meant me. I was “people.” So I hadn’t been invisible to Ella. She knew I’d been eavesdropping.

  I glanced away, but when I looked back, she was staring right at me. My pulse p
oints jumped. I’d never looked Ella Parker in the eyes, which were white-gray, almost a non-color.

  Her phone was poised at me. She snapped. I flinched. She smiled, an uptick at the edges of her mouth. Like we were in on something together. It was a moment that felt as important as a kiss or a secret.

  Then it was over. As Ella pocketed the phone and brushed past me toward the showers. Nearly bumping into Natalya, all pinned up and making a break for it.

  three

  My moment with Ella Parker wouldn’t have meant anything if Filthcrack hadn’t humiliated her the next afternoon.

  But he did, which set the stage for everything that came after.

  Filthcrack taught us Mandarin Chinese, and although I was in the honors section and Ella was in the regular section, both sections joined up on Friday afternoons for fifty tedious minutes of Filth-proctored “conversation.” With his lizard hips and pompadour, Filthcrack might have been greasily handsome back in the day, and he still thought he had some middle-aged game—you could tell by how he sauntered around the halls.

  For the first few minutes, conversation was going okay. Beebee Bidell was leading it, explaining how she’d gone to the market and picked out a bag of rice and saffron and crab and put everything into her basket.

  We’d all been chiming in with our simple syntax questions, and then Ella Parker accidentally asked, “Was the market very noisy, or very penis?”

  Filthcrack, who’d been leaning back against his desk, snorted. Ella’d said ying jing instead of an jing. In Mandarin, the words for quiet and penis are almost identical.

  But nobody else in the class got it, and I felt somewhat creepy-geeky that I did. It had been a trend in my old school to learn all the dirty words in Chinese, and then to use them liberally—preferably in front of our clueless parents.

  “Miss Parker,” said Filth, in English and smirking, “you are confusing a noun and an adjective. Try again.”

  “Was it penis in the market?” Ella asked carefully.

  Now Filth laughed outright. Beebee had typed the word into her MacBook. “Ew, Ella, careful,” she warned. “Ying jing means ‘dick.’”