Bad Girls

by Aurora Yeo

  On his precious sports car, I used the sharpie markers to draw weird designs. I also added the words cheater, faker, dick, and even the trusted fuck you. Winnie and I drew patterns and shapes on the windshields and the windows too. We drew hearts on the tires with a cutter, along with random punctures. Satisfied with our masterpiece, we quickly packed the markers and headed to the back of the house where Wesley and William were working on their part of the plot.

  The whole way, Winnie shone with so much pride. “I can’t believe he can still call himself a man. He’s going to have a tough time correcting all those mistakes. You can damn well bet on that.” William had sworn back in the truck when he was told the story of what happened between Blake and me.

  What they say really is true; once a friendship is made, it will more often than not stay for life if it’s a strong one. Though I had not seen the triplets in a decade, they still stuck by my side. Some memories are just stronger than others, especially memories of best friends.

  The duo sat by the pool with huge rolls of toilet paper in their hands. When they heard our footsteps approaching, their head shot up so fast that I was surprised they hadn’t gotten whiplash. Two pairs of eyes immediately left their task, searching for the source of noise before finally settling on our approaching figures. They sighed visibly, their shoulders slackening when they saw us before promptly returning to their work.

  “What are you guys planning to do with that ridiculous amount of tissue paper?” Winnie gestured to the huge blobs of toilet paper scattered all around, her hands on her hips.

  “Watch us, Pooh bear. We’re gonna give him a hell of a time when he cleans his pool next.” Wesley cackled, making me grin as well. Something I had come to know from my long friendship with Blake was that his parents always, and I seriously mean always, had him clean the pool, especially if he just had a wild party. He wasn’t allowed to do anything, and his car keys would be confiscated if he ever chose to protest against his parents’ wishes. Of course, none of this actually helped in the threat, but like I said, Blake respected his parents and always did what they asked of him.

  Guess who would be having fun cleaning the pool.

  William was grinning by the time he had unwrapped the last of the fifty-over rolls of toilet paper, and the two brothers were already gathering all the food dye they had gotten. Dumping all the small strips of tissue into the pool, Wesley poured glass after glass of red food dye into the pool, making the pool hot pink.

  “Oh my gosh. This is priceless.” I laughed, bending over slightly and leaning on my knees when my eyes started to tear up from laughing so much.

  “You bet, princess. We already checked if he was home through his room’s balcony. Guess what? Prince Charming isn’t home today. He wasn’t in his room, so I gather he is either screwing someone in some party or staying over at Charlotte’s house.” Wesley grinned, to which his siblings matched with satisfied smirks. Yet with all the supposed joy around me, I could still feel my heart sink just a bit with sadness before I shoved it away.

  “We still have eggs, tuna, and mayonnaise. Why don’t we make him a sandwich, Winnie?” I grinned, already preparing to climb up his balcony window.

  “I say hell yeah!” she screamed along with me, easily climbing up the tree and landing on his balcony in less than a minute.

  We pulled ourselves over the rail and easily slipped into the sliding glass doors since it was unlocked. His room hadn’t changed much since the last time I had been there, and a sense of guilt washed over me when I stepped foot inside. He was my best friend until Charlotte came in. He was, in fact, the only person I could ever see myself with, and this remained until I was seventeen years old. Sure, I hated him then, but I still missed him a lot. It hurts when the one closest to you leaves you. Shaking my thoughts away, I dabbed the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my teary cheeks. He was my best friend.

  Keyword: was. He broke my heart when he decided to go with Charlotte and left me in the dust without a proper reason. At that point of time, he did not just break off our relationship. He brought our friendship down as well.

  I was just giving him what he deserved.

  Laughing maniacally, I started to crack eggs all over his bed, his carpeted floor, and his sofas. I grabbed some plastic gloves from our little stash and slipped it on before I started to spread mayo across his dark blue walls and even painted a little mural for him. When I reached his pictures with Charlotte, though, I dropped the mayo, opened a can of tuna, and spread it all over the pictures. I was going through all the pictures like crazy, too caught up in vengeance to properly react when Winnie had called out my name. It took me a second before I was pulled out of my little daydream, my eyes snapping to look at Winnie as she waved me over.

  “Avery, come look.”

  I turned over to see her holding onto a picture. It was too small to see from where I was standing, but curiosity soon got hold of me. Dropping all my things, I quickly made my way across the room and toward where Winnie stood, which was just beside Blake’s bed.

  Grabbing the picture from her hands, I quickly examined what the big deal about it was. My breath got caught in my throat when my brain finally processed what exactly I was looking at.

  “I found it under his pillow,” Winnie muttered softly from behind me, but I paid no attention to her. My eyes were solely fixated on that small piece of paper.

  The picture, if I remembered correctly, was taken during the sixth-grade school fun fair. A boy had his arm draped over a girl’s shoulders; both were smiling widely. However, only one of them paid attention to the person taking the photograph. While the girl beamed brightly at the camera, the boy was staring intensely at the girl with a brilliant smile still etched on his face.

  Snapping out of my thoughts, I took out a lighter from the front pocket of my sweatshirt and began to burn the edges of the paper, watching intently as it started to char a dark earthy brown before deepening into a smoky black. I opened the balcony glass door and stood near the edge. I let the wind carry the burning picture and watched it fly away out of my sight.

  All the while, I kept chanting to myself in a monotonous voice: I was doing him a favor. Charlotte wouldn’t have liked it if she saw that.

  I repeated the chant in my head over and over, trying to imprint it into my mind.

  I was doing him a favor.

  Chapter 5

  For the rest of the weekend, that one single picture haunted my thoughts. I couldn’t fall back to sleep no matter how much I tossed and turned. By the time the trio had dropped me off, it was already 5:30 am. Since it was a Saturday the next day, and I had nothing to do, I decided to get some sleep. Not a single part of that plan worked, though. My brain was working overtime that night, stopping me from slipping into that much-needed break away from reality.

  It was just one insignificant picture, but the day it was taken meant so much to me. It was the same week my parents told me about their divorce. Or should I say, the same week I overheard the news of my parents divorcing and the reasons behind it. It was also the same week that Blake had asked me to be his girlfriend, and I thought it was a joke.

  That day was magical, and I thought that it was perhaps one of the best days of my life. Of course, considering the situation now, that day was nothing but an unfulfilled promise. Our friendship crashed and burned like my parent’s marriage, which was saying a lot. I stayed with my father in California, and my mother lived all the way in New York City. Ironically, my parents were best friends before they got married and had a beautiful love story worthy of the big screen in Hollywood.

  I guess both me and my parents’ failures in cliché best friend love stories is evident enough to tell everyone, that those undying proclamations of love and sweet nothings only come true in fairy tales, where happily-ever-afters are possible.

  There are no fairy tales in real life. This is the inescapable truth of reality, and reality will, at one point, strike everyone in the face like a cold, hard brick. The ine
vitable truth about the real world, about our world, is that there will never be happily-ever-afters. Happily-ever-afters were only created to give kids a nice bedtime story. Even if a couple were blessed enough by the heavens and did get together for the rest of their life in absolute bliss, still, as they say, death would do them part. Unless immortality were possible, there would never be a happily-ever-after.

  However, I do believe in happily-afters. There’s no ever because it won’t last forever. It only means that for a period of time, bliss and happiness is possible. It’s better than nothing, and it’s more realistic than the happily-ever-afters in children’s books.

  My time with Blake was an example of a happily-after. We had our fun, and we had fights, but we still stuck together through rain and shine. Honestly, I believed that we would still be in our happily-after if Charlotte Brooke ceased to exist. But then we would also have the problem of Miranda Hastings, Charlotte’s best friend. After all, birds of a feather flock together, and fate will always find ways to warp the future.

  I’ll shoot down that bird one day, but now, my brain is still in a mess, I thought.

  On top of the picture problem, the lack of sleep was finally taking a toll on me during my last period in school come Monday morning. Winnie, William, and Wesley officially started school that day too, and surprisingly, almost all my classes had at least one of the triple threats. That last period, however, didn’t. Instead, I had with me the wonderful Charlotte Brooke and the root of all my problems, Blake Ryder.

  Such joy.

  When the last bell finally rang, I immediately shot up from my seat, refusing eye contact with the two of them. Blake hadn’t gone home yet. That was obvious since he hadn’t confronted me yet about the poor state of his house and his precious car.

  Soon, I would face Satan’s wrath, and I had brought it all upon myself, and I liked it.

  I liked being bad.

  I liked destroying things.

  And when Blake would finally realize that I trashed his whole house, I would also come to like the feeling of accomplishment.

  ***

  “You’ve been awfully quiet,” Summer commented as we sat down in the bleachers, waiting for William and Wesley to finish their football tryouts. Desperate for a little point boost, the two brothers had decided to join the football team. By the way, they were playing on the field, it certainly wouldn’t take long before they would be accepted.

  “I didn’t sleep well last night, I guess. To say the least, it had been a long weekend.” I shrugged, brushed my hair backward, and tugged my jacket closer to my body to keep myself warm.

  “Yeah, I can tell. Your eyes look like a panda’s. Girl, ever heard of concealer?”

  “She was too busy kicking butt on Friday night to think of concealer.” Winnie suddenly appeared by my side, grinning at my physical appearance, and I scowled. “Winnie Jerald.” She grinned at Summer, holding out her hand, and Summer took immediately, shaking it enthusiastically.

  “Summer Dollen, this idiot’s best friend. Though I’ve heard some people mentioning that I’m more of a sidekick. Can’t argue, though. I do stick with her through everything.” Summer grinned at Winnie, and I could tell that the both of them were already going to be best friends. Their personalities were too similar for one, and two, they were both kickass beauties.

  Though I was never one to doubt my physical appearance, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with two stunning ladies seated beside me.

  Pulling my wild purple hair into a ponytail, I got up and gestured to the washrooms. “I’m going to go get a breather. Be right back.” The both of them barely even spared me a glance as they chatted on and on about how cool some new video game was. Though it was not a topic anyone would have assumed these two will talk about, they still discussed with utmost enthusiasm, once again slapping stereotypes in the face.

  Sighing, I quickly trudged toward the washrooms past the entrance of the school, but I immediately stopped in my tracks when I heard a familiar voice.

  “I can’t find it, Ryan. I searched everywhere.” Blake’s frustrated voice echoed along the small corridor. Ryan Smith is Blake’s best friend and right-hand man. Outside of our little friendship circle, Blake had always been close with Ryan ever since we were young. However, due to his lack of restraint and revolting personality, I had never found myself liking Ryan’s company. I never quite understood their friendship, but then again, ours was a flop. So who was I to judge?

  “Did you check your house? I thought you always left it under some pillow.” Ryan’s voice followed soon after, and I gulped slightly.

  Did he mean the picture? I asked myself.

  “You’re right. Thanks, dude.” Blake’s relieved voice came again, and I could hear his footsteps slowly fade.

  Taking a deep breath, I quickly made my way back toward the bleachers before either of the two boys could spot me, the need to wash up completely gone from my mind.

  Chapter 6

  Since I was young, I had been a pampered girl, the princess of my family. My parents, though divorced, loved me and showered me with absolute care and concern no matter what I did. They supported me in a way that a best friend would, yet they were stern and wary of the guys I hung out with like parents should be. They were wrong about one thing, though. They would always warn me about other boys, how they would want to lure a poor, innocent girl, but not once did it run through their minds that perhaps my best friend was the one that would hurt me in the future.

  Sitting at the back of the class watching Charlotte and Blake make sickly sweet eyes at each other was already enough to make me regurgitate last night’s dinner. What I heard near the locker rooms was wrong, apparently. Blake was not looking for the picture, thank God. He was looking for a ring. I didn’t know what type of ring, but the idea of rings made me sick. Anything that ever reminded me of Blake made me sick. When we were around six years old, I rolled out a small plastic ring from a gumball machine and gave it to Blake since he made a huge fuss about it. He probably lost it the very next day because he never mentioned it again. The memory still burned in the pits of my mind, causing my stomach to flip nauseatingly whenever I was reminded of it.

  “What’s got your mood down in a ditch, princess.” Wesley poked me with the tip of his pen, and I glared at him. It only took a little convincing with the principal to get Wesley transferred to my last class. That way, I wouldn’t be left alone to spectate Blake and Charlotte’s exchange of love notes right before school ended.

  “I’m just not overly fond of puking in class.” I gestured to Blake and Charlotte before turning my attention back to Wesley.

  “Really? Gosh, Ava. I can’t believe you would let jerks like him dictate how you would feel for the day. It’s not a bad day just because you have to face a bad person.” Wesley laughed, his voice a little too loud, which caught the attention of the teacher in front.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Jerald?” The teacher raised an eyebrow in our direction, and Wesley smirked, winked, and saluted the teacher.

  “No problem here, Mr. Lee.”

  The teacher didn’t question Wesley back but only shot him a deadly glare before he returned to scribbling on the blackboard.

  “Really, Ava. You need to start loosening up. Keeping tabs on them constantly isn’t going to be healthy for your mental well-being.” Wesley gestured toward me, and at that moment, the bell rang. I gathered my things, shoved them all into my bag, and trudged out of the class, leaving Wesley rather dumbfounded at my sudden departure.

  “Avery!” I heard a voice from behind me once I neared the lockers. I spun around slightly and came face to face with Charlotte Brooke. I blinked twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

  Damn, she already poisoned my classroom life. Did she have to destroy my lockers too?

  “What is it that you want, Brooke? I don’t have time for thieves like you. Not today at least. So get out of my sight,” I snapped, turning back to remove certain items from my
bag.

  “I don’t know what is it that Blake and I did to offend you—”

  I scoffed slightly, placing my textbooks in the locker.

  “But I want you to stop bothering the both of us. I know what you did to Blake’s room and his car. I know it was you, and if you don’t want me to…to go to the teachers, you’ll learn to keep your nose in your own business.” Charlotte’s face resembled a red tomato by the end of her speech.

  I laughed. Hell, it was probably the first time in forever I had laughed so genuinely.

  “Really? You don’t know what is it you did? Why don’t you figure it out, nerd? And while you do that, keep it in your mind that you have absolutely no right to threaten me. I can destroy you faster than you can run into Blake’s arms. Hell, into any other guy’s. Only God knows what a slut you truly are.” I spit the words out like poison, sparing no mercy, and slammed the locker door shut, leaving her gaping at my words as I strutted out of the school’s front doors. Not for a moment did I turn my head back.

  ***

  “You left her there?” Summer laughed upon hearing my story, which caused a ripple effect because soon enough, Winnie started laughing along too.

  “Damn girl! That will teach her. Do you think she is really that dumb to not figure out?” Winnie raised an eyebrow, holding out the different nail polish bottles and placing them beside her nails to see which matched her mood best.

  “She could be really dumb. No one knows for sure.” I shrugged, picking out a light lavender nail polish and applying it.

  “I don’t get what Blake saw in her. He downgraded major, Ave.” Summer winked, picking out the black nail polish instead.

  We were sleeping over at Winnie’s house. They had gotten a huge four-level house, a major change from what they lived in. Before Nate, their older brother, went missing, they lived in a shaggy little poor excuse of a house and barely had enough money to tide by the days. Often Blake and I had to chip in to make sure the triplets could get something to eat during recess. Now, they sure were well-off.