Play Dirty (26 page)

Lynn clenched her teeth and just smiled back. Now she couldn’t say shit, because she would look like a liar. And even then, Aria would likely find a way to make Lynn’s stories all about her anyway. It made Lynn even angrier. A strong desire to bash Aria’s face in with a textbook floated through her mind.

Let’s see how many auditions she could get while missing teeth.

“I learned
so much
from all the professional actors and directors. I mean, they are the real deal. They have successful careers in their fields and their instruction is just so much more powerful. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. F is great and all, but these are people who are actually making it. Incredible!”

Lynn noticed Matthew’s eyes flick over to Aria with annoyance.

“They just have a whole other level of professionalism that we haven’t really found here in class.”

“Well! I can’t wait to see what you can teach all of us at rehearsal.” Lynn rolled her eyes.

“It’s just so exciting, Viggiani!” Aria clapped her hands like a child. “I shouldn’t, but I will tell you this: even if I’m not cast after this round of callbacks, one director said he definitely had a role in mind for me for an upcoming play! Be prepared to see Aria Levens in lights one day, friends!”

Friends. Right. Lynn set her jaw and pulled out her phone to text Dana another series of gifs about decapitating her rival.
Ready to address possibility Aria is an alien sexbot.

A few seconds later, Dana sent back:
Told you. Let me guess? Santa brought her a new face for Christmas??

Lynn coughed to cover her laughter.
She. Wishes. Even worse, tho. She auditioned in NYC over Xmas.

“There’s a special magic being on a stage where greats once stood,” Aria was still prattling on. “I mean, Idina Menzel was Elphie
on that stage
. Don’t tell anyone, but I stole a piece of gaff tape from backstage. I had to take a piece of it with me!”

Did all the directors in the city develop dementia or something? Gross.

Then began the parade of gifs, Lynn’s favorite part of the day. Today’s list included the Wicked Witch of the West, many of the Real Housewives, and a string of drag queens fucking people up. All in all, not a bad spread.

Something sparkly caught her eye on Aria’s wrist. Aria always wore something sparkly, but this set of sparkly looked almost familiar from the corner of her eye.

Her bracelet was almost identical to the one Matthew just left in Lynn’s locker. And suddenly, it was like someone set her blood to Broil. Lynn was so angry she literally could not see straight. Funny, she always thought that was just a silly expression until she
was
that fucking angry.

That cheating, sleazy, wannabe motherfucking jack shit asshole. She fucking knew it. She knew he was a skeezy piece of shit the second that box appeared in her locker. “Just a mistake.” Right. What more proof did she need that he was fucking Aria on the side?

She was ready to flip her goddamn desk over Aria when Matthew called for everyone’s attention. Lynn sent as many
fuck you die
vibes as she could while he was talking. She no longer cared what he had to say or why he was saying it. Fuck him. He was dead to her and Aria was about to meet her end.

Lynn wasn’t sure how, because she wasn’t exactly the most violent person on the planet, but she was going to ruin both of them. Dana was an evil genius in her own right, and surely she would help her very best friend find a way to dispose of a piece of rotting dick meat and his whore-faced cunt-mouthed girl on the side.

How could he do this to her? He
knew
how much she hated Aria. Matthew really must have thought she was fucking stupid. Flashbacks of their night in Manhattan together overwhelmed her. Lynn must have been nothing more than a dumb, silly little child he used to get his rocks off.

Goddammit, she should have known better. She should have trusted in herself, instead of letting a giant penis interrupt her life, just like it interrupted her mother’s. Lynn had fought so hard to have her own life. Her mother was a day drunk who spent her husband’s paychecks on clothes she’d never wear and eight a.m. vodkas, and pool boys with thick accents and no visas.

She was miserable. That wasn’t the life Lynn wanted. She’d promised herself for as long as she remembered that it wouldn’t be her. And here she was—Barbara Lite. Well, there was still time for Lynn. This was just high school and he was just some two-bit hack of an actor who couldn’t make it and tried to make himself fucking feel better by sleeping with girls who were way too young for him, and therefore didn’t know any better.

She swallowed hard. Fine. Lynn Viggiani had learned her lesson. Better now than in Manhattan, where her mistakes and fuck-ups would cost her a lot more than a few weeks of discomfort and bad dreams. She was Lynn Maria Viggiani, goddammit. Her Juliet was so stunning, she made the paper. She could hit notes Aria Levens couldn’t even hear.

Lynn glanced down at her desk and saw that she’d been digging her pen into the wood of her desk without noticing. Embarrassed, she covered it with her hand. She didn’t want either one of them to know they got to her in any capacity. It was time to rally her pride and say fuck the haters. Haters, of course, being Matthew and Aria.

A crumpled up piece of paper landed on the corner of her desk. Lynn glanced out of her periphery and saw Aria staring at her intently. She wanted to take it and shove it in Aria’s eyeballs, but that would draw attention from the fuckface at the front of the class. So she opened the note.

Can I borrow a tampon?

Lynn stared at the curling letters. She would recognize that handwriting
anywhere
. It was the same handwriting as the note in her flowers. But that wasn’t what sat her back on her heels. It was another realization that nearly knocked her out of her chair.

Oh, god. How could she not see this before? Clearly, Aria knew about them and used that as leverage to get in Matthew’s pants! She was flirting with him from the first day of school. She was basically naked in her audition for the musical. The way she threw herself at him, and he avoided her on stage. Oh god, she’d blackmailed him for weeks.

He’d tried to tell her, in his own way, but she’d been too thick to put the pieces together until now.

Lynn kept her actress mask on and leaned over to whisper, “I’ll go with you.” She grabbed her purse and walked out of the classroom, with Aria right behind her.

“Uh, ladies?” Matthew said before Lynn got out of the classroom. “Can I help you?”

“No.” Lynn replied, not looking at him. She didn’t trust herself to. Aria may be blackmailing him, and she would very shortly be handled, but he was also still fucking going through with it and fucking her enemy. This revelation didn’t get him off the hook.

They said nothing as they walked down the hall, past Dana’s classroom, where she nearly fell out of her chair watching the two of them walk together. Lynn spent the time determining how exactly she wanted to destroy Aria. Smash her head in a sink? Flush her down the toilet? Throw her out the window?

Hot damn, she wished she really was violent. Besides that one time in Manhattan where her boyfriend-thing called her the wrong goddamn name. Instead, she knew she was going to get answers, pretend she knew nothing, and then tell Matthew to fucking forget her, because Lynn was not going to be tangled up in Aria’s web of bullshit.

Maybe she’d be able to channel that anger again and really throw her out the window. That wouldn’t be so terrible.

Her heart hurt knowing these were the last few moments she and Matthew would be together, even if right now things were shaky. Lynn felt awful and sick all at once. They were both being played by this bratty, cunty bitch. Knowing it was her for certain was worse than she expected it to be.

She slipped the bracelet into her pocket and put her mask back on as they pushed through the swing doors. At this point, it was clear Aria didn’t need a tampon. And if she was going to try and blackmail Lynn, too, she had every intention of punching her in the brand new goddamn nose.

“So.” Lynn’s voice shook slightly for the turmoil warring within her. She closed her eyes. “Is there something we need to discuss?”

Punching her in the nose, while it would feel amazing, wouldn’t help her situation. How could she turn this around on Aria without taking Matthew down? She could deny, but since she actually was sleeping with Matthew, it exposed his guilt and hers by proxy. Then again, now that Aria was sleeping with him, it put them in the same boat, right? There had to be a way to turn this on her.

“Oh my god.” Aria sighed dramatically, hand on her forehead. Hand attached to the bracelet Matthew obviously gave her. Lynn rubbed her now bare wrist. “Yes. And it’s so awful. I know we are professional rivals, though that gap is clearly widening, what with my professional auditions over the break—”

“Aria.” Lynn snapped. Despite what was going on, she couldn’t handle her mouth.

Aria huffed. “It’s time for us to unite as one in the name of good. Mr. Flint has been keeping a very big secret.”

Lynn felt dizzy and angry. Big secret, right. THAT HE’S SLEEPING WITH YOU. She shook under the screaming her in head, and was about to lash out, when—

“Did you know we share an agent?”

Lynn snapped her jaw shut and shook her head.

“Well, we totally do. Just before
Romeo and Juliet
, Sam told me that our own Mr. Flint has been going to auditions in the City every weekend. Can you believe that?! It’s been going on for months, he said.”

“I…” Lynn didn’t know what to say.

“Right! So, on opening night, I sent Mr. Flint a note telling him that I knew everything, assuming he would get the hint and quit auditioning. He didn’t. Over Christmas, I actually ran into him at a closed audition. How can he commit to us, his prized and most important pupils, when his heart and thoughts are on his own career?”

“I…”

“It’s despicable!” Aria flushed red. “I can’t believe him. He lied to us, you know that, right? He said he was here to teach and grow us, but he’s been hunting for something new ever since the first day of school. We don’t mean anything to him! We’re just a paycheck. But we need to come together to not let that happen.”

“Despicable.” Lynn found herself nodded. “Absolutely, yes.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page. I need you to help me approach him after school about this nonsense. I am not going to have my career jeopardized just because he’s unhappy with his acting career. Unacceptable!”

“Unacceptable.”

“We will meet in his room after school today.” Aria pointed at her. “Be strong and look past his good looks, Viggiani. He won’t win this one.”

“Absolutely.” Lynn struggled to process everything. So, Aria didn’t know about them? And he didn’t sleep with her? “Hey, that’s a really pretty bracelet—”

“Oh, thank you!” Aria waved her arm around. “Sam gave it to me for Christmas. He’s just the sweetest agent ever.”

“Wow, yeah.”

“Today, after school. Don’t miss it.” Aria pointed at her again.

For once, Lynn didn’t really care. As soon as Aria closed the door, Lynn laughed and cried until she couldn’t breathe. Aria had no idea. Matthew wasn’t cheating on her. No one knew. They were free.

PART THREE

LYNN

She had absolutely zero intention of meeting Aria after school, and every intention of cornering Matthew to discuss the giant bomb that went off in the bathroom. Unfortunately, when Aria Levens was on a mission, she didn’t derail.

“Unless we can distract her.” Dana whispered conspiratorially over their lunches. “There’s always playing to her ego, right? But that would have to be huge, because she apparently thinks Matthew’s only job in life is to revolve around her.”

“Because she’s fucking insane.”

“But she’s also not fucking your man.”

Lynn grinned. Matthew was all hers, no matter how hard Aria tried. Never would she have guessed a joint restroom break with her mortal enemy would result in such amazing and stress-killing news. “I always knew he was loyal to me.”

Dana cocked an eyebrow clear into her bangs, but pulled out a notebook and flipped to a clean sheet of paper. “We know we can’t lure her with stupid shit. She’s on a mission, and someone fanning all over her just won’t cut it.”

“Also, ew.”

“But if we caused damage …”

They both brightened at the same time, huge, beaming smiles full of excitement and pure malice. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say those words, D. Tell me you have something magical and terrible saved up for her. I know she’s not sleeping with Matthew, but she’s still fucking Aria.”

“Fucking Aria who bragged all day about an audition for a role she didn’t even land. That girl has some serious ovaries.”

“Or an ego the size of New York.”

“Truth. Okay.” Dana started making a few notes. “Now, let me know if this is too extreme, but I’m thinking we get her car towed.”

“You are my favorite human being. How do we do that?”

“Oliver knows a guy.”

“Oliver is the BEST.”

“Oh, girl, you don’t even
know
.” Dana tapped her nose. “You’ve been so far up Kirk’s ass, you’ve missed half the good stuff. Which I’m still mad at you for, just bee-tee-dubs.”

Lynn hid her face in her hands. “I know! I’m sorry! I’m the worst friend in existence. But after today, I promise, I’m all yours. When I’m not with Kirk.”

Dana harrumphed, but happily continued her notes for Operation Kill Mercedes. Lynn wasn’t completely clear on the details, but knew it would involve something with Aria’s stupid car and a tow-away zone.

“The beautiful thing is,” Dana talked around a carrot stick dangling from her mouth. “She usually parks somewhere she’s not supposed to already because she thinks she owns the whole school. If she’s where I think she is, this is really just going to take a few phone calls. But, if she decided to be a decent human being today or someone took her spot or whatever, we’ve still got it covered. You’ll have Kirk all to yourself.”

“Hopefully, this means out-of-this-world sex, too.” Lynn winked at her. It had been weeks since they actually had
sex
, and she was going crazy. Now that his name was cleared, her sex drive was working overtime. Sex in the classroom would be really, really hot. Also really, really dangerous, but a girl could dream.