The Revenge Playbook

by Rachael Allen

  “So, how did it go last night?” I ask.

  Peyton and Melanie Jane mostly eat their ice cream and shrug. They weren’t kidding when they said they had nothing. Liv did a little better.

  “I know who has the keys to the trophy case!” she says.

  The floor-to-ceiling case takes up almost an entire wall at the front of the school, and it’s filled with trophies and other random football crap, and of course, at its center, is the Football of ’76, letting off an otherworldly glow under its custom track lighting. I heard the glass protecting it is bulletproof, but I think that might be BS.

  “Nice,” I tell Liv. “Who’s got them?”

  “Coach Fuller and the team captain,” she says. “So, Chad MacAllistair.”

  I focus on keeping my expression neutral. Is it weird that hearing a name can make you feel like your eyelids are stapled open and you’re being forced to watch the worst night of your life on replay? I feel Melanie Jane’s eyes on me.

  “Well, I have Coach Fuller for health, and he pretty much loves me,” she says. “I’ll think of an excuse to borrow his keys. I’m sure he’ll give them to me.”

  “Oh! And if that doesn’t work, I’ll try to steal Chad’s,” says Liv. “He was one of the guys I heard telling Trevor to break up with me, so I wouldn’t mind getting back at him.” She’s smiling, but there’s sharpness behind it. “I can plan a fake seduction for the next football party! He’d totally fall for it.”

  I narrow my eyes. “That’s not a good idea.”

  I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. Almost like I was snapping at her. Melanie Jane is definitely staring at me this time, and so are Peyton and Liv.

  “He’s—well, he’s just not a nice guy, you know?” Understatement of the year. Just thinking about him makes my pulse feel like it’s exploding in my ears. I try to channel some Liv-like excitement. “Plus, I haven’t even told you guys what I found out yet!”

  “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about that,” says Peyton just as Liv says, “Spill!”

  Melanie Jane isn’t so easily distracted. She keeps watching me, a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows.

  “Right, so the football team is having this initiation thing a week from today, and that means they’re going to have the football out of the case. It’s supposed to happen in this abandoned barn at Big Tom’s around midnight, so I figure we sneak in early and wait for our chance to steal it.”

  “We’re going to watch their secret boy ceremony? That’s awesome!” says Liv.

  “How did you find out about all this anyway?” asks Melanie Jane. Ha! She’s impressed.

  “My friend Toby is a water boy. You guys really can’t tell anyone about this. Toby’s supernice, and I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

  “We would never do that. We promise,” says Peyton, and she looks so serious I half expect her to make the Girl Scout sign.

  Liv and Melanie Jane nod.

  We make plans for this Saturday, excitement sizzling in the air around us. We laugh like supervillains and feel like badasses and use our empty ice-cream cups to act out our plans even though it is completely unnecessary. It’s times like this that I get so caught up in what we’re doing that I almost forget why I wanted to be part of this in the first place. Almost.

  Melanie Jane elbows Liv. “Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “A pen that doubles as a hidden camera?”

  “The List?”

  “Oh, right! The List.” Liv slams her hands down on the table in front of her, making us all jump. “Those assholes made a list.”

  “What kind of a list?” I ask. Girls we’ve banged. Girls we hate more than anyone else in school. I could be on any number of lists.

  “A list of girls the guys had to dump,” says Melanie Jane, venom in her voice. “And we are not telling anyone.”

  I stifle a snort. That kind of list would completely submarine the perfect reputation she’s worked so hard to build.

  “Who else is on it?” I ask.

  “We don’t know,” says Liv. “Really, I’m the only one we know for sure was on it, and that’s only because Rey told me.”

  “Rey?”

  “That crazy-big freshman from Samoa who just made Varsity.”

  I still have no idea who she’s talking about but I nod like I do.

  “Rey stays in the cone of silence too,” says Liv. “He may be one of them, but he seems like a really nice guy.”

  “Well, clearly, I’m on The List too because they made Weston dump me,” says Melanie Jane because the attention being on someone else for a minute during her time of crisis is just too much for her to handle.

  “The other girls probably don’t even know. They just think their boyfriends decided to break up with them.” Liv shakes her head.

  “That’s horrible,” says Peyton. “We need to find out who they are so we can help them.”

  “How do we do that?” asks Liv.

  “Check online?”

  “Yeah, that could work.” I whip out my phone and so do the other girls. “We can just see if any other football team girlfriends got dumped last week.”

  “Month,” says Liv. “I got the feeling they’d been wearing Trevor down for a few weeks at least, so we need to check the past month.”

  It takes some searching, but we eventually find two other girls who got dumped a couple weeks before Liv and Melanie Jane. Natalie von Oterendorp, this girl in the band who is a total sweetheart but definitely not the coolest girl in school. And Abby Clayton, who I don’t think I’ve talked to but who is, erm, full figured. It takes about a second to look at their pictures and know why they made The List. And then another second to feel sick to your stomach that you just snap judged them the way the football team did.

  Liv rests her head against the chair beside her—for once she has nothing to say. Melanie Jane seems even more pissed off than before, but it’s probably only because she was lumped in with these girls.

  “They’re such jerks!” Peyton shoves her phone away, and we all turn toward her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angry. I don’t think I believed she was capable of getting angry. “Natalie is one of the sweetest girls I know. She doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves this. We need to tell her. And Abby too. Can you imagine how they’re feeling right now?!”

  “Yes,” say Liv and Melanie Jane simultaneously.

  “Oh, yeah.” Her cheeks turn a little pink. “But we should tell them, right?”

  Melanie Jane runs a hand through her dark, glossy hair. “I don’t think we should.”

  I give her a look that says, Seriously? even though I should know better than to expect her to help someone if it means going against the other popular kids.

  “No, I mean it,” she says. “Finding out you’re on that list hurts. Bad.” She glances at Liv, who nods in corroboration. “I don’t think we should go telling anyone they’re on it unless we know for sure.”

  “But we do know,” I say. “It’s obvious because of when they got dumped.”

  “We know they’re probably on The List,” says Liv. She shakes her blond head. “I agree with Melanie Jane. I’m not about to gut someone over ‘probably.’” She squeezes Peyton’s knee. “But, hey, I promise, as soon as we know something for sure, we’ll tell.”

  Peyton sighs. “So then what are we going to do? We can’t just wait around doing nothing.”

  Melanie Jane smiles like a Disney villain. “We get our hands on that list.”

  RANBURNE PANTHER SCAVENGER HUNT

  In Ranburne:

  1. Fill a condom up with water. Draw a face on it. Put it on Principal Corso’s doormat, and ding-dong ditch. (One person)

  2. The egg-on-a-string trick. Hang an egg from a power line by a string and watch a car run into it. (Everyone)

  3. Paint the David Bowie statue at Old Lady Howard’s corn maze. (Everyone)

  4. Chair race through Walmart. (Everyone)

  5. Get a picture of the team with the
Ranburne Panther. (Everyone)

  6. Go to the Dawsonville football field. Find that stupid rock they touch before their games. Pee on it. (Everyone)

  In Nashville:

  7. Visit the illustrious Delta Tau Beta fraternity at Vanderbilt. Have a beer with Panther alum TJ McNeil and take a picture of the legendary scar he got during a game-winning play against Dawsonville. (One person)

  8. Go to LP Field and reenact the “Music City Miracle.” (Everyone)

  9. Go to Centennial Park and jump into the pond behind the Parthenon. (Everyone)

  10. Go to The Jackrabbit Saloon. Walk to the very middle of the dance floor and attempt to do the worm. (One person)

  11. Go up to a girl who is totally out of your league, get down on your knees, and ask her to marry you. (One person)

  12. Go up to a fat girl and tell her “You’re so beautiful . . . for a fat chick.” Bonus points if she throws her drink on you. (One person)

  13. Hug a biker. Bonus points if he has a mullet. (One person)

  14. Get a girl to give you her thong. (One person)

  DARES REMAINING: 10

  8:20 P.M.

  PEYTON

  When Liv removes the box of condoms from their brown paper bag, it is all I can do not to snatch the bag and start hyperventilating into it. Liv must be able to tell because she grabs me by the shoulders.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know. One of the other girls can videotape me. It’s totally fine.”

  “I want to. Really.” My jittery hands are clearly saying the opposite, and Ana half grimaces as she passes me her camera.

  She shows me what all the buttons do, and I hold it steady. Well, as steady as I can. I really do want to do this. Partly because I want to be an active part of this team and partly because of what this particular prank symbolizes for me. I am taking a stand against our school’s special treatment of football players. Against the teachers who give them endless extensions and undeserved passing grades, and the administration’s complete inability to care. Against a school system that thinks making sure Casey Martin plays football is more important than making sure I get the education I need. I’d never have the guts to walk into Principal Corso’s office and tell him these things, but leaving an anonymous smiling condom on his doorstep is just as good, right?

  My grip has tightened on the camera. I make sure I still have it trained on Liv, who is currently using her water bottle to turn a condom into a water balloon. She draws a face in black Sharpie, really taking her time with the bushy eyebrows. Bushy eyebrows that look strangely familiar.

  I cock my head to the side. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Supposed to be Principal Corso? Yes.”

  The four of us burst into giggles, but mine don’t last because now it’s time to walk up to the front door of my principal’s house, and ding-dong ditch.

  I feel so vulnerable. Principal Corso’s street has an unseemly number of streetlights, and everything is lit up like daytime. Liv skips down the sidewalk like we’re delivering a welcome basket, and I trail along beside her. We thought it would be a good idea to park around the corner and walk.

  She skids to a stop in front of a blue house with hydrangea bushes the size of boulders obscuring the front porch. “It’s this one with the flower boxes on the windows.”

  “Are you sure?” Because we could totally turn back.

  She nods. “Marley lives two houses over. Apparently, he likes to mow the lawn shirtless, and his chest hair looks like a sweater-vest.”

  We stare up the incline of his driveway with wrinkled noses.

  “There’s no car. Do you think that means he’s not home?” I ask hopefully.

  Liv squints at the blackened windows of the garage. “There might still be a car in there. Can’t tell.”

  “Yeah.”

  There are luna moths flapping around in my belly. We could still turn and run. Liv starts walking, but my feet are rooted to the cement next to the mailbox.

  “We better get going,” she says. “Who knows what dare the boys are on right now.”

  She means we need to hurry because we have no idea how far ahead they might be, but the thought of them showing up here and catching us finally gets me moving. I force one foot in front of the other in slow, terrified steps that lead me to the porch.

  “Hey, look,” says Liv.

  Sitting on the doormat in the glow of the porch light is a condom with a sloppy smile and uneven eyes.

  She smirks. “My smiley face is so much better than theirs.”

  “He must not be home.” I feel a flood of relief.

  “Yeah, or the boys were too scared to ring his doorbell.”

  And the relief disappears.

  A car zooms by on the street behind us, and I clutch Liv’s arm.

  She laughs. “It’s okay. Just a passing car. Nothing to have a heart attack over.”

  “Right,” I say, feeling a little embarrassed.

  Liv starts up the stairs, and I follow. My heart races, knowing what happens next, but I try to keep calm and not act like such a dork. I keep my mind occupied with technical stuff. Checking that the tiny red light by the record button is still blinking. Making sure I’m not cutting off Liv’s head. She sets her condom next to the one the boys left. It really is superior in every way, especially the eyebrows. I wish I could add a thought bubble that says Stop the favoritism. Or leave a sternly worded letter. Of course, then they’d know exactly who did it.

  Liv looks at me, eyebrows raised, silently asking if I’m ready. Before I can nod, I hear another car. I turn, determined not to freak out this time, but the car is slowing down.

  “Liv.”

  It’s turning into the driveway.

  “Liv!”

  She flies into action, ringing the doorbell with one hand and grabbing my arm with the other. “This way!”

  She practically drags me down the porch. I bang my knee on a wooden rocking chair, and reach down to rub it, but she’s already vaulting over the porch railing. I follow without thinking, landing with a soft thump on the pine straw below. Snowballs of white flowers surround us on all sides.

  Liv’s eyes are frantic. “Do you think he saw us? Ohmygosh, he saw us! I am never getting into college!”

  I squeeze her hands. “It’s going to be okay. I think the bushes hid us.”

  Liv continues to jabber about college in a much-too-loud voice, and a car door slams, and I clap my hand over her mouth.

  “We have to go. Now. It’s our only shot,” I whisper.

  Her mouth closes, and she shakes her head up and down in a manic nod. We squeeze between two of the mammoth hydrangeas, their branches digging into our clothes and hair like they want to keep us. The last thing I hear before we tear off through the neighbor’s yard is Principal Corso’s voice saying, “What in the hell?”

  4

  Monday, August 17

  PEYTON

  We’ve been in school for less than a week, and already geometry is kicking my butt. It doesn’t help that my teacher is Coach Mayes and he thinks sports tangents make great teaching tools. Or that I suck at math. Or that there are four football players in this class, and they’ve made a game of seeing what they can get away with behind Coach’s back. Pelting each other with Skittles. Texting each other pictures of porn stars. Having lewd hand gesture showdowns.

  Things I have learned in this class:

  • Skittles hurt more than you’d expect.

  • Gianna Michaels does not have fake boobs.

  • Flipping someone the bird < the BJ motion < flicking your hands against your pelvic bones in the way that means “suck it” < full-on dry humping your textbook.

  Things I have not learned in this class:

  • Geometry.

  It also doesn’t help that I have ADHD so even if they weren’t doing all that ridiculous crap, I’d still have trouble paying attention. And the thing is, I actually do okay in school—in non-math things. I like reading, and as long as I’m interest
ed in something, I can be a pretty fast learner. But the math. Ugh. It’s like one minute Coach Mayes is up there blathering on about angles and the next minute I’m thinking about how chipped my nail polish is and then I notice that Jessica Swanson’s toenail polish is a shade of green that makes me imagine a flesh-eating bacteria is feasting on her toes and now I’m wondering whether a flesh-eating bacteria really could eat up all your skin. And before I know what’s happened, we’re on an entirely different problem, and I have no idea how much I missed.

  Today, we’re doing these problems where there are all these lines intersecting to make angles, and even though they only give you like two of the angle measurements, you’re supposed to be able to guess all the others. I’m trying like anything to focus. Unfortunately for me, the football team is playing the penis game.

  “Lines that look parallel are parallel,” says Coach Mayes.

  “Penis,” whispers Brian.

  “If we know this angle is one hundred fifteen degrees, what do we know about the angle on the other side?”

  “Penis,” whispers Casey, just a smidge louder than Brian.

  “Penis,” whispers Weston, but at least he has the decency to blush.

  “Anybody? Come on, if this angle is one hundred fifteen degrees, the other angle has to be . . . ?” His question hangs in the air. No one makes eye contact.

  “Penis,” says Nate in a voice just louder than a whisper.

  Coach cocks his head up. “What was that, Nate?”

  Nate grins. “Sixty-five, Coach.”

  The other guys snicker.

  “Sixty-five. Nice work.”

  Sixty-five. Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense. I add the number sixty-five to the diagram I copied from the board and try extra hard to block out the crescendoing cries of “Penis!” for the rest of class. Finally, Coach Mayes notices what the rest of the class picked up on over half an hour ago, but all he does is laugh and say, “All right, guys. Knock it off.” Not that that actually stops them. Nate, determined to end class with a bang, jumps into the air as he leaves the room, slapping both hands against the door frame and yelling “Penis!” at the top of his lungs.