The Revenge Playbook (2 page)

Liv puts on a burst of speed and passes me just as we reach the finish line, aka a selection of laundry baskets. Her chair keeps rolling as she pumps her fists in the air.

Peyton's chair putters to a stop just past the finish line. “Maybe we should get out of here. Like, before they catch us?” She checks over her shoulder for authority figures.

“It's too late,” says Liv, reversing her chair and kicking toward Peyton. “You're already in trouble.”

“What?” Her brown eyes dart around the store.

Then Liv crashes into her, bumper-cars style, and they both fall apart laughing. Thankfully, no one seems to be able to recover from our weirdness fast enough to arrest us, so we're able to get back to the car without so much as a lecture. The other girls are checking the list again, but I don't have to. I know what's next. And I am dreading it.

I pull a small pack of baby wipes from my purse. That was way too much physical activity for my sweat glands to handle, and now I feel positively gross. I wipe myself down while my friends crack jokes about
my obsession with looking polished at all times.
Friends
. If you had told me two months ago that the four of us would be sitting in this car together, I never would have believed you.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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N
o one here knows you're a loser. Take a deep breath. Stand up straight. Smile.

And no one has to know.

I wait my turn for dance team sign-ins with dozens of other girls and try to ignore the feeling of being in a cattle line. If I can get through another day of auditions without passing out from fear, I will consider it a raging success.

The two girls in front of me were in my geography class last year. I should totally say hi to them. It would be easy. I'm going to do it, like, right now. Well, maybe in a minute. After the heart palpitations stop.

“Hi,” I finally say. I tuck a sheet of light brown hair behind my ear out of habit, then pull it out again so it won't get a wrinkle.

They either don't hear me or pretend they don't. Awesome. I am off to an awesome start.

“Can you believe the routine from yesterday?” I say it a little louder, plowing through the jitters. “The choreography at the end was really intense.”

This time one of the girls glances at me over her shoulder before turning back to her friend. She can hear me—I just don't have enough cool points to be worthy of her attention. This is the part of dance team tryouts I hate. The awkward-small-talk-during-breaks, all-the-other-girls-safely-in-their-cliques part. I sigh. Sometimes I feel like there's this extra layer to
the world of social interaction that's invisible to shy people, and if I could only see it, I'd be able to make friends.

The summer before eighth grade, I did the thing from the teen movies where you have a summer transformation—the braces came off, I bought new clothes, I even learned how to use a flatiron. It didn't work out the way it does in the movies though. It wasn't like everyone suddenly noticed me. Well, Karl noticed me. This is the first thing I've tried to do for myself since I broke up with him. And I know it's just making the dance team, but sometimes it feels like a test. If I fail it, I fail at being on my own.

It's my turn to sign in, so I write
Peyton Reed
in my neat, clear handwriting and sit down on a patch of grass to stretch while I wait for the good part of tryouts—the dancing.

“We're going to run through yesterday's routine again,” yells Coach Tanner. “Make sure you're where you can see one of the veterans, and remember, we're just practicing right now. There's no need to be anxious.”

Yeah, right. If you're dancing and the coaches are watching, it's part of the audition. I know they want to see how fast we learn, and I'm not going to disappoint. I hurry to join Liv Lambros's group—she's the only sophomore veteran leading her own practice group. She's also the best dancer on the team.

“Hey! Are you guys psyched about how awesome this dance is? Because I am psyched!” Liv bounces up and down a little as she talks, her blonde curls fighting their elastic.

There is some awkward smiling/mumbling/head nodding.

“I am going to pretend that means you are all REALLY PSYCHED!”

I giggle, and she smiles at me. Score!

Then the music starts, and we're all in the zone. Liv rattles off the eight count while she goes through yesterday's steps. She has this amazing spark when she dances—she commands your attention even though some of the other girls on the team are better technical dancers. I pray the spark is contagious.

Yesterday, we mostly worked without the music, doing the steps at half-time until we had them perfect. Today we are at full speed. You never appreciate how fast a Beyoncé song is until you're expected to do two double pirouettes during the first verse. The crazy thing is, at ballet class last week I was cranking out triple pirouettes no problem, but it's different now because my feet have to be parallel instead of turned out. Plus, with hip-hop everything's off center instead of straight up and down, so my center of gravity pretty much hates me right now. I try to keep up and do a pretty good job considering how long it's been. I need to rebuild my stamina, though. Ballet doesn't push me in the same way. By the second time through the song, I am panting like crazy. By the third, I decide Beyoncé is a sadist.

When the song ends for the third time, the coaches signal a water break, and I take the opportunity to flop on the ground. This would be a whole lot easier if I was still taking my other dance class. If I hadn't cut hip-hop out of my life two years ago. I saw a documentary about phantom limbs
once. Someone loses an arm or a leg, and even though it's gone, they still feel the pain of it, haunting them. Well, hip-hop is my phantom limb. I think about it. I dream about it. I pop sassy moves into my ballet routines without even meaning to, and if I hear more than a few beats of bass, I'm busting out spontaneous choreography.

And ballet is great, don't get me wrong. But all I am is straight-laced and predictable and controlled. Hip-hop was my one outlet to be something else. To feel something different. So I'm worse than the phantom-limb people. Because if they had a chance to have their limb back, you know they'd take it in a heartbeat. And I've been living without a piece of myself for the past year because other people made me feel ashamed of it.

When the music starts again, I don't worry about keeping up. I don't worry about anything. I let myself go and maybe, just maybe, reclaim a little piece of what I lost. I can't stop grinning. I forgot how much fun this could be. I feel a burst of energy I didn't have before—there is more air in my leaps, more booty in my shake. When I get to the end of the song, I realize I may have gotten through the entire thing mistake-free. The best part: I don't know because I was having so much fun I forgot to count my mistakes.

Liv bumps me with her hip. “Nice job, rookie.”

“Hey, thanks!”

She noticed! I am giddy for the rest of practice.

When we finish, I walk to the parking lot to wait for my mom. She won't be off work for at least half an hour. I picture what Karl would say if he saw the way I danced at tryouts today. The things he said to me last year when I called him crying after the lock-in and told him I was having second thoughts about dance team tryouts replay in my head.

They dance like how strippers dance. I can't believe that's even something you would want.

I'm just trying to protect you. Women who do stuff like that are one step above whores. I don't want people thinking about you that way.

You're so shy—do you really think they'd pick you anyway?

I sigh because that last thought still gets me. Even though Karl and I are over, he's haunting me. He is the voice in the back of my mind that whispers I can't do it.

I sit on the curb and try to ignore the cold feeling that has slipped into my stomach. If what the voice says is true, that brilliant moment of life-reclaiming I had at tryouts today? I can kiss it good-bye.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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T
ackle hugs are kind of my thing. I know a lot of people
say
*tacklehug* like in texts or on
the internet or whatever, but most people have never actually tried to simultaneously tackle and hug another human being. Most people are missing out. There is a special kind of joy that radiates through you when your arms and legs are wrapped around another person and for a split second you have no idea whether you're both about to end up on the ground or not. I can't just put something like that into words.

It's why I'm tucked behind the bleachers right now waiting for my boyfriend, Trevor, who I estimate is twenty yards away. Timing is a critical ingredient in a good tackle hug. I poke my head out for one more peek and have to jerk back quickly. Yep, he's close. He and some friends from the football team stroll past the bleacher next to mine, decked out in their practice gear. They're so close I can hear their voices. I flex my leg muscles like a runner in the starting box, waiting for my first glimpse of Trevor's blond head so I can pounce. And then they stop walking. Right in front of my bleacher.

Huh. Well, creeping in the shadows wasn't exactly what I had planned. I'm debating on whether to go for the running leap–tackle hug combo when I hear a voice say, “Hey, have you broken up with Liv yet?”

I feel like I just took a punch to the gut. Did I really hear that right? The words are there, in my head, wounding me, but they don't make sense. There's got to be some other interpretation that I'm not getting because Trevor wouldn't. I mean. He loves me.

“Oh, um,” I hear Trevor say.

Another voice, one I recognize, cuts him off. It's Chad MacAllistair, senior, football captain, star receiver, and therefore king of the universe. “That's a no. Dude, we've been talking about this for weeks. You gotta man up already.”

Weeks
. They've been talking about this for
weeks
. Were they talking about it five weeks ago when Trevor and I stayed up until 8:00 in the morning talking on Skype? Or two weeks ago when we went out to dinner for our ten-month anniversary? Or maybe last night when Trevor kissed me on my forehead and nose and mouth and told me he couldn't imagine being with any other girl but me?

He finally pipes up, but his voice is feeble. “She's a pretty cool girl.”

“I'm sure she is. I'm sure she's a lot of fun,” says the first voice. The guys all laugh, and I feel like something must have happened that I can't see.

“Hey, I've seen the way she dances. I get it,” says Chad. “But what have we been telling you? She's toxic.”

“But—”

“Calm down, man. There's plenty of other girls at this school,” says someone who isn't Chad or Trevor. Other voices chime in, and I can't tell who's saying what or who they're directing it at.

“Yeah. Girls who aren't skanks.”

Somebody laughs. “That's cold.”

“What? You've seen her. She's a straight-up slut.”

“I bet she puts out after the first date.”

“I bet she puts out after no date.”

“She's probably banged at least twelve guys.”

“Dude, that's a Tuesday for her.”

I wait for the part where Trevor speaks up and defends me. And then I wait some more. He knows it's not true. He knows he was my first, and even if he wasn't, he's not the kind of guy who talks about girls like that. I keep waiting while the sobs form in my chest like a hurricane working its way to a Category 5. But he never says a damn thing—not in my defense, not even just to say, “Hey, man, it's gross to talk about girls like that.”

“Guys, guys,” says Chad. “We all know Liv Lambros is a gigantic whore. What we need to know is when our man Trevor is going to do something about it.” He lowers his voice. “I don't want this to get ugly.”

“Today, okay?” Trevor sounds exasperated. “I'll do it today.”

“You better. I want you to be a free man for Casey's party next weekend. Text me after you do it, okay, brah?”

“Yeah, okay.”

The tiny hope that Trevor would come to his senses and tell them no was the only thing keeping the tears at bay, and now they come crashing down. And because I am crying so hard I can't see, I don't realize that Trevor is barreling around the corner until he has already crashed into me. He wraps his arm around my back to keep us both standing, and we have this split second of vertigo when I think we might both end up on the ground before he pulls away.

“I'm so sorry, sugar. I didn't see you there.” His easy smile dies on his face. “Hey, what's wrong? Did you—? I mean, did you hear—?”

I stand there with my fists clenched, trying to keep the storm inside even though I'm already falling apart. “It's fine, Trevor. I already know what you're going to say.”

“But—” He reaches out to touch my cheek, something he always does when I'm sad.

“No.” I catch his fingers before they graze my face. And if it were possible to take everything those guys said about me and everything Trevor didn't say and forge my hurt into a weapon that I could plunge into his stomach making him feel everything I feel—that is what I'd do. He lets out a small gasp like he felt my imaginary stab wound, or maybe he's just gearing up for another attempt at apologizing. “I have to go.”

I point my chin in the air and walk away from him with as much grace as I can manage.