The Karma Club (21 page)

The woman is clearly not amused by my antics. “Well, do it fast. You’re holding up the line.”

I nod. “The mac and cheese looks promising. Do you happen to remember anything about the woman who was fired yesterday?”

The lunch lady shoots me a very strange look, like I might be one of those special ed kids that she has been trained to deal with in a patient and understanding manner. I guess this ends up working in my favor because she goes, “Her name was Leanne something or other. She only wanted to work here once a week because she already had another job. A flight attendant, I think.”

I squint at her. “Leanne, you say?”

“Yeah, now are you gonna order or just stand there and ask more questions?”

I’m too lost in thought to decide about food right now. So I mumble something that sounds like no and exit the line, abandoning my empty tray on the metal slider.

There’s something very familiar about the name Leanne, but I’m not really sure why. It’s not like I know any flight attendants.

I push it to the back of my mind and hope that the subsequent stops on my investigative path will prove more fruitful. The next
place I go is Mason’s house. I know, I know, it’s pretty much a suicidal thing to do. But I have to talk to his mom and ask her if she remembers anything about the night she went to Miller’s Drug Store. I mean, according to Angie, those guys in the ski masks walked in the door mere seconds after she left. Maybe Mrs. Brooks can tell me something that will apply to
my
case that didn’t necessarily make a difference in the police investigation.

Plus, I purposely choose a time when I know Mason will be at soccer practice. Since he’s one of my prime suspects, it’s important that I interview his mother when he’s not around.

After school, I ride the bus home and get my bike out of the garage. It’s absolutely humiliating that I have to resort to this, but I still have one week left of my driving probation. Jade is still home sick, and Angie’s parents have been dropping her off and picking her up from school every day since the robbery. And it’s not like I can ask Spencer to take me. I already had to lie to him earlier today to get out of going home with him.

As I pedal my way down the hill toward Mason’s house, I can’t help thinking about the fact that, for the past couple weeks, all I seem to be doing is lying to the people that I care about. I’ve been lying to Jade and Angie ever since I kissed Spencer. And now I’m lying to him too. But it’s for the best, right? If Angie and Jade found out about Spencer, they would be crushed. And if Spencer found out about the Karma Club, he’d most definitely break up with me. So really, what choice do I have?

Once at Mason’s house, I take a deep, motivating breath and then reach out to ring the doorbell. As I stand on that welcome mat, a place I’ve stood hundreds of times over the past two years, I realize that being here is going to be harder than I thought. Just
looking at Mason’s door is bringing back so many memories that I would have rather kept packed away in boxes in the back of my mind. I close my eyes and will myself to be strong. This goes much deeper than just me and my pride. I have to find out why these terrible things are happening to my friends and my family.

Mrs. Brooks answers the door, and she breaks into a warm and inviting smile, immediately putting me at ease. “Oh, Maddy. It’s so good to see you again. Please come in.” She holds the door open for me, but I hesitate on the front steps. I don’t think I can go in there. Not after everything that’s happened. Facing Mason’s front door was hard enough. The thought of facing his couch, his TV, his dining room table, and everything else is too much to think about.

“Actually, I’ll just stay out here, if you don’t mind,” I tell her.

She seems to understand and nods cordially.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about the night that Mr. Miller’s store was robbed.”

Mrs. Brooks instantly looks pained. “So terrible, wasn’t it? How’s Angela holding up? Is she very upset?”

“She’s doing better. A bit shaken up.”

“I couldn’t believe it when the police came and told me what happened. It was such a shock to me because I didn’t see anyone in the parking lot when I left,” Mrs. Brooks tells me.

My heart sinks upon hearing this, but I force myself to ask, “So you didn’t see
anyone
?”

She shakes her head again. “No. I wish I had. I wish I could have been more help. But I hurried back to my car and drove away. I was anxious to get home so I could bring Mason the bandages I bought. He was bleeding pretty badly.”

As soon as she says this, my ears perk up and my eyes open a little wider. “You were buying those for
Mason
?” I’m not sure why I didn’t know that before. Had anyone even mentioned it? Did Angie know?

“Yes, he cut his hand open while cleaning out the toolshed. We were out of bandages, so I ran out to get some,” Mrs. Brooks tells me.

I’m totally confused now. “Why was Mason cleaning out the toolshed on a Saturday night? Wasn’t he at the Loft par . . .” My voice trails off as a sinking realization hits me. Of course he was home on Saturday night. Heather dumped him, so he would have never been able to get into the Loft party after that. She would have made sure of it.

“Maddy, are you all right?” Mrs. Brooks asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

She is obviously referring to the fact that I’m standing here with my mouth wide open, looking like I’m about to get hit by a bus.

I blink rapidly. “Yes, I’m fine. I just remembered I have to go do something. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Brooks.” With that, I turn around, race back down the steps, hop on my bike, and pedal furiously toward the Pine Valley Memorial Hospital.

My mind is racing the entire way. I have a million thoughts, and I’m having a hard time sorting through them.

When I get to the hospital, I chain my bike to a telephone pole, speed through the front doors, and dash into the elevator. I arrive in Emily’s room two minutes later, completely panting and out of breath.

“Maddy?” My mom leaps to her feet when she sees me. “Are you okay?”

I don’t answer her. Instead, I turn to Emily and say, “You have to remember who hit you. Who was it? What did they look like? You have to remember something about them!”

Emily looks at me like I’ve completely lost it, and maybe I have.

“I already told everyone I don’t know,” she says, confused. “Including you when you were here last night. I was hit from behind. I couldn’t see anything.”

“You have to have seen a shoe, an arm, something!” I’m quite aware of the desperation in my voice, but I don’t care.

“Madison,” my mom says in a warning voice. “Don’t upset your sister. Besides, it doesn’t matter what she saw or didn’t see. We already know who did it.”

I struggle to catch my breath. “You do?”

“Yes,” my mom says. “He turned himself in and confessed about an hour ago. It was a terrible accident, and he feels awful about what happened. His family has already promised to pay the hospital bills.”

“Well, who is it?” I say, even though I’m afraid of what her answer might be.

“You know him, actually,” my mom replies. “He’s that guy Angie used to date. Ryan Feldman.”

I stagger back
until my legs hit a chair and I collapse into it.

Ryan Feldman
. Ryan Feldman hit my sister on his bike. Ryan Feldman wouldn’t have been
riding
a bike if his parents hadn’t taken away his car. And I know exactly why
that
happened.

The Karma Club.

And what about Mason Brooks? He was home on a Saturday night. He cut his hand while cleaning out the toolshed. His mom begged Angie to open the pharmacy door that she had already locked in order to buy bandages. And once that door was opened, three men entered with guns and forced Angie to empty the register. But Mason Brooks was only home on a Saturday night because of one thing.

The Karma Club.

This is not happening. This is a bad dream.

My mother persistently asks me if I’m all right and why I look so pale, but I hardly notice her. I make up some bogus excuse
about having homework to finish and hightail it out of the hospital. I hop back on my bike and begin another triathlon-worthy sprint in the direction of Jade’s house.

When I burst into her room ten minutes later, sweaty and out of breath, I say, “Do you know a flight attendant named Leanne?”

Jade is sitting up in her bed, watching TV and chewing on ice cubes from a coffee mug. She looks me up and down, taking in my current state, and gives me a what-the-heck? type of look.

“I’ll explain in a minute. Just do you?”

She takes a deep breath and racks her brain. “Leanne, Leanne. Sounds familiar.”

“Yeah, it did to me too. But why?”

Jade snaps her fingers. “Friday, nine o’clock, Lenny’s bar.”

“Huh?”

“Operation Mrs. Robinson,” Jade explains. “One of our Mrs. Robinsons was a flight attendant named Leanne.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, the dread already seeping into my voice.

Jade shrugs. “I think so. Check the notebook.”

“Oh, God.”

“Why?”

I look at Jade, sitting in her bed, chewing on her ice cubes because it’s the only way she can keep down fluids, and suddenly I know what put her there.

I did.

Well, not me alone.
All
of us. The Karma Club. Everything that’s happened over the past ten days is entirely our fault. It happened because of
us
.

I look Jade directly in the eye, take a deep breath, and say, “Because I think she gave you food poisoning.”

Jade eyes me curiously. “What?”

“She was the new employee in the cafeteria.”

“Why was she working in our cafeteria?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe to be closer to Seth. Those women were crazy clingy desperate. And this Leanne chick was probably the most desperate of them all. She knew where Seth went to school. It’s totally plausible.”

I can tell Jade thinks I’m insane. I’ve been getting a lot of those looks today. I’m kind of used to it by now. “I don’t follow you,” she says.

So I launch into the retelling of my day. About the lunch lady’s story, about what Mason’s mom said, about Ryan running over my sister with his bike. And when I’m finished, Jade gawks at me, eyes wide, and says, “Oh my God, it’s the butterfly effect!”

“The what?”

She bites down on another ice cube and explains, “It’s this theory that a butterfly can flap his wings in China and cause a hurricane in Florida.”

“How?”

“I don’t know the science of it, but it’s this chain-of-events thing. Like the smallest little gust of wind from a butterfly’s wings can turn into a windstorm the size of a hurricane by the time it circles the globe. And that’s exactly what happened here.”

“We were the butterfly,” I say, dumbfounded.

“Yes,” Jade replies. “We put up the profile on the Internet which was seen by Leanne. She met Seth because of it and decided to get a job at his school cafeteria. And then she screwed up the turkey chili that I ate and now here I am.”

I sit in a stunned silence as the pieces of the puzzle start to fall
into place. Jade is absolutely right. Every single bad thing that has happened to us in the past week and a half,
we
set into motion. So in the end, all of my initial suspects turned out to be innocent.

It was us.

But why? Why would this happen? We were doing a good deed. We were balancing out the universe. We were helping Karma out by lightening its load. Why did it have to come back and bite us in the butt?

And the only thing I can think of is
What’s next?
What other hurricanes are currently forming in the distance, ready to strike down upon us?

If we want any hope of predicting them, we have to retrace our steps. Figure out where else we flapped our wings and then do our best to try to stop the chain reaction before everything falls apart. I race home on my bike and immediately run to my room to fetch the Karma Club notebook. Suddenly, I’m very grateful that I came up with the idea to record everything in the first place. Otherwise, right now it would just be me trying to sort through a jumble of thoughts and scattered memories.

I pull my backpack off the floor and unzip the pouch. I remove the textbooks that I brought home for the day. But when I reach back inside to grab the notebook, I find the backpack empty.

That’s strange,
I think. I always keep it in here. Then I figure it must be somewhere in my room. In all the commotion of the last week, I probably stashed it somewhere and forgot. I search in my desk drawers, under the bed, in my closet, even in my bathroom, thinking I might have hidden it under the sink among my hair products or something. But I come up short.

My heart starts pounding in my chest. I call up Jade and ask if
I left the notebook at her place. Negative. Then I call Angie and ask the same thing. No dice.

As I dazedly fall back onto my bed and hold my head in my hands, I realize that it’s time to take shelter because I can feel another hurricane brewing in the air.

The Karma Club notebook is gone.

Spencer calls later
that night, but I don’t answer. He leaves a really sweet message on my voice mail saying that he hopes my sister is all right.

Of course she’s not all right. I got her run over by a bike! But I don’t think I can face him right now. It would require more lying and I just don’t have it in me.

Jade and Angie also call, but I ignore them as well. How on earth can I tell them that I lost the very thing that held our most destructive secrets? That’s like the president showing up to work in the Oval Office and saying that he lost the nuclear launch codes. If I were him, I would just pretend nothing happened and hope our country doesn’t blow up. Which is exactly what I plan to do.

The next day at school Jade corners me at my locker and I want to say something about how she’s finally feeling well enough to leave her house, but I can tell by the look on her face that she’s in no mood to chitchat about her health. Point-blank, she asks me
if I found the notebook after I called her. I lie and tell her that I did. But Jade sees right through me and pulls me off to a hidden corner. Her face gets all serious and she says, “Maddy, you cannot lose that notebook. You know that. It has
everything
in it. Everything that we planned, everything that we did. All of our missions. It links us to every bad thing that has happened around here.”