The Karma Club

by Jessica Brody

  “So?” Jade says. “It gets us the notebook back and saves us a lot of explanations.”

  “But we can’t do that to Spencer,” I argue.

  “Who cares about Spencer?” Angie says. “After what he wrote on Jenna’s locker, the guy deserves some payback of his own.”

  Oh, God, why are you doing this to me? It’s because I lied, right? This is my punishment for lying to my friends. Bravo, then. Well played. Touché, God.

  “But . . . ,” I stammer. “But . . . what if he didn’t write it? What if someone else did? Then we’d be punishing him for no reason.”

  “What are you, Spencer Cooper’s new best friend or something?” Angie shoots back. “Do you not remember what happened to you at his parents’ loft?”

  “But that wasn’t his fault,” I argue, realizing that I’m probably just sinking farther into this dark hole of deception, but at this point, I don’t really have a choice, do I?

  “Maddy,” Jade says more calmly. “We don’t even know Spencer Cooper. And from what I’ve heard, he’s a spoiled rich kid whose daddy can buy him out of any problem that we could ever create for him, so I think the wise choice here is to start thinking about Operation Spencer Annihilation and concentrate on getting our lives out of the hands of Jenna LeRoux.”

  Just like that, I’m silenced in the backseat.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Angie immediately chimes in. “How about we put Nair in his shampoo so his hair falls out in weird patches.”

  “Ooh, that’s good,” Jade says. “Or send flowers and love letters to Mrs. Chandler, the principal, and sign his name.”

  “No, I got it,” Angie says, giggling a little and having far too much fun with this for my comfort level. “Let’s send a male stripper to the Loft party next weekend and have him ask for Spencer.”

  Jade cracks up laughing, and I watch in horror as the two monsters that I’ve created plot the downfall of my secret boyfriend. I feel even more ashamed when I think that only a few weeks ago I would have been just as happy to join in on this conversation and throw out some hilarious revenge schemes of my own. Now all I want to do is cry.

  “Or . . . or . . . ,” Jade says in between fits of laughter. “We could put up a Web site with—”

  “Stop!” I shout from the backseat. I feel like I’m having one of those out-of-body experiences where you lose full control of everything you do or say.

  “What’s your problem?” Angie says, turning her head around to give me a dirty look.

  “We can’t do that. We can’t do any of those things.”

  And now the tears are falling. Another thing I can’t seem to control. They fall by themselves. As if each little teardrop has a mind of its own and is triumphantly defying what little ounce of strength I have left.

  “Maddy,” Angie says a bit softer. “Don’t cry. It’s gonna be fine. We’ll do this one thing and then Jenna will give us the notebook back and it will all be over.”

  I sit in silence for a few moments as Angie continues to stare at me and Jade casts quick, concerned glances at me in her rearview mirror.

  I know that it’s time to come clean. I can’t sit back and allow my friends to do this to Spencer. He’s not the person they think he is. He’s different. He’s kind and gentle and totally sweet. And not to mention, completely innocent.

  I brush away my tears, suck in a breath of courage, and say, “It’s just that . . . Spencer and I are . . . well, we’re dating.”

  Jade slams on the brakes and the car comes to a sudden halt. There are loud honking sounds coming from behind us, and she quickly maneuvers the car to the side of the road, unfastens her seat belt, and turns her entire body around to confront me. “What did you say?”

  And there I am, sitting next to the window, my two best friends staring at me. Shock and disappointment on their faces. I look down at my lap. “I wanted to tell you guys, I swear, but I didn’t know how. And I was afraid you guys would get mad after—”

  “After everything we’ve done to get back at the last loser you dated!” Angie practically shouts.

  “I’m sorry,” I offer, cringing. “It happened so fast. I was tutoring him at his house and the next thing I knew we were kissing and it was nice and he was nice and—”

  “But what about that thing he wrote on Jenna’s locker?” Jade shoves the question at me.

  “That’s the thing,” I say, trying to defend myself and Spencer. “He didn’t write that. He doesn’t know who did. He thinks it might have been Jenna herself.”

  Angie groans and rolls her eyes. “At least that’s what he told you.”

  I shake my head with frustration. “No, I believe him. I really do.”

  Jade snorts loudly. “Yeah, you believed Mason for two years, and look how that turned out.”

  “No, it’s different with Spencer,” I try to tell them, but I soon realize that neither one of them is even listening to me. It doesn’t matter what I say, they’re not going to believe me, and I don’t blame them. I probably wouldn’t have believed me either.

  “What about our pact? What about sticking together?” Jade asks. “Watching out for each other because the boys aren’t going to do it. They’re all heartbreakers. Does any of that ring a bell? It should, because you said it.”

  “I wish you could understand,” I plead with them. “Spencer is not who you think he is. He’s actually a very sweet guy.”

  “So, that’s how it’s gonna be then?” Angie says, looking at me with such grave disappointment that it makes my heart lurch in my chest. “You’re going to choose him over us?”

  “It’s not like that,” I say, feeling as though the world is crashing down on my shoulders and I’m not strong enough to stop it. “There’s got to be another way to get the notebook from Jenna.”

  Jade throws the car back into gear and pulls onto the road again. Her voice is filled with something I can only describe as disgust. “Well, there is no other way, Maddy. This is the only way. It’s him or us. And if you pick him, then don’t come crying to me when he breaks your heart too.”

  Instead of going to her house as planned, Jade drops me off at mine.

  “Look,” she says to me before I get out of the car, her voice a bit softer and slightly more controlled now, “if you can think of a way out of this then fine, we’ll do it your way. But if you don’t have anything by next week, we’re going to have to solve this Jenna’s way.” Then, with just the slightest trace of sympathy, she says, “I’m sorry, Maddy, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  I bow my head in defeat and step out of the car. As I stand in my driveway and watch the two of them disappear around the bend, I feel despair and longing. Despair for letting my friends down and longing for everything to be how it used to be. Before all of this. Before Mason cheated with Heather. Before the Karma Club. When life was simple and easy and fun. Now it’s so complicated and messy. I wonder if this is what they mean when they say that becoming an adult is a complicated process. Well, if this is what it feels like, I’d rather stay a teenager forever.

  That night at dinner, I hardly eat anything. I just push my food around on my plate. Most of the attention is on my sister’s upcoming science fair project, and I’m pretty content with that. I don’t want to play the twenty questions game right now.

  After dinner, I sit alone in my room and try to hide from the rest of the world while I wait for Jade or Angie to call me and tell me that everything is okay and that they forgive me. But the phone is quiet.

  I stare down at my charm bracelet and turn it around on my wrist, studying each of the five charms as if I’m looking at them for the first time. A baseball bat, a graduation cap, a pharmacy mortar and pestle, a broken heart, and finally . . . a Yin-Yang. They’re all just steps down the path that has brought me right here, right now. And I would rather be a million other places than here.

  In a sudden fit of anger, I unclasp the bracelet and hurl it across the room. It hits the floor and slides partially undernea
th my dresser so that only a single charm remains visible from my place on the bed. And that’s the Yin-Yang.

  The symbol for balance. I’m no expert or anything, but nothing feels balanced about my life at this moment. Everything is so terribly lopsided that I might actually fall right off the face of the earth. In fact, I can feel myself slipping already and, sadly, there’s nothing to grab on to. It’s doubtful that my friends will ever speak to me again, and if I don’t tell Spencer what really happened, then Jenna LeRoux will do it for me and I’ll lose him anyway. The only thing you can do at a time like this is exactly what I’m doing. Sit here and shut everyone out.

  The thing that truly gets me is that I thought I had it all figured out. I thought this was the answer. Karma. Balance. Setting things right.

  As I sit there, staring at my charm bracelet on the floor, I suddenly realize that there is only one person who will be able to explain all of this. And I have to get to him before it’s too late.

  RETURNING TO GROUND ZERO

  My parents generously decide to give me my car back a few days early, and the minute the keys are in my hand on Saturday morning, I’m out the door. I drive north for forty-five miles without stopping. I’m on a new kind of mission. A quest for answers.

  A little more than an hour later, I arrive at the Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth and toss my keys to the valet. When I enter the familiar building, I’m greeted at the reception desk by the same woman who checked my mom and me in to the center more than two months ago. She’s wearing the same white toga-looking thing, which makes me wonder how many of those she has in her closet.

  “Hello,” she says without the slightest trace of recognition.

  “Hi,” I say, standing awkwardly in front of the desk, eyeing the golden statue of Buddha perched on the edge of it. For a moment, it feels like he’s questioning me. Asking what I’m doing back here. And I realize I don’t have an action plan. I mean, I planned to come here the moment I got my car back, but I didn’t really think beyond that. I want answers. That’s what I know. But I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to go about getting them.

  “Um . . . ,” I begin shakily. “I was wondering if I could speak to Rajiv.”

  The woman flashes me a kind smile and responds, “Rajiv is conducting a workshop right now. Can I take a message and have him call you?”

  “Actually,” I say, shifting my weight around on my feet, “do you know how long he’ll be? I can wait. I would prefer to talk to him in person.”

  The woman flips open a black book lying in front of her. She runs her fingertip across the page until she arrives at a large rectangular space and points at it purposefully. “His workshop ends in three hours. You’re welcome to wait until then. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you when he’s done. You can take a seat here in the welcoming room.” She motions to the white couches behind me.

  I thank her and sit down. For the first ten minutes, I lean back and try to relax. Maybe three hours of downtime will be good for me. A chance to clear my head, meditate upon what has happened over the last few days, and try to come up with some solutions of my own.

  Ever since Wednesday, when I told them that Spencer was my boyfriend, my two best friends—or rather now, ex-best friends—have done their best to avoid me while I’ve done my best to avoid Spencer. This wasn’t easy. When I didn’t answer any of his dozen or so texts, he stopped by my house last night.

  I knew I couldn’t avoid him forever. At least not without a fight. I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to be with him. I do. I really do. But I don’t know how. How do you have a relationship with someone when you can’t tell him the truth? Or more important, how do you even have a conversation with someone if you can’t tell him the truth? Am I just supposed to sit around his house, watching movies, making out and cuddling, and not tell him about all the terrible things that have been happening in my life?

  And then, of course, there’s the other issue. The one hanging over my head like a rain cloud that’s threatening to pour down upon me with a vengeance and never let up. The Karma Club notebook in the hands of Jenna LeRoux. If we give in to her demands, Jade and Angie will make sure that Spencer’s life is totally and utterly ruined.

  If we don’t give in to her, eventually the contents of the notebook will surface in some way. Jenna will make sure of it. And then what? Spencer would leave me. And I wouldn’t blame him. Why would you want to be with someone who goes out of her way to get back at her ex-boyfriend and the girl he cheated on her with? I didn’t want to be with Spencer after I thought it was him who graffitied Jenna’s locker, because it said something about his character. How is this any different?

  It’s not.

  When he came up to my room, I couldn’t say any of this. And I couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation why I had been ignoring his calls and not responding to his text messages. So I just said, “I’m sorry, I’ve been going through some things with my friends and it’s been very distracting.”

  Of course, like the sweet, supportive, perfect guy that he is, he said, “Why don’t you tell me about it? Maybe I can help.”

  And I could feel the tears stinging the corners of my eyes and I didn’t want Spencer to see me cry so I shook my head, turned away from him, and said, “No, I can’t talk about it. Not now. I’m sorry, Spencer. I really am.”

  He nodded like he understood what I was going through, but really, I knew that he didn’t understand in the slightest. And how could he when I didn’t even give him a clue?

  Spencer sat down on my bed and motioned for me to sit next to him. I obliged. And when I did, he put his arms around me and held me close to him. I buried my head in his warm neck and felt the short hairs on his head tickling my nose. I tried so hard not to cry, but it didn’t work. The tears fell and Spencer squeezed me even tighter, whispering things in my ear like “Shhh. Maddy, don’t cry. Everything will work out. Whatever it is, it will be okay.”

  This only made me cry harder. I wasn’t so sure that everything would be okay. Even though he was just trying to help, he was only making everything worse. Why did he have to be so nice to me? Why couldn’t he just get pissed off and storm out the door? It certainly would have made everything a lot easier.

  As I sit on this white couch, in this immaculately white “welcoming room,” I can’t stand the thought of Spencer holding me and comforting me anymore. It’s too painful. I scan the room for something to read, because I am in serious need of a distraction. All I come up with are a few New Age spiritual books sprawled out on the table in front of me. I pick one up and begin to thumb through it.

  After reading a paragraph beginning, “As human beings, it is natural for us to make mistakes . . . ,” I groan and shut the book. That’s really what I need right now. A book to remind me of how I screwed up my life. I toss it back on the coffee table (or in a place like this, it’s probably called something like a “chai latte table”) and get up to approach the receptionist again. I ask her politely if they have any “normal” things to read, like Us Weekly, People, or Contempo Girl.

  She gives me this strange look like she hasn’t even heard of any of these magazines and shakes her head. My signal to sit back down.

  Ten minutes turn into one hour and one hour slowly turns into two and I’ve now looked at the screen of my cell phone fifteen times. Five times to check the time and ten to see if either Angie or Jade has called or texted me. I probably would have checked another two dozen times if the lady hadn’t pleasantly reminded me that cell phones are not allowed in the Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth and I was forced to return the device to my bag.

  The end of hour three finally rolls around, and I see Rajiv make his way out of a door to my left and start walking down a long corridor. I jump to my feet and jog to catch up with him. “Rajiv?” I call down the hallway.

  He stops and turns around. Upon seeing my face, unlike the woman at the front desk, he actually seems to recognize me, and his lips curl
into a warm smile. “Yes?”

  I stand there kind of awkwardly and say, “Hi, I’m not sure if you remember me, but I was here with my mom a couple months ago and I listened to you speak about Karma and balance and—”

  With the same deep and melodic Indian accent that I remember, he replies, “Yes. You inquired after my Yin-Yang.” He reaches up and affectionately caresses the amulet hanging from his neck.

  I glance at it and immediately feel the urge to yank it from its braided rope and inform him that it’s a hoax. That the universe doesn’t give a crap about balance. The only thing it cares about is making my life miserable. But I resist the urge and return my attention to his face. “Yes, um, I was wondering if you had some time because I’d really like to ask you some questions about that whole universal balance thing. You see, it doesn’t seem to be working out quite the way that you said it would.”

  Rajiv almost appears amused upon hearing this. “No?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He looks at me with kind, paternal eyes, and I can tell that he’s taking pity on me. Because, more likely than not, he knows I had nowhere else to go.

  And the truth is, I didn’t.

  He points to a door and says, “Why don’t we step into the meditation room and you can tell me about it?”

  THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM

  When we enter the small room, Rajiv motions to a padded mat on the floor, and I take a seat. He sits across from me with his legs folded in front of him and stares at me expectantly until I get super uncomfortable. I soon realize that he’s simply waiting for me to talk.

  This guy really doesn’t beat around the bush, does he? Small talk is apparently not something he’s familiar with.

  So I skip the usual warm-up questions pertaining to the weather and how he came to work here at the Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth and get right to the heart of it. “You see, I did everything you said. I worked hard to balance out my life and erase all the negative things that have happened to me over the past few months, but it didn’t work.”