Ex-Rating (12 page)

“It’s pretty serious, Mads,” Holly said. “I’m with you all the way, but we should realize we’re taking a risk.”

“It’s not that risky,” Mads said, “We’ll hide the blog where no one will ever find it—unless they know where to look.”

That was the plan: to plant the Dating Game back on the school site, hidden at the end of the summer reading list. The only
problem was that they needed a teacher-access code in order to write on that part of the site. Ramona worked in the school
office and had access to the codes. She was more than happy to pass on the code in the name of subversive activity. She loved
anything secret and dangerous.

Using the access code, Holly sat at her computer and transferred the Dating Game, X-Ratings, questionnaires, and all, to the
end of the summer reading list.

“All we have to do is spread the word so people can find it,” Mads said. “But only the right people. Students, not parents.”

“That’s what scares me,” Lina said. “What if this leaks out somehow? What if somebody tells on us?”

“Anyone who does that will face a firing squad,” Mads said. “Just kidding.”

“Finished,” Holly said, turning away from her screen. “The Dating Game is back in business.”

“You know what?” Mads’ mind was humming. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if this leaked. There is serious injustice here. We
shouldn’t be hiding it—we should draw attention to it. That’s the only way we’ll really beat this for good.”

“How could we get more attention?” Holly said. “The school paper has covered the story.”

“The school paper is small-time,” Mads said. “We need something bigger.”

“But why would anyone outside of the school care about our little blog?” Lina asked.

“National Radio Network cared about it,” Mads said.

Holly’s phone rang. “Hello?” she said. “Oh hi, Julia.”

“She called twice before you got here,” Mads whispered to Lina.

“What does she want?” Lina asked.

“First she asked if Holly thought she should wear flowers in her hair or a veil,” Mads said. “Holly said flowers, and ten
minutes later Julia called back and said, ’What kind of flowers?’”

“Julia, if you want to wear a veil, wear a veil,” Holly said. “You’re the bride. You can do whatever you want. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Well, Rob was going to come over here that night. … No, don’t put her on. … Hi, Mrs. Safran.”

Mads looked at Lina. Now what was going on? Holly covered her eyes with her hands as if she had a headache. All along, in
the back of her mind, Mads was still thinking about the Dating Game, turning over ideas.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” Holly said. “I understand. Sure. I’d be glad to help Julia address the invitations. Three
hundred people is an awful lot. Okay. I’ll be over later. Hope you feel better.” After a pause she said, “Julia? When are
your bridesmaids coming? You know, your bridesmaids? Deirdre and Bethany? Aren’t they flying in from Boston soon to help you?
Oh. They had to postpone it? Not until then? All right. Just wondering. Okay. See you in a couple hours.” She hung up.

“What was that all about?” Mads asked.

“Julia’s kind of overwhelmed by the wedding,” Holly said. “Her mother’s not into it, and I think Julia feels like she’s doing
everything alone.”

“So she ropes you into helping her,” Lina said.

“Well, I’m around a lot, seeing Rob,” Holly said. “Or trying to, anyway. We can’t get a minute alone lately. We haven’t had
a good solid make-out session in a week!”

“Bummer,” Mads said. “At least you get to see your boyfriend. Stephen’s always busy with some project, or away somewhere.”
She glanced at Lina, who was the worst off of all. Lina told her and Holly about Walker and Flynn right after her fight with
Walker, when she was still fuming, Mads was shocked. She just didn’t see it. But Lina’s anger had faded into sadness.

“Did you read Walker’s piece in
The Seer
this week?” Lina asked. “‘Varsity Swimmers Drown Draper’? He’s so good with words.”

The Seer
. That made Mads start thinking about the blog again, and censorship, and press coverage …

“‘Drown Draper.’ That’s cute,” Holly said, humoring Lina. “Let me fix you up with somebody else. Please! It will help you
forget about Walker.”

“That’s impossible,” Lina said. “And, anyway, with my luck, here’s what will happen: You’ll fix me up with some dork, and
I won’t like him because I’m hung up on Walker, but then finally I’ll get over Walker and start liking the dork. But my heart
will break because by then, he’ll have another girlfriend. You see, it’s hopeless. Life is just a big circle of unrequited
love. Mads isn’t listening.”

“I am, too,” Mads said, but she was really only half-listening. She had an idea, but it had nothing to do with Walker.

“I know how we can get lots of attention,” she said. “A strike!”

“What are you talking about?” Holly asked.

“To protest the censorship at school,” Mads said. “We’ll have a huge rally. A full-school strike. A walkout! Rosewood has
over eight hundred students. If everyone walks out of school at once, people will notice. I’ll bet we can get the local news
to cover it.”

“But how will we get everyone in school to strike at once?” Holly asked.

“E-mail,” Mads said. “I’ll send out a mass e-mail to everyone in school. And you guys spread the word at school. We tell everybody
to tell everybody. We can make flyers, too, and stuff them in people’s lockers. At two o’clock Friday afternoon, everybody
in school—I mean
everybody
—will drop whatever he or she is doing and walk out.”

“Right in the middle of class?” Lina asked.

“Exactly,” Mads said. “Teachers can’t ignore this. Rod can’t ignore it. The whole student body will show our solidarity. What
do you think?”

“It’s daring,” Holly said.

“We could get into
big
trouble for this,” Lina said. “Mads, I don’t think we should do it. Rod will suspend us for sure. If we call a strike … my
parents will kill me.”

“I don’t want a suspension on my record,” Holly said.

“I don’t want to be suspended, either,” Mads said, “But I can’t sit by and let Rod and the parents get away with this. I just
can’t! Look, it’s my idea. I’m going to do it no matter what. If we get into trouble, I’ll take the blame.”

“Mads, no,” Lina said. “We’ll stick with you.”

“I’m not worried,” Mads said. “What are they going to do—suspend the whole school?”

STUDENT STRIKE!!!!!

Fight censorship! Support the Dating Game! We are calling for a school-wide student strike on Friday afternoon at two o’clock.
When the sixth-period bell rings, drop what you’re doing and walk quietly and calmly to the front lawn of the school. You
will then receive further instructions.

IMPORTANT: For this to work, we need total, 100% participation! No wimpouts! College wonks worried about your transcripts—wake
up! A good college will respect you for standing up for civil rights and working for free speech and equality, etc. Call it
an extracurricular activity. And, anyway, if you don’t join us, you’re a weenie and no college will take you, anyway. Bonus:
You’ll be on TV! Channel 7 News promised to be there to cover the story. Plus, you’ll miss 45 minutes of class! How can you
lose? Spread the word!

HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: In the movies, great couples overcome obstacles and misunderstandings before they get together.
In real life, they just have problems.

Your name:
Elvira Webber

Your grade:
10th

Your ex’s name:
Walker Moore

Your ex’s grade:
11th

How do you know him/her?
school

How long were you together?
Too long

Who dumped who?
I dumped him—you think I’m some kind of idiot?

Why did you break up?
Where do I start? Basically, he’s a jerk
.

Are you friends now?
I don’t make friends with jerks
.

What do you think of your ex as a friend?
See above

What do you think of your ex as a boyfriend/girlfriend? (What was good and bad about him or her? Vices? Habits? Hang-ups?
Family problems?)
He’s a player. He cheated on me more than once—that I know of. He’s totally selfish. Sure, he seems sweet on the surface,
but trust me—that’s an act. And I find it scary that a person can fool so many people. … There are tons of little things wrong
with him, too. If I had to name just one, it would be—rampant backne. Ick!

What would a new person have to have (that you didn’t have) to make a relationship with your ex work?
She’d have to be crazy. I’m not kidding. But I know what kind of girl he likes: the kind of nervous, snooty girl who can’t
resist mentioning the fact that she has famous Hollywood-director relatives. Just shows what sort of person he is—he pretends
to be cool, but deep down, he’s a social climber
.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, you rate your ex:
negative 10 billion

“Jeez Louise,” Lina said when she read Elvira’s X-Rating. “How did this get on the site?”

It appeared on the Dating Game sometime during the night. Lina checked the blog that morning before school, and there it was.
She didn’t post it, she knew that much. And she couldn’t believe Holly or Mads would have such bad judgment. It was so mean!
But how else could it have gotten there? She had to talk to them right away.

“Yikes, that is mean,” Mads said. “I’d never post it without talking to you first, Lina. Especially since it’s about Walker.”

“I haven’t posted any X-Ratings all week,” Holly said.

Lina had dragged them into the library to check out the site as soon as she got to school. “I don’t get it,” she said. “If
none of us posted it, how did it get there?”

The mystery preoccupied Lina at school all morning. Was this the same Walker Lina knew? Could any of this be true? Or was
it just a joke—a very mean joke? Sure, she was annoyed with Walker, but she didn’t think he deserved anything like this.

“What is that supposed to be?” Sebastiano asked her later on in art class. “A plane crash?”

Lina was trying to make a birthday card for her father. Next to her, Mads, who was better at art, was taking headshots of
people in her family and putting them on top of animal bodies.

“It’s not supposed to be anything,” Lina said. “It’s abstract. For my father’s birthday.”

“I guess your father has pretty gory taste,” Sebastiano said. “Use a little more blood-red, why don’t you. That doesn’t say,
‘Happy Birthday.’ It says, ‘I know what you did last summer.’”

Lina looked at her collage and realized he was right. It was way too red. She grabbed some slips of blue paper and started
pasting over it.

“And Mads, why are you putting your sister’s head on the body of a cockroach?” Sebastiano asked.

“Art is an expression of truth,” Mads said. “You’re so nosy, what are you making?”

“A 3-D collage in the shape of a disco ball,” Sebastiano said. He showed them a half-finished sphere covered in pictures cut
out from magazines. “Instead of mirrors, I’m covering it with pictures of everybody on
Desperate Housewives
.”

“Very ambitious,” Lina said. Sebastiano sat down at the next table and started flipping through old issues of
People
, scissors in hand.

“I can’t stop thinking about Elvira,” Lina said to Mads. “It has to be a joke. A made-up name. But who would do that? And
why? What does she have against Walker?”

“It’s weird,” Mads said. “Walker’s popular. Everybody likes him.”

“I know,” Lina said. “Could somebody be out to get him?”

“Or did he really mistreat some girl who couldn’t wait to blow his nice-guy cover?” Mads said.

“It’s not a cover,” Lina said. “He really is nice.”

“And what about Flynn?” Mads said. “That description of the kind of girl Walker likes was obviously Flynn. I’m not crazy about
her, but that was pretty mean. But even if someone’s out to get Walker, why go after Flynn, too?”

“It has to be someone who has access to the site,” Lina said. “But we’re the only ones. Except for Rod, of course, and his
secretary—”

“—and Ramona,” Mads said. “She has the access code. Duh. That’s where we got it from in the first place.”

“And she was with me when we heard Flynn talking about Walker,” Lina said. “She knows how hurt I was. And she hates Flynn
on principal. She’d have no problem doing something mean to her.”

“And if it screws up your life and hurts Walker, too, what does she care?” Mads said. “She likes causing trouble.”

“And eavesdropping,” Lina added with an eye on Sebastiano. “Are you listening to us?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “I’m incapable of cutting out pictures of celebrities and listening to you talk at the same time. It takes
too much coordination.” He snapped his scissors at her. “Of course, I’m eavesdropping! You want my advice?”

“No,” Lina and Mads said at once.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Sebastiano said.

“That’s terrible advice,” Mads said.

“We didn’t jump to conclusions. We figured it out logically,” Lina said. “It had to be Ramona.”

After lunch, Lina realized she’d left her father’s birthday card in the art studio. She went upstairs to the third floor to
get it. As she approached the room, she heard voices—mainly a shrill girl’s voice, yelling.

“Just tell me if it’s true!” the girl shouted.
That’s Flynn
, Lina realized. “Are you really a player? Are you cheating on me right now?”

“No, Flynn, I swear!” Walker said. “That whole thing is a giant pack of lies.”