The International Kissing Club (49 page)

Piper looked baffled. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“What?” Izzy demanded. “You can’t believe I called you on the fact that your crush on Tanner is stupid?”

Mei frowned, looking first at Izzy and then back to Piper. It was like they were having two completely different conversations, but neither of them realized it.

“You really think this is about Tanner?
This
is about
Germaine
. You betrayed our friendship,” Piper shrieked. “What you did was wrong. Don’t try to make this about me.”

“Why not?” Izzy demanded. “Everything is
always
about you. Nothing ever happens to the three of us without you bringing it back around to you.”

“I can’t—” Piper broke off, clearly unable to finish the sentence.

In that instant, Mei saw it in Piper’s expression. The line Izzy had crossed had just sprouted a forty-foot-high wall. Piper was done.

Piper shifted to look beyond Izzy to where Cassidy still stood. When she spoke, her words were stiff. Almost uncertain. “You coming?”

Cassidy—who hadn’t even cried when she’d broken her foot in the fourth grade—looked ready to burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Pipes. Izzy needs me.”

Mei was pretty sure Piper actually bit down on her tongue then. She could practically see the scream her friend was smothering. With jerky movements, Piper climbed into the car. Mei had to scramble to get in before she drove off.

Even though the school was only ten minutes away, Piper didn’t make it. She pulled off the road and cut the engine, then dropped her face into her hands.

“Germaine? That’s what she spent her ten weeks doing? Social climbing?”

Mei thought of how lonely Izzy’s Facebook messages had sounded during the first few weeks of the trip. Piper had been so thrilled with Paris she hadn’t noticed. But Mei—equally lost in China—certainly had. Then she’d met Guiran, her search for her parents had gotten under way, and she’d stopped chatting with Izzy as much.

“I don’t think—” Mei began weakly.

Piper cut her off. “Of all the people she could have sat with, that’s who she chose? She chose Germaine? Sit with band geeks or the stoners. Sit with the lunch ladies, for God’s sake. But don’t sit with
Germaine.” Piper’s words were pouring out in a white-hot rush and she couldn’t seem to stop them. “I never … I never would have sided with Linc. I wouldn’t have done that. And she …”

And then, she snapped her mouth closed. So tightly her lips started to turn white. She shook her head like she couldn’t even go there. After a long minute, Piper drew in a few deep breaths and then asked, “And what’s
wrong
with her that she thinks this is all about Tanner?”

Mei considered Piper’s question, unsure how to answer. There was an ocean of things that needed to be said about Izzy’s schizophrenic befriending of Germaine. She thought about the messages Izzy had sent her a few weeks ago, questioning Germaine’s role in the split back in seventh grade. Obviously, more had gone on between Izzy and Piper’s enemy than Izzy had let on. Mei had a hard time believing that Germaine hadn’t somehow manipulated Izzy, but even if she had, Piper wasn’t ready to hear justifications.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she finally said, being as honest as she could. “Izzy was wrong. She shouldn’t have done it. No matter how lonely she was.”

Piper drew in a breath and Mei could hear the shudder of tears she hadn’t yet cried. “I wanted us to have the best adventure ever. I never dreamed how it would mess everything up once we got back.”

Watching Piper racked by sorrow, Mei felt like crying herself. Even if Germaine had taken advantage of her, Izzy was still in the wrong. You didn’t throw in with the person who had destroyed your best friend’s life—no matter how much your own life sucked. She’d been pretty lonely in China, but she hadn’t started texting Germaine.

Mei reached out a hand and rested it on top of Piper’s trembling head. Suddenly she thought of her memory from the SWI. Of that little baby girl she’d known. The infant friend she’d left behind when her parents had adopted her.

Through whatever stroke of luck, Mei had been picked. She’d been given a home. A family. Parents who loved her no matter what.
But she’d had to leave behind her companion to get it. At two, the choice hadn’t been hers. Now it was.

She wouldn’t leave her friend. As long as Piper needed her, she was staying right here.

Chapter 29
Piper

Piper and her friends sat in homeroom Tuesday morning, waiting for the announcements. Normally the girls would be chatting and giggling about any number of things, but today they could barely look at one another. Mei had slid into Cassidy’s usual spot, right behind Piper, while Cassidy was sitting two rows away, next to Izzy.

It was the first time she and Cassidy hadn’t sat near each other in class since kindergarten, the first time the four of them hadn’t sat together since Izzy joined their group, and Piper hated every second of it.

She felt sick, like a huge weight was pressing down on her chest and stopping her from breathing. She wanted to rush across the aisle, to throw her arms around Izzy and forget everything, but she couldn’t. Not when Izzy had hurt her so much. And not when Izzy almost seemed to hate her.

And Germaine. How could Izzy possibly have become friends with Germaine? It was insane, mind-boggling, so horrible she could barely comprehend it.

Just then the TV in the front of the room spewed to life. Normally no one in class paid much attention to the daily news and announcements program run by the video-editing class—this was Paris, Texas, after all. It wasn’t like anything major ever happened here. And when it did, everyone knew what was going on long before the daily announcements got around to talking about it.

But today, everyone was watching with rapt attention, and when Piper glanced up at the screen, she knew why. Germaine was on TV. She was dressed like a Dallas news anchor in a pale pink sweater set and pearl earrings, her hair curled, coiffed, and sprayed within an inch of its life. The look on her face was positively angelic.

Piper’s stomach tightened. Germaine only looked that sweet when she was doing something incredibly awful. She flashed back to the scene at Dairy Queen, to Germaine’s promise that everyone would know what they’d done, and felt the entire world collapse around her as she turned to Mei, who was staring at her with a look of horror Piper knew was echoed on her own face.

“Good morning, Wildcats. Today we have a special program for you,” said Marc Bradley, the senior in charge of the show. “A story sure to have you thinking twice before you kiss and tell.”

“Oh, shit,” she heard Cassidy mutter.

Mei’s hand reached out and clutched hers so tightly that Piper feared she might never regain circulation in her fingers. Not that she could complain—she had a feeling, after this, she wouldn’t need her mouse hand, anyway.

“Welcome, Germaine. It’s great to have you here today.”

“Thank you for having me, Marc. You’ve always been my favorite announcer.” Germaine fluttered her eyes.

“Is that a purity ring on her hand?” Mei whispered in Piper’s ear.

“Of course it is. Because, really, what else would Germaine the—what’s a word that rhymes with Germaine and means
whore
—wear when she’s in front of the entire school?” And since Marc was usually a pretty decent guy, Piper couldn’t help wondering what Germaine had promised him in exchange for the time to do her little exposé. Something that would make a complete and total mockery of said purity ring on her finger, no doubt.

“Sssssh,” hissed Mr. Johnson from the front of the room, where he sat grading papers, oblivious to the horror unfolding on the screen before them. “Quiet, girls.”

Right. Of course. Because God forbid they didn’t sit silently by and wait for their total and complete annihilation.

Piper thought about gathering her things and trying to slip out the back of the classroom—she really didn’t want to see this—but at the same time, it was like she was glued to her seat. She couldn’t move.

“Fellow students,” Germaine began, “I’m here today to remind you of the dangers of the Internet and how the things you post online can and
will
come back to haunt you for the rest of your life.” A feral glint twinkled in Germaine’s cold eyes while she looked straight at the camera, as if she were speaking directly to Piper. Which, of course, she was.

“We at Paris High have been made all too aware that what’s put on social media websites like YouTube and Facebook can take on a life of its own.” A video clip of that horrible pig attacking Piper ran in full, see-every-hair-on-its-snout HD. Piper clamped her eyes shut and willed God to take her now before this got any worse.

“Because we can’t control what happens to information once it’s posted online,” Germaine continued, “teens must be especially vigilant about maintaining an online presence marked by maturity and, above all, dignity.” Then her smile took on an even more predatory slant as she said, “Take this Facebook page as a poor example of both.”

The screen cut to the International Kissing Club Facebook page—and the silly rules they’d come up with weeks ago at the mall—in every perfect pixel of detail.

“Oh. My. God.” Mei leaned closer to the TV for a second, then whipped her phone out of her back pocket. A few seconds later her head hit the desk with a bang.

“What?” Piper whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

“This is streaming. She hacked into the IKC page,” Mei said furiously, passing her phone over to Piper. “The video is posted on our page—and on the Kiss the Pig page.”

Piper watched with disbelieving eyes as the same video played in the middle of the IKC page. “Just shoot me now.”

Everything was on display: their avatars, their posts, pictures they’d taken on their trips, pictures of the boys, their point totals. Germaine continued talking in the background and Piper could hear the absolute glee in her voice as she spoke. “Perhaps the four founders of this page—this so-called International Kissing Club—
thought
what they were doing was all in good fun, and that they were being cleverly anonymous when they used what was supposed to be an
academic
foreign exchange program as a front for kissing boys—not to mention the other sexcapades hinted at in these posts—all across the globe.” The camera zoomed in on one of the racier entries on the page. “But what they forgot was that on the Internet, nothing is ever truly anonymous.”

Then, before all eight of their incredulous eyes (though at this point, Piper didn’t know why anything should shock her anymore), graphics of Cassidy’s, Izzy’s, Mei’s, and Piper’s yearbook pictures tumbled across the screen until each interlocked like a puzzle piece with graphics of their respective Disney character avatars. And for the coup de grâce, their kissing point totals flashed above each one.

Suddenly, a strangled scream came from the counseling center across the hall. Seconds later, the class watched Ms. Vogel run out of the open doorway and down the hall as fast as her four-inch heels could carry her. Apparently, Vogel was the only adult on campus who actually watched the school news program.

Back on screen, Germaine looked triumphantly at the camera. “After all, you never know who may be watching—your classmates, your teachers, college admission boards, even future employers. The best rule of thumb for teens’ online activities is that if you wouldn’t want your parents to see it, don’t post it.”

And it was done. In less than three minutes, Germaine had accomplished what she’d been unable to until now—Piper’s complete ruin.

The camera swiveled back to Marc. “Thank you, Germaine, for that remind—” His last words were cut off as the screen went blue.

Mei closed her eyes. “Do you think anyone at MIT will see it?”

“I think the entire world is going to see it before this is over,” Piper answered. They were so totally and completely screwed that she couldn’t pretend otherwise, even to save her best friend’s sanity. And she’d thought the Kiss the Pig debacle was bad.

Piper felt every eye in the classroom on her and her friends. She slumped down in her chair, watched from the corner of her eye as Cassidy did the same. Izzy buried her head in her hands and Mei, Mei didn’t move a muscle, unless you counted the fine trembling that was shaking her entire body.

Of course it was Jackson Grosbeck who broke the deafening silence. “Whoooooa, Piper,” he said, leaning over in his chair until he was practically on top of Piper’s desk. “I didn’t know you had it in you. What kind of international sexcapades are you into?”

The entire class cracked up, and the jocks in the back of the room started catcalling and whistling as loudly as they could. Mr. Johnson looked up for the first time, tried to quiet them down, but there was no maintaining order right now. Similar noises were floating down the hall from other classrooms.

And suddenly, Piper had had enough. Enough of Germaine, enough of Paris High School, and more than enough of Jackson Grosbeck and his perverted questions. Pulling her chemistry book out of her backpack, she hurled it straight at his smug, ugly face. It felt good. Maybe Cassidy had the right idea when she led with her fists.