The Karma Club by Jessica Brody Page A

certainly doesn’t help that the kitchen is large enough to cook for an entire army despite the fact that the Campbell family is made up of a humble three people.
    Okay, think,
I sternly command myself.
Where does my mom keep the food coloring?
    For some reason, I can picture it in the pantry, on the shelf with the baking items. I close my eyes momentarily and try to see it in front of me. Baking powder, baking soda, salt . . . food coloring. Yes! I’m sure of it.
    As soon as I open my eyes again, they land on a pair of white doors on the far side of the kitchen. I race across the tile floor, careful not to squeak in my rubber-soled black sneakers, and swing the double doors open. In one glance, I know I’ve located the pantry. I quickly skim the shelves, row by row, until I come across the familiar labels and brand names of popular baking ingredients. And then, there it is: food coloring in assorted colors. I breathe a loud sigh of relief as I reach for the green box and hightail it out of the kitchen.
     
    By the time I squeeze out the window and make it back around the house, Angie and Jade are at the front door with Mrs. Campbell. I wait behind a giant pine tree and listen as Heather’s motherrambles on about something and then finally says, “Well, I hope I was able to help.”
    “Oh, you certainly did,” I hear Angie respond pleasantly as she steps off the front stoop. “Thanks again.”
    As soon as the front door closes, I emerge from behind the tree and hurry toward the car. Once we’re inside, I screech out of the Campbells’ driveway faster than you can say “maximum-strength Myzaclin.”
    No one speaks for a good two minutes as we drive in mutually stunned silence. Finally, once we’re out on the main road, Angie says, “Well, that was probably the most excitement I’ve had in a long time. I think I just lost ten pounds in ten minutes.”
    I stop the car at a red light and turn toward her, prepared to let all my anxiety and pent-up fear just flow out of me. But as soon as I look at her, I burst out laughing. Jade and Angie exchange cautious glances but then quickly join in until finally the three of us are giggling uncontrollably in the car.
    “You should have seen Angie’s face when I told her the Myzaclin was green!”
    More laughter.
    As I giggle, I think about the green acne cream that is now floating somewhere in the pipes underneath Heather Campbell’s house and the green-dyed Crisco and hair conditioner that now sits in its place. “Definitely worth it,” I say with a smile.
    Jade catches her breath. “Definitely. And now it’ll only be a matter of time before people start calling her Butter Face.”
    The light turns green and I step on the gas, wrinkling up my forehead in confusion as I look at Jade in the rearview mirror.“Why would they do that? It’s not like anyone’s gonna
know
what we replaced her prescription with.”
    “No,” she replies. “Don’t you know that saying ‘She’s a total butter face’?”
    I shake my head. “No.”
    “You know, as in ‘She’s got a nice body,
but her
face . . .’ ”

CHARMED, I’M SURE
    Okay, so it’s not like I expected to come to school the next day and find the entire universe turned upside down. An alternate reality in which Heather Campbell (sporting at least one very unbecoming facial blemish) is no longer the most popular girl in school and Mason is off crying in the corner somewhere. I know that these kinds of things take time.
    But what I definitely didn’t expect to see was Mason and Heather making out in front of her locker. Not because that’s so entirely tacky, not to mention, um, hello, eighth grade, but because I thought that we had put an end to Heather and Mason yesterday. Or at least put the wheels in motion to set them down the steady track that would lead them to the end.
    But these are definitely not the signs of a couple on the verge of a split. They’re actually quite the opposite. And the whole thing