by Kasie West
“Sometimes regardless of what we want, reality takes over.”
“I want to read your screenplays.”
“Maybe. Soon. I’m working on one right now, in fact.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it about?”
“I’m not going to give it away. You’ll have to wait.”
I rolled onto my back again and stared up at the ceiling. “Have I ever told you that patience is not my strong suit?”
“I would disagree with that. You’re the girl who helps kids feed goats for two hours straight and mucks spots and helps a really difficult guy with his hard math problems. I’d say patience is definitely one of your virtues.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Well, you’re patient, too. You climb trees and stare at scenery for hours.”
“I never claimed I wasn’t patient. I am the king of patience. I have so much patience that I can wait months for something I really want.”
“What do you really want?” I don’t know why I asked it and I don’t know what I expected him to say. That he really wanted me?
But he didn’t say that, of course; he said, “I want one of those lemonade slushies.”
“Don’t we all?”
He laughed and I closed my eyes and listened to that laugh, warm and familiar.
I wasn’t sure how long we talked after that, but it was nice. It reminded me of being at the zoo where I felt like I was in my old life, the one where relationships were easy and every other sentence wasn’t about my money. It felt real.
The next day at lunch Blaire and Elise were busy, again. I wondered if the rest of the year was going to play out like this, us hardly seeing each other.
I headed toward the food carts and out of the corner of my eye I saw a fast-moving object headed my way. It was actually a fast-moving person—Trina.
“You want to go off campus for lunch again?”
I looked at my phone, the texts from earlier confirming that all my friends were indeed otherwise occupied. “Yeah, that sounds fun.”
“Let’s take your car.”
We got burritos at Café Rio and ate there, like we did last time. When we pulled back onto campus there was plenty of time to get to our next classes. We walked through the parking lot. I held a half-full soda cup, and listened while Trina explained to me what an all-ages club was and why I should go with her to one that weekend. That’s when I saw Blaire and Elise exit the library together. Like they had just spent lunch in there. Elise even held a brown lunch bag that she crumpled up and threw in a trash can as they walked by it. I pulled out my phone to see if I had missed a text about them getting done early. There was nothing on my phone.
“You okay?” Trina asked from next to me, and I realized I had stopped listening to her.
“Yeah. Fine.” I swallowed a lump that was trying to form in my throat. I ducked my head a little, not sure if I didn’t want my friends to see me or if I didn’t want them to know that I had seen them.
When I showed up for study group the next night, it was the first time I’d seen my friends since they’d gotten together at lunch without me the day before. Had they been purposely leaving me out all week? Having meetings without me? If so, why?
“Maddie!” Elise called when she saw me. Her excitement was so genuine that my suspicions became more of a mild doubt. Maybe they had just both randomly shown up in the library, unplanned.
I swung my bag onto the table. “I’m not late, am I?” I asked, checking my phone. It was only five minutes to seven.
“Of course not,” Blaire said, giving me a smile.
“But you usually come with treats,” Elise said. “Where are our treats?”
I laughed. “So you appreciate them after all.” I was avoiding the Mini-mart and the lady who wanted me to mail her a check for … how much did she expect me to give her, anyway? Millions?
“Treats?” a deep voice said, and I jumped. I hadn’t seen him there at first at the corner of the table. Mason. Why was he here?
“Hi,” I said.
“Do you know Mason?” Elise asked.
“Yes, how do you know him?” My voice was laced with disbelief and I realized too late that it sounded offensive. “I mean, I just didn’t know you knew each other.”
“We met at your party,” Elise said.
“Oh. Right.”
“Are you getting us treats?” he asked.
“No, I sometimes do.”
“Oh.” He went back to reading his graphic novel. Blaire would’ve killed me had I ever invaded the study space with anything other than core subjects.
I slid into the open chair next to Elise.
“Did you do anything fun today?” Blaire asked me.
“No. Laundry.”
“You haven’t hired someone for that yet?”
I laughed even though I was kind of tired of those jokes. I was getting them constantly.
Blaire pointed to the colored chart in the center of the table. “I’ve divided the night by subjects. Right now we’re working on math. If anyone has any hang-ups they’d like to discuss as a group, those will take place in the last quarter of each hour.”
We knew the drill. It was a method of group studying we did about once a month. But Blaire still felt the need to explain it every time. The only problem with this method was that I’d already done my math for the day after school. I’d gotten ahead of myself.
I bit my lip and pulled out the only homework I had—Government. I would participate in the group discussions for math when everyone was finished with theirs.
“What’s that?” Blaire asked. She was like a hawk, narrowing in on my book right away and ready to swoop it away from me.
“I finished math.”
Elise looked up from her paper but didn’t say anything.
“We just got the assignment today,” Blaire said.
“I know. I did it after school. I didn’t know what method we were doing tonight. Sometimes we do flash cards, sometimes we do mock quizzes, sometimes it’s free-form. I wasn’t sure.”
“I told you on Monday.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Yes, we were sitting in the library discussing today and I said—”
“She wasn’t in the library with us,” Elise interrupted, and I wasn’t sure if it was to defend me or to accuse me.
“You were in the library Monday, too?” I asked. “You all said you were busy.”
“Oh.” Blaire’s indignation left just as quickly as it came. “I should’ve texted you about the method. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Didn’t that prove they didn’t purposely leave me out? If they had made some sort of secret plan, Blaire would’ve known not to bring it up now.
Mason put his book down. “Can we get treats now? I’m hungry.” He said it to me, like I was going to run to the store that second and bring him back something.
“Let’s get pizza,” Elise said.
That was a new suggestion and I looked at Blaire to gauge her reaction. She’d always been pretty no-nonsense about study time. She barely tolerated my candy. I wasn’t sure she’d tolerate a big greasy pizza in the middle of all our precious books.
“Yes, I second that,” Mason said.
“If Maddie is providing, I’ll eat pizza,” Blaire said.
“Me?” I asked.
“You just dubbed yourself the treat provider,” Mason said. “So now you must provide treats.”
“Okay, I can buy some pizza. We’ll have it delivered, right?” Or did they all expect me to go pick it up, too?
“For sure. I’ll order it,” Mason said, whipping out his phone.
Apparently there were fancy pizza joints in town where they must’ve charged by the pepperoni slice. It’s the only way I could explain how much the guy at the door wanted me to pay for the pizza. I’d never paid more than fifteen dollars for a large pizza in my life. But Mason must’ve had amazing ordering skills or maybe I’d heard the guy wrong.
“How much?”
I asked.
“Sixty-three, forty-one.”
“Sixty-three dollars?”
“Yes,” he said.
“For one pizza?”
He pulled the receipt off the top of the pizza warmer he held and said, “You ordered two large specialty pizzas, breadsticks, and two bottles of soda.”
“There are five of us.”
The guy smiled. “Yeah, that’s a lot of food.”
“Do you take credit cards?”
He nodded and I handed mine over.
“You’re that girl, right?”
“What girl?” I asked, hoping he didn’t really know who I was.
“The lottery girl.”
Great. He did. “Um … ” Could I say no? “Yeah.”
He pulled the pizzas out of the bag. “Does this mean I get a big tip tonight?”
I gave a little chuckle. It was a joke, right? He ran my card through the square on his phone and then held it out for me. There was a place where I could add on a tip. Twenty percent would’ve been about twelve bucks. I put in twenty dollars and handed it back.
He didn’t try very hard to hide his disappointment. “Your drinks and breadsticks are in the car. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” I took the pizza to the kitchen and set it on the counter. “Mason, there’s more. Be a stand-up guy and go get it.” I tried to keep the snarl out of my voice when I said it.
Mason jumped up and disappeared out of the room.
“Was he voted on, too, in the library this week?” I asked, and then bit my tongue, instantly regretting letting that out.
“You don’t want Mason here?” Elise asked. “It’s Mason Ramirez, Maddie. Mason wants to hang out with us.”
I sighed. “Yes, that’s cool. I’m sorry. The pizza guy made me mad.”
Blaire was at my side and said under her breath, “I didn’t vote for him.”
I smiled, glad I wasn’t completely going crazy, and grabbed a slice of pizza. This was why people bought expensive pizza, I realized after my first bite. It was amazing.
Mason came back with his armful of food and drinks, and Blaire got cups and plates down.
“Who is the best person ever?” Mason asked, filling his plate. “That girl right there.” He pointed to me, his mouth already full.
Blaire nodded her head. “It’s true.”
And just like that, the night turned around. Mason ended up bringing a lightness to the group that made study time more fun and less structured. And maybe the food helped, too. It was the best eighty dollars I’d spent in a while.
We had another study session Friday night (this time sans Mason) and I finally felt like I was back on track. Back on my schedule. Back on my life plan. The last few weeks had been exciting and distracting and out of the ordinary but, like I’d told Seth, it was time to focus. Keep my eye on the real goal—college. And that’s what I was doing now, sitting at my desk on a Saturday afternoon, doing what I did best, studying.
My phone buzzed and I smiled; Seth was my main texter lately. But it wasn’t Seth. It was an anonymous number. And the only text was a link to a website that I wasn’t dumb enough to click on. I wasn’t going to get a virus on my brand-new phone. It was probably some spammer. I deleted the text and set my phone down.
Not two minutes later, the text was back again. This time I clicked the link. It took me to a website I’d seen before. It mostly covered celebrity gossip or sensational news stories that seemed too far-fetched to be true. Again, I deleted the text. When it came up a third time, my curiosity got the best of me. I accessed the link on my computer rather than click on it through my phone again.
The headline story on the site was about some woman who had free-climbed a fifty-story building.
“Crazy, girl,” I said. “But pretty impressive.”
Had this girl’s publicist sent out mass texts to the world to get her some attention? Or maybe she wanted to go viral and get on a few talk shows or something. I moved the cursor to the top left corner, ready to shut down the browser, when I saw something that stopped me cold. Below the article about the human spider woman was the title of another article. “How Would You Spend $50 Million?” Subtitled: “Probably Not Like Her.”
I moved the cursor over the words, not wanting to know if it was about me. Maybe it was about someone else and the text I’d gotten was just showing me how someone else chose to spend their money. Or maybe it wasn’t. How would anyone know how I spent my money anyway? Lottery winners might have been public record, but I knew my spending habits weren’t.
I wasn’t sure if I was trying to talk myself into or out of clicking on the link with that reasoning. But my finger pressed on the trackpad, and I wasn’t prepared for the large picture of my face that now filled my screen. It was a newer picture, my hair highlighted and cut. I’d been shot candid style. My mouth was halfway open, right in the middle of saying something. It wasn’t flattering. I looked like I was disgusted or in the middle of ordering someone to do something. And the words that followed were even less flattering.
Hundred-thousand-dollar yacht parties, hundred-thousand-dollar cars, half-a-million-dollar condos. This new multimillionaire has already gotten the hang of luxury. But don’t let the fact that she’ll drop cash by the hundreds fool you into thinking she’s generous. She’s also already learned how to snub the commoner—how about no tip for the valet driver and a mere twenty bucks for the delivery boy after ordering designer pizza. And not a single charitable donation. Maddie might want to read up on charity before she spends her way into the title of most-hated teen.
Below the words was a detailed spreadsheet of how I’d spent a lot of my money, including the hundred dollars I’d given to Dylan not to jump off the boat. It didn’t list everything I’d spent, but enough to let me know that someone had talked to this journalist. Someone close to me. But who?
I re-read the article multiple times, feeling more and more sick to my stomach. There was no one person who knew all of these things. The same people who knew how I’d tipped the delivery boy—Blaire, Elise, Mason—were not with me when I hadn’t tipped the valet driver. Also, who took the super unflattering picture of me and handed it over? Upon further study, I realized the picture was taken the night of the yacht party.
That could’ve been almost anyone in the entire school.
This was my own fault. I’d started my spending off with a bang. Regardless of how responsible I planned on being with most of my money, nobody could see that from the way I’d acted so far. Was someone trying to teach me a lesson in some weird way? Who would humiliate me publicly like this? Had someone been compensated for this information? For the picture? And how many people would visit this site?
That thought had me clicking over to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, checking each one to see if anyone had linked to the article yet. So far, nothing. The thought brought me no relief. I knew they would. Whoever my mysterious texter was would pass this information on. The texter. I picked up my phone and responded to the text: Who is this?
There was no answer.
Had I expected the person to confess their identity after what they’d just shown me?
I called Blaire on speakerphone.
“Hey, Bruce,” she said.
“Not you too.”
She laughed. “It’s kind of funny, right?”
“I’m going to text you a link. Look it up and tell me not to panic.”
“Okay … ” she said warily. “Is everything all right?”
“That’s what you’re going to tell me. That everything is going to be all right.” I shot her off a text.
“Looking it up now,” she said. “Okay, I’m here. What … Oh.”
I listened as she mumble-read the article to herself. “Condo? I didn’t know you bought a condo.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh.” She continued to read. Then she was quiet. “Who did this reporter talk to?”
“That’s what I was wondering.” I let
out a long groan.
“Listen, Maddie, it’s fine. I mean, it’s super unflattering, obviously, but this is a gossip column. Everyone knows half the things on here are exaggerated or lies.”
“You think?”
“Yes. So just let it go. I doubt anyone will even look at this.”
Her calm helped settle my nerves. “I hope you’re right.”
“The real thing you need to worry about is who is talking. Who wanted to rat you out like this? And did they get paid to do it?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“You need to be more cautious. Less trusting,” she said.
Less trusting. What did she mean? I didn’t get to have friends? Or talk to my friends about anything? Or maybe I just couldn’t make new friends. I put my hand on my forehead.
Was this my life now?
I sat in the cocoon chair hanging from the ceiling in my bedroom, reading the last book we had to read for the year in Honors English. But my mind wasn’t able to focus. All I could think about was that article. In the last twenty-four hours, I’d checked the site approximately five hundred times. There were still minimal comments on it (things like: “She should share her money with the rest of us!” Or “This girl needs to learn how to really spend money!”) and it hadn’t spread to any other social media as far as I knew.
My door creaked open. “Maddie, you in here?”
It was Beau.
I pushed on the floor to spin the chair until I was facing him.
“Ah, you’re in metamorphosis.” Beau stepped into my room and shut the door behind him.
“Hey.”
“I just wanted to let you know I’m moving the last of the boxes over to my place today.”
I sat forward. “What? You’re officially done here?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t be too happy for me.”
“No, I am. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.”
He slapped at my legs, sending the chair swinging back and forth. “It’s today, kid.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re only two years older than me.”