The Revenge Playbook

by Rachael Allen

  “I’m fine, y’all, really. I am so over him,” I say with a winning smile.

  Liv stands at my side, but they aren’t really acknowledging that she’s there. High school caste system in action. Chloe and Beth are giving me sad, hopeful looks. Sad because that’s what they’re pretending to be. Hopeful because they’re failing. They are actually prissy debutante hags who would like nothing more than to see me go “crazy train” over Weston in public.

  “Do you want to go somewhere and talk about it?” asks Beth.

  I think I’ve had about all the heart-to-hearts I can take for the night.

  “Nah. I’m off to find my next victim.”

  “Text me if you need anything,” says Aubrey, who is actually pretty great to talk to even if she can’t keep a secret to save her life.

  “I will. Wish me luck.” I grin at them before I walk away.

  I kind of said that stuff to get away from them, but boy-finding really was part of my plan for tonight. Plus, Weston totally deserves it since he broke up with me over a freaking list.

  The kitchen is the heart of any party, so that’s where I head first. There are not one but two kegs—the guys have really gone all out this time, and the winding beer line is where I begin my search for my next boyfriend. I have to work fast. Whoever moves on first wins.

  Being on a guy search makes me feel like I’m some kind of robot girl. I can practically see the info on each boy pop up in my view screen as I assess the candidates. There’s a guy from my health class pumping the keg.

  Terry Hanes. Blond hair. Track team. Kind of goofy. Expiration date: five months from now. Meh. I think he has horrible breath.

  The guy standing next to him with an empty cup, I’ve known since second grade. When he used to sneak behind the cubbies and eat glue. He hasn’t changed a whole lot since then. I’m kind of surprised he got an invite. And is that a faint white residue I detect on his lips? Hell. No.

  In the dining room, Big Tom tortures some rookies with forties duct-taped around their wrists.

  “This is the sorriest game of Edward Fortyhands I’ve ever seen. Mason, I had no idea you were such a little bitch.”

  He pushes one guy, Mason, I guess, in the shoulder. The bottle slips out of Mason’s mouth and beer spills down his shirt.

  “I gotta pee,” whines Mason in a voice that makes me fear for Casey’s mom’s dining room chairs.

  “Well, then I guess you better drink faster.”

  Some guy vomits in the corner, and Mason gets a reprieve.

  “Vomiting is an immediate disqualification,” yells Big Tom.

  I stifle my own gag reflex and move to the living room. Music blasts over the speakers, a few girls dancing while Purdeep Patel and Judd Baker play deejay.

  Purdeep Patel. Gorgeous smile. Eyelashes I would kill for. In all the smart-people classes but still cool. Expiration date: ten to twelve months. Huh. I never realized Purdeep and I were so compatible. Bonus: he’s completely unlike Weston, which would totally piss Weston off. Not-so-bonus: my parents, well, my mother at least, would hate the idea of me dating him because I don’t know a lot about the Hindu religion, but I’m pretty sure it does not include Jesus.

  Judd Baker, on the other hand . . . reasonably attractive, but smokes way too much pot and has no discernible life goals. Expiration date: two months. Tops.

  I’m thinking about going over to flirt with Purdeep when this other guy, Michael, joins them. There he goes in his Boston College shirt, slapping Purdeep and Judd a high five and looking deceptively safe. I’ve been actively avoiding Michael ever since I met him in physical science last year and thought I might be in love with him.

  We were working on this lab together, and I felt the prickly feeling I get when I catch someone noticing my finger. I made sure to keep it tucked in even farther as I wrote.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?” I shook my hair over my shoulder as if to say, I am certain I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  “Hide it.” He stopped my hand and unbent my knuckle so my pinky was showing, all the way out to its nail-less tip. “You’re beautiful. People aren’t going to stop seeing that if you let them see all of you.”

  And then he touched my finger. And when he did it, when he ran his thumb over those thousands of nerve endings, I could have sworn he was touching my soul. Unlike some people, I find the sensation of having someone plunge their hand into my chest and grab my still-beating heart to be extremely unpleasant. Feelings that strong are scary. Feelings that strong for someone you just met are even scarier. There’s a term for them in Japanese—koi no yokan—the sense you get when you’ve just met someone but feel certain you’re going to fall in love with them. Koi no yokan is part of why I started dating Weston in the first place. I needed an emergency exit.

  I realize I need to stop with the staring before he notices, but it’s too late. When he tilts his head up and our eyes meet from across the room, I get the same feeling I got last year.

  He’s dangerous.

  He gives me a smile and my insides feel all toasty, like I’ve just gulped down a mug of hot chocolate. I retreat to the kitchen. I eat some chips and salsa, which normally I wouldn’t do because eating at a party shortly after a breakup makes you look mopey and desperate, but I estimate I need to stay here at least another few minutes before it’s safe to walk back through the living room. Before my heart rate returns to normal.

  “Hi.”

  “Holy jeez!” I almost flip the entire contents of the salsa bowl onto my dress because I was so not expecting for someone to—to—

  Michael stands in front of me, his eyebrows raised at my obvious weirdness. Perfectly groomed eyebrows, I might add. Guys actually taking the time to do personal upkeep is kind of a turn-on of mine, and most guys in this town just . . . don’t. Memo to high school boys everywhere: Axe body spray cannot be used in place of actual hygiene.

  “I’m Michael. I think we had class together last semester,” he says. He’s so much taller up close. Mmmm. Tall guys are my Kryptonite.

  “I’m—I’m Melanie Jane.” Seriously? Stuttering? Pageant queens do not stutter. I am nothing if not well spoken—with all my training it’s like I can’t even help it. I take a breath. Maybe this is a good thing, him finding me. Maybe I was wrong before, and I can find out all kinds of annoying things about him, and he’ll turn out to have an expiration date measured in weeks. Maybe.

  “Why’d you run away back there?”

  “I didn’t.” I flip my hair over my shoulder in an attempt to center myself and get some of my swagger back. “I just really wanted some chips.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case.” His hand brushes against my forearm in the very best way as he snakes around me to snag a chip. He dips it in salsa and pops it into his mouth with a James Bond grin. “I’ll have chips with you.”

  “Accidentally” brushing my arm. Trying to be all suave. Things like that don’t work on me. Maybe he’s just nervous or maybe he really is that cheesy and my guy-finder needs recalibrating. Whew. Now that I know he’s not a threat, I can relax. I hop on a bar stool, and he takes the one next to me, and we just talk. Not about anything vitally important. He asks me questions about my friends and my family. And he listens, really listens, and it’s not the I-want-to-get-into-your-pants kind of listening I’m so used to with guys. I find out he’s from Boston, and he misses his friends like crazy. His stories about his family’s attempts to acclimate to Tennessee have me laughing so hard I almost spit chip pieces everywhere. I wipe my mouth, embarrassed, and reach for another chip. He reaches for one too, both of us still laughing. Until it happens.

  Until our fingers touch in the half-empty bowl, and a jolt ricochets down my arm, and suddenly we’re staring at each other all serious. And it’s not like salty fingers + one lingering glance = me seeing visions of us getting married and having perfectly eyebrowed children, but wow, holy wow. I was right to call him dangerous. If my Terminator vi
sion popped up right now it would say something like:

  Michael I-don’t-even-know-his-last-name. Gorgeous. Charming. Deliciously tall. Makes me laugh in unladylike ways at parties. Expiration date: indefinite.

  And I don’t mean “indefinite” as in “Oh, I just haven’t figured it out yet because I don’t know him well enough.” I mean “indefinite” as in he’s the kind of guy who might not have an expiration date. Who I could fall for so completely that I might as well put my heart in a blender right now because it would hurt less. Who I could want with the kind of passion that makes you forget important things like the promises you make to yourself. I am terrified. Because the last time I let myself fall this hard, I learned that a lack of control sets you up for heartache and that maybe I shouldn’t trust my heart anyway if it picks guys like Chad MacAllistair. Now I know the only safe boys are the ones who fit neatly into expiration date–stamped packages. I know exactly what to do in this situation.

  I run.

  I make an excuse first about how I desperately need to use the powder room and the downstairs one always has a crazy-long wait, but running is what I am doing. I need to purge Michael and his taller-than-six-foot self from my brain. Stat.

  And I know I hardly know the guy, and really I’m not dumb enough to believe in love at first sight, but you hear people like my dad say he knew he was going to marry my mom from that first day when he saw her carrying an entire crate of books up the stairs of their freshman dorm by herself and in heels. He nearly took out two other guys and an RA so he could be the one to open the door for her. And I guess what I think is, sometimes when you meet someone Big, you know. You can’t love them. You just met them. But you have this irrepressible feeling that they could change your life forever. It’s kind of like how I felt when I met Ana. We were drawn together at that first practice because we were the only two brunettes on the seventh-grade cheerleading squad, but it was about so much more than hair color. I met her, and I knew I wanted her to be my best friend.

  And that turned out so well.

  By the time I finish reapplying my lip gloss, I am no longer thinking about Michael. I’m thinking about Ana. All the memories of what happened last year—being at the first football party of the year, walking uncertainly down this very hallway, and seeing them. I shiver, feeling as though I’ve been transported back in time. The door at the end of the hallway is cracked open, and I hold my breath as I walk toward it. I push it open wider, my fingers quivering just a bit, my stomach knotting up.

  It’s empty.

  Of course it is. She’s not even here. It’s not like I’m going to see some replay of last year.

  But it does replay, in my head.

  I was wearing a new pink dress and a ton of body glitter, and I totally looked like I was trying too hard because I wanted like anything for Chad MacAllistair to notice me that night the way I’d noticed him every day for the past two weeks. I had this idea that he was going to be Big, and if I could just get myself looking hot and into his line of sight, something Big would happen to me. I had talked Ana’s ear off about him, and she had dutifully listened and squealed, only making me stop when I started comparing him to all the colors of the rainbow. She’s a really good friend.

  The first football party was supposed to be the big night, but I panicked every time I got near him, so Ana said she would talk to him for me. But then half an hour went by.

  I checked the basement one more time and then the backyard again. It was like they’d disappeared! I went back inside through the kitchen door and accidentally kind of slammed it behind me.

  “Something wrong, princess?” asked a football player I didn’t know.

  “No.” I glared at him. I liked when my dad called me princess, but something about the way this guy said it bothered me.

  The cluster of guys surrounding the keg laughed.

  I decided maybe I could use his help after all. I hopped up on the counter beside him so my hip touched his bicep. “Actually, I’m looking for my friend Ana. Long, black hair? Freshman cheerleader like me? I just wanted to make sure she didn’t leave without me.”

  “Is that the girl who was talking to Chad?” asked another guy.

  “Maybe,” I replied, even though I knew good and well the answer was yes.

  “Oh, her,” said the guy beside me. “Don’t worry. They just went upstairs. I’m sure they’ll be back in a little bit.”

  A couple of guys snickered, and I died a little on the inside, but I tried not to show it.

  I gave him a smirk as I squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks. Princess.”

  Then I hopped off the counter and headed to the staircase.

  “Wait!” he called. “You can’t just go up there.”

  I pretended not to hear.

  When I reached the upstairs hallway, I didn’t feel so brave. Could my best friend really do this to me? She knew he was supposed to be Big—I told her about things like that, my crazy theories on the Bigness of people. The first room was empty and the second one was occupied by Big Tom and two girls from band doing things I hoped didn’t scar me for life. And then I heard what I thought was the sound of salvation or, more accurately, the sound of vomiting. Lots of it, happening in the bathroom right next to me. I foolishly hoped Ana was in there puking her guts out while Chad innocently held her hair, not even once glancing in the direction of her butt.

  It wasn’t them. It was a couple of sophomore girls. Which left only one door, the one at the end of the hallway. My stomach knotted up as I gently turned the handle. My fingers shook as I eased the door open.

  And there they were.

  My best friend, flopped spread eagle on the bed, purple panties crumpled in a ball on the floor. And the guy who was supposed to be Big, his hand moving around under her skirt.

  “What are you doing?!” I practically shrieked it.

  In less than a second, Chad was three feet away, his body pressed against a dresser instead of Ana. My yelling has that effect on people. “I wasn’t! I mean, she—I mean, what?”

  “You knew I liked him!” I started crying then, in public, which completely went against all of my Southern belle training.

  Chad’s eyes bugged a little, and his face started to get its color back. “I’ll just let you girls work this out, then,” he said before making a quick exit.

  I moved beside the bed, hands on hips, waiting for the apology I wasn’t going to accept.

  Ana just looked confused. “Mel-Jay?”

  She tried to sit up, but didn’t quite make it. And when I moved to help her, she vomited all down the side of the bedspread . . . and my new dress.

  Fantastic. On top of everything else, she was wasted, and there was no one to take care of her but me. I could have just left her there, but I knew how strict her parents were, and I didn’t want her getting in trouble, even if she was a heartless, guy-stealing lush. So because I am such a good friend, I carried her home and snuck her into her bed without her parents noticing.

  And then I cut her out of my life.

  Sunday, August 16

  ANA

  I wake up to my phone vibrating its way off my nightstand. My hand fumbles around on the floor for it. If I can just reach it, I won’t have to get out from under the covers yet. I snag the corner of it with my index finger (success!) and slide it until it’s close enough to pick up.

  The Devil: I got nothing out of that party.

  Peyton: Me neither.

  I text the girls back:

  I have something :)

  A few seconds later, my phone buzzes again.

  The Devil: What? You weren’t even at the party.

  I smirk as I text back:

  I have my ways.

  Liv chimes in later.

  Liv: I have something too! We should meet up!

  The Devil: Yeah, but we need to keep this on the DL. People will get suspicious if they see us together.

  I roll my eyes. Translation: I’m Melanie Jane Montgomery, and I’m too cool
to be seen with you people.

  Liv: SECRET RENDEZVOUS!!!

  Me: I have to open at Jake’s this morning. Want to meet me there at 11? No one comes in before noon.

  Peyton: Works for me.

  The Devil: Me too.

  Liv: SECRET RENDEZVOUS + ICE CREAM!!!

  I get to Jake’s early and clock in. My manager’s getting the register ready, but she retreats to her office when she’s done. She knows I’ve got this. I turn on all the lights, prep everything that needs prepping, make some coffee (the inferior, stateside kind), and check all the rooms and bathrooms just in case, even though they should still be clean from closing last night. Just as I’m finishing up, there’s a knock at the door. I unlock it and let in Peyton and Liv even though we don’t open for another ten minutes.

  “Hey, you guys want anything?” I ask.

  “Oh! I’ll have Strawberry Fields in a waffle cone,” says Liv.

  I make one for her, and then a Key Lime Piescream for Peyton, and a Chocolate Slap Yo Mama for myself. Liv takes the opportunity to prowl around the store like a secret agent even though I already told her we’re the only people here. When the bell jingles at the front door, she pops out of one of the side rooms, looking a little disappointed when she sees it’s Melanie Jane and not an enemy spy.

  “We can meet over there.” I point to a tiny room with squishy mismatched chairs and an antique bookcase painted the precise shade of a baked sweet potato. “That way I can hear the bell if anyone comes in.”

  I scoop up a cup of Brown Sugah Vanilla for Melanie Jane and hand it to her without making eye contact. Sometimes it’s hard to be around her without launching into a rant about how she’s a stupid vaca, and she should have been there for me, but wasn’t. Not that I care. I shake my head. I used to tell her everything. Even the weird, embarrassing stuff like how I believe dragons are real and the only reason we don’t see them nowadays is because they propagate backward through time. But when I needed to tell her something really important, she wouldn’t listen.

  We all get comfortable, Peyton tucked into a high-backed chair that almost swallows her whole, Liv sitting on the floor in a butterfly stretch that would make me whimper in pain, and Melanie Jane perched on the edge of her cushion with her legs crossed at the ankles. (She never crosses at the knee because she says the pressure can cause varicose veins. Because, you know, that’s something normal for a fifteen-year-old girl to worry about.) I take the seat closest to the door in case I need to jump up and help a customer.