The Revenge Playbook

by Rachael Allen

  They are on me the moment I open the front door.

  “Where have you been?” Mama calls from the kitchen. “Cheerleading practice ended over an hour ago.”

  I find her making homemade salad dressing. (Hers is so much tastier than store-bought.) Daddy is on the back deck manning the grill, but he comes inside when he sees me.

  “Hey, princess.”

  “Hey.” I give him a hug. “Weston and I were at Jake’s getting ice cream,” I tell Mama.

  “You ate ice cream? Miss Nashville is right around the corner.”

  I roll my eyes. “Mama, it’s still weeks away. One bowl of ice cream isn’t going to ruin my chances.”

  She shakes her head, her glossy black hair reflecting the light. “That’s the kind of attitude that gets you first runner-up. The judges expect perfection.”

  “Mama, I—”

  “That reminds me, your pageant coach is coming over tomorrow, so make sure to come home right after practice.”

  I wrinkle my nose where she can’t see. I hate meeting with my pageant coach. She’s always trying to make me memorize canned answers to questions on current events (um, hi, unlike all those other girls you coach, I have strong opinions about things like global economics and the state of our education system, so you can peddle world peace somewhere else), or worse, find ways to help me capitalize on the fact that I’m 25 percent Cherokee, which makes me feel 100 percent gross. “Mama.”

  “And when was the last time we deep conditioned your hair? It’s looking a little damaged.”

  “Mom.”

  “I’ll set up an appointment with Charmaine.” She squints at my forehead. “I think you’re getting a breakout. You should—”

  “Weston dumped me!”

  My parents stare at me in shock. “He did?”

  I nod pitifully. “In front of Ana Cardoso.”

  Mama makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “That girl dresses like a heathen, bless her heart.”

  I feel deflated. I pull up a bar stool and slump into it, my perfect posture shot all to hell. “It was awful.”

  “Why would anyone ever dump you?” says Daddy.

  “He always seemed like the nicest boy. I can’t believe he would do something like that,” says Mama.

  “That boy is obviously a dumbass,” says Daddy. “Do you want me to kill him?”

  I shake my head, but it makes me smile because my dad could never hurt anyone. Mama, on the other hand . . .

  “What happened?” she asks.

  I can’t tell them the real reason. Talking about sex with your parents is worse than Chinese water torture. “Um.”

  Daddy puts his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay, princess?”

  “Um.” And then for the first time today, tears fill my eyes.

  Daddy runs to get a glass from the cabinet. “Do you want some water?”

  “You need to drink something,” says Mama.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  “I have some that I made with agave nectar,” she says. “There’s hardly any calories.”

  “How about some juice?”

  “Juice has too much sugar.”

  I cry harder.

  Mama makes her solving-a-problem face, probably because I’ve never cried this much over a boy. Not since that thing that happened last year with Ana anyway. “What’s wrong? Did you do something?”

  I stare at her, my mouth wide open. Seriously?

  “What? What did you do?”

  And then I explode. “Of course you think I did something. Of course you think it’s all my fault because you could never believe a sweet Southern gentleman like Weston could do anything wrong. Well, he is not as sweet as you think. And this is not my fault.” Daddy still hovers with the glass, now filled with tea. “And I don’t want anything to drink!”

  I flounce upstairs to my room, really unleashing my inner pageant diva with foot stomps and door slams. It feels good. Not quite as cathartic as going off on my parents, but good. I flop onto my four-poster bed and bury my face in my pillow. I wonder if the boys I dumped felt this bad when I dumped them. A few minutes later, I hear a quiet knock at the door.

  “Mel Belle?” says Daddy. “Can I come in?”

  I lift my head just long enough to say, “Not now, okay?” before letting it squish back into my pillow.

  “I’m just going to leave a tray outside for you, then.”

  After I hear him go back downstairs, I open the door, and my heart melts. There is a glass of tea, a plate with some Tagalongs (my most favorite of Girl Scout cookies—how he has managed to hide them from Mama’s sugar purges, I’ll never know), and a note, smiley face included.

  I’m sorry we upset you. Please come down to dinner soon. Love, Dad

  P.S. That boy really is a dumbass. ☺

  Daddy’s note gets me crying all over again. My parents really are sweet in their own suffocating way. I pull the tray inside and drink the tea and eat the cookies. Just two though. I don’t want to have to worry about Kummerspeck on top of everything else. (Side note: whoever it was in Germany that thought up a word that (A) means the weight you gain from emotional bingeing and (B) literally translates to “grief bacon” is a genius.) The tears trickle off, because really, who can cry when they’re thinking about bacon?

  I stand in front of the mirror, taking in my puffy eyes and red nose. Do you see how hideous crying makes you look? Don’t do it! Especially not over Weston. He had an eight-month expiration date—he is totally not worth a Scarlett O’Hara tomorrow-is-another-day scene.

  Scarlett had that part of it right though. Tomorrow is another day. And I will go to that party next weekend and pick out another boyfriend, and then I will find a way to steal that stupid football and make Weston sorry he ever dumped me for a bunch of sweaty guys.

  Wednesday, August 12

  PEYTON

  The list is up. People have been stalking the bulletin board all day, but the coaches waited until the very last bell so as not to interfere with any learning. Because you totally learn a lot on the first day of school. Now the first day is over, and I can see the white sheet of paper flapping in the school’s subzero air-conditioning. Girls on either side of it are jumping up and down and squealing. Or crying.

  I stare at the list from across the hall and work up the courage to walk to the bulletin board. If I were still with Karl, I wouldn’t have to make the walk by myself. I miss having someone to be here with me. I don’t miss what came along with it. Sometimes you think someone is holding your hand when really they’re holding you back.

  “I can do it myself,” I whisper, but my heartbeat disagrees. As I walk through the sea of girls surrounding the list, I assess the butterflies in my stomach. Today’s feel like monarchs.

  I approach the list. Search for my name.

  PEYTON REED.

  There it is! I touch my index finger beside it just to make sure it’s real. As I turn around, a huge grin plasters itself across my face. You know, the kind that makes you look goofy when you’re trying to appear calm and sophisticated? That’s the one. I am a Ranburne High Pink Panther. And I made three new friends this week. Not that that was the only reason I agreed to be part of the football team revenge plot. I mean, it was part of it, for sure. Ever since Candace moved away, I’ve been hoping to find that kind of friendship again. But I really do think things are screwed up at our school, and I really do love the idea of being part of something that could change that. This week is everything I wanted but never thought I could have. My grin gets, if possible, even bigger and goofier.

  And then I am on the floor.

  From a hug—at least I think this was meant to be a hug. It could also be a mauling.

  “You made the dance team! I am so excited! You were the best in my group!” Liv squeals all of this rapid fire into my ear. It feels awesome.

  “I can’t even believe it,” I say as I untangle the two of us and help her up.

  “You’ll believe it when Coach
Tanner kicks your butt at practice tomorrow.”

  I grin, excited at the prospect of getting my butt kicked by dance.

  But something’s off. I feel him watching me before I see him, almost like my body is programmed to be on edge whenever he’s within a thirty-foot radius. I search the hallways and, sure enough, Karl is standing by the double doors leading to the parking lot.

  “I better go,” I tell Liv. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Okay! And you have to come over to my house this Friday to get ready for the party, okay? My friend Marley’s coming, and I really want you both to be friends too!” says Liv, bouncing forward on the balls of her feet.

  “Definitely.” I can’t help but smile even though Karl is still waiting for me.

  I pace over to him, hoping we’re far enough away that none of the dance team girls will hear us if things get ugly.

  “Hi,” I say, for some reason feeling the need to stretch to my absolute tallest.

  “Looks like you made the dance team.” It sounds like an accusation.

  His hard blue eyes won’t let go of me, and I start to splinter into familiar pieces. I feel an overwhelming need to defend my choices. To apologize. To beg for scraps of approval like a half-starved dog.

  I force my mouth to form short, strong words. “Yes. I did.”

  Karl sways a little on his feet like I pushed him. He recovers quickly. “Good for you.” His voice says he thinks it is anything but good. And then he’s standing right next to me, and there’s no breath in my lungs. So close I can feel him even though he hasn’t touched me yet. “Do you want a ride home?” His lips hover dangerously close to my ear.

  “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. 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 h
appy.” 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.”

  Friday, August 14

  ANA

  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 of 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.”