The Revenge Playbook (21 page)

“Do you want to make up?” asks Peyton.

Melanie Jane lets out a sigh that is laced with missed chances. “Of course I do. She used to be my best friend. But I think it's too late. We tried it before, and it was all
cavoli riscaldati
.”

We blink at her.

“Oh, sorry. It means reheated cabbage. It's Italian for what you get when you try to fix an unfixable relationship.”

I bite my lip. “But what if it wasn't? Unfixable, I mean? Couldn't you just apologize and see what happens?”

She shrugs uncomfortably. I get it. Putting your heart out there like that is a huge risk.

“What if we talked to Ana first?” says Peyton.

Slow down there, champ. Talk? To Ana?

“I guess I could think about it,” she finally says.

And then I stop them both because we've reached Trevor's house.

Melanie Jane blinks. “Trevor lives
here
?”

“Yes.” I square my shoulders automatically. Trevor's house is like every redneck joke in one place. Dogs under the porch. Knee-high grass punctuated with broken-down cars and appliances. A goat bleating at us from the side yard.

Two little girls play house with a rust-covered dishwasher. Their hair is neatly braided, and their pretty gingham dresses swish when they run. Trevor's mom makes most of his sisters' clothes.

“I'm sorry,” says Melanie Jane, and I can tell she feels terribly uncomfortable about what she just said. “So . . . are you going to kiss Trevor?”

I scoff. “This is a secret mission.”

“Uh-huh. I still think you should kiss him.”

I look to Peyton for support.

She shrugs. “I think you should kiss him too.”

My jaw drops. “
Traitor
. I can't believe you two. I'm going to get to work on THE MISSION now before either of you get any other ideas.”

I send The Boy I Am Not Going To Kiss an email just before I walk up to the house. It's a picture of a pink fairy armadillo. Trevor and I had this thing we used to do where we'd send each other pictures of the strangest, most ugly-cute animals we could find. It's weird, I know, but it's actually really fun to start your morning by waking up to a random picture of a baby wombat. The picture is supposed to help me out with the next phase of my plan, but I wasn't expecting to feel a pathetic wistfulness while Google-searching for animals. I really do miss him.

I reach my hand through the gashes in the screen and knock on the front door. Trevor opens it.

“Hey!” His face says seeing me here, on his front porch, is the happiest surprise in the universe.

I follow him up to his room. It smells like chocolate-chip cookies inside because his mom bakes them homemade almost every day. He takes the desk chair, and I hop onto his bed because it's the only other place to sit. I try not to think about the things that used to happen on it.

“Hey, have you checked your email recently?”

“Nope, why?” A small flush creeps up his neck, like he's trying not to think about the same things I'm trying not to think about. “Did you send me something?”

“Yep. Check it! Check it!” I bounce up and down a little, and the flush reaches his ears. Oops. No bouncing.

He turns to the old computer that was a hand-me-down from his grandfather, and logs in to his email. I don't catch the whole password. It has an
e
and a
4
. Not exactly helpful. But that's okay. I have other plans.

Trevor snort-laughs. “What
is
this thing?”

“It's a pink fairy armadillo! Isn't it awesome?!”

“Yeah.” He looks at it and starts laughing again. “Yeah, I love it.”

He isn't laughing now. His face is serious, and his eyes are on mine, and he's saying love, and I
want to throw away all my plans to be strong and jump in his lap and say, “Yes, I'll be your secret girlfriend. I miss you so much it hurts.” But I don't.

What I say is, “I'm really thirsty. Do you mind getting me some water?”

That's the next step of the plan. Get him to leave the room once he's logged on to his email. I think it's going to work too, until he clicks the little logout button before he gets up.

“Sure thing. I want some too.”

Crap. Well, this isn't working out like I'd planned. I knew I should have worn a wig. I probably should have had more of a backup plan too, but I had this feeling I'd be able to slip in like a secret agent and make something happen. I guess I could come right out and ask him. He's not like Weston or one of those other guys who might rat out Rey for telling me. Trevor's safe. I think part of the reason I haven't asked him is because I'm hurt. Rey, this guy I barely know, told me, but Trevor couldn't. I need to know why and dread finding out at the same time.

He's back with our waters now. He sets one glass on his desk and holds the other out to me just as I'm saying, “I know about The List.”

The water almost ends up on both of us.

“How'd you hear about that?”

“One of the guys, Rey, told me. You can't tell anyone.”

“You know I wouldn't do that.”

“I thought I knew a lot of things about you,” I say. And then, because he looks so damn sad, “Sorry.”

I gulp down half my water and wait for him to break the silence, but he's picking at the wooden slats of his chair and not making eye contact.

“Why couldn't you tell me?” I'm holding my breath before I even get the question out.

“I wanted to,” he says to the chair. “I just— I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Plus, I wasn't sure how you'd take it. If anyone found out I told, I'd be dead.”

“Yeah, but so would Rey.”

Trevor shakes his head. “No. He wouldn't.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“It does if you understand how these guys work.”

I'm mildly horrified at the idea of finding out how people like Chad MacAllistair work. I'm also DYING to know.

“Rey has more power on this team than I do. The coaches love him. He's an incredible player. I don't think it's possible to make the guy look bad. Me, I'm good. But I'm not that good. And besides, I'm offense. The defenders can hit me hard at practice and make it look like an accident. If offense tried the same thing on Rey, they'd probably hurt themselves.” He takes a sip of his water and stops when he sees the look on my face. “They're not all bad guys, Liv, but no one will go against Chad. He's the golden boy. And he hates me.”

I frown. “Shouldn't he have stopped messing with you by now? You did what he wanted.”

“Yeah, well, I don't think Chad likes there to be any other stars on his offense. Nobody expected me to be this good, and that's making the buzz even bigger. I can almost see him seething over every pass I catch. Every bit of attention I take off him.”

I wince. I hate what they've done to him. And what they've made him do to me. All because Chad MacAllistair has sick ideas about what he's entitled to.

“I want to see The List,” I say.

“Sugar, I can't. I just told you why.”

Being called “sugar” makes this hurt even more. I think Trevor senses that because he moves to sit beside me on the bed. He puts his arm around me, and when I don't protest, he rubs my back in gentle circles.

“I'm so sorry,” he says. “For everything that happened. For all the things that are still happening. If I could think of a way to fix this that didn't involve screwing up my future, I'd do anything.”

The familiar touch of his hand on my body. The gray of his eyes searing into mine. I'm tempted to tell him that I'm going to pay them back for both of us. But I have to keep my secrets too. So I keep my mouth shut—in the spilling-secrets sense only. In reality, there isn't enough willpower inside me to stop me from telling him AND to keep me from kissing him. Not when his face is so close to mine and his lips are parted like that. It's like we're in slow motion, him running his hand up to the back of my neck, me leaning toward him. Thousands of seconds pass where I could stop this from happening. I ignore each and every one of them.

Our lips touch, featherlight, like they've forgotten they know each other. I can feel his smile against my mouth. I can't hold back anymore. I need this—the crush of his lips against mine, the cinnamon-sweet taste of him. His strong arms wrap around me, and I pull him closer. Pull him to a place where they can't touch us and no one and nothing matters more than the blissful, dizzy feeling of being together. I press him into the blankets, taking more more more. His hand slips up the back of my shirt, and I return to my senses.

“Trevor, I can't.”

He sighs and hugs me to him, but he doesn't try anything else. “I know.”

We stay that way for a long time, neither of us willing to let go.

The front door opens downstairs, and we tear apart. It feels like when you rip a piece of superglue off your finger and part of you goes with it. I tell him I better go. And I do. But I can't help wondering which parts of me I left stuck to him.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

W
hy does it feel like a date? I didn't do anything special, like wear eyeliner or try to shrink my pores. We're just studying. Geometry. Which has to be the least sexy subject in the
world. I mean, half the classics we read in Brit lit are chock-full of sex, and biology can be awkward too, especially when you have to say words like
spermatozoa
without giggling. But what does geometry have other than lame pickup lines like “I don't mean to be obtuse, but you're acute girl” and “Hey, baby, nice asymptote”?

“Hey, Peyton.”

I know it's him before I turn around. Rey, as my tutor, that's what geometry has. He sits next to me at the cafeteria table—we both had our parents drop us off early so we could study together before school.

“Do you care if I eat breakfast?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Go for it. I already had a giant bowl of cereal at home.”

“Me too,” he says. And then he pulls out two bananas, a stack of bagels that have been cut, cream-cheesed, and rebagged, and a bottle of orange juice that looks like it's meant for a family.

“Wow, you eat a lot, huh?” Did I really just say that? He's going to think I'm an idiot. Oh, wait, he saw my last geometry quiz, so he probably already does.

He smiles. “During football season I have to.”

And then he gets right to work, both on eating the bagels and teaching me about angles. The date feeling goes away, and I'm glad. We go over practice problems, and Rey is superpatient, even when I ask questions I would feel way too dumb asking in class. He's also superpatient with the four different girls who interrupt us to flirt with him. They mostly glare at me, but one of them smiles. I hope he ends up with that one.

“She seems really nice,” I say after she leaves.

“Who, Victoria? Yeah. Yeah, she's cool.”

Soon, we're finished with the practice problems, and we only have a few minutes left, so we end up talking about all kinds of random stuff while Rey drinks his OJ. I finally get up the nerve to ask him something I've been dying to know.

“Do you really have those tattoos?”

He laughs, and it's the warmest, happiest sound in the world. “You heard about that?”

“
Everyone
heard about that.”

“Oh.” And for a second he looks almost sad, but it passes before I can ask him about it. “Yeah, so I went to Samoa to visit my family this summer. My cousin, Tupe, he's a few years older than me, he was getting his
pe'a
—it's this tattoo that wraps around your whole body from your waist to your knees. It's kind of like a rite of passage. It takes a really long time, and it hurts like crazy, so I told him stories and stuff during a lot of it. That's as close as I came to getting a tattoo.”

“So that's where the rumor comes from.”

“Yeah. I want to get one, though. Someday. It's a really big deal in my family.” He polishes off the last of the juice. “Mom says I have to wait until I'm done growing though. Hey, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yeah?” The first-date flutters come back with a vengeance. I feel there is a high probability of
me running into things.

“You remember those kids I was talking about at FMF, right?”

“Sure, I was hoping to get involved with that.”

His grin lights up the entire hallway—seriously, I think it could power a continent. “Right on. Well, I'm going to see them tomorrow after practice, and we were going to play football again. Some of the girls are into it, but I can tell some of them are really bored, and I was thinking since you're a dancer . . . ?”

“Totally! I would love to come do some dance stuff with them!”

“Okay. Well, cool.”

“Yeah, cool.”

He nods, that grin still shining on his face like a beacon. “Cool,” he says again.

I feel suddenly and supremely shy, like I've been struck with a disease that makes me incapable of speech, and my hands are these huge awkward things that wave around of their own accord, never finding a place to rest. So, I settle for smiling, trying for a good closed-lip one that will make me look friendly but not constipated. But one look at his face, and my smile bursts at the seams, and it's broadcasting all of my secrets, and if I don't shut it down soon, he's going to know I spent three whole minutes of our study session thinking about orange juice-flavored kisses. Mercifully, the bell rings. We go our separate ways, Rey calling good luck to me as I walk the long hallway to geometry.

Karl falls into step beside me. “Peyton, can I talk to you?
Now
.”