The Revenge Playbook (34 page)

“I'm Ana Cardoso. I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell you because you already know who I am and you already know I was part of this whole football team revenge thing. But I need you to know why. A lot of you have ideas about me. That I'm a slut and a liar and a life ruiner. And I need everyone to know the truth.”

Don't cry. Don't. Take a deep breath. You can do this.
I tell the camera what happened. The abridged version, not the gory details, but enough to know that Chad MacAllistair is not the shining prince they believe him to be. I also tell all about what it feels like being on date-rape drugs because I want every girl watching this to understand and get help if the same thing happens to her. I have to pause a couple of times when the memories feel like living things, dark winged demons slashing through the musty garage air. I nod when I'm finished, and Melanie Jane stops the camera.

I have done it. I have ripped out my own heart and videotaped the darkest parts of it. I'm about to put it on display for everyone to judge. I don't know what I'll do if people see it and still take his side. I try not to think about that. I try to focus on the one girl, more than one if I'm lucky, that could have her life changed by what I've done. Then, I collapse on the floor of my garage and burst into tears. Melanie Jane sits down beside me and pulls me into a fierce hug and whispers, “You are the bravest person I know, and I love you.”

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At first it's such a disappointment. Everything is exactly the same. I don't know what I was expecting. That we'd walk into class and people would start clapping? Yeah. Something cheesy like that.

But then things begin to happen, like ripples in a pond. Trevor and Liv holding hands together
without any backlash. A school board meeting about the football team's policy on hazing. And every now and then, someone will pull me aside. A freshman girl to say she thinks I'm brave. Grayson to tell me he hasn't been picked on all week. These are not small things. But I want more. I want football players to be treated like everybody else, and for the guys at this school to realize that rape culture isn't something feminists invented so they could have something new to be pissed about, and so many other things I don't even have words for yet. And most of all, I want to make sure no other girls have to go through anything like what any of us went through. That's why we're here at Jake's tonight.

The four of us are holed up in the room where it all started, crowded around the coffee table. I work on another entry in the scrapbook we're making—the book we hope will change everything. We've spent the night carefully cataloguing our secrets for any girls who come after us. Melanie Jane leans over me with a glue stick, not bothering to hide her finger as she slathers a border of glue around what I just wrote. Because if every page isn't coated in a metric ton of glitter, the message will surely be lost. Liv is demanding to go next, in between stealing bites of Peyton's ice cream. All of us are talking over each other, but in the good way. Melanie Jane says they have a word for it in Denmark:
hygge
. The cozy, intimate feeling that wraps around you like a hug when you're surrounded by your best friends and doing things like eating ice cream and laughing.

“You're going to come over to my house and get ready for the concert with me, right?” Liv asks Peyton.

Peyton passes me a cup of gel pens. “Of course. I'm so excited, I've been listening to her new song on repeat. I still can't believe you convinced Rey and Trevor to go to a Lilah Montgomery concert, and—dude! Stop stealing my ice cream!”

“Did I tell y'all Principal Corso is coming after us again?” Melanie Jane adjusts the green beaded necklace she's wearing. I picked it up at an antique shop, and I made her borrow it because it totally matches her eyes.

I don't even try to suppress my smirk. “Haven't they realized that going against you doesn't work out for them yet?”

She grins. “Right? They keep making empty threats, and I keep leaving the website up. Oh. But I did have to listen to this hour-long lecture from my dad on how”—she makes air quotes—“once you put something on the internet, it can't be undone.”

Liv puts an arm around her. “And we appreciate the hardship you went through.”

I laugh, but her dad is kind of right. The police opened an official investigation because of what I said about Chad in my vlog. Another girl came forward. My dad ungrounded me and clutched me to him like a rag doll and cried that he was so sorry he couldn't protect me. He said he would move heaven and earth to make sure that boy paid for what he did. I haven't decided how I feel about the investigation yet, but I know who will help me figure it out.

I finish my entry and close the scrapbook before handing it to Liv. The words
THE REVENGE PLAYBOOK
shine out at me from the front cover, filling me with hope. We aren't the same people we
were in August. I don't know what's going to happen next week, or next year, or even tomorrow. All I know is that we're here, together, today. And that's enough.

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[Acknowledgments tk]

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RACHAEL ALLEN
lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, two children, and two sled dogs. In addition to being a YA writer, she's a mad scientist, a rabid Falcons fan, an expert dare list maker, and a hugger. Rachael is the author of
17 First Kisses
.

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HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

THE REVENGE PLAYBOOK
. Copyright © 2015 by Rachael Allen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress catalog card number:

ISBN 978-0-06-228136-4 (pbk.)

EPub Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062385031

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FIRST EDITION

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