The Julian Game Read online

  The class exploded. Expressionless, Ella stood and removed her petal pink gloves, slapping them five times into the palm of her hand. She always did things like that. Little touches and taps and knocks.

  In the next second, she was out of there.

  “Mr. Phillstack, can I follow her?” Beebee wasn’t in the Group, but she was captain of the varsity field hockey team, which made her Ella’s closest contact, status-wise.

  “Why? So you two can jabber in the bathroom until end bell? Don’t think so.” Filth pointed. “Raye Archer. Go retrieve Ella.”

  Me, because I was least likely to jabber with Ella? But I went. Checking a few places along the way—library lounge, soda pit, bathrooms, cafeteria. Ella had a thing for the cafeteria’s kitchen. I’d seen her zip in there for the Clorox spray to wipe down her table before eating at it, and sometimes to wash her hands under the high-pressure sink faucet.

  That’s where I found her. Sudsing away.

  “Filth told me to get you.”

  “He’s such an ass. Laughing at me.”

  “I guess he thought it was funny.”

  “Let’s see if that old fart’s still jolly when I get him fired. Set his screensaver to porn or something.” She turned off the taps and wiped her hands. Up, down, up on a dishtowel. “He’s out for me. My last test looked like his pen had hemorrhaged red ink.”

  “Everyone knows Filth’s an idiot. Honestly? I could teach you better with one arm tied behind my back,” I said on i mpulse.

  Her answering stare flattened me. “Doubt it.”

  “Well, okay, if Chinese isn’t your thing,” I continued quickly, “then what about Spanish? It’s way less—”

  “Because my parents think I need it for college,” Ella snapped. “Even though I told them nobody else is taking it. They don’t get it’s like the hardest language invented.”

  Nobody else. She didn’t even hear how insulting that was. I decided to ignore it. “Yeah, the tonal stresses are tough for me.”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re the Sophie Fulton-Glass Scholar. You go to Fulton for free. You get straight A’s. You’ve got your room all picked out at Princeton, right?”

  “Ha,” I answered, though it was all true. Except the room at Princeton.

  “And my parents won’t let me take Spanish—they think it’s a cop-out. They both graduated Harvard, and they’re clinging to this moosick fantasy that I might go there, too. My sister’s a junior.”

  What did Ella want me to say? “I understand.”

  “Except my point is that you don’t.”

  How had this turned into a debate? I’d completely annoyed Ella Parker, and I hadn’t done a thing. But still I wanted to soothe her. “There’s more to smart than school smarts,” I said. “And you’re all over me on that.”

  She looked at me hard. “How?”

  “People watch you. You have a way of doing things.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know.” I stammered to explain it. “You’ve always got the best line.” She was waiting for an example. “Last week in chorus, you told that freshman Jillian Sweeney to move it, since her bad breath was bleaching your eyebrows. The way you said it made everyone laugh.” Except Jillian, who’d turned bright red.

  “It did smell rank.” Ella shrugged, but I sensed that she was pleased. “And I like to tell the truth.”

  “Exactly.”

  She touched a finger to the spigot. Tapped it seven times. “But I’m an incredible liar, too,” she added. “You don’t want to be on my bad side. I can get people to believe anything.” There was something empty in her face as she told me this. A lack of . . . emotion, maybe? Conscience?

  “At least you’ve got a bad side,” I said lightly. “Good people are so boring.”

  She smiled, that tiny uptick. That sister smile. “Are you bad, Raye?”

  “Sometimes.” I looked her straight in the eye. “Sometimes I’m treacherous.”

  She burst out laughing. If the mood had been intense, it wasn’t now.

  Later, I’d always think this was the moment where it started. Ella’s challenge. My answer. What we’d really meant, and what we’d unleashed in each other.

  four

  “So Uncle Freddie sent not one, not two, but three installments of Midnight Planet from London for us on Saturday night,” Natalya informed me excitedly in homeroom at the end of the day. “If we watch them all, we’ll be as caught up as anyone in the U.K. How cool is that?”

  “Oh . . . great.”

  “Raye, you are coming over tomorrow, right?” she asked a minute later. “As per usual?”

  I swiveled my head to examine my Chemistry notes. Sometimes I felt a touch mortified by my friendship with Natalya. Maybe it wasn’t personal—maybe any best friendship would have been too intense for me. Last year, I’d hung in a relaxed, loosely defined group, but Fulton didn’t have anything like that. Its selective social circles were knit by girls who’d hit the slopes and the shore and played on the same teams together since kindergarten. The cliques were fixed and impenetrable, nothing loose about it.

  Whereas Tal and I were friends because she was an outsider and so was I. Period.

  “Paging Raye for confirmation on tomorrow night?” Tal asked, louder.

  “Sure, I guess,” I relented. Anyway, Dad and his girlfriend were counting on it. It went unspoken that Saturdays were their night to be free of me.

  Fridays had a way of making me self-conscious about everything I’d be excluded from over the weekend, but I listened in on what was happening anyway. Not only did I now know about Lindy’s party, but I’d also overheard that Sadie Nufer, a junior, was throwing one. Another group of juniors was planning to hit the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie at the Ritz, and some seniors wanted to check out an exclusive dance club on South Street.

  Fun, fun, fun. All this activity, and I wasn’t part of any of it.

  At last bell, I hit the library to finish all my weekend homework assignments. It was dark by the time I got home on the late bus. Dad’s girlfriend, Stacey, was in the kitchen, heating soup and blowing her nose. Usually Stacey reminded me of a spaniel—small and playful, warm dark eyes, always happy to see you. Today, between her mangy bathrobe and bad-hair-day frizzies, she looked more like a shelter dog. “Your dad’s still at the store,” she told me, with a sniffle. “Tal’s called the landline twice; she says she has a burning question about her Renaissance Art project. Oh, and another girl.”

  The name on the scratch pad read “Ella Parker” plus her phone number.

  “This girl? Ella Parker? Called me?”

  “Yip.” She blew her nose. “She did.”

  I walked upstairs. Was this a joke? But even as I envisioned the Group sniggering on the other end of the line, my fingers pressed the numbers like a trail of bread crumbs leading to Ella’s ear.

  She answered on the first ring. “Let me guess, Raye’s cell? Thanks for getting back.” She sounded friendly. It didn’t feel like a joke. “Look, can I come over tomorrow night?”

  “Come over where?”

  “Your house?” Then she laughed as if I were already delighting her with my company. “Sorry. Do you have other plans?”

  “Not exactly, but . . .” I stared over the banister into the living room. Noooo. Ella Parker couldn’t come over to my house. Not tomorrow night or any other night. It was too shabby here, too cluttered.

  “You know I live in Radnor? And you’re on North Aberdeen Avenue in Wayne, right? Actually I’m not guessing—I looked you up in the school directory. I’m only fifteen minutes, and Noreen—that’s my housekeeper—said she’d drive me.”

  Why? Why did she want to come here? I was delirious to know and almost too shy to ask. “Do you need something . . . from me?”

  “Remember you said you could teach me Chinese better than Filth? Well, I’m free tomorrow. Do you mind? I’m in major danger of failing the semester. Then we’ll do something fun, after. Promise.”
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br />   Awful as it was to think of Ella in my house, I didn’t know how to deny her. “No, I don’t mind. Come over whenever.”

  “Eight-ish?”

  “Eight-ish, sure.” After I clicked off, I rested the phone on my beating heart. Then I called Natalya’s. Then I hung up. Then I stared at the phone. What would I tell her? I felt horrible. But a bigger part of me was excited. A promise of fun, from Ella Parker, didn’t happen every day.

  five

  Almost a year before, I’d experienced my first kiss. It was way overdue, and it happened in the final five minutes of a freshman mixer. Ed Strohman was cute, with a choppy haircut that made me think of artichokes, and a habit of repeating the last words I’d said to him. I’d been shyly orbiting him all night. Laughing at his jokes and accepting his offer of cinnamon Dentyne.

  When he went for it, I was ready.

  “It’s the last dance of the night, I think,” I’d prompted as the music switched to a down-tempo.

  “I think,” he agreed with a nod of his big artichoke head. Moving in. His breath was sweet, his mouth was warm, his tongue roved but didn’t make me want to throw up. Afterward, he’d helped me on with my jacket and waited outside by the front wall for my ride. And although the image of Dad cranking down the window to tell Ed, “I’ll take it from here, son,” over “Looks Like We Made It” is seared forever into my Miserable Manilow Moments, that night also became a semi-precious stone embedded in my memory.

  Nothing had come of it, but later that spring Ed sent me a good-luck note on Facebook about how he hoped I’d survive my new, all-girls school. Last time I texted him, he wrote back that he was seeing Maia Amodio. If I’d known that my next year at Fulton would be so parched of romance or adventure, I might have kept up with him more aggressively.

  It seemed unnatural to have so few chances to talk to guys these days. So few chances to be social, ever. Which was probably why, by Saturday morning, I still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to cancel on either Natalya or Ella. I was stuck between the safe bet of a comfy night of videos with Tal, and that seductive, electric promise of “something fun” with Ella Parker.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked me at breakfast as he peered over his Chex and coffee.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look thoughtful.”

  I’d only been wondering what kind of party Lindy Limon was throwing. Which MacArthur guys would be there. Imagining a grateful Ella—after I’d cracked the mysteries of Mandarin for her in less than an hour—asking her housekeeper to drop us both off at Lindy’s house. Would the Group accept me if I showed up with Ella? Would they be shocked, or would Ella’s vote of confidence put them at ease? It’s not like I was some charity choice. My worst crime was being the new girl. And maybe not being superrich. But I could be fun, and I wasn’t too shy or too bold, which could land you in equal social peril.

  Dad was still watching me. But he wouldn’t want to hear about any of this.

  We cleaned up together before taking the short walk into town. At the corner, we ran into our neighbor Mrs. Savides, who gave me a honeyed good morning and a spiky-eyed once-over. Probably because I was drowning inside clothing two sizes too big for me—as usual. My love of floppy clothes had started after Mom died and I began wearing her stuff, wrapping myself in her fleeces and sweatshirts like multiple security blankets. Now it was just a force of habit.

  I let Dad extract us, which took longer than if I’d handled it myself. Dad had a higher tolerance for cranks and spinsters. Not a bad trick, if you’re running a secondhand store.

  Stacey, an incurable morning person, had left the house hours ago to open shop. We stopped to admire her new window display of Heidi Dean’s wooden ostriches.

  “They look almost cute,” I admitted. Heidi was one of the artists for Dad’s shop, the Wayne Women’s Exchange, founded way back when as a place for Civil War widows to sell homemade wares. Today, you don’t have to be a widow—if you can sew or paint, or even whittle an ostrich, we’ll sticker and shelve it.

  Inside, Stacey was unpacking Augie Hopkington’s latest wares. Augie was a Gulf War vet-turned-hermit-knitter from Stowe, Vermont.

  “Aye or nay, for you?” She held up a thin caramel V-neck.

  “Soooo nay.” My weekend uniform was clogs, jeans and one of Mom’s baggy sweatshirts. I didn’t mess with it.

  She tossed it over. “Humor me.”

  I slithered in, bunching the arms.

  “It clings and it smells like a hospital.”

  “No, that’s just mothballs. It’s nice on your shape. I’m going to the stockroom to break down boxes.”

  Stacey’s morning energy always amazed me. I returned to the girl in the caramel V-neck. Soft brown eyes and shaggy hair. A nothing nose, but full lips that dressed up my face. More-athletic-looking-than-I-really-was body, thanks to Dad’s T-shaped shoulders. Big feet that I hated. Big hands that I liked.

  “Dad, what’s my best feature?”

  “Your brain.”

  “For real.”

  “Really? I really have to keep talking about this?”

  “What if I wanted to transfer back to Conestoga?”

  “I’d tell you Fulton’s a top-notch school and you’re lucky to be there.”

  “Right. Just checking.”

  I wasn’t surprised. After all, Dad truly thought Fulton would launch me into the glorious future that he and Mom had dreamed of since the day I killed it at my nursery school interview. Dad rarely lets a month go by without commenting on what is apparently Mom’s favorite pastime in heaven, gloating over my Fulton scholarship.

  And it wasn’t just about honoring Mom. Dad had grown up a poor kid from Yardley, so having me in a fancy prep school meant he’d made it. I was double cursed. To let down Dad was one thing, and then to let Dad think he’d let down Mom was tragedy times two.

  “I’ve been feeling some unrest since breakfast,” said Dad. “C’mon, Raye. What’s on your mind?”

  “I think,” I said slowly, “that I want to have a friend over tonight.”

  “Friend as in Natalya? No problem.”

  “Actually, another friend. But the thing is . . .” My voice trailed off as Stacey reappeared.

  “The thing is you don’t want us around,” Stacey guessed, smiling. “Easy-peasey. Your dad and I’ll go to my place. We never hang out there. I’m paying rent to store clothes.”

  “I don’t know.” Dad didn’t like the plan. “You did all your homework?”

  “Yesterday. Check it if you want.”

  “And this girl isn’t a troublemaker?”

  “She’s the most popular girl in my class.”

  “Not the answer to my question.”

  “Enough.” Stacey touched her fingers to his lips. “Let’s give Raye some space, okay? Besides, my spider plants are thirsty.”

  Dad made an I-give-up face.

  “Thanks, Stace,” I told her a little later, when Dad had gone off to the stockroom. “I mean, not that it matters if you guys are there or not.”

  Untrue. It really did matter. Knowing Dad, he’d start right in grilling Ella on all the wrong things, like grades and SATs and her potential college major. He’d be intense. And the absolute last thing Ella Parker needed was to be reminded of her SATs.

  With Dad and Stace out of the picture, I’d at least removed one of the million variables in how the night might go wrong.

  six

  “You are so not sick.”

  “I am.”

  Natalya exhaled. “If you don’t want to watch Midnight Planet, we’ll do something else.”

  “No, I’m serious. I’m sick. Really.”

  “It’s not like I don’t know you, Raye. Your voice is lying. And it’s making me feel weird.” Natalya snorted, waiting for me to admit it. Tough as it was, I waited her out. I didn’t enjoy lying, and especially not to Natalya, who was always so sincere. But how could I explain that I was trading our Saturday to tutor Ella Parker in Chinese?

  “Ok
ay, fine,” she conceded into the silence. “I’ll go tell my mom. She was making white borscht, your favorite. But now she can do it with beets instead of potatoes. The way I like it. If you’re really not coming over.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry.” I meant it. Mrs. Z always spoiled me with her blinis and borschts and extra spoonfuls of mothering. “I don’t want to give you what I’ve got.”

  “You could come here and be sick. I’m not feeling exactly fantastic myself, with all the pollen.”

  “Thanks, but . . . I better stay put. I’ll call you later,” I finished. “If I feel any better.”

  “Right,” she said, and when we hung up, I knew I’d need to make an effort Monday to put things right between us.

  By eight o’clock, Dad and Stacey were out the door and I’d cleaned up three times, rearranging the pillows and hiding the Barry Manilow portrait that an Exchange artist had given Dad as a joke but that he’d accepted with much joy and then hung in our front hall right over the plastic-fruit-filled bowl.

  I was about to hide all the plastic fruit when the doorbell rang. I counted to ten and opened it in time to watch a dark Mercedes glide away from our house like a bank vault on wheels.

  “Hey.” Ella was, without doubt, the most glamorous thing that had ever happened to my doorstep. Burberry jacket, pale hair tied back in a puff of white scarf, cognac leather book bag slung over a shoulder.

  Ella Parker. Here. No joke. In fact, she thought I was the one kidding when she realized it was just us. “Are you for real?” she asked, brushing past. “You’re alone?”

  I was confused. “Is that okay?”

  She looked around. “Sure. Nate and Jennifer would never trust me to be alone. I’d break house rules six different ways in the first five minutes.” She shrugged off her jacket, leaving me to wonder what the Parkers’ house rules were—and how Ella could break so many, so quickly.

  “Let’s get the study session out of the way.” She strode past me through the living room and its partition to the dining room, where she unpacked the Golden Bridge: Learning Practical Chinese textbook plus workbook. Setting both on the dining room table, then turning to me. “Can I ask you something?”