The Julian Game

by Adele Griffin

  eleven

  March had been cold, but not today. Natalya and I carried our lunches out to a small table in the courtyard. The cafeteria tables each sat eight, which meant we ended up sharing indoor table space with Boogertroll and her best friend, Bryce Cuckler, who, in the nerd spectrum, was more on the techie than bookworm end.

  Courtyard tables sat only two, and I was glad to use the shift in weather to escape there. Plus I wanted to talk to Natalya in private.

  “You’re going to Ella Parker’s house Saturday?” She drew back at my news as if I’d stung her. “Why?”

  “To jump-start her for midterms,” I said. “It was last minute. Her parents are so worried she’ll flunk Chinese. I’m really sorry, Tal. I’ll come next weekend for sure.”

  Natalya looked at me suspiciously. “Did I ever tell you Ella’s dad made his money off computer dating?” she asked. “Back in the eighties where you’d do a videotape and send it to the company and they’d pick the three best people to go out with.”

  I laughed. “How do you know that?”

  “Don’t laugh too hard. That’s how my parents met. They were the one hundredth couple to get married off Parker Pairing. Our parents got to be friends, and they’d pair Ella and me off, too. Sesame Place, Disney World, Six Flags—our families doubled up for all that stuff, in the day.” She moved from her sandwich to unzip a Fruit Roll-Up from its cellophane.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “It wasn’t important. It still isn’t. Except I used to know Ella pretty well. Sometimes she’d come over for a playdate looking perfect in her sundress and she’d have flowers for my mom. And then she’d start. Telling me about germs and all the ways you might die from raw eggs or mouse poop or mosquitoes or popcorn. She was always washing her hands, and she had to control everything and reject everything. She’s still so negative that way—haven’t you noticed? How incredibly good she is at telling people how they’ll fail?”

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  “Anyway, I was relieved when our parents stopped pushing the friendship,” Natalya concluded. “No matter how jealous some of the other girls were. They didn’t know her like I did.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Tal. I get what you’re saying about Ella. But it’s just tutoring.”

  “No, it’s not just tutoring.” Natalya spoke with crisp assurance. “Ella wants something from you. If she was serious about Chinese, she’d get a professional tutor.”

  I didn’t have a ready answer for that.

  “Don’t go,” Natalya warned. “Even if you don’t want to come over to my house. Ella Parker has problems. I grew up with her. She’s poison.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  I didn’t say what I thought, which was that Natalya probably needed to deal with her own jealousy issues. She might seem protective with my interests at heart, but she’d also made a point of noting how once she’d been close with Ella. It was harsh to say that her advice came loaded, but it wasn’t exactly neutral.

  After lunch, Natalya drifted away. No loitering at my locker at the end of the day so that we could trek over to afternoon assembly together.

  Alone, I joined the slipstream into the auditorium. Sinking into the one free seat at the end of the back row. I needed to be alone to think.

  Don’t go.

  Maybe Natalya was right. And she didn’t even know the half of what was planned.

  Ella’s not loyal, you know that. She could take you to this party and abandon you. Or set you up to carry all the blame for Elizabeth. You won’t know anyone; you won’t have a car or any way to escape. You’d have no control over the situation.

  I took a few deep breaths and made myself listen to the afternoon’s program panel for CAFÉ—Cultural Awareness For Everyone. They were sponsoring a contest with prizes. The familiar rush of competition perked me up.

  The Group was a few rows ahead. Ella’s pale hair in its trademark silk scarf; Alison’s bob, glossy as chocolate wrapping paper; Jeffey’s, a high-fashion waterfall cascading down the back of the chair; Lindy’s wrestled into her curly ponytail; and Faulkner’s limp but tidy.

  In faceless ranks, they seemed dangerously united.

  Don’t go.

  As usual, I wasn’t really listening to myself.

  twelve

  The Parkers lived at Ravenscliff, a compound of huge stucco houses divided by a storybook landscape of scum-free ponds and tidy evergreens.

  “Smugville,” Natalya had called it. But I privately thought it was vastly superior to my neighborhood of crumbling Victorian gingerbreads.

  Stace and Dad dropped me off to the embarrassing tune of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” and were singing along—“Come, oh come into my arms. Let me know the wonder of all of you. Baby, I want you!”—as I scrammed up the path-lit flagstones.

  My cheeks were still burning when Mimi answered. Real Mimi was just like photos Mimi, a smirking beanpole in Chuck Taylors. “Looks like I owe my sis a tenner,” she said. “I never thought she’d make friends with one of Sophie’s Girls.”

  “Oh. Well, here I am.” Mimi meant Sophie Fulton-Glass, whose trust endowment paid for my scholarship. Swathed in a cape and clutching a spray of violets, Sophie’s homely portrait judged me every morning when I walked through Fulton’s doors.

  Sophie Fulton-Glass, the original Nerbit.

  “My year’s Sophie was my best friend, Andy,” Mimi continued as she led me through the double-high front hall and then under a vaulted arch into what I knew rich people called the great room. “Now Mom and Dad are thrilled Ella has a Sophie Girl of her very own.”

  “Andrea Caplan.” I remembered. I’d seen a copy of Mimi’s yearbook. Andrea and Mimi had done a double-spread, overexposed film print of themselves, bare feet dangling from the branches of a huggable oak. Very retro-hip seventies. Was that what the Parkers wanted from me? Another scholarship Sophie Girl for their other daughter, a smart sidebar benefit to pad the Fulton experience, with an arty yearbook page to prove it?

  Past the great room, I glimpsed a formal living room of stiff furniture and bold paintings, mostly pop art. I recognized a Warhol and a Lichtenstein. Were they real? They looked so confident that you didn’t want to doubt their worth. Sort of like both Parker daughters.

  But Mimi led me under another arch, and into a kitchen double the size of a Fulton squash court. She tossed me a Coke from the fridge and took one herself. “Hey, Mom, here’s Raye, your Sophie Girl. Just like you ordered.”

  The woman had slipped in through a swinging door. “Hi, Raye. I’m Jennifer Parker. Now, Mimi, don’t be horrible. Ella knows she can be friends with anyone she wants, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Mimi repeated, reloading the word with friendly sarcasm.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” I said nerbitishly. Ella’s mother looked like a teacher, with silver-threaded hair, bifocals, and the look of having just misplaced an intelligent decision.

  “We’re down to the wire. Two receptions. Both at seven,” she said to Mimi. “One’s sculpture. The other’s fish photographs. Which?” She held two printouts for Mimi to examine.

  They were still deciding between them when Ella bopped down, dressed in dark jeans, a fitted top and loose, shining hair. She was so beautiful, I felt a sudden surge of insecurity. I could obsess on myself all day and never look that good.

  “You’re fancy for homework,” Mimi commented.

  “We’re going to Luddington. Which is a public place, even if it’s a library, so excuse me for not wearing a Slanket,” said Ella.

  “Saturday night at the library? That’s different.” Jennifer Parker smiled at me, then reached out and tucked a piece of Ella’s hair behind her ear. “Does that mean you’ll spend the night in the stacks whispering about boys and hair mousse?”

  “What the hell is hair mousse?” Ella stepped outside her mother’s reach. “And I’ve got other interests than guys.”
She began to tap-tap-tap a nail on the kitchen counter.

  Mimi feigned surprise. “And they are?”

  “Like you care.”

  “I do. Tell me.”

  “Let’s just say you’ll find out one day.”

  “Really? As in, when you declare your major at Tragic U?”

  “Mimi, please.” Their mother frowned. Then turned to Mimi. “Photography or sculpture? I’ll need to call Dad and tell him. And then where to, for dinner?” All of her body language was flexed for Mimi’s opinion.

  Ella took photography. That was one of her “other interests.” She’d had a photo accepted for the school’s Winter Fair exhibit. Which was a semi-big deal.

  “Ella, don’t you do photography?” I prompted.

  “Hardly.” She sniffed.

  “Ella takes great shots,” said her mother. “And Mimi had a photo accepted to National Wildlife magazine when she was fourteen. It’s of a tidal pool in Stone Harbor. It’s framed in the den.”

  “Mom, stop,” said Mimi. “Nobody cares.”

  “Both my girls have an eye.”

  “I was named after Man Ray,” I said on impulse. “My mom put an e on the end to feminize it.”

  “Sweet. I love Man Ray,” said Mimi.

  “You never told me that.” Ella turned on me. “What, did you think I’m such a jizzbrain I wouldn’t know who Man Ray is?”

  “Oh, shut up, Ella. You’d have no idea if I hadn’t hung one of his prints in my bedroom,” said Mimi.

  “You shut up,” spat Ella. “For once in your life, you pathetic retard.”

  “Girls, please. Ella, your rudeness to your guest and your sister isn’t particularly impressive. And you know how I feel about the word retard.”

  “What about her rudeness to me? What about Tragic U?”

  Fatigue crossed Jennifer Parker’s face. “Mimi, will you apologize?”

  “I’m sorry for presuming you might attend a nonaccredited college, Ella.”

  “Whatever.” Her sister’s apology had only riled Ella. And now Mimi and her mother knit tighter together as they decided that they’d prefer to see fish.

  The whole thing surprised me. I hadn’t envisioned Ella so out of step with the choreography of her household. Ella might rule the Group, but she was hardly the top dog in her own family. And yet all of the Parker females shared an aura of superiority that made me miss the warm democracy of the Zawadski kitchen.

  Ella nudged me from my thoughts. Brightening me up with a sisterly smile that I highly doubted she ever bestowed on her real sister. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “Bring your drink, and I’ll pimp it up.”

  thirteen

  “Change into this.” Ella pulled out a lacy black blouse. Away from her mom and Mimi, she’d instantly reclaimed her familiar, finessed persona. She’d switched on her music and poured some Captain Morgan’s into my Coke can from a bottle she kept in the back of her closet. I faked drinking it. The last thing I needed was to think fuzzy tonight. “You can’t show up at Meri’s party with me in that pitiful Muppet fur.”

  I was already casting off my Exchange sweater when Ella’s cell pulsed.

  “That’s Hannah, our ride.” As she took the call and turned away from me, I checked out her room. It was decorated in cream and celery colors, with a canopy bed and a wall mural painted to look like a garden. I went to inspect her desk, the only messy part, a jungle of books and crib sheets and no fewer than three “please see me” notes, all from different teachers. Chaos.

  The corkboard over the desk was thumbtacked with dozens of photos, some double and triple layered. From underneath a recent snap of the Group mugging in their bikinis, I found a curling picture of grade-school Ella standing between Natalya and Mickey Mouse. Not that I’d thought Natalya would lie about it, but the photo evidence of their friendship jarred me. It had seemed so unlikely.

  Propped against the corkboard, I excavated a three-picture frame, each with a different image of Julian Kilgarry. One from somewhere informal, maybe a party, where he lounged, his feet up on a coffee table spilling over in bags of chips and tottered beer cans. The next was from a lacrosse game, Julian on the field in perfect profile. The last was a class portrait, where Julian was maybe in sixth or seventh grade, but minus all those middle school plagues: pimples, braces, zigzaggy bangs. He was just his same hot self with fat apple cheeks.

  “ETA is twenty minutes.” Ella tossed her phone on the bed.

  I held up the frame. “So I take it you’re madly in love with him, like everyone else?”

  “Don’t try to be witty. Faulkner made that for me as a joke. C’mon, you need to change. You must be getting style tips from the Wad.”

  She decided against the lacy number, and vetoed both a sparkly camisole with a shrug and a one-shoulder tunic thingy before decreeing that I should wear a midnight blue Chloé blouse that was probably the most expensive item I’d ever buttoned over my body.

  “Don’t stink it up,” Ella warned, “like Lindy always does. That poor child reeks down to her Swiss cheese feet. Dry cleaning never gets out her skanky b.o. Come on, bathroom next.”

  Where I let Ella do my hair and makeup. “The first time I fixed you up, I almost thought it was a fluke,” she told me. “I mean, who’d ever given you a second look before I added the mascara and the magic? But then I decided you do it on purpose.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Hide in plain sight. Hair in the face and Salvation Army reject clothes. I bet your idea of hell would be the spotlight, right? All eyes on you.”

  “Once I read an essay for the Daughters of the American Revolution to a packed auditorium,” I said. “It was for more than two hundred people, and once I got going, I wasn’t scared at all.”

  Ella smirked. “Nerbit spotlights don’t count.” She picked up a brush and began to yank at my hair. Hard. “Hair in the face screams insecurity complex. And would you stop pinching up your mouth like you swallowed a lime?”

  “I can’t help it, I feel bad,” I answered.

  “About what?”

  “About seeing Julian. About this whole night. Maybe we really should go to the library.”

  I met Ella’s frown as she sat back on the edge of the tub. The hairbrush tapping tapping tapping against her shin. “Are you high?”

  “No, it’s just, how are we going to have any fun if Julian’s there, searching all over—”

  From outside, a horn honked.

  “This is not exactly about fun.” Ella reached forward and took my hand between hers. So soft, the same texture as I’d imagined those buttery kid gloves she wore to protect them. Her eyes had turned soft, too, and entreating. “Please, please don’t nerb out on me, Looze. I mean, it’s hardly even a prank when I think of what Julian actually deserves. ’Kay?”

  It wasn’t that I trusted her. It wasn’t that I believed for a second that she’d ever have my back if I needed her. But if I had to take a hard look at why I was in this predicament tonight, I knew it was because I’d way rather walk into a party, any party at all, with Ella Parker, than one more night stuck on the couch between Dad and Stacey, or even seated at the Zawadski table.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “Okay.”

  “Cool. I always knew you were a secret rock star.” Her smile was like a sparkler that lit us both up, and in the perfect sisterhood of the moment, I felt like I’d do anything for her.

  As we bolted through her bedroom, Ella grabbed her three-photo frame and tapped three kisses to her fingers, then one to each Julian. “It just this thing I do,” she said. “I make a wish on the Julians. I’ve been doing it forever.”

  “So tonight you’re wishing on the picture Julians for revenge on the real Julian?”

  She laughed. “Right. Ironic.”

  More like Unstable, and it set me back. At the front door, I stopped.

  “What?” Ella jiggled the keys. “Come on. We’ve been through this. Motor already. Mom and Mimi left, so I’ve got to set the alarm.”
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  “Listen. Just to say. I’m okay with this to a point. But I think down the line—maybe not tonight, but soon—we need to tell him that Elizabeth’s a joke.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Ella nudged me aside so that she could set the alarm code. “I can dress you up, but underneath you’re still the same ant. Hiding under the leaves and analyzing how every single thing in your tiny ant world can go to shit. Piece of advice for you, Raye. No matter what happens tonight, you should get out more.”

  I stared. In the shadow of the night, Ella seemed unreal, a soothsaying cyborg with pale hair and a washboard body held taut against the nip in the air.

  “Ha,” I stammered. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Don’t be mad, fancy ant.” She waved at the car, then casually looped her pinkie finger through mine and swung. “All I meant is find your life and take control. Am I right?” Stepping off the porch, she didn’t look back as she tugged me, pinkie-hooked, into a striding lope across the lawn. “’Cause it’s sure as hell not gonna come find you.”

  fourteen

  One eighth-grade graduation party at D’Arcy Brewer’s house with parents present, no alcohol, and random couples feeling each other up behind the Brewers’ shed. Two parties last year, with absent parents, keg beer and everyone in the kitchen playing endless rounds of drinking games: Circle of Death, Quarters, Give One-Take One.

  The sum total of my partying experience.

  As soon as Doug turned into the drive, I saw that this party would be different.

  For one thing, the property was huge. I was getting used to prepster wealth—even Natalya’s house claimed a kidney-bean pool and a weedy clay tennis court. And we’d all been to Faulkner’s faux Tudor fortress back in October when she’d hosted that class party to celebrate her shoo-in presidency.

  Rolling fields, a bend in the drive and there was the house. And the barn. And the pool house.

  “Just one family lives here?” I squeaked.

  “I know. Holy Great Gatsby, Batman, right?” murmured Hannah from the passenger seat. But nobody seemed surprised.

  Cars and jeeps parked haphazardly over the vast lawn. Tucked under willows and wedged into hedges, as if all drivers had spied the same spaceship in the sky and then abandoned their vehicles for a better look. Doug did the same, veering his brand-new birthday Volvo off into a field.