by Tara Brown
“Andy, I don’t care why she started it,” I groaned, wiping my eyes. “I don’t care that some asshole cheated on her in high school. I care that she’s currently sleeping with my boyfriend. I care that they were fucking on my goddamn sheets. The sheets I just bought and—”
“Cherry, take a breath. If you’re crying, you’re losing it.”
I heaved, realizing I was blind with rage and tears.
“If you can’t get past this with a simple cake, then I don’t know what to say. If I ever make the mistake of falling in love again, it’ll be with some girl in a different financial bracket. This is why we don’t date our kind.”
“Yeah, great advice now!” I spit my words, feeling the fury building.
“Don’t lose control! You’re in public, and you’re a Kennedy for God’s sake. We don’t lose it in front of strangers. Plus, you’ll be upset you didn’t cry in the shower like a winner.”
“Shut up!” I hated him sometimes.
“Cherry, getting upset and ruining your summer is pointless; you’re the only one who suffers. They’ll win. They’ll ruin your last summer before college is over and the real world hits. Don’t let them do that to you.”
“What should I do then?” I burst again, sobbing.
“I don’t know. Maybe take her down. Get revenge. Just whatever you do, don’t go back to that moron, Chatsworth. The guy’s an asshole.”
“I won’t.” I sighed. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I’ll text you later.”
“Trust me, eat the cake. It will make you feel better. Do that before you do anything else. My friend Angela swears by it.” He laughed bitterly and hung up.
But I didn’t focus on the cake or the bath or the wine. My mind was stuck on the one thing Andy had said that was useful, on repeat.
Get revenge.
And I would.
Chapter Two
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Cherry
A week later, I stared at the boxes, contemplating how long it would take for the movers to load them up and hoping I still had a few hours before Andy arrived with our chauffeur. I needed to run to the coffee shop with my laptop and post the help-wanted ad my little sister, Ella, had insisted our plot required.
Pacing, I tapped my finger against my lip, finalizing what the ad would say. Ella hadn’t given me all the details, but she assured me what she had in the works would ruin both Cait and Griffin. And she was merciless when it came to the upper crust. She was merciless period. It helped that she hated Cait, the mean girls, elitist attitudes, conformity, and being born with a silver spoon. Anarchy was her ultimate goal.
My phone vibrated on the counter behind me, no doubt another message from Griffin.
My cold and concise breakup text hadn’t been well received. I wasn’t sure what Griffin would say or think, being dumped by text after six months, and so soon after I’d said “I love you” back. But I didn’t care.
From what I could tell, he was crushed, devastated even, that this end had come out of nowhere. He was legitimately surprised that I could possibly not want him. Considering I broke up with him the day after I caught him cheating, I really thought he’d be capable of putting two and two together. I wondered if he didn’t suspect that, just maybe, I’d discovered that he was sleeping with my “friend.”
Apparently he was not as bright as I’d ever given him credit for.
No, instead he acted like he was the one who had been wronged.
Frankly, from the moment I sent the breakup text, I forced myself not to care what he thought or how he felt.
Growing up in a world where arranged marriages were still a thing, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t ever be that girlfriend, fiancée, or wife. The one who quietly looked the other way. The one who pretended things were perfect, smoothed her dress and her hair and all the wrinkles on her face. The one who lied to her reflection when she whispered that it was just sex; it meant nothing. A common problem when business was the focus of the joining families, and not love. No, growing up I knew I was surrounded by many self-important men who used sex as a reward for success or a way to blow off steam, or even as a rebellious act against the system they kept perpetuating.
I also was never going to be like my father, suffering through a loveless marriage for the sake of appearances.
“Cherry?” A voice I knew called from the hallway to the open door of my apartment. “Are you ready or what?”
“Andy?” I scowled, unsure why he was here so soon. He wasn’t supposed to be here for hours.
“No, your conscience has started sounding like me.” Andy lifted an impatient eyebrow as he got to the door of my apartment. “We’ve been waiting for ten minutes. I texted you before we left Harvard. I got finished early. Hans is downstairs with the car. Let’s go.”
“I didn’t realize you were coming so soon—I missed the text. You guys go on ahead. I’ll take the train.” I winced, not wanting him to know why I was staying behind. “I’m not done packing up.”
“Looks like you’re done. Or is it that you’re not ready to leave here, being so close to Boston?” Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Have you gone to see him? Or agreed to see him? Christ, you’re not taking him back, are you?”
“No! I don’t care about Griffin.” It was only a little lie. “I’m just not ready to go home yet.”
“Why? What’s going on?” He stepped closer, coming into the foyer of the apartment and closing the door. “Don’t lie.” He knew me too well. “What’s that look in your eyes? Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing.” I swatted at him.
“Spill, now, or you won’t leave the apartment alive.” He used the bossy tone I didn’t enjoy.
“Honestly, it’s nothing.”
“Cherry,” he warned, lowering his voice even more.
“Really, it’s nothing. I’m just going to take your advice is all.” I didn’t know how else to say it.
“Which advice? Some of it’s pretty bad.” He tilted his head skeptically.
“The uh—revenge advice.” My words became a near whisper.
“Oh, that advice.” He cringed. “That was bad advice. Ignore that. Did you try cake? We can go get some cake now and eat it in the car on the way home.”
“No. God, I don’t want cake. Dessert doesn’t solve everything. It’s like you want me to get fat.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?” he said seriously.
“Shut up.” I stepped back as he reached for my arm. “I’m going to take Cait down, Andy. She’s done ruling over my life and everyone else’s.”
“How do you propose doing that?” he asked dubiously.
“I have a plan.” I said it confidently, as if I’d come up with it on my own.
“What plan?”
“I’m going to make her break all the rules of Fling Club. Publicly. I’m going to humiliate her and ruin the stupid club altogether.” I whispered, not even wanting the walls to hear this. “I’m thinking about finding a scholarship student from a community college and paying him to date her for the summer while he pretends to be a wealthy European. And then, I’ll be able to prove that she’s a fraud and a bully. I just need to slip down to the café and use the Wi-Fi to post the ad.”
“Genius!” He burst out laughing and clapping. “Fucking genius! I love it. When do we start?”
“We?”
“Oh, I want in on this. It’s brilliant. How did you think of it?”
“Well, Ella pointed out that Cait always goes for guys who show an interest in me. She takes them every summer, which we all know she does. It’s part of the sick little game we all play as the cost of being popular and liked by Cait: pretend to have interest in a guy, let Cait take him, then go for the one you actually want. Griffin was the first one she didn’t go after publicly, but she betrayed me behind my back. It wasn’t a game this time, though. He’s my boyfriend—was my boyfriend. Not some fling. Anyway, all I have to do is make the guy I choose hit on me in front of
her—”
“Seriously, Cherry,” he interrupted, “this is the best idea you’ve ever had.” A wide grin cracked across his face as he beamed at me. “But forget the community college; go for the gold on this one. Nothing pisses the rich elite off more than MIT. We’ll go there. Find some middle-class nerd and make him the handsome prince for the summer.” He started to laugh. “Oh, God, this is good. I always thought you had some sharp edges in you; I’m glad to see they’re finally poking out.”
“Well, ugh . . . it was actually Ella’s idea,” I offered weakly, wishing I could take credit for it.
“Right.” He said it like that made more sense. “I guess I should have known. She has the darkest soul of anyone we know.”
“Besides Cait.”
“That’s assuming Cait has a soul at all.” He chuckled again. “When did you talk to Ella?”
“On the train after I talked to you. I called and asked what would be the one thing that would ruin Cait Landry. She instantly went for the Fling Club.”
“Slut club, Cherry. Call it like it is.”
“How is it a slut club, moron?” I snapped back, still a little protective of the club and adverse to that word in all its connotations. “The girls pick one guy for the summer and take him to all the festivities. How is that slutty? And why aren’t the guys slutty? If slut club were a thing, it would be filled with egotistical men who like to play ladies. Not the reverse.”
“It rolls off the tongue smoother than ball-buster club.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on. I’ll make up an excuse for Hans to make a quick pit stop at MIT so you can post on the community Post-it board.”
“The what?”
“The Post-it note wall.” He said it like I should know.
“What’s that?”
“Seriously? You all-girls-school chicks are deprived.” He grabbed my arm, handbag, and cell phone and dragged me from the apartment as the movers passed us in the halls. “I get that it’s not as necessary to have a Post-it note wall here at an all-girls college, what with the lack of hormonal teenagers and diversity in gender. But surely you’ve heard about them out in the real world?” He side-eyed me with his usual big-brother shittiness.
“No, I haven’t. And we have a few guys here, FYI. This is the real world, dick. Just because we don’t drug each other and dry hump at parties doesn’t mean we aren’t having fun.” My tone grew defensive just as his got aggressive. It was our brother-sister dance.
“Dry humping is the stuff of life, Cherry; you ladies are missing out. And don’t try to tell me some of the girls aren’t dry humping.”
“Andy!”
“What?” He poked my arm. “It’s true. Anyway, back to the important stuff. All you do is post something on the Post-it wall, and someone will answer your note. It can be anything: a bottle of wine you recommend, a rant, help wanted, or a for-sale item. Sometimes we have poetry on ours, or people bitching about professors, or students ass kissing, or TAs being annoyingly passive-aggressive.” He laughed at that one, like maybe he’d left a few of those messages himself. “People can answer by either sticking a Post-it note to your original post and making a chain, or they can text the phone number or email address you’ve left behind. It’s like old-fashioned communication in an era overburdened by technology.”
“That sounds weird and archaic.”
“Look at you, using big-girl words! Well done.” He nudged me. “It is archaic—that’s the point. It’s ironic and anonymous. But I think your best bet is to advertise the position there. It’ll be simple. You write the note and leave an email address; that way you don’t have to keep coming back to Boston to check the wall for a chain of responses. They’ll email you, we’ll set up some interviews, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“What?”
“Nothing. One of my TAs is British. He says it a lot.”
“What are you talking about?” He drove me insane with his random shit.
“The Post-it wall.”
“I know that. I mean the rest of it. Can you focus on one thing at a time?”
“Too fast for ya? I can slow it down.”
“Shut up, Andy.” I was already emotionally exhausted before he got here; ten minutes of him and I was ready to nap.
“On the note, you need to write that you’re looking for a guy to make a fool of someone. Specify that it’s a revenge plot so the guy knows what he’s signing up for.” He opened the limo door for me and grinned. “I can’t believe we’re finally doing this.”
“Finally doing what?”
“Finally destroying Cait.”
“Jesus.” I scowled. “How much thought have you put into your own revenge plot against Cait?” I feared the answer.
“More than you can imagine,” he offered, then shut my door.
Cait had broken Andy’s heart years ago. They’d dated early in high school until he found out she was also seeing a guy in Italy. He’d hated her ever since, and of course hated Fling Club from the moment of its inception. Being one of her exes meant no club member in our part of the Hamptons would be allowed to touch him. It was a rule. While no one outside of the club knew the actual rules, but the guys we dated started to guess after a few seasons. Some rules were more obvious than others.
Andy got in on the other side, grinning. “We’re going to have to be picky when it comes to our selection. We need someone who can be made handsome enough that Cait will want him. Have you seen the guys at MIT? They’re not exactly used to interacting with members of the opposite sex, if you know what I mean.”
“Since when are you a specialist on hot guys?” I laughed for the first time since walking in on the freak show in Griffin’s bedroom.
“I have no issue admitting a guy’s hot. It’s called self-confidence. And the guys at MIT are known for brains, not brawn or chiseled jawlines. It reminds me of troll hall back there.” He pointed at my school.
“Andy!”
“What?” He ignored me and carried on. “It’s a shame we’re asking some smart guy to dumb it down for the summer. I don’t think Cait cares about brains. In fact, I suspect she prefers her men without them.”
“Present company included,” I teased.
“She cheated on me, so I doubt it. It was probably because I was too smart.”
“And modest, but you tell yourself whatever you need to.” I rolled my eyes.
“I will. Anyway, you’re going to have to glow up some geek. Do you have a plan for that?”
“No. I never thought about the makeover much. Ella just said I needed to find a guy who was middle class, attractive, in need of money, and had a moral compass that pointed south. Or who was at least morally flexible.”
“He definitely needs to despise the elite if he’s going to be able to resist falling for Cait. She’s rich, gorgeous, confident, and sexy. He needs to know his one job is wooing the ice queen without falling for her.”
“That’s true.” I cringed, realizing that might be impossible for any guy. “Maybe—”
“Trust me, this is why we tell him the truth—all of it. No guy deserves to go into this blindly. Keeping him from her evil clutches and not having him turn on us will be my job. I’ll befriend him and keep him on the straight and narrow. Mom’s been nagging me to come home early and house-sit, so he can stay with me. This way we don’t have some stranger in our guesthouse.”
“I don’t think I can do this.” A wave of nausea hit me as the car got smaller and the temperature rose. I hadn’t even considered what would happen if our mystery man turned on us and Cait crushed me. What if I ended up the big loser? Again. Who was I kidding, I couldn’t go up against Cait.
“Really?” Andy lifted a dark eyebrow. “You don’t think you can get revenge against the girl who pretended to be your friend while she slept with the first guy you ever loved?”
“I did-didn’t.” I couldn’t even say it.
“Okay. Fine. Stay in denial. We can just go home, and you can continue being her little bitch, and when sh
e chooses the guy you like again this summer, you can roll over for the seventh year in a row. Shit, maybe you can just introduce them and give them permission to bang behind your back.” He leaned in, hissing in my face, “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“I have spent half my life watching that hateful witch use and abuse you. She’s made you her little whipping girl. You and all your stupid friends. She doesn’t say jump; you bitches just hang around jumping all day in case she wants you to. I never imagined we’d get you out from under her. Now that you see what a terrible person she is, surely you can’t want to go back to that life?” He was impassioned on the subject, more than I’d ever seen him.
“No.” I admitted it. I admitted to myself she had been cruelly abusing me for years. That I had done things because she was the queen bee and I was a worker bee.
“Good, because it’s depressing to watch your sister lose herself when the girl she worships tells her she isn’t good enough. Between Cait and Mommy dearest, you’ve been a vapid waste of flesh for years.” He’d hit below the belt. But maybe I needed a painful blow.
He was right. I couldn’t let her win. Not this time. Griffin wasn’t the first boy Cait had stolen from me. He was just the first one I cared about. “I can do this.” I mustered fake strength and pretended I was like Ella, that I didn’t care what anyone else thought or did.
“It’s going to be easier than you think. Trust me. You have me, and you have Ella.” He sat back, plotting so loud I could almost hear it. “And that’s as good as making a deal with the devil. You need to find some of that savage redhead strength all the other gingers have.” He laughed at his own joke.
It wasn’t easy being calm, even in my own head, but by the time we got to MIT, I’d come to terms with the fact that Cait was going down.
