The Revenge Playbook (6 page)

“No. My mom's picking me up.”
I don't need you anymore.
“Bye, Karl.”

I turn and don't let myself look back. I'm breathing like a gazelle that just outran a tiger, but I walk away feeling stronger with every step. Each day, more of the invisible strings between us snap. When I get to the turnaround at the front of the school, I sit down on a planter and pull my knees to my chest. I'm shaking, but I'm smiling.

I did it.

And I think I sounded kind of tough too.

I stare out at the bumper-to-bumper pickup traffic and my mind replays the conversation I just had with Karl and that gets me thinking about my name on the dance team list which gives me chill bumps even though it's 92 degrees outside and humid but also takes me back to last year's dance team tryouts and the reason I didn't audition.

It started at this youth group lock-in, the summer before ninth grade. Fifty-seven middle schoolers packed into a church gym, hopped up on Mountain Dew and hormones. The boys were mostly playing basketball. Not, like, a real game, just trying to hit threes and goofy trick shots. Leaving their arms hanging in the air a second too long after they made it and checking over their shoulders to see if any girls were watching. There were people playing air hockey and listening to music, and a few of the sixth graders had already passed out in their sleeping bags in the room set aside for lock-in wimps. Some of the chaperones played alongside us, but most of them had more important things to tend to. Chiefly among them:

1.
  
   Keeping Jimmy Ferraro from breaking any more church windows and/or bones.

2.
  
   Drinking coffee and looking very tired.

3.
  
   Making sure none of the couples disappeared because if two teenagers of the opposite sex were left alone in a room for more than five minutes, God would surely smite us all.

A few of us girls practiced cheerleading jumps and dance moves on the carpet behind one of the basketball goals.

“Your toe-touches are really good,” said one of the girls, Mandy, who was captain of the eighth-grade cheerleading squad.

I blushed. “Aw, thanks. I stretch, like, every day.”

“She choreographs her own dances too!” said Candace. “Show them the one you showed me yesterday!”

“Okay!” I squealed, partly because I was excited and partly because Candace and I had just split a Nerds Rope.

A pop song blared over the gym speakers. It was a little bouncy for this dance, but fast enough that it would still work.

I took a deep breath and bobbed my head to the music for a second. I knew this dance cold, I made the thing up, but Mandy was about the coolest person who had ever talked to me, so I didn't want to screw it up in front of her. And then I was flying through the steps, pumping my fists and shaking my hips, and the leaps—oh, the leaps in this dance. By the time I finished, Mandy's mouth was open, and she was all, “That was awesome!” And there were boys hollering things at me from
the basketball court. I was grinning like crazy.

Until a hand clamped down on my shoulder.

“You need to come with me,” said Mrs. Bellcamp, one of the unhappier-looking chaperones.

And it's not like she dragged me off by my ear or anything, but that's sure what it felt like. She got me alone in the kitchen, and man, did she ever start in on me. The way I was dancing was wrong, did I know that? I was sinning, and I was causing all those boys watching me to sin too. And if she had just asked me not to do any more dancing at the lock-in, I would have listened. But the things she was saying, I had to fight back. At first, anyway. It was like she was telling me I was morally deficient, and she wouldn't be satisfied until I agreed with her. We weren't arguing about dancing anymore but about my value as a person. And I wasn't a bad person. I knew it. But when I talked to Karl about it the next day, he had all these reasons, and they seemed like good ones. And somehow I ended up feeling bad enough that I stopped dancing.

I'm doing everything I'm supposed to. I already had a snack, I've got my rain-forest sounds playing, and I'm sitting at my desk with my homework notebook open and my laptop and phone stowed safely downstairs. But so far, all I've accomplished is turning to the correct page of my textbook and reading the first problem of tonight's geometry homework approximately eighty-seven times. Between Karl and dance team, I was doomed before I started.

I sigh and begin attempt number eighty-eight.

1. State whether the figure is a line, a ray, or a segment.

Finally,
finally
, I am able to block out the dog barking next door and my conversation with Karl and the annoying way my sleeves brush against my wrists whenever I move my arms. A ray! The point on one side and the little arrow on the other means it's a ray! I write
ray
beside the figure and then I get to thinking about this guy I saw at youth group last week who I think is named Ray only maybe it's spelled Rey and I wonder if it means anything different when it's spelled with an
e
and I wonder if he was really smiling at me or some hot girl I couldn't see but assume was hovering nearby and—

“Peyton?” I hear the door close downstairs and know my mom is home. “I've got dinner.”

I realize my hand is still holding my pencil, and I've only written the letters
R A
. I roll my eyes and add a
Y
before I clomp downstairs.

“What'd you get?” I ask.

“I went to that little Greek place in Dawsonville,” she replies, setting two plates with gyro sandwiches on the kitchen table.

She's already changed out of her work clothes and is currently wearing my red halter top, but I let it slide because there's baklava.

I slather tzatziki sauce onto my sandwich. “I can't wait to see what we do at practice tomorrow. I'm so excited!”

The corners of Mama's mouth turn upward in a sly smile. “You might have mentioned that.”

I blush. “Sorry.”

I've been like this since she picked me up from practice. She'll say something, and I'll respond with some completely unrelated piece of information about the dance team.

I'm thinking of dyeing my hair red.
Dance team!

I can't believe how hot it's been this summer.
Dance team!

Have you talked to your dad recently?
Pause to feel awkward because what she really wants to know is whether he's been on a date lately. Dance team!

“It's okay. It makes me happy to see you so happy.” She gets up because we both need napkins.

“Thanks. I am. Happy, I mean. With dance team. And . . . and because of other stuff.”

She says the part I didn't. “Since you and Karl broke up. I've noticed.” She smiles. “You've started singing in the shower again.”

“I sing in the shower?” How. Embarrassing.

“You do. Loudly. And off-key.” She kisses the top of my head. “And I love it.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I
had hoped a summer would help people forget. It didn't. The first week of school is no different from any of the weeks last year. When I'm at my locker switching books, a football player leans in and whispers, “Slut,” before continuing down the hallway.
Idiota,
I whisper back. I only whisper it in my head, but it still helps. A couple cheerleader girls who are friends with Melanie Jane give me dirty looks as I pass them.
Malevolent hags
. It's been almost a year since the Party-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, and my subsequent departure from the cheerleading squad, but it may as well have been last month. At least I still have my guys—the merry band of nerds I've belonged to since diapers. I can get through anything with them.

I get a text from Melanie Jane (only it shows up in my phone as
THE DEVIL
) while I'm weaving through school to get to the parking lot. It's to all three of us.

Recon this weekend! Don't forget!

Seeing her picture pop up on my screen after all this time is like an electric shock. I think about what she did to me, and my teeth clench, and I want to throw my phone against the wall. As much as I want to get revenge on the football team, I don't know if it's worth teaming up with my former BFF–current nemesis. Getting texts from her. Planning check-in meetings. Having to listen to her yammer on about stupid pageant crap. I am very tempted to text back something along the lines of “Screw this. I'm out.” when I run into a burly shoulder.

“Excuse you,” says the voice I hear in my nightmares.

Chad MacAllistair stands in front of me, and life stops for one terrifying second, and I think I
might vomit and cry and claw his eyes out all at the same time. A glimmer of recognition flickers in his eyes. “Oh, hey, Ana.”

He takes a step closer. The apparent safety of the open hallway is an illusion. I hate hearing him say my name. Seeing him smile that half smile like he didn't tear my entire world apart. Like I don't know what kind of person he really is. Part of me wants to run away and never look back. The other part wants to strap him to a medieval torture device until he tells me every last thing that happened that night.

“Okay, well, I'll see you,” he says. And just like that he's gone. Not another look. Not another thought. Because even though he did what he did, everything is always totally freaking peachy in Chad MacAllistair land.

Joining forces with Melanie Jane is worth getting even with him.
Anything
would be worth getting even with him. I text back:

I'm on it.

I know it's kind of dumb. An inflated piece of pigskin isn't going to counterbalance what happened to me—I don't care if it is the Football of '76. The scars I'm hiding are bigger than the ones you get from being called a slut or getting dumped by your loser boyfriend. A silly little revenge plot isn't going to erase them. But the idea of being united instead of facing the great heaving darkness alone? That feels like it could change everything.

I drive shakily to Jake's to put in a couple hours and pick up my pay stub before heading home—being the first sophomore with a license is one of the few perks of getting held back because of my English when we moved here in second grade. Shouts are coming from my backyard when I pull into the driveway, so I follow the noises through the grass along the side of the house. The kitchen window is cracked, and the smell of
feijoada
tumbles out—I can practically taste the black beans and pork trimmings. My embarrassingly PDA parents are drinking red wine and looking like they might eat each other instead of the food.

I round the corner of the house and burst out laughing at the scene that is currently taking place in my backyard. Grayson is trying on an embroidered jacket, Toby is making dragon eggs, Isaiah is slashing at the air with a fake sword, and Matthew is filming it all with a digital video camera.

“Ana!” they yell when they see me.

I hop over and give each one a squeeze. These are my boys. My best and truest friends. They were there for me when I made the cheerleading squad in seventh grade—thus unexpectedly catapulting myself into the popular-kid stratosphere—and they are still here for me now, after my fall from grace.

“How are we doing?” I ask, digging around in my bag for my new lip balm.

“Pretty good,” says Grayson. “The first couple episodes are going to be brutal, but after that we won't have as many new props and costumes to make, so it'll get a lot easier.”

We have this year-long assignment for our broadcasting class: start a vlog and post a one-to-five-minute video each week. Naturally, we decided to reenact
Game of Thrones
, Season 1, in
one-minute episodes. We're also posting clips of how we're making some of the props and stuff.

“Cool. Well, I can help out for most of tonight.” I grab a box of thumbtacks and carry it over to Toby. “What's up, Tobes? Need some help?”

“Sure.”

He passes me a Styrofoam egg, and I get to work pushing in thumbtacks so they look like tiny scales. It's monotonous work but not in a bad way.

“Are we painting them today too?” I ask Toby after a few minutes.

He doesn't answer, so I push his shoulder. “Toby?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” He rubs at his eyes. “Man, I'm tired.”

“Why are you so tired? School just started. Are you addicted to video games again?” I tease.

He fumbles with his handful of thumbtacks and almost drops them. “No, but I had to, like, assist a friend with something late last night.”

“That's the sketchiest thing I've ever heard.”

His face is turning redder by the second. “Oh, no. It's nothing bad. It's nothing bad.”

I laugh. “What, are you a drug dealer now?”

“It's nothing bad. I just don't want to tell you.” He goes back to his dragon egg.

“Yeah, I'm just gonna assume you're a drug dealer until you tell me otherwise,” I say. “You can't bring something like this up and not tell me.”

Toby sighs. “Well, it's just that I have a new girlfriend, so I need to spend a lot of time with her. Cool?”

Like with a question mark. Like he's asking me if it's cool.

This time I force myself to keep the laughter on the inside. “Yeah. Yeah, that is very cool.”

He gets this smug grin that is both goofy and adorable. “Thanks. For some reason, I just didn't want to tell you.”

This does not surprise me. I'm always having to convince one or another of them that they are not in love with me. I don't mean for it to sound like I'm some great beauty. It's just that I'm the only girl most of them have regular contact with, so it's not all that surprising that at some point they have all confessed their undying devotion. Except Grayson. Based on the number of times he's fought me over who gets to be Princess Daenerys, I suspect there is something he hasn't told us yet.