Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood (10 page)

“Sort of.”

“Just sort of? Haven’t they gone out forever?”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s it. She’s bored of him. She seemed more ticked about the fact that he lied to her about something than the fact that they broke up. Lauren doesn’t like it when people don’t sort of fall in line.”

“But still, it’s her boyfriend. I would have thought he was super important to her. Shouldn’t she be crushed?”

“I don’t know, I guess. Maybe she likes someone else.”

“Who?”

“Got me. She’s never said anything about anyone else, but she also doesn’t rave about Justin either. He was more like an accessory, you know?”

“Huh,” I muttered. That put a kink in my plan. What was the fun of breaking up Lauren and her boyfriend if she didn’t even care? I chewed on the corner of my thumbnail for a second.

“So are you going out with us tonight?”

“I made other plans.” I could tell Kyla wanted to ask what other plans, but she didn’t want to let on that she was out of the loop on any possible social options at Lincoln High. I was too tired to deal with Lauren’s drama and needed the time to come up with how to take the plan to the next stage given this disturbing Justin news. I was just staying home, but if Kyla thought I had better plans, I was willing to let her think it.

“Would you mind if I borrowed your boots through the rest of the weekend? I’ll polish them up before I give them back.”

“Sure.” I said absently while I tried to figure out the next step.

Kyla squealed. “You’re the best. I really appreciate it.”

“No worries. You know, if you want, you can keep them. Just let me borrow them once in a while,” I said.

There was silence on the other line for a second.

“Oh-my-god-are-you-serious? That-is-so-awesome,” Kyla said, stringing all her words together. “Anytime you want to borrow them, I mean any time, you just say the word.”

“Deal. Look, I gotta run okay?” I said, but Kyla hardly noticed because no doubt she was already plotting new outfits. I punched the phone off and leaned back against the bed.

Getting revenge was more complicated than it had looked blocked out in my binder. In theory everything was going exactly according to plan. Lauren’s two best friends were finding themselves more and more annoyed with her. I, the mysterious New York City girl, got way more stealth glances and blatant kiss-up compliments from random peons in the hallway, at least for now. Her status as top of the social heap was starting to erode. She was still up there, but the ground beneath her was unstable. I had known I would never steal her boyfriend out from under her. Justin wasn’t the type to actually cheat, he was too all-American, but I had even found a way around that. I didn’t have to steal him, I just had to make Lauren think that she might not be the center of his universe. She would never take the chance that he would break up with her. How would that look, after all? No, I
knew Lauren would dump him first. And she did, just the way I expected. Well, except for the part where she didn’t seem to care. I had expected that to go differently. I didn’t necessarily think she would be gutted, but I had hoped for a bigger reaction.

I pulled my binder out from under my bed. I flipped through the pages. I was popular, her friends were starting to like me more than her, Lauren’s relationship was over, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. I looked at the other two bullet points under Lauren’s name. It was time to move on to the next stage of the plan.

Chapter Eighteen

T he rest of the evening was frustrating. I made a list of ways to get Lauren off the cheerleading team. It wouldn’t be enough if she quit. She had to get kicked off. Unlike the situation with Justin, there needed to be no mistaking the fact that quitting wasn’t her choice. It needed that added dimension of humiliation. I made a list of possibilities in my binder:

1.
Some type of tragic cheerleading injury due to negligence (Is drunken cheering illegal?)

2.
Busted for taking pictures of elementary school kids in compromising positions

3.
Doing something very unsportswomanship-like, such as beating up our school mascot

4.
Failing all her classes (perhaps declared functionally illiterate) and thus losing her sports eligibility

5.
Caught starring in a cheerleaders-gone-wild video

None of the options I came up with seemed very workable. It was going to require more research. I decided to go with just making her life generally miserable until I had a better plan.

Sunday mornings the Wood family could be counted on to go to church no matter the weather. If a once-in-a-century blizzard struck the area, then you could bet Mr. Wood would purchase a dogsled team and mush his family there to prove their commitment to being upstanding members of the community. It wasn’t that they were particularly religious—they never prayed over dinner and their house didn’t have any Virgin Mary statues planted in the front lawn or anything. If I had to guess, Lauren’s favorite saint would be Judas, patron of betrayers. I never heard either of Lauren’s parents mention God, unless you counted the times her mom would say, “For the love of God, turn down the TV.” Like many things the Wood family did, they went to church because it looked good. It was one more check box on their list proving what an all-American family they were.

To me it didn’t matter if they were in church for a true religious calling or if they were faking it. The point was, I could count on all of them being out of the house for at least an hour. I parked a block or two down from their house and waited until I saw their car pull out of the driveway. I got out of my car and walked quickly over to the house and slipped open the gate to the backyard. I stood there waiting. This was the first part of my revenge plan that, if you were going to be technical about things, was illegal.

Lauren’s older brother, Josh, had his bedroom on the first
floor. He was off at college, but I was counting on the fact that his window would still be unlocked. Years ago, when Josh was in junior high, he had broken the latch so that it looked locked, but with a good push it would slide right open so he could sneak out and in whenever he wanted. I wandered through the backyard trying to look casual in case any of their neighbors were looking out from their houses. The screen popped right off and I placed it on the ground and gave a quick look around. I yanked on the window. It slid open ridiculously easy; it practically flew off the track. I waited for the sound of sirens, or perhaps a neighbor yelling, but nothing.

One quick jump and a pull, and my front half slipped through the window. Where Josh’s bed used to be was now a desk and I slid onto it, knocking a stack of papers to the floor. Shit.

Apparently after Josh went off to college Mrs. Wood had redone his room. I would have thought she was the type of mom to keep her kid’s room a shrine to his childhood long after he left, but as it turns out, she was more the type to turn his bedroom into a den. I wonder what Josh thought of the forest green duck theme that was going on. The bookshelf was littered with wooden duck decoys. Their eyes looked a bit desperate to me. I had to fight the urge to stuff them into my bag and release them back into the wild. I picked up the papers on the floor and tried to tell if there had been a specific order. When I couldn’t figure it out, I shuffled them back into a tidy pile and hoped no one would notice.

As I slipped through the house, I could see that Mrs. Wood had been busy with redecorating since I had been there last. It seemed to be done in an English country cottage style, heavy on the chintz fabric and overstuffed furniture. Something about the decor made me want to sneeze, as if I were allergic to bad floral design. The staircase wall was a gallery of family photos. There was a giant 14 x 16 of Lauren in her cheerleader outfit near the top. I paused to make the frame hang on a crooked angle. I would have colored in her teeth with a marker, but that might have been a bit too obvious.

Lauren’s room was the same Barbie pink it had been when we were kids, but the canopy that had hung over her bed was gone, as were most of the stuffed animals. Most likely she had them put down when she no longer had a use for them. The bedspread was a floral and the furniture was all painted a soft distressed white. The room looked like Laura Ashley had thrown up all over everything. No time to look around. Lauren may not care that much about Justin, but her wardrobe was a different story. I went over to Lauren’s closet and pulled out her favorite pair of shoes. I took the left shoe and shoved it into my handbag. I liked the idea of her looking for it, holding the remaining shoe and thinking that the other one had to be there somewhere. I rifled through her hangers, grabbed a few things that I knew she liked, and sat down on the bed. I pulled a seam ripper from my bag and went to work. On one blouse I loosened all the threads that held the right sleeve, I took off three buttons on another. I
took the hem out on one of her pant legs. Her jeans took me the most time. I cut every third thread on the seam in the butt.

I shot a look at the clock on her nightstand. Time to get moving: They would be home before too long. I sat down at Lauren’s desk and jostled the computer mouse. Her computer was on hibernation mode so it fired right to life. Open on the screen was a paper she was writing for English. On the desk was a copy of Cliff’s Notes.
Tsk tsk.
This could count as cheating. I looked around in case anyone was sneaking up on me and then hit delete. One term paper—gone. Consider it a form of academic discipline: If she really wanted to write a paper on the theme of
The Color Purple
, then she should start with reading the book. I rifled through the papers on her desk but didn’t see anything that would help me. I opened her desk drawers at random. I crouched down and slid my hand between her mattress and box spring. When we were kids this is where she had kept her Disney Princess locking diary. She had either given up journal writing or had found a more creative hiding place. I looked around for evidence that would give away any secret crushes. If Justin wasn’t the love of her life, maybe there was someone else. But the pictures that sat in frames on the dresser were mostly her, Bailey, and Kyla.

I stood in the middle of the room and looked around. What was I missing? I gave the clock another look. Shit, church would be over soon. I reached into my purse and took out the Ziploc bag I had brought. I scooped out the tablespoon of tuna fish
inside and dropped it into the heat duct. That should fester after a day or two. I stepped into her bathroom. Lauren appeared to have every possible goo and potion. I picked up her perfume bottle, Clinique Happy. I gave a quick squirt onto my wrists. My hands slid over her things: eye shadow, lip liners, pressed powder, lip sticks, glitter gloss, eye liners, toners, creams, and bronzers. Finally I found it, black mascara. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was giving an evil smile that reminded me of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch. I pulled a package out of my bag. It was one of those lip-plumping lip glosses. My mom hated those lip glosses and had pointed out to me that they contained capsaicin to make your lips swell. Capsaicin is an extract from chili peppers. I took Lauren’s mascara brush out of the tube and swabbed it into the lip-gloss two or three times and then shoved it back into the tube. Victory. Nothing like a little chili pepper to the eye to put a smile on a girl’s face.

I took my time leaving the house. I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind, not a speck of dust could be out of place. I peeked out the window before I climbed out, but the coast was clear. The window slid shut, giving a satisfying click as it closed. I did my best to walk slowly back to my car, but it was hard to avoid skipping.

I could hardly wait for Monday.

Chapter Nineteen

Before school started, the popular kids hung out on the back staircase into the building, provided that the weather was decent. Although there was nothing posted, everyone else knew this area was off-limits unless you were in the upper echelon, in the same way they knew the stoner kids owned the wooded strip at the back of the parking lot where they could smoke weed and pretend no one could see them. Monday morning, I sat next to Bailey and Kyla on the cold cement steps, sipping our Starbucks coffee and talking about our respective weekends. I saw Lauren first; she was walking toward the door from the parking lot, her pace slow.

“Hey, you okay?” Bailey asked, as Lauren drew closer. It was clear Lauren was anything but okay; her eyes were red and swollen. Chili pepper in mascara: one; Lauren Wood: zero.

“I know it’s early in the day, but use your brain. Do I look okay?”

Bailey’s mouth snapped shut; I could hear her teeth click together.

“I heard about you and Justin. I guess the breakup got to you more than you expected, huh?” I said trying to sound suitably sympathetic. Lauren’s mouth pressed together until her lips almost disappeared.

“I haven’t been crying. I had some kind of allergic reaction or something.” Lauren gave a sniff as if to prove her point.

“Of course you did,” Bailey offered. “There can be all kinds of weird pollen and stuff in the fall.”

Lauren’s nostrils flared and she looked around to see how many people were listening. For once she didn’t want to be the center of attention.

“You should get that checked out. Maybe you’ve got shingles,” I suggested.

“Are you saying I’ve got some kind of disease?”

I placed my hand on my heart as if shocked at her attack. “I didn’t mean like a sexually transmitted one or anything. Shingles is like chicken pox. I guess it could also be pink eye.”

“Just drop it, okay?” Lauren said, giving her watery eyes another swipe.

“Do you want some of my latte?” Bailey offered.

“Lattes have milk, Bailey. Think about it.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry for being stupid or sorry for the latte?” Lauren asked with a snarl.

Bailey’s lower lip started to shake and her eyes welled up to match Lauren’s.

“Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” a voice behind Lauren said, and we all turned to see who it was.