Free The Karma Club by Jessica Brody

her again.
    She takes a deep breath and surrenders to me. “He was chosen as the starting pitcher and captain of Colonial High’s varsity baseball team this year.”
    “And?”
    She sighs and mumbles. “And now he’s dating Leslie Gellar, the head cheerleader.”
    I nod diplomatically, pretending to think long and hard about my next sentence. “Yep, sounds like he got
exactly
what he deserves.”
    Jade giggles beside me, and I immediately turn my attention to her, my next victim. “And you . . .”
    She stops giggling and shoots me a clever smile. I can tell she’s enjoying my charade. “Yes, Grim Reaper?”
    “Has Seth been properly punished in your eyes for what he did to you?”
    Jade snorts loudly and shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”
    “Because what is he doing now?” I ask rhetorically before answering my own question. “He’s dating some sorority chick whogoes to UC Berkeley. Which
means
he gets to go to Delta Delta Delta parties nearly every weekend. Yep, sounds like Karma definitely got to him too!”
    “What’s your point, Maddy?” Angie snaps, rather impatiently.
    I smile at her eagerness. The dramatic buildup is working out exactly as I intended it to.
    “My point is: Guys have been screwing us over our entire lives. And we keep telling ourselves that they’ll get what they deserve. That Karma will take its course. Because it makes us feel better long enough for us to shack up with a new and supposedly
better
loser, who will inevitably do the same thing to us.
    “Well,
screw that
! It’s time to make Karma work for
us
. Even that guru guy at the retreat said that it’s up to us to find balance in our own lives. So I say, the responsibility to even out the playing field and reverse the imbalance in our lives does not belong to the universe. It belongs to us! We have to watch out for each other. Take care of each other. Because it’s pretty darn clear that the boys aren’t going to be the ones to do it. In the end, we only have our friends. And if we don’t help each other out, no one will.”
    I take another long, drawn-out pause before finishing off my soapbox diatribe with the climactic clincher that I practiced in front of the mirror as soon as I got home from the retreat. “It’s time to start balancing out the universe.”
    They both stare at me for a few blank moments before Jade finally asks, “So you want to humiliate Mason in the same way he humiliated you?”
    I knew she’d be not only the first one to understand where I am going with this but also the first one to jump onboard with it.
    “Exactly,” I say authoritatively. “But not just Mason. The rest of them too. Heather, Seth,
and
Ryan.”
    Jade bites her bottom lip anxiously as I watch her slip into a brief daydream, most likely about getting back at the guy who completely ruined her junior year of high school.
    “But we have to make a pact,” I say, pulling her back to the present. “A pact that only we know about. Like a secret, members-only club. A
Karma
Club. Whose sole purpose is to clean up the messes that the universe has been leaving behind.”
    “I am
so
with you,” Jade says, a huge grin spreading across her face. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
    “Me too,” Angie says shortly after.
    “Nice!” I exclaim, rubbing my hands together in a sinister way like Dr. Evil planning out his plot for world domination. I feel a tingling thrill run through my body. I knew my friends would support this idea. I never doubted that. But the rush that I feel when they actually confirm it is exhilarating. I feel like I’m finally part of a team. A real team. Not the one-sided, dishonest team that turned out to be my relationship with Mason. But a partnership based on trust and friendship and loyalty. And I have never loved my friends more than I do at this moment.
    “But this has to be our secret,” I remind them with a serious expression. “No one can know that we are in any way responsible for what