The Revenge Playbook (32 page)

“Yes.” They both say at once.

So, I tell them about last year. Or, rather, I tell the coffee table about last year. If I don't look at them while I say it, maybe they'll still love me. Telling Melanie Jane this weekend was good practice. It's like it got my truth muscles working. When I'm done, I guess I expect hugs and tears and stuff. My dad walks out of the room without saying anything. And then there are tears (from me) and hugs (from my mom).

“He just needs some time,” she says.

I nod, but I don't understand. I go up to my room and pull the curtains shut and wish I could block out my feelings along with the light. Falcor climbs into bed with me and curls against my side with a sad doggy sigh. I wrap my arm around my demon familiar and bury my face in his fur and try not to think about how sad it is that my dog is giving me more support than my father. At some point, I guess I fall asleep because I wake up later to someone rapping on my window. I open the curtains to see Toby standing outside, so I open the window too.

“Your parents said you're grounded.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

He scratches his cheek. Turns his head from side to side like he's worried someone will overhear. “I'm really sorry about everything that happened.”

Poor Tobes. You'd think he was the one who called me out in the middle of the hallway. “Aw, thanks. It'll be okay.” Maybe. Hopefully. Someday. Or never. Never is also a possibility.

“No, I mean, I'm
really
sorry. I think Chad was the one who told Coach Fuller and the principal. Chad was talking about how he saw you at the bar, and why would you ever come there. And I remembered all the questions you had been asking me about the football and the scavenger hunt and stuff, and it all made sense. So, I told him.” His voice goes so quiet I almost don't hear the last part, and it takes me a second to process.

“You told him?” Toby, my Toby, told
Chad
of all people? “Do you know how bad this is? How could you do that? You completely betrayed me.”

He stares at me through the screen, his eyes turning red at the corners. “You betrayed me first, Ana.”

His words cut me straight through the heart because they're completely true. I did hurt him first. I used him, more than once, and I gave myself a free pass because I felt like it was worth it. Now I'm thinking it wasn't.

“I'll see you later, okay?” Toby walks away through my backyard and disappears between the hedges.

I want to yell out his name, but I'm scared of how much it will hurt if he doesn't come back.

A few minutes later, my phone beeps in my pocket. My heart does a backflip. Toby? Oh. It's just Liv.

We're in the tree house. Grayson said you might be able to meet us. Can you get out?

I almost cry when I read the text. It feels that good to have someone waiting for me. I can't believe the other girls were able to sneak past their parents and come all the way over here. They must really care about me. I slip out to the backyard, telling my mom first that I'm going to the tree house to think. She's used to me doing this, so she gives me a hug and lets me go. When I climb the wooden rungs to the top, the girls are all there, as promised.

Liv squeezes me in a hug before I can catch my balance. “Are you okay?”

“As good as I can be, I guess.” I find an open space to sit. It's kind of a tight squeeze in here with four grown-up-sized people. “What about you guys? Are you okay?”

They pass confused glances back and forth. “What do you mean?” asks Melanie Jane.

“We got caught.” Our lives as we know them are going up in flames. How are they all so calm?

Peyton shakes her head slowly. “You got caught. We're still not sure how.”

“It was Toby,” I say. “He told Chad.”

“What?!” Melanie Jane looks like she's about to fly out of the tree house on a broom. Possibly with a legion of flying monkeys with which to attack Toby. “I'll kill that little dork.”

I put a hand on her arm. “It's okay. We're kind of even.”

“They never called the rest of us to the principal's office.” Liv shifts her legs into a butterfly stretch. “We kept waiting.”

“Of course not. I didn't tell on you guys.”

“That was really cool of you,” she says, and the other girls nod.

“Yeah. I mean, we're in this together. Things are bad for me right now, but they don't have to be bad for everyone.”

They breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“Oh, good,” says Liv. “Because I don't think I'd have a chance of getting a scholarship with something like this on my record.”

“Miss Nashville is right around the corner,” chimes in Melanie Jane.

“I'd hate for Rey to know I was a part of this,” says Peyton.

“Sure,” I reply, feeling suddenly alone in this very cramped tree house. “I can take the fall by myself. It's not a problem.”

I falter on the end of my sentence. Melanie Jane is picking at her cuticles. Liv seems very
interested in her split ends. Peyton is the only one of them who has the decency to look at me, and even she seems like she's about to burst into tears. And just like that I am dragged back into the darkness that consumed me for most of last year. Was this the only reason they came over? Did they care about how I was doing at all? I thought the whole point of this was for us to band together, but I guess I was wrong.

“I should probably go.”

I crawl out of the tree house before they can stop me. Back into my house. Back into my bed. Back under the covers pulled up over my face. My parents hate me. Toby hates me. The kids at school never liked me to begin with. My girls have abandoned me. I have no one.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
here is no vlog today. Though that doesn't stop people from checking at 9:30. And 9:31 and 9:32 and 9:40 and then at 11:00 just in case. The excitement of Monday and Tuesday is gone. All anyone can talk about today is that bitch Ana Cardoso.

“It just makes me sad, you know?” Chloe slides into the desk next to me in Spanish. “They're
such
great guys, and they totally don't deserve this. Ana Cardoso is a stupid bitch drama queen who likes to make other people's lives miserable. It's really lame.”

I narrow my eyes. “You didn't think it was lame Tuesday before you found out it was Ana.”

Chloe looks me up and down like she doesn't even know who I am anymore. “What's your deal, Mel-Jay? This is Ana we're talking about. Besides, that video she posted yesterday was way over the line. You can't just out someone's secret ceremonies. That's just wrong.”

I shrug because if I open my mouth again, bad things are guaranteed to come out.

Ana is screwed, and I am drowning in guilt. Liv and Peyton too. We talked about it for over an hour after Ana left last night. Keeping our secret seemed like the best idea at the time, but now I'm not so sure.

Chloe snort-giggles next to me. “OMG. Have you seen this?”

She pushes her phone in front of me. It's a photo of Ana looking totally wasted, horns and a mustache edited onto the picture later. It's posted on some kind of website. I scroll down to find dozens, maybe even hundreds, of comments.

Ana Cardoso is a stupid skanky narc who needs to learn to keep her mouth shut.

She just wants to make everyone else as miserable as her.

She's a liar.

Slut.

Bitch.

And after the comments, there's another post. A video. The caption above it reads,
WHAT ANA CARDOSO LIKES TO DO FOR FUN
.

“Oh! That's the best part. Here.” She clicks
PLAY
. “It's hilarious.”

I feel like I'm going to be sick. This is the video from the night Chad tried to rape Ana. To anyone who doesn't know Ana was on drugs, all the dancing around probably would seem pretty funny. To me, it is disgusting. A thought hits me like a sucker punch: I wonder if Ana's seen it. Is she watching it right this minute? Is it dragging her back into that nightmare? Making her feel like she'll never be able to outrun it no matter what she does?

The video settles it. We
have
to confess. Take some of the attention off Ana. Give back the football and try to get through the next 2.5 years with our heads down. The more I think about it, the better I feel. It's going to suck, really badly, but telling is the right thing to do. And I think I know how I want to do it.

I give Chloe's phone back and pull out my own where Señor Barbas can't see it. I text Michael.

Me: I know we were planning on Saturday, but can I come over tonight?

Michael: Sure.

Me: Awesome. And can Liv and Peyton come too? It's really important.

Michael: Yeah. Is everything okay?

Me: I think it will be. Also, do you have any video equipment?

There's a delay. He must think I'm so weird. Chloe is leaning over her desk trying to read my screen, so I scoot it farther under my Spanish book. Michael texts back.

Michael: Yes, but you have to know, after the thong incident, getting texts like this from you is very scary :)

Yep. Definitely thinks I'm weird. Fantastic.

Me: You're the best! I'll come over after cheer practice! And don't be scared :)

“I'm so glad we're doing this,” says Peyton. “I've been feeling awful.”

“Me too,” says Liv.

We get right to work making a new vlog post. It feels weird doing this without Ana, but I'm hoping she'll forgive us when she sees it. Michael films for us—he's pretty amazing about rolling with whatever crazy thing I throw at him. We kind of had to tell him what was going on, but he had figured it out for himself after watching all of our shenanigans this weekend. Before I know it, we've wrapped, and the post is set to go live tomorrow, and Michael and I are alone in his bedroom. There is nothing left to do but make out. It is obvious. And it is creating an awkward silence.

Michael scratches the back of his neck. “Just so you know, I really wasn't inviting you over here as a sex thing.”

“Good.” I sit on his bed and swing my feet back and forth just a little. “Because we're not having sex.”

I scrutinize his face for the wrong reaction, but he seems pretty okay with what I just said. “Are you a virgin?”

“Yep.”

Some girls are embarrassed about being virgins. They get all shy and flushed every time they have to tell a boy because they're worried about what he'll think. Well, not me because I know what those girls don't. Every time I've ever told a boy I liked I was a virgin, they had unilaterally the same response: they thought it was “so cool” or “very cool” or “really cool” or sometimes just plain “cool,” but
cool
was always the word of choice to describe having retained one's virginity.

The problem is, even though they said it was “so cool,” that's not what they meant. What guys mean when you tell them you are a virgin, and they tell you it's “so cool,” is that it is “so cool that you have never had sex with anyone else as long as you are planning on letting me eventually have sex with you.” Which is not, in my opinion, cool at all.

“I thought so,” he says. And I must be giving him some kind of evil eye because he rushes to explain. “You said something about it at the bar. About Weston dumping you?”

Oh. Right.

“Is it tough?” he asks. “Waiting?”

“Sometimes.”
It probably will be with you.
“What about you? Are you a virgin?”

“No. She was my girlfriend. Before I moved from Boston.” He sits beside me. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah.”
It only puts a ton of pressure on me.
“I have to ask you something else. Do you have any STDs or anything?”

“Nope. Do you?”

“No.”

We both laugh awkwardly.

“Well, now that I've totally killed the mood . . .”

He grabs my hand. “No, you didn't. And now we can have fun without having to worry about anything. So. You just let me know if I ever do anything you don't want me to. I never want you to be uncomfortable, and I don't really know how this works.”

“Okay.”

I have no idea what I do or don't want him to do. This would be a whole lot easier if I had created a complicated formula taking into account the number of weeks we've been dating and how much I like him and doling out precise allotments of physical affection. Not that I normally do that. Okay, fine, I totally always do that. But not this time. Not with Michael. That boy is my exception. I'll have to be careful not to unleash years of pent-up sexual desire onto him all at once.

I kiss him until we're gasping for air, and we do things, wonderful things, and I have feelings I didn't know were possible. We didn't do Everything, but I never realized how much the things we did do could mean. It's euphoria—this freewheeling, flying, falling-in-love-for-the-first-time feeling. The Norwegians call it
forelsket
. And then we're wound up together in his sheets, my head resting against his shoulder. He opens one eye when I snuggle closer.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

We stare at each other, our eyes passing secrets back and forth about the last hour. He touches my cheek with the back of his fingers.

“I love you, Melanie Jane.”

“I love you too.”

Did we really just say that? This early? Oh, yes, my brain has definitely been washed. And dried. And maybe ironed with starch too. Before I can get a really good internal freak-out going, my phone vibrates on Michael's floor. I lean over and pick it up. And nearly swallow my tongue because on my screen in serious black letters is a text from my mother.