The Revenge Playbook

by Rachael Allen

  “Um, you drive a BMW, and our house has three fireplaces.” It slips out before I can stop it.

  She laughs, and there’s a trace of bitterness in it. “My life isn’t a Cinderella story.” She chews at the inside of her lip. “I didn’t want to tell you this because I want you to love your dad’s parents, but they never let me forget that I’m not rich and I’m not white. It got better with each one of you kids that I had, but you should have seen them when your father and I were engaged.”

  Mama has turned my whole world upside down. My grandfather is a lovable, red-cheeked old man who belly laughs at my jokes and sneaks hip flasks of Scotch into my pageant competitions. And even though my grandmother is prissy and has a collection of wigs that smell like Chanel No. 5, she’s always slipping me wads of cash when my parents aren’t looking and telling me how dah-lin’ I am.

  “Grammy and Pop-Pop were mean to you?”

  “They were.” The hurt in her eyes is so fresh. It must have been terrible. “I don’t want you to be mad at them. I just want you to understand me.”

  “That’s all I want. I want you to understand me too.”

  “Well, tell me about you,” she says.

  “Huh?”

  “I told you something you didn’t know about me, so now tell me something about you.”

  “Oh. Well, I really like learning other languages.”

  She smiles. “I know that. I’m not completely oblivious.”

  “Right.” I smile too, and our matching dimples line up across the table. “I like pageants. You kind of pushed me into those, but I really do love competing. I don’t like all the pretending though—and I can’t stand my pageant coach. I wish I could feel more like I’m being me at pageants. Even if it means I lose.”

  “I think we could arrange a new coach,” she says.

  “Cool. And I like Michael. And . . . you can meet him. I want you to meet him. But you have to be nice.”

  She places a hand over her heart, but in the joking way. “When am I ever not nice? Don’t answer that. I’ll be nice.”

  The clock on the stove says I need to leave for school now.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want us to have more talks like this.”

  Her eyes go softer than I’ve ever seen them. “Me too.”

  When I walk around the table and hug her before I leave, she hangs on for an extra second. At least things with Mama are good because when that vlog goes live today, my life as I know it will be over.

  Friday, October 2

  ANA

  I am more alone than ever. Yesterday, I had no visitors. (To be fair, Grayson tried, but my parents sent him away.) Today, I languish under my covers with my stuffed animal dragon, Nostradamus, and attempt to eat my weight in Romeu e Julieta. Nostradamus doesn’t judge. Neither does Falkor as long as I slip him hush money bites at regular intervals. I gulp down my last bite of sliced guava paste on white cheese and consider whether going to the kitchen to get more requires too much effort. The lack of human contact is making me spiral into despair—especially since all I’ve been doing is watching people trash me on social media. My phone buzzes. An update to tell me another person hates my guts? Excellent. I check it, but instead it’s a text from Melanie Jane.

  Look for a vlog today at the usual time.

  A new vlog? We didn’t make another one. Crap. It’s almost 9:30 right now. I hurry and open my laptop—it’ll look so much better there than through the cracked screen of my phone, and I need to see this. I go to the website. Wait for what feels like hours but in reality is about two minutes. There it is! The new vlog! I click PLAY.

  There are three grim reapers on my screen, one of them holding the football and another holding cards. The film quality is actually pretty good. I can’t believe they were able to do this without me. I start to get excited, and then I remember I’m mad at them. Grim Reaper Number One flips the first card.

  Ana Cardoso didn’t act alone.

  Flip.

  It took four of us (FOUR GIRLS!) to beat the football team.

  Flip.

  And now we’re going to tell you why we did it.

  In smaller font, at the bottom of the card, are the words Please forgive us, Ana.

  I lean forward, desperate to see what comes next, but instead of flipping another card, the reaper takes off her hood. Holy shit.

  Curly blonde hair tumbles out. The girl underneath smiles.

  “I’m Liv Lambros, alleged whore. I know a lot of you are pissed about what happened, but we had reasons for doing what we did. I had just gotten dumped by the love of my life, and it was because the football team made him do it. You guys have seen the emails. You know what happened to him when he tried to stand up to them. I don’t want what happened to me and Trevor to happen to anyone else. And I don’t want any other girls to feel how I felt when they called me a slut and a whore. You guys know you don’t deserve that, right? No matter what you’ve done and who you’ve done it with.”

  Grim Reaper Number Two removes her hood next. Peyton.

  “Hi.” She clears her throat and raises her voice. “I’m Peyton Reed. I don’t think it’s right that the football team gets special treatment in class when some of us are working really hard. And I don’t think they should get away with saying whatever they want to the girls at our school. No matter what we’re wearing. So, yeah, that’s why I helped. And I’m sorry because some of the guys on the team are really sweet and don’t deserve this, and some of the guys who aren’t on the team totally suck.” She pauses and looks straight at the camera, and I can tell she’s imagining Rey’s eyes. “I’m sorry if I hurt any of the good guys.”

  Grim Reaper Number Three, aka Melanie Jane, rips off her mask like that’s about all she can take. I picture people gasping all around school. A cheerleader! And Ana Cardoso’s nemesis too!

  “I’m sorry too,” she says in a voice that is anything but. “I’m sorry my loser ex-boyfriend felt the need to dump me because of my belief system. I’m sorry he and his friends felt the need to harass my new boyfriend who is better than him in every way. Especially at kissing. And I am sooo sorry that we spied on your dorky little ceremony and sent your cut list to the entire school and beat you at your own scavenger hunt by doing all the dares better and faster than you, even though we only had four people. Whew. I am just so sorry. But things needed to change. And someone needed to do it.”

  Best. Rant. Ever. I think she might be finished, and then:

  “Oh. And the Football of ’76 is in a box in Coach Fuller’s office as we speak, so you can all just get ahold of yourselves.”

  The video goes black. That was the best thing I’ve ever seen. Holy amazing. I can’t wait to tell them how awesome they all are. Because, naturally, after a performance like that, I have to forgive them. There’s something else I have to do too. But we’ll take care of that this weekend.

  Saturday, October 3

  You don’t have to do this, you know,” says Melanie Jane from behind the camera.

  “I know,” I say. “I want to, though. I need to.”

  I pull the black grim reaper hood over my head, and give her the thumbs-up sign. She starts rolling.

  I take the hood back off.

  “I’m Ana Cardoso. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to tell you because you already know who I am and you already know I was part of this whole football team revenge thing. But I need you to know why. A lot of you have ideas about me. That I’m a slut and a liar and a life ruiner. And I need everyone to know the truth.”

  Don’t cry. Don’t. Take a deep breath. You can do this. I tell the camera what happened. The abridged version, not the gory details, but enough to know that Chad MacAllistair is not the shining prince they believe him to be. I also tell all about what it feels like being on date-rape drugs because I want every girl watching this to understand and get help if the same thing happens to her. I have to pause a couple of times when the memories feel like living th
ings, dark winged demons slashing through the musty garage air. I nod when I’m finished, and Melanie Jane stops the camera.

  I have done it. I have ripped out my own heart and videotaped the darkest parts of it. I’m about to put it on display for everyone to judge. I don’t know what I’ll do if people see it and still take his side. I try not to think about that. I try to focus on the one girl, more than one if I’m lucky, that could have her life changed by what I’ve done. Then, I collapse on the floor of my garage and burst into tears. Melanie Jane sits down beside me and pulls me into a fierce hug and whispers, “You are the bravest person I know, and I love you.”

  Saturday, October 17

  At first it’s such a disappointment. Everything is exactly the same. I don’t know what I was expecting. That we’d walk into class and people would start clapping? Yeah. Something cheesy like that.

  But then things begin to happen, like ripples in a pond. Trevor and Liv holding hands together without any backlash. A school board meeting about the football team’s policy on hazing. And every now and then, someone will pull me aside. A freshman girl to say she thinks I’m brave. Grayson to tell me he hasn’t been picked on all week. These are not small things. But I want more. I want football players to be treated like everybody else, and for the guys at this school to realize that rape culture isn’t something feminists invented so they could have something new to be pissed about, and so many other things I don’t even have words for yet. And most of all, I want to make sure no other girls have to go through anything like what any of us went through. That’s why we’re here at Jake’s tonight.

  The four of us are holed up in the room where it all started, crowded around the coffee table. I work on another entry in the scrapbook we’re making—the book we hope will change everything. We’ve spent the night carefully cataloguing our secrets for any girls who come after us. Melanie Jane leans over me with a glue stick, not bothering to hide her finger as she slathers a border of glue around what I just wrote. Because if every page isn’t coated in a metric ton of glitter, the message will surely be lost. Liv is demanding to go next, in between stealing bites of Peyton’s ice cream. All of us are talking over each other, but in the good way. Melanie Jane says they have a word for it in Denmark: hygge. The cozy, intimate feeling that wraps around you like a hug when you’re surrounded by your best friends and doing things like eating ice cream and laughing.

  “You’re going to come over to my house and get ready for the concert with me, right?” Liv asks Peyton.

  Peyton passes me a cup of gel pens. “Of course. I’m so excited, I’ve been listening to her new song on repeat. I still can’t believe you convinced Rey and Trevor to go to a Lilah Montgomery concert, and—dude! Stop stealing my ice cream!”

  “Did I tell y’all Principal Corso is coming after us again?” Melanie Jane adjusts the green beaded necklace she’s wearing. I picked it up at an antique shop, and I made her borrow it because it totally matches her eyes.

  I don’t even try to suppress my smirk. “Haven’t they realized yet that going against you doesn’t work out for them?”

  She grins. “Right? They keep making empty threats, and I keep leaving the website up. Oh. But I did have to listen to this hour-long lecture from my dad on how”—she makes air quotes—“once you put something on the internet, it can’t be undone.”

  Liv puts an arm around her. “And we appreciate the hardship you went through.”

  I laugh, but her dad is kind of right. The police opened an official investigation because of what I said about Chad in my vlog. Another girl came forward. My dad ungrounded me and clutched me to him like a rag doll and cried that he was so sorry he couldn’t protect me. He said he would move heaven and earth to make sure that boy paid for what he did. I haven’t decided how I feel about the investigation yet, but I know who will help me figure it out.

  I finish my entry and close the scrapbook before handing it to Liv. The words THE REVENGE PLAYBOOK shine out at me from the front cover, filling me with hope. We aren’t the same people we were in August. I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, or next year, or even tomorrow. All I know is that we’re here, together, today. And that’s enough.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A confession: I may have field-tested some of those dares in college. No, I won’t tell you which ones. In completely unrelated news, doing the worm is a lot harder than it looks. Those nights of friendship and frenzy sparked the idea for this book, so thank you to all my scavenger hunt girls—you know who you are. ☺

  I loved writing the friendships in this book, and I’m so lucky to have some of the best girlfriends in the whole world. Laura, Katie, Anya, Bethany, Mahoney, Holly, Rachel, Anna, Callie, Lisa, Jeanne, Sara, Kalynda, Bekah, and so many others. Thank you for making some of the best (and also most embarrassing) memories with me, and for being the kind of friends where, even after years apart, we fall right back into laughing, dancing, and doing pretend America’s Next Top Model photo shoots. I love you, and I will hold your hair always and forever. Special mention goes to:

  Nini—my scavenger hunt coqueen

  Nicole—for telling me all about dance-y things and for being you

  Becca—for believing in dragons and in me

  Phae—I hope Liv is one-tenth as fun and energetic as you

  To my unbelievable beta readers, I send you statues of David Bowie sprinkled in glitter. Jamie Blair, Rachel Simon, Dana Alison Levy, Erin Brambilla, Kate Boorman, and Emery Lord, thank you for making this book better, for your neverending encouragement, and for helping me figure out that pesky last scene!

  Thanks to Kim Laver (aka mom) and Bethany Griffin for answering my IEP questions.

  To all my buddies at OneFour KidLit, the AbsoluteWrite forums, my Atlanta writer dinner crew, and Little Shop of Stories. And to the LB’s for being one part sorority, two parts sekrit writing lair, and three parts kraken. I’m already counting down the days till the next retreat.

  To my agent, Susan Hawk, and my editor, Jen Klonsky, thank you both for putting up with the sleep deprived, spacey version of me this year and for being two of the most fun people to work with in all of publishing. I’m so lucky I get to work with you both!

  Susan, thank you for being on top of all the things, all the time, and for always making me laugh on the phone.

  Jen, thank you for working so hard on this book and turning it around so fast. I’m surprised you didn’t sustain an editing-related injury. ☺ When I go through this book and think about all the things that wouldn’t be there without you—the structure, the email, all kinds of friendship-y feels—I am blown away.

  Huge thanks to Catherine Wallace (side note: Every time I get a package with your name on it, I do a happy dance). To Michelle Taormina, Alexandra Alexo, Lillian Sun, Karen Sherman, Christina Colangelo, Kara Brammer, Stephanie Hoover, Susan Katz, Kate Jackson, Andrea Pappenheimer and her whole team, and to anyone else at Harper who worked on my book in any way. You guys are the greatest.

  To my family, for all the love and support this year, and especially Mom, Mica, Bekah, Dennis, and Maxie for taking care of my brave, strong girl so I had time to write about brave, strong girls.

  To Ansley and Xander, there aren’t words to describe how happy you make me. And Xander, thank you so much for holding off on making your appearance until after I turned in this book. I will definitely keep this in mind when I’m deciding whether to show the naked baby pictures to your future prom date.

  And to Zack Allen. Thank you for countless conversations on Brazilian food and language and culture. Ana wouldn’t have been the same character without you. Also, thanks for being my person.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  RACHAEL ALLEN lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, two children, and two sled dogs. In addition to being a YA writer, she’s a mad scientist, a rabid Falcons fan, an expert dare list maker, and a hugger. Rachael is also the author of 17 First Kisses.

  www.rachaelallenwrites.blogspot.com/

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  BOOKS BY RACHAEL ALLEN

  17 First Kisses

  The Revenge Playbook

  CREDITS

  Cover art © 2015 by Christine Blackburne

  Cover design by Annemieke Beemster Leverenz

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE REVENGE PLAYBOOK. Copyright © 2015 by Rachael Allen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014946550

  ISBN 978-0-06-228136-4 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780062281371

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