The Julian Game

by Adele Griffin

  Sunday morning, when I logged on to the Zawadskis’ kitchen laptop and saw that Julian sent me a note to say he’d been accepted for Presidential Classroom, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. At least he was still in contact with me.

  I even let Natalya read it. “What do you think I should write back?”

  She slammed down the screen with a look like I’d just asked her to shave my head. “Are you kidding? Don’t you dare reply anything,” she said. “This guy can’t treat you like dirt in life and then turn around and be your online valentine. Simple as that.”

  “Right, you’re right.” Even if it was hard to hear it dissected in such harsh terms. Natalya was so sure; I felt silly that I’d thought any different.

  I got home late that afternoon to discover that Dad and Stacey had concocted their specialty, turkey sausage chili, for dinner. The whole downstairs was fired up with chili spices, and Dad had put out the flowered china and cloth napkins. A bottle of champagne on ice confirmed it. I could feel the smile spreading over my face.

  “Is this what it looks like?”

  “Prepare yourself.” Stacey’s bounce was back. “You’re about to get a wicked stepmother.”

  “Yes!” The happiness on their faces, and the way all throughout dinner Stacey overused her left hand—now set with a vintage chip of diamond—was kind of adorable. Whatever Dad and Stacey had discussed, and whatever was left to discuss, they’d finally made the jump together, and that seemed like a good thing.

  For a while, I basked in their glow and left my problems on my brain’s back burner. But late that night, I logged on to my laptop and was greeted with another note plus attachment from Julian: hey r. dont be a stranger—tell me watcha think about the PC itin?

  My reply was quick. One line to congratulate him. Next line to tell him that his itinerary looked great.

  He popped back a DJ Haute concert bootleg.

  I sent him a thanx.

  He sent me a Chappelle clip from YouTube.

  I sent a lol.

  He sent a note: I miss u. thinking about sat & your wicked bod.

  I sent nothing.

  R. how about send me a private pic—w/ the blue wig. Wont show any1 ✌

  I sent nothing. Logged off with a dry mouth and a vague sense of having done something wrong. He was acting gross tonight, but maybe I was partly to blame for allowing those pictures? Or was I blameless, 100 percent victim? It was all a bit cloudy; the only thing I knew for sure was that Julian was still irresistible to me. Or I was too weak. Or some dread combination of both. But cutting off Julian wasn’t as simple as Natalya had insisted. It just plain wasn’t.

  twenty-eight

  By the next week, I could honestly, thankfully feel Ella’s crusade against me starting to wind down. There’d been one nasty stick drawing of me in a blue wig and fried-egg boobs on the math slide overhead. One package of diapers jammed in my desk. A pickle taped to my locker door. Although the school day didn’t exactly put a spring in my step, it was nothing I couldn’t handle—as long as I had Natalya.

  “Do you hate to sit with me?” I asked her at lunch. “Do you think I walk like I’m wearing diapers? Seriously, tell me the truth.”

  “Please. Your walk is normal, you don’t scratch yourself or pick your nose or any of those things, and FYI as your friend, your . . . chest . . . is totally normal, too. You just have to wait them out, until they find the next thing.”

  “Right. What if they don’t?”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “How do you know how it works?”

  “I just do,” Natalya answered firmly.

  We ate in silence, until I heard it. “Tal, you’re making that sound.”

  “What sound?”

  “That humming sound of wanting to say something more personal but you don’t know how.”

  She put down her sandwich. “Okay. Once back in sixth grade, Ella started a rumor that I was a hermaphrodite.”

  “Wait, a hermaphrodite is . . . ?”

  “You know, part boy, part girl.”

  “Where’d she get that idea?”

  “I used to wear Tom’s undershirts instead of a bra.”

  “So why didn’t you just stop wearing undershirts and put on a bra already?”

  “I guess I liked the undershirts. They fit. In sixth grade, I wasn’t ready for a full-on strap-’em-in situation. Anyway. After a month of buying me jock-itch creams and calling me Nub because they said I had like, a guy’s parts or whatever”—Natalya was talking fast through the memory—“Ella switched to Nanda Abrams. She said Nanda smelled like olive oil. So they brought in olive oil and poured it all over her books and on her lunch and in her hair.”

  “God, poor Nanda.”

  “Poor Nanda nothing. She’s fine. Nobody abuses her now, right? What I’m trying to say is this is how the Group works. Ella singles you out. Then they attack. Think sharks on a feed. They devour you, and then you all move on and forget about it.”

  “Tal,” I said, “how does a person forget about being devoured?”

  “Good point.” She smiled wanly. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  She’d only wanted to comfort me. But I took it as a warning: if Ella had stuck in her harpoon, my struggle was pointless. I was already dead meat.

  twenty-nine

  celebrate R.’s graduation(s)

  watch sunrise outside the Taj Mahal

  canoe Walden

  look into the eyes of my grandchild

  I’d found the scrap of paper while searching for Mom’s reading glasses to bring to the hospital. I’d read it and replaced it, but then a couple of days later, I’d brought it to her.

  “Oh, right.” She’d closed her eyes. “My fantasy bucket list. May I add to it one hot cuppa Lipton with two sugars?”

  And then she’d smiled broadly when I delivered the Styrofoam cup of tea. “Sometimes I think it’s these little uplifts that count the most.” Her tone an attempt to fill up the hopeless inadequacy between all that we wanted and what we’d been given instead.

  The next summer, Dad and I had picked Walden Pond for our vacation. We’d rented the canoe and let it drift us, and we’d sung Mom’s favorites—unfortunately, a lot of Manilow since Mom was the original fangirl, along with some No Doubt and Bob Marley, and then her fave, a Herman’s Hermits golden oldie that still gets a lot of rotation at our local Fresh Fields supermarket.

  “ ‘Somethin’ tells me I’m into something good (Somethin’ tells me I’m into somethin’) . . . ’ ”

  And then we’d watched the sun go down with the tune still in our ears.

  Now I sat at the kitchen table wondering what advice Mom would have had for me as I stared into the crystal ball of my soggy Chex. She’d have been ashamed of me, probably. And she’d have been baffled about why I’d sold myself out to be friends with Ella, or put on that trashy wig or still furtively, desperately chatted online with Julian, even though he’d made no plans to see me in the real world and I couldn’t shake the dread suspicion that if I met him by chance out in public, he’d basically act the same way he had at Fulton—like I didn’t exist.

  I’d been so easily led. It was like I’d turned into a smudgy outline of who Mom had hoped I’d become.

  My Chex stared up at me.

  “Eat.” That’s definitely one thing Mom would have said.

  “Juice?” Stacey creeping up from behind me made me jump. She laughed apologetically. “Oops. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I bought grapefruits yesterday.” She held one up. “You in?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I was just thinking.”

  She grunted as she lugged our prehistoric electric juicer from the bottom cupboard. “Yes, I’m being nosy, but you don’t seem like yourself these days. Did you and Mr. Beautiful break up?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, I’m all ears. If you w
ant to talk about it.”

  “Thanks, Stace.”

  “Either way, you should refuel. No matter that it reminds you of dog food. Believe me,” she called over the chug of the juicer, “I’ve been nagging myself with the same advice. Feels like I’ve been living this week off pure adrenaline.”

  Come to think of it, my Chex did look like kibble. I picked up my spoon. “Stace, I think my mom would have liked you.”

  When I glanced up, she was intently fishing a grapefruit seed out of my glass. “Okay, that just shot to the top of my list of compliments,” she said softly, not looking up. “Because your mom sounds like she was helluva cool.” Then she smiled at me briefly as she plunked down my juice. “Customized with one ice cube, à la Raye.”

  Sweet and tart. Just cold enough. A little uplift, but it counted.

  thirty

  “Thanks for coming out.”

  “You bet.” Julian slid into the diner booth. Did he seem apprehensive or was it my imagination? “Nice move last night, with the bishop-to-knight block.”

  “An old trick,” I answered. I hadn’t seen him since he’d visited Fulton. Tonight was Thursday. Twelve days since the start of the Death to Nerbit campaign. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Maybe so, but it got you the match.”

  “Yeah, better luck next time.” Over the past week or so, we’d played seven chess games. He’d won four, I’d won three, and we’d planned a rematch for Friday.

  But I hadn’t braved one single opening move in terms of letting Julian know what was going on at school. Which was why I’d tried to make a plan to see him in real life. Tonight was Julian’s first free time. Or so he claimed.

  At the Villanova Diner, where we’d agreed to meet, I ordered fries and a Diet Coke. Julian ordered carrot juice and a tuna melt—which immediately made me want to reorder something less junky.

  “Sorry I’ve been off the map. Getting ready for exams and lacrosse practice . . . anyway . . .” Julian yawned and stretched his arms over his head. I averted my eyes from his biceps. That sneak peek of belly button. He was like a Leonardo da Vinci sketch of the male physique.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “Sure, echo back.”

  “Did you go out Saturday night? With Alison and everyone?” Though I knew he had. I’d heard all the stories on Monday. The popular crowd, united as one.

  “I don’t know why I get dragged to those things. Lame of me. I always want to be sure I’m not missing anything, and I never am.”

  “Right. How was it hanging out with Ella?”

  His eyes rolled, dismissive. “I wouldn’t call it hanging out. We have friends in common, but there was zero one-on-one interaction.” But then he slid his arm across the tabletop, his fingers reaching to close over mine, bunching them. “Look, Raye, let’s cut to it. I know why you wanted to meet. I heard that Ella’s giving you a hard time.”

  “A hard time? She’s out for blood. She’s ruining my life.”

  Julian frowned. “Seems a little extreme.”

  “You haven’t spent a day at school with me.” Don’t be pitiful , I’d warned myself beforehand. But in person was so much harder than in theory. “You can’t even believe how out of control she is. Not to put you on the spot here, Julian—but why did you mention me to her in the first place on your Sunday night call? When you know firsthand that she can be such a total freak?”

  “Hey hey hey. Chill your rant.” He let go of my wrist. “All I did when I called Ella that night was confront her about that fake catering job. Which she denied. But then I told her what she needed to hear—that I’d been a big-time jerk at Alison’s Sweet Sixteen. And then she admitted she’d set me up at Meri’s. She apologized for that, which is what I needed to hear. We kind of made a truce, and your name didn’t come up once. Not on my end.”

  I leaned in. “What was she saying about me on her end?”

  “C’mon, Raye. Let’s bury this.”

  “No, please. Tell me?”

  He looked uneasy. “Ella said you were obsessed with her, and with the Group, and with me. And that you’d do anything to get me to hate her. I mean, I realize now it was a crock. Ella’s one crayon short of a box. She said you had a shrine to me, but I didn’t believe it. It’s almost cute, if you don’t let her bother you too much.”

  “She made you think I was poison and insane. That bothers me.”

  Julian smiled. Not his dazzle-the-masses smile. It was unhappier than that. “What’s between us has got nothing to do with Ella. But I should set the record straight. It’s partly why I wanted to meet up. ’Cause I guess I gave you the wrong impression when we met. I didn’t mean to. The thing is, I don’t want to get serious with anyone this year.”

  “Right.” A hundred arrows were hitting target. “I probably knew that.” Although I hadn’t wanted to hear it. “And this doesn’t have anything to do with what Ella put up on her blog?”

  “What blog?” Julian’s poker face would almost have been hilarious, if I’d been in the mood to laugh.

  “Because,” I continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “considering you’ve seen the pictures, I think it’s got everything to do with it.”

  He shook his head. “No, I never—”

  “Kilgarry, dude, are you blind?”

  “Didn’t you see us, you tosser? Clear some space.”

  My head snapped around. Henry and another, taller guy were strolling over. Both with damp hair and, as they got closer, a whiff of chlorine in their skin.

  “Can we sit?” The tall guy plunked next to Julian as Henry’s lopsided grin gave me a more sincere apology.

  “Do I have a choice?” But Julian looked relieved.

  “Bump?” Henry gestured.

  I bumped in. He settled next to me. “Thanks.”

  “Raye, this is Chapin and that’s Henry. I think I’ve mentioned these jokers before. Guys, Raye.”

  “Raye and I go way back to a month ago,” said Henry.

  “Hi.” The information spun in my brain. Chapin went out with Faulkner. I knew him only by name and random Facebook tags. In person, he looked bigger and meaner, and also sort of misshapen. As in, his head was too small for his broad, sloped shoulders and gangly arms. He reminded me of a giant squid.

  I could tell that Chapin didn’t think much of me either, though he gave me a long, searching look that made me squirm. They both ordered milk shakes and burgers. Talk turned to sports practice, sports meets, exams, more sports. I began to feel my precious chunk of time with Julian eroding.

  But I still wanted to ask Julian if he could do something about Ella. In this campaign Ella had waged, Julian’s power was all the power I had. Meantime, the minutes were ticking. Now Chapin’s squid arms were gesturing madly as he related an account of last weekend’s swimming competition. Followed by a full report on who got wasted at his house, after.

  My dad was coming to pick me up in half an hour. I had to be out front. It was, after all, a school night.

  “Here, Raye, share? Let’s make Jules the jealous one for once.” As Henry stuck in a second straw, so we could share his milk shake. “The problem is all the boys are madly in love with our Jules,” he said with a wink. “Same as the girls. It’s a bit like being a superhero, I’d reckon.”

  “Lucky him.” As I sipped obligingly. Equally obliging, Julian acted casually “jealous” by blowing the wrapper from his own straw so that it shot into Henry’s face.

  “Not at all. It’s a full-time job deflecting all these soppy boy crushes,” Henry went on. “Especially Chapin’s, because he’s so disastrously closeted.”

  The Squid gave him the finger. “Go bugger someone who cares, Henry.”

  “I would, you wanker, but you’ve had quite enough exercise for tonight.”

  I laughed. Suddenly, the Squid’s eyes were on me. “I knew I recognized you.” His blunt finger stabbed the air in front of my face. “You’re the girl in the blue wig.”

  “No,” I said, my walls up.
My voice robotic. “I’m not.”

  “Yeah. You are. I’ve seen your picture. We all have. Oh, damn. How much do I love that I met you? I bet you’re a real good time.” He reached down and stuffed his mouth full of fries. “Nice work, Kilgarry.” His huge hands clapped together as the rest of us sat there and said nothing. “Forget it, then,” he said into the silence. “What the hell. I was only kidding.”

  “It’s my experience that if a person says he’s only kidding, what he ought to have said was that he’s sorry,” said Henry.

  Julian was inching lower in his seat. He picked up a piece of parsley from his plate and began to twirl it between his fingers.

  “Sorry for what?” The Squid leaned back and inhaled another fistful of fries.

  “Nothing. You’ve got me mistaken for another person,” I muttered.

  “Uh-uh.” The Squid shook his head. “No, sweetheart, I haven’t. Faulk sent the link to a whole group—”

  “Leave it alone.” Henry’s tone was bladed. “Present company is absolutely disinterested. Here”—to me. “Finish.”

  I blinked. Angled my face so that my hair fell over the milk shake glass, making a curtain as I sipped, though my gesture was all but a guilty admission.

  After a pause, Henry forced the guys’ conversation back up and on a different path by pseudo-insisting that Mr. Barlow might actually be a CIA agent. “It’s not nonsense. Don’t dismiss it,” he said. “There are signs. Barlow has an excellent memory. Never says a word about his family. Those clunky bifocals see in infrared. And the other day, I swear I heard the old geeze muttering to himself in Russian.”

  As the guys hooted and told Henry he was full of crap, I sent him a mental thanks.

  Henry Henry, my secret avenger.

  Peeking through my hair, I glimpsed through the diner’s front window the VW looping. Finally. “My ride’s here.” I jumped up. With a look at Julian. “So I guess . . .”

  “Yep. Chat later, if you’re up.” With his two-fingered salute. Not getting up, though my entire mind-set willed it.

  Walking out, I imagined Julian leaving the booth to follow me. He’d catch up with me outside, pivot me by the elbow and in the same sure voice he’d tell me I had the longest eyelashes he’d ever seen, he’d admit okay, yes, he’d seen the picture, but so what? We could deal with it, get past it, because he didn’t want to let me go, I was The One, and his real self was nothing like the unintentional heartbreaker, player, hookup maestro that everyone from Natalya to his own brother had warned me about.