Can True Love Survive High School?

  “Quit backtracking,” Stephen said. “It's cute. But I don't really get it. Why are you writing gossip about Caleb and Rain? I've never heard you mention them before.”

  “It's not about Caleb and Rain,” Mads said. She tried to show her best, most noble and intelligent face to Stephen whenever possible, but she was beginning to think it was too late for that now. And she didn't want him to suspect that she still had a crush on Sean, though sometimes she had a feeling that he suspected anyway.

  “It's about Sean and Jane,” Mads said. “I've seen Jane kissing this guy in the play, Damien, more than once. I thought Sean should know.”

  “Why?” Stephen asked.

  “Well, wouldn't you want to know if I was kissing some other boy?”

  “I don't know,” Stephen said. “Maybe. It depends why you're kissing him, how serious it is, and if it's worth getting upset over. Because I would get upset. But what if you just kissed him a few times and I never found out about it and it never affected us? Then I'd be getting upset over nothing.”

  “I don't think this is nothing, though,” Mads said. “I think this is something.”

  “Maybe. But you don't know exactly what kind of something.”

  “I still think Sean has a right to know,” Mads said. “She's deceiving him. If you were cheating on me and Holly knew about it, I'd kill her if she didn't tell me.”

  “I guess everybody has different feelings about it,” Stephen said. He glanced at Mads' lunch, which she had unpacked but not yet touched. “Are you going to eat that cookie?”

  Mads put her hand over the cookie protectively. “Yes,” she said. “But I brought another one for you.” She reached into her bag and brought out an oatmeal cookie wrapped in foil with a heart drawn on it in red marker.

  “Hey, thanks.” Stephen took the cookie. “That's sweet of you.”

  “It's not from me. It's from M.C.,” Mads said. Her mother loved Stephen. “But I would have done the same thing if she hadn't thought of it first.”

  There was a crash in the cafeteria food line. Rain dropped her tray and ran into the lunchroom, shrieking, followed by a red-faced, bellowing Caleb. “Just tell me his name!” Caleb roared.

  “Caleb, I swear it's not true!” Rain cried. He cornered her against the far bank of windows. The lunchroom fell silent.

  Caleb threw a slice of pizza against the wall—splat!— where it stuck for a moment before sliding down in a stream of grease. “You're lying! I always knew there was something weird going on. All those nights you said you were taking tae kwon do—”

  “But I was taking tae kwon do,” Rain said. “And I'll prove it!” She reared back and gave Caleb a mighty kick in the chest—“Hee-ya!” Caleb, big as he was, flew backward and landed on his butt. The room burst into laughter and cheers.

  Caleb got to his feet. “I'm going to find out who it is, and I'm going to rip his face off!”

  “You do that!” Rain shouted. “Look all over school for the guy I'm supposedly cheating with. That ought to keep you busy while I find a real guy who's not paranoid!”

  Caleb stormed out of the room. Rain scanned the tables until her eyes settled on Mads. Mads swallowed. Uh-oh.

  “Madison Markowitz?” Rain asked, marching to her table.

  Mads tried to smile. “Um, you can call me Mads.”

  “I'll call you whatever I damn well please,” Rain said. “Why did you print that gossip about me? Why would you want to make up lies about me? I don't even know you!”

  “It wasn't supposed to be about you, see—”

  “You're trying to get Caleb for yourself, is that it?” Rain said. “That's it, isn't it? You're after Caleb. You're trying to break us up!”

  “No, see, I never even really noticed him before—”

  “Who's this guy?” Rain asked, jerking her thumb at Stephen.

  “Hello, I'm the boyfriend,” Stephen said. “At least, until Caleb replaces me.”

  “Stephen!” Mads punched his arm.

  “I knew it,” Rain said. She stuck her face up close to Mads'. “Listen to me, Madison Markowitz. You're going to be sorry you wrote lies about Rain Rickenbacker, you lying liar. If I see another word about me on that stupid Web site of yours, I'm going to break your fingers. You won't be able to write a word without a voice recognition system!”

  “I've heard those can be very frustrating,” Stephen said. “They get everything wrong—”

  Mads still wanted to explain, if only Rain would listen to her. “See, you still don't get it. It wasn't about you, it was about—”

  “I'm warning you—your fingers will never touch a keyboard again. Got me?”

  She stormed across the room and burst through the swinging doors. Everyone stared at Mads.

  “It was all a—a big mistake,” Mads said. “Really. I mean, she could be cheating on him for all I know, but … “ Mads let her words fade out. It was no use.

  Sean walked out of the cafeteria line, tray in hand, and stepped over the puddle of spilt food and broken dishes that Rain had left. He looked up, shook his shaggy blond hair, and said, “What happened? Did I miss something?”

  Mads rubbed her head. She was getting a headache.

  “Maybe that blind item thing isn't the best way to pass on information,” Stephen said. “I mean, you know, as far as accuracy goes.”

  “You're probably right,” Mads admitted. She thought she'd learned to think these things through before she acted on them. Guess not.

  20

  Rapunzel

  To: hollygolitely

  From: your daily horoscope

  HERE IS TODAY'S HOROSCOPE: CAPRICORN: Great news: Your trip to the lower depths won't use up any frequent flier miles.

  * * *

  Holly, my parents are the forces of evil,” Britta wailed. “They're the Taliban. They're Orcs. They're Lord and Lady Voldemort!” She buried her head in her green pillow and sobbed.

  “They can't be that bad.” Holly sat beside her on the bed, trying to comfort her. Britta had been a mess ever since the Fowlers had dragged her, kicking and screaming, from the beach house. “They're only trying to do what's best for you.”

  “Ed said that we should have left for Las Vegas right away,” Britta said. “But I wanted to spend one last night in our little house. I should have listened to him. We would have been long gone … If only I had listened to Ed!”

  The Fowlers had found them with their bags packed, ready to leave in the morning. Holly couldn't believe that Britta, this seventeen-year-old girl sitting right in front of her, had come so close to getting married. She felt as if she had just woken up from a gauzy, romantic dream. But Britta was still trapped in the dream.

  “They won't let me see Ed at all—ever!” Britta cried. “They make me tell them where I am every second of the day. I have to go straight to school and come straight home and not stop anywhere for a minute. They actually wanted to put a tracking device on me! I'm under house arrest.”

  Holly wasn't sure what to say. She could understand Britta's frustration, but she saw the Fowlers' side of things, too. After all, Britta did disobey them, lie to them, and run away with a guy she'd known only for a couple of weeks. Even Holly's parents would get upset about that.

  Holly crossed the room for a box of Kleenex. It was the greenest room Holly had ever seen. Forest green everything: curtains, walls, bedspread, chairs. How can she live like this? Holly wondered. It was like a claustrophobic elves' den. Even if green were your favorite color, Holly thought, you could liven it up with a little white or something.

  Britta sat up and yanked three tissues out of the box. “The part I don't get,” she said through her stuffy nose, “is how they knew where to find us.”

  Holly froze.

  “What did they do?” Britta wondered aloud. “Listen in on my phone calls? Have me followed? Read my e-mail? We planned almost everything by e-mail. Do you think they actually found a way to steal my password and read my e-mail?”

  Holly
felt sick. The Fowlers hadn't told Britta how they found her. She didn't know that Holly had betrayed her trust. And now it was Holly she turned to for comfort, to confide in even further. But what should Holly do? She'd never meant to hurt Britta, only help her. If she confessed to Britta, Britta would only get more upset, feel more alone. Britta needed a friend. Holly decided to be the best friend to her she could.

  She gave a stiff shrug. “Who knows how they did it? It doesn't really matter, does it?”

  “I don't want them to find out anything else about me, that's all. Maybe we should make up a secret language, a code for all our e-mails, IMs, and phone calls. Something my parents could never decipher … ”

  “Okay,” Holly said, though she knew this was completely unnecessary. “Pig Latin?”

  “They'd figure that out in a second.” Britta thought for a few minutes, then said, “I'll work on it. In the meantime, pass on any important information to me in person only. Unless …” She suddenly jumped to her feet and started looking around the room, feeling under the chair and behind the dresser for suspicious lumps. “What if my room is bugged?”

  “Britta, calm down,” Holly said. “Even your parents wouldn't go that far.”

  “You don't know them.” Satisfied after a brief scan, she sat on the bed and dissolved into tears again. “I just miss him so much…. ”

  Holly wished she could turn green and fade into the background. Maybe I made a terrible mistake, she thought. Why does everything I do seem to backfire lately? Rob is annoyed because I've been neglecting him, and Lina and Mads feel neglected, too, and Britta would hate me if she knew the truth…. I did the right thing, didn't I?

  By the time Holly left Britta's house, she felt so guilty and low that she knew she couldn't go straight home. She longed to see Lina and Mads. She had no one else to turn to. She knew they were annoyed with her, but they wouldn't shut her out.

  She called them on her cell and asked them to meet her at Vineland.

  “I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately,” Holly said. She and Lina and Mads settled down together on the sofa at Vineland, three hot chocolates lined up on the coffee table in front of them.

  “We just missed you,” Lina said. “But we know how intense things were with Britta.”

  “You don't even know how intense,” Holly said. “Last night Britta tried to elope with Ed.”

  Mads gasped. “She was going to marry him?”

  “He's going back to England next week, and she wants to be with him. She doesn't care about college or anything anymore.”

  “What happened?” Lina asked.

  Holly hesitated. She wanted to confess what she'd done. Maybe they'd tell her it wasn't so bad. But she was afraid they wouldn't trust her if they knew she'd told on Britta. They might worry that their secrets weren't safe with her.

  Holly's silence scared Mads. “Oh my god,” she said. “Was there an accident?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Holly said. She plunged in. “What happened was … her mother called looking for her and she was so upset, and I had a feeling I knew where Britta was … so I told her mother they were going to elope. And that they were probably at the cottage.”

  “The beautiful secret beach house?” Mads said.

  Holly nodded. “I feel so terrible. Britta made me promise not to tell her parents about it. But I was afraid! And her parents were freaking—”

  “Does Britta know you told?” Lina asked.

  “No,” Holly said. “She doesn't know how they found her. She thinks they've been spying on her or reading her e-mail. If she found out it was me—I think she'd hate me forever.”

  A silence settled over the couch. Holly glanced at Mads and Lina. What were they thinking? Were they afraid to trust her now?

  “Are we still going to Stanford next weekend?” Lina asked.

  “Sure, if you want to,” Holly said.

  “I was going to smack you if you said no,” Mads said. “After what I went through to get permission to go.”

  “What if we brought Britta with us?” Lina said. “It might cheer her up and help her forget about Ed, at least a little.”

  “And if she has fun, she might be glad she's going to college instead of getting married,” Mads added.

  “You're not mad at me?” Holly asked. “Or afraid I'll call up your parents and tell them all your secrets?”

  “You'd never do that,” Lina said. “We've got too much dirt on you.”

  Holly laughed and felt better. Lina and Mads were the best. “All right,” she said. “I'll ask Britta. But it will be a miracle if her parents let her go.”

  “Woo hoo!” Mads raised her mug. Holly and Lina clinked glasses with her. “The crazy college weekend is a go!”

  21

  The Crazy College Weekend

  To: hollygolitely

  From: your daily horoscope

  HERE IS TODAY'S HOROSCOPE: CAPRICORN: That little twinge you feel, just under your skull? Skip the CAT scan—it's not a brain tumor. It's your conscience.

  * * *

  That's Memorial Church,” Holly said. Holly's yellow VW Beetle chugged down Palm Drive, the long, straight, tree-lined road that led from the town of Palo Alto to the Stanford University campus. It ended in a beautiful white chapel topped with a dome. “And that's the Main Quad.”

  Holly had been to Stanford a few times before, the last time being when she and her parents dropped Piper off during Freshman Week back in August.

  “It's so beautiful,” Mads said as they drove through the campus. “Imagine living here, in a wonderful place like this, with lots of friends and no parents? It's paradise!”

  “Only if you're with someone you love,” Britta said. That silenced the car for few minutes. For the whole ride—which lasted about an hour and a half—every sentence out of Britta's mouth was a downer. Holly was starting to wish she'd just zip it. She could ruin the whole weekend.

  Britta had been reluctant to go when Holly first mentioned it—Ed was leaving on Monday. What if she found a way to see him over the weekend? Since her confinement he'd been secretly texting her in code, begging her to sneak out and see him. But she could never get away.

  Holly pointed out that Britta hadn't managed to get past her parents yet and probably never would, so she might as well come away and have a good time. The Fowlers liked the idea of keeping Britta away from Ed and getting her excited about college again. And they trusted Holly, since she'd been honest with them and helped them find Britta when she ran away. To Holly's surprise, they let Britta go. “Think of it as a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card,” Holly told Britta.

  Holly pulled up at Sterling Quad and the girls piled out. Piper's head popped out of a second-story window. “Welcome to Party Central!”

  It was late Friday afternoon, and students buzzed around the quad, setting up for a weekend-long party. “Come On, Eileen,” blared out of one of the windows. Some workers constructed a stage for bands to play on and one dorm already had a keg going. A banner hung along one wall of the quad, proclaiming, 80S BLOWOUT! THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YA.

  Britta rolled her eyes. “Theme parties. So lame.”

  “She'll be lame if she doesn't stop sulking,” Mads whispered. “I'll break her toes myself.”

  Lina, Mads, and Holly were bonding already—bonding over how annoying Britta was being. Holly hoped that bringing her along wouldn't turn out to be yet another in her recent, seemingly endless series of mistakes.

  They gathered up their overnight bags and trooped up to Piper's suite, which consisted of two double bedrooms and a shared living room. Piper—pretty, thin and dark-haired like Jen—was barefoot in her jeans and blue satin tank top.

  “It's a little tight in here, but this is a foldout couch,” Piper explained. “So you can sleep two on the couch and two on the floor, in sleeping bags.”

  “We came prepared,” Holly said, tossing two sleeping bags in a corner.

  A bleary-eyed girl with a long mane of curly red hair
came out of one of the bedrooms. “This is my roommate, Naomi,” Piper said. “Just waking up from her disco nap.”

  “Morning,” Naomi said, even though it was five o'clock in the evening. “Mi casa es su casa.”

  “Thanks,” Holly said.

  “Jess and Shannon are out somewhere,” Piper said. “They both have boyfriends, so you might not see them all weekend. You never know.” She scanned their faces. “You're a peppy group. Come on! It's the weekend! Dr. Piper prescribes a campus tour, followed by party after party after party.”

  Piper led them through the campus, past the rows of frats and sororities, the academic buildings, Hoover Tower and the Main Quad, the Oval, a fountain called the Claw with ducks swimming in it, the student union and Lake Lagunita, where students picnicked, swam, and windsurfed.

  “Isn't it gorgeous?” Holly asked Britta.

  “Yes,” Britta said. “But I already knew that.”

  “And not just the campus,” Mads said, pointing out a clutch of guys in shorts playing touch football.

  “Are you applying here next year, Britta?” Piper asked. “You should. I really love it.”

  “I was thinking about it, before,” Britta said. “Now I'm not sure. Everybody looks so—California.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Piper asked. “We're in California—how are they supposed to look? You're from California …”

  She glanced at Holly, and the question in her eyes was, What's with her?

  “Britta might want to go to England for college,” Holly said.

  The tour ended at the dining hall. Mads loaded up her tray with three kinds of bread, zucchini, roast chicken, salad, and cake. “Mads, you'll never eat all that,” Holly said. They settled their trays at a table and went to the soda fountain for drinks. Mads filled three glasses with three different kinds of soda.

  “Mads,” Holly said.

  “I know,” Mads said. “This is a nightmare for me. I don't handle abundance well.”