Chapter 5

Madison was in her first class of the summer when her cellphone rang.

The professor, a youngish-looking fellow who insisted that everyone call him "Roger" instead of "Professor Hangleton"—Madison thought she would insist on the same thing if that was her name—gave her a wry look and continued on with his introductory lecture. Meanwhile, Madison dove for her phone to shut it the hell up. She didn't recognize the number, besides noticing that it was in her area code, and the person didn't leave a message, so it wasn't until after that introductory class was over that she was able to call the number back.

"Hello?"

"Hi?"

"Hi, umm ... Who is this?"

"I beg your pardon, but, you called me." The caller was speaking in the lilting tones of an Indian or Pakistani.

"Yes, but, you called me first. This is Madison Bechtel."

"Ohh, Madison! Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't recognize your voice. Please forgive me. This is Jenna Sayuri."

Madison knew Jenna. She was in Madison's grade and they had shared a number of classes over their years at Mount Hill. She was indeed Indian, with rich brown skin and lustrous hair—attractive, certainly; not without her share of suitors. Really, except for being Indian, she was in the same social strata as Madison—but the races didn't mix; it was just one of the unwritten rules of popularity. As a consequence, Madison could not think of a single reason why Jenna might be calling her. "Umm ... Hi, Jenna. This is Madison Bechtel. —Umm. Of course. You knew that. Umm. what can I do for you?"

"Well, I was calling about the, ah ... The discoveries that were passed around about you just prior to the end of school."

" ... Oh?" said Madison. It was one of the last things she wanted to discuss, and Jenna Mayuri one of the last people she wanted to discuss it with. She didn't think it was intentional, but Jenna had always managed to radiate an air of ... Well, arrogance was the only real word for it. It was like she considered most people beneath her.

"I'm sure you're aware that there's been a lot of whispering about you behind backs. You know how it is: half of it's fact, half of it's exaggeration, and half of it is outright lies."

For lack of anything else to say, Madison replied, "Three halves. Must be a lot of talk."

"It is," said Jenna without a trace of irony. "But the reason I'm calling is to tell you that I don't hold with any of that. We've known each other for a while, and you have always struck me as a completely normal girl. I can't see how that has changed. After all, you had your ... Condition ... Even then. True, you didn't know it, but that doesn't make you different. And I don't see why we should treat you differently either."

"Uhh, ahm..." said Madison, who had not been expecting anything like this. "Um, thank you, Jenna."

"And I wanted to say that, if you are in need of social contact this summer, or would simply like someone to talk to, I would be happy to be your friend at any time."

"Thank you," said Madison again, meaning it this time. "I really appreciate that. I may just take you up on it."

"Oh, at any time, " said Jenna. "Feel free."

"Jenna? Jenna Sayuri?" was Devin's response. "But ... She's..."

"Stuck-up," said Nancy.

"Yeah," said Madison. "It's like she thinks she's better than us."

"Yeah," said Devin. "Of course, some of that might just be cultural. She emigrated, you can tell by her accent."

"Whereas you speak perfect English because you were born here," Nancy said, completely straight-faced. It was true, after all.

"Yeah," said Devin. "My mom and my uncle flip R's and L's left and right, whereas I—"

"Flip R's and L's?" Madison said.

"It's a Japanese thing," said Nancy. "They don't really distinguish between the L and R sound; you can use them interchangeably in their language."

"Really?" said Madison.

"Yes, rearry," said Devin, straight-faced. "It cause some probrem some time, ret me terr you, fripping errs and alls reft and light."

Nancy sniggered. "Whose terrible idea was it to do that in Japanese? It's like the word 'lisp'. When you have a lithp, you can't thay that you have a lithp. Thome thaditht mutht've been in charge of that one."

"God, what if you had both of them," Devin giggled. " 'Herro, I am Japanethe, I have rithp and I frip my errs and alls.' —err. 'Errth and allth. Can anybody underthtand me? I rithen to mytherf and I cannot underthtand my own dithcourrthe.'"

"Jesus Christ, Devin, making fun of your own ethnicity," said Nancy, sniggering.

"Excuse me!" Devin said with a weak attempt at indignance. "I'm a chink! I can make fun of other chinks if I want to."

"So, Jenna," said Madison loudly, to bring the two of them back on topic. "Who neither flips her L's and R's nor has a lisp." Sometimes she wondered who the best friends were in this crowd. If she left Nancy and Devin to their own devices, they would tangent until armageddon. "Why do you say it's cultural?"

"Well, maybe it is," said Devin. "Like I was saying, you can tell by her accent that she grew up speaking an Indian language, and picked up English second. (Though she does speak it really well.) It means she grew up, at least a little, in India, and absorbed some of their cultural practices and mores and standards."

"Does that include being snotty to white people?" said Madison.

"I don't know," said Devin. "Like I've ever studied Indian culture. All I'm saying is that there might be a reason for her behavior that isn't related to her personality."

"You mean, that was programmed into her by culture," Nancy said.

"Yeah, exactly," said Devin. "None of us are perfectly free to shape ourselves however we want—by the time we're able to think for ourselves, there are already things that are programmed into us and which we'd have a hard time taking out again. What's the worse curse word in the English language? It's 'fuck', right? What's it mean? It means 'sex', it relates to sex. The absolute worst swear word in our language is 'sex'. That's cultural, isn't it? There's no guarantee that the worst swear word in—what—in Norse or Chinese or Swahili has anything to do with sex. It's probably something completely different—and probably something way more threatening. I mean, really, which is more dangerous, sex or an atomic bomb? Or a T-Rex? Or syphillis? So the fact that we swear by it says more about us than it does about anything else."

"God, you're right," said Madison, suddenly glimpsing the panorama Devin was describing. "There's a lot of things that could explain why any given person does any given thing. I mean, maybe it's genetic—or maybe it's something their parents trained them to do. Or maybe they learned it from their environment—from their peers."

"Or from bullies," Devin said.

"Or maybe it's something their culture expects of them. Look at all the different ways people carry out religious worship. Or maybe it's something that they would just do no matter what, that just comes out of themselves."

"Out of their soul," said Nancy.

"Yeah," said Madison. "It's ... There's so much." She turned to Devin. "And you study this? How do you wade through it??"

"It's fun, isn't it?" Devin asked with a wide, bright grin. "There's always so much more than you realized."

"So, Jenna, said Nancy loudly, and Madison realized that she had precipitated the tangent this time. "Are you going to contact her?"

"Well ... I dunno," Madison said. "I mean ... I don't think she was faking it or anything. I think she meant what she said. But ... No matter where she got that habit of looking down her nose at people, it's still there. And I'm not sure I wanna deal with that."

"Why not?" said Devin. "What've you got to lose?"

"A couple hours of my life," said Madison.

"What, are you secretly dying?" Devin said. "Are you in a terminal condition all of a sudden?"

"Yes, she is," said Nancy. "It's called living."

Devin rolled his eyes, tossed his head. "Well, you live like that if you want to, but I'm still of the opinion that you have nothing to lose. What harm could come of it?"

"Yeah, well, you're the most optimistic one of us all," Madison said. She had meant it to be sarcastic, maybe a little scornful, but it didn't come out that way. The way she said it, it sounded more like a compliment.

Devin gave her a smile. "Somebody has to be. I mean, look at Nancy over there, all doom-and-gloom-and—"

Nancy's cellphone cut off the proceedings, chittering like a rodent. Nancy checked the display, frowned, and flipped it open. "Hello? ... Yes? Yes, hi, it's me. How're you doing? ... That's good. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh..."

Then she blinked at Madison.

"Yes, actually, I'm still friends with Madison, why?"

Another pause, and then she took the phone away from her ear and put the caller on speaker. "—just been thinking, and ... I felt really bad about ... Well."

"About what, Haley," Nancy said, and Madison suddenly recognized the voice: Haley Lombardo, she of the recently-lost virginity. What was she calling Nancy about?

"About ... How we all treated Madison, " Haley said.

Madison stared.

"Look, the other girls don't know I'm calling, they're happy she's gone. You know how it is. But ... I mean, we just started treating her like she was the plague. Craig started coming by—and Jessica McLaughlin jumped on that, you know how she's always had a crush on him—and she was encouraging him to, you know, spread the word about Madison, and ... And talk about how she was a mutant, and ... God, it was disgusting. The others just ate it up."

Madison opened her mouth to say something, but Nancy gestured for silence with a hand. "Is Vanessa getting in on that?"

"No, Vanessa said to stop it, " Haley said. "She said she didn't want to be involved in that. Of course, Jessica didn't—she and Craig just started whispering instead of shouting. I don't think they even know what they were talking about anyway. They were saying something about how Madison, in addition to her, um, female genitalia, has ... Umm. You know. A, umm." Madison could practically hear the blush. "A scrotum. But whenever anybody asks Craig if he's seen it, he just, you know, he either blows it over, or he makes something up. It's disgusting."

"What, Madison having a scrotum?"

A snort. "No. Craig."

You and me both, Madison thought.

"Okay, and..." said Nancy. "Why are you telling us this?"

"Because I don't want to be involved in it, " Haley said. "They're just getting off on it, you know? They're, like, having so much fun spouting shit about Madison. And I'm like, What's she ever done to you, and they're like, What does that matter. And ... Well, I dunno what I can do once school starts up again, but right now it's summer and Jessica's off in, what, Hawaii or Barbados or some other tropical paradise right now, and Vanessa's with her, so I can hang out with whoever I darn well please."

"And ... You want to hang out with Madison?" Nancy said.

" ... Yeah, " said Haley. "I... " She sighed. "God, I dunno. There's— ... Something happened recently, something that kind of set me apart from other people—not a lot of people know it, because Brent kept quiet about it—"

"Brent?" said Nancy. "Your boyfriend? What would he have to do with it?" Nancy was enjoying this, Madison realized: she already knew the answer, but she was still playing Haley on, just to see her squirm. " ... Wait. Did you... ?"

"Shit. I guess I'm not keeping quiet about it very well, am I. Yeah. We did."

Nancy, grinning like a shit-house cat: "How was it?"

"That's besides the point, the point is... " said Haley. "The point is ... The few people he did tell—you know, his friends, the people he trusts—they all look at me different now. They know. And, I can tell just by the way they act towards me. I can tell they're ... Thinking about what Brent and I did."

"Yeah," said Nancy. Madison suddenly wondered how many people Don Calhoun had told, and how many of those you're-different looks Nancy had had to endure.

"And ... I realized that ... Well, Madison must be going through the same thing. You know?"

"And that matters to you?" said Nancy in a different voice.

"Well, yeah! Shouldn't it?"

Madison held up her hand, to indicate that she wanted to take the floor, and Nancy gestured for her to go ahead. "Haley. This is Madison. You're on speakerphone."

"Ohmygod Madison have you been listening? Oh my god, I'm so sorry for— Madison, I had nothing to—"

"Haley—"

"—do with it, I swear, it was all Jessica, you know that—"

"Haley—"

"­—I would never try to stab you in the back like that, I'm really—"

"Haley!" said Madison, and Haley's babble cut off. "It's okay. I forgive you. —Actually, no, I don't forgive you, because as far as I'm concerned you did nothing wrong. There's nothing to forgive. It's okay."

"So, Haley," said Nancy in conversational tones. "You were calling us because you wanted to hang out with us?"

"Yeah ... I mean, if you're okay with it. I just ... I wanted to apologize, and give you one of your friends back. I mean, we were all like, you know, Oh yeah, Madison, we'll always be there for you, and then this shit happens, and look what we do. God, Vanessa's been a better friend to you than we have."

Arguably, this was true, but Madison didn't see any need to make Haley feel worse. "Umm, yeah, we're okay with it. Umm. The next time we try and put something together, we'll, umm, we'll look you up, okay?"

"Okay, that works. I ended up getting a job at Starbucks, so I'm not sure when I'm really available, but—"

Madison recognized a Haley-Lombardo babble when she heard one. "Haley. We'll call you," she said, smiling.

"Okay, umm, I'll talk to you later ... Umm. Madison?"

"Yeah?"

" ... I'm sorry."

Madison felt a different smile on her face. "It's okay. And thank you for calling, Haley. It's always good to know who my friends are."

When Haley had hung up, Devin raised his head and said, "Boy, she must really be upset."

"Yeah, sounds like it," Nancy agreed. "I wonder how much of it is just annoyance with Vanessa's little clique. Haley jumps ship when she feels like she isn't getting what she deserves."

"Look, guys, I don't have so many friends that I'm going to turn one down just because her motives aren't pure," Madison snapped. "Yeah, so, she thinks she sees a better chance with me than with Vanessa. So what? I think I see a better chance with her than without her. How am I any better? I'm not, is the answer, but that's okay. We're using each other, and we both know it. And how is that any different from any other friendship?"

"Boy," said Devin. "That's harsh."

"If true," said Nancy.

"Yeah, but ... I mean, come on. Don't you believe in true friendship? Love? Loyalty?"

"Oh, God, not another one," Nancy moaned. "You two should get on famously."

Devin turned to Madison, grinning widely. "What, you also believe in loyalty that transcends all bounds? Love that can never be broken? Devotion until your dying day?"

"Not in public I don't," Madison retorted, and Devin laughed.

"Actually, if you think about it, this solves your Jenna situation," said Nancy. "Just invite Haley along too as a counterbalance. If Jenna gets to be too much, you can just get Haley to start babbling."

"Yeah, but..." said Madison. "Is that ... Polite? I mean, they don't realize—"

"It's not like they can do anything anyway," Nancy said. "You're the one with the power here. They're the ones asking to be your friends."

"She's got a point," said Devin.

So Nancy called Haley back, and Madison called Jenna back, and they made plans to meet the very next day. Madison warned them both that the other girl would be coming, and that furthermore Devin would be present; both of them remembered Devin, though neither knew him very well. The funny thing was that Haley and Jenna both wanted to bring their boyfriends—whom, they assured Madison, were perfectly well-behaved and would not cause any problems. Madison and Devin and Nancy had a short discussion over this eventuality and eventually decided that boyfriends should not be too big of an issue. "Plus," said Devin, laughing in that high voice of his, "it'd be nice to have a little more testosterone around."

"Madison probably has more of it than you," Nancy said. "Fuck, I probably have more of it than you."

"Shh!" said Devin, pretending at indignance. "I told you not to tell anybody about that!"

And so it was that, at 3 PM the next day, a group of people assembled at Madison's house which could be best described as "a bunch." Jenna and her boyfriend were punctual, as was Devin, whereas Haley chose to show up later—or perhaps simply failed to be on-time—and Nancy, as usual, simply popped in whenever she darn well felt like it. Of course, that made it hard for Madison to grab Nancy in private and ask her about their previous adventure. She wasn't sure how she understood it, but she knew it was true: that covering things up would only make them worse. If Nancy had any reservations about the fact that she had seen all of Madison there was to see, they needed to talk about it instead of ignore it. If only Nancy could bloody well be on time.

Jenna had never been to Madison's house before nor met her parents; she was gracious and polite in meeting Mrs. Bechtel and Connor, who was of course making his best 14-year-old effort at not being impressed by the upperclassmen whom he would join at Mount Hill in August. Haley had visited here before, but for her boyfriend, Brent Warburton, as well as Jenna's, a bespectacled, cave-chested boy with the unfortunate name of Simon Biggerstaff, this was all a new experience. Brent reminded Haley of Craig—attractive on the outside, maybe not so much a catch on the inside—but she trusted Haley's judgment. (Really, what other choice did she have?—to protest that this man was a bad idea, and Haley had better break up with him, or else? Maybe if she were Jessica McLaughlin.) Simon was a curiosity too, in his own way: furtive, underconfident, ill-at-ease amongst even as motley a crew as this one (though Madison had a hunch that this was true of any gathering he might be in, not just there).

As she would say to Devin, later: "He thinks he's out of his league."

Devin would give her a curious look and say, "Isn't he? I think he's taller than Jenna physically, but she still seems to dwarf him because she stands up straight."

"True enough, but one of the secrets you learn by being popular is that it's more important what you think than what you are. I mean, look at Haley. She's not in our league either—she's so fat."

"She's not fat. I mean, she's not like life-threateningly obese, she's still healthy. It's just our cultural obsession with thinness."

"That's true, but my point is that, regardless of whether the standards are kind or intelligent or even correct, they still say she's too big to really climb to the top. But she doesn't let that stop her." She would lean over and spear Devin with a look at this time. "She just keeps on playing. And since she thinks she belongs at the top, we treat her like she does."

"Whereas Simon..."

"With his every action, says, I don't belong here. And so we treat him that way too."

"Show people how you want to be treated."

"Exactly. Wasn't that your theory?"

"So you believe in it now?"

She would shrug. "I guess I always have, whether or not I realized it."

But all this was in the future. For now there was the hashy business of first contact. Brent she had some sense of, and Haley's behavior she could predict and even influence to a certain extent; Jenna and Simon were uncharted territory, and here there might be dragons. Maybe not Simon; he seemed too meek to really start anything—but then, wasn't it always the kids like him who blew up their high schools? The marginalized, overlooked ones; the ones whom everyone beat up on? At least he had Jenna to keep him sane.

Or did he? The impression Madison got, watching the two of them interact, was of a master-slave relationship. Jenna ignored him most of the time, barely even acknowledging his efforts to join in on the conversations, and Simon seemed pathetically glad the few times she did deign to make him room. Most of the time he sat by her side, trying and failing to break into the group, and Jenna would occasionally dispatch him to run some errand—fetch me a coke, that sort of thing. It was too early to ask, but Madison wondered what the nature of that relationship was. She didn't know for certain, of course—nobody did—but her guess was that the two of them weren't lovers, that Jenna wasn't compensating Simon in that way—for that matter, that Simon wasn't compensating Jenna in that way. She wasn't sure why she felt that way, except for noticing their body language: how tentative Simon was, how brusquely Jenna brushed off his affections. Haley and Brent had never believed in public displays of affection either (as opposed to Jessica McLaughlin, who might at any given time be plastered onto her boyfriend-du-jour in an entirely inappropriate manner), but Brent had his arm around her most of the time they were at Madison's house, and she seemed completely comfortable there. Jenna, for her part, couldn't seem to keep enough distance between herself and Simon.

Was that wise?, Madison wondered. Shouldn't she be treating him better? What if he blew up his high school? —With Madison in it? Was she now on his shit list for having been present for this public humiliation?

And yet, she completely understood why Jenna would want Simon to keep his mouth shut in public: he was, in short, embarrassing. He either looked down at the table or down at girls' breasts—Jenna was wearing a high-necked shirt, despite the heat, and Madison thought she understood why. And everything to him seemed to be cartoons or video games. Or porn, of course. Or porn. An exchange might go like this:

"So, I told him, 'Heck no, you want us to get in trouble?'" Haley laughed and gave her boyfriend a playful swat. "I mean, they have cameras on those changing rooms. Not to mention store employees. What if the manager came and knocked on the door?"

Simon burst in at this point: "I saw this thing on the Internet where these two girls were together in a changing room, and—"

As this was his fifth or sixth outburst of the day, Jenna evidently could not contain herself any longer. "The Internet. So you mean it was porn."