Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood

Getting
REVENGE
on Lauren Wood

Also by Eileen Cook

What Would Emma Do?

EILEEN COOK

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition January 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Eileen Cook

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Designed by Paul Weil

The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond.

Manufactured in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Control Number 2009938355

ISBN 978-1-4169-7433-8

ISBN 978-1-4169-8537-2 (eBook)

Getting
REVENGE
on Lauren Wood

Chapter One

Last night I dreamed I dissected Lauren Wood in Earth Sciences class. She was wearing her blue and white cheerleader outfit, the pleated skirt fanned out and the sweater cut right down the middle. She lay there, unmoving, staring straight up at the ceiling tiles. She was annoyed. I could tell from the way her jaw thrust forward and her lips pressed together in a thin line. I opened up her chest, peeling her ribs back like a half-opened Christmas present, and the entire class leaned in to get a good look.

“As I suspected,” I declared, “no heart.” I pointed with my scalpel to the chest cavity, where nothing but a black lump of coal squatted in the lipstick-red center. The class leaned back with a sigh, equally appalled and fascinated. The mysterious inner workings of Lauren Wood exposed for all to see.

“Earth to Helen.”

My Earth Sciences teacher, Mr. Porto, was staring at me,
waiting for an answer. Someone behind me snickered. I hadn’t heard the question. I had been reliving my dream from last night and must have spaced out. I looked at my desk in case the answer was there, but the only thing on my page was a doodle of an anatomically correct heart. I didn’t think Mr. Porto would be impressed with my artwork at this particular moment. I prayed for time to speed up and make the bell ring, but the clock kept on ticking one second at a time.

“People, I know vacation begins in a few days, but at the moment you still need to worry more about your final exam than about your summer plans. Can anyone else list for me the six kingdoms of the scientific classification system?” Mr. Porto asked.

He looked around the room for a victim. I slouched down in my seat and attempted to resume my train of thought and natural state of invisibility.

Before the incident there hadn’t been a single moment of my life without Lauren in it. We were born in the same hospital, her the day before me. They placed us side by side in the nursery, our first sleepover. Helen Worthington right next to Lauren Wood. Even alphabetically, Lauren came before me. Lauren was in every one of my birthday photos—from age one, when she has her fist buried in my cake, to fourteen when we are both posing supermodel style for the camera, Lauren’s outstretched arm covering part of my face. Looking back, I can see how she always had to be front and center.

Speaking of needing to be front and center, Carrie Edwards
must have been running for star biology student. She waved her arm like she was flagging down traffic until Mr. Porto called on her.

“Eubacteria, arche bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals,” Carrie spouted off. She paused as if she expected applause. I drew a cartoon of a cheerleader on my paper. I gave her a giant mouth. My eyes slid back to the clock and watched it tick over the final seconds. The bell rang out, and everyone stood up together and jostled toward the door.

“Be sure to look over chapter twenty-two before the exam! I don’t want to hear anyone saying they didn’t know they were supposed to know the material. Consider this your last warning,” Mr. Porto yelled to everyone’s back. The volume in the hallway seemed even louder than usual. Everyone was excited to see the year come to an end. Next year we would be seniors, on top of the world. I slipped through the hallway by myself. A few people nodded in my direction, but nobody said anything to me.

It had been the end of the school year when it happened three years ago, only a few days after my fourteenth birthday. Sometimes I look at the photo from the party to see if I can find any clues. Lauren and I are both smiling. My smile is easy to explain—I didn’t know what was coming—but Lauren would have known. She had already put pieces of her plan into action, but there isn’t a sign of regret on her face. No hesitation at all, just her wide smile. I suppose she expected me to be grateful that she let me have my birthday before she brought the world crashing down around me. It was the least she could do. After all, what are friends for?

Chapter Two

T
HREE
Y
EARS
A
GO
—S
PRING
, E
IGHTH
G
RADE

I
never should have worn my jean skirt. I wasn’t fat, but I was definitely pushing the chubby border. I wanted to wear the skirt because I thought it looked good, but I quickly regretted it. It was too warm for tights, and my bare thighs had been rubbing together as I walked, and they felt like they were going to blister. I shifted again on the bleacher, trying to give my legs their own breathing space.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lauren asked. “Stop moving around.”

“I’m hot.”

“I know I am, but what are you?” she said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“Ha. Lauren Wood, stand-up comic extraordinaire.”

Lauren took a regal bow. It was good to see her joking around again, even if it was a lame joke. The idea of starting high school
seemed to freak her out more than me. For the past few weeks she’d been in a rotten mood, and everything set her off. That week alone we’d had at least four fights, one where she didn’t speak to me for a full day because she thought I was making fun of what she had brought for lunch. Lauren was a huge fan of the silent treatment when she was ticked at you. I would end up begging her to forgive me, even when I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong. It had been established years ago that Lauren was the drama queen and I was the diplomat. I had pleaded with her to stop being mad about the lunch fight. I even declared I was sincerely sorry if her Oreos had suffered any emotional distress on my account. I didn’t care about sacrificing my pride. Keeping my best friend happy was worth it.

“Do you see that guy over there?” Lauren yanked her head to the left. I leaned forward to look, but she rammed her bony elbow into my side.

“Don’t look at him.”

“How am I supposed to see him if I don’t look at him?”

“I mean look, but don’t
look
like you’re looking. God.”

I leaned forward casually and then let my eyes drift over the crowd. The gym was packed. Lincoln High was huge, with at least seven hundred students in every grade. Students came from different middle schools all across the city. Each spring the school did a welcome event for the incoming freshmen so that we could bond as a class. We had already been given a tour of the school, taken to an extracurricular “fair” so we could see all
the clubs and teams we had to choose from, and subjected to a hot lunch from the cafeteria. Now we were rounding out the day with a rah-rah school spirit rally. All of this was supposed to help keep us from freaking out next fall, as if not knowing how to find our way to our lockers was the problem. If schools really wanted to reduce the anxiety level, they would distribute student handbooks with useful information like which bathroom belongs to the stoner kids, and how the sink in the biology lab always sprays water, and how under no circumstances should you order the hot lunch on the day they serve “shepherd’s pie” because it’s leftovers from last week with boxed mashed potatoes on top. They never tell you the useful stuff. That you have to figure out on your own.

Lauren was taking the whole thing very seriously. She scribbled down notes during the fair, grabbed handouts from each table, and ranked activities in preference from best to worse. I suspected that later her mom would help her turn it into a spreadsheet complete with social acceptability ratings.

My eyes scanned the rows of people. At first I couldn’t figure out who had caught Lauren’s eye, but then I saw him. Lauren usually went for the Mr. All-American type, blond, fresh off the country club look. This guy was different. He was leaning back, his elbows on the bleacher seat behind him. He was wearing what looked like a vintage T-shirt. Not some shirt from Old Navy that was meant to
look
like a cool vintage shirt, but really wasn’t—his was the real thing, pale and soft from years of washing. He had
red hair that was cut short in the back, but a little longer in the front. I was staring at him when he looked over and met my eyes. He gave a smile and then a small salute in my direction.

“Oh my God, he saw me.” I yanked my head back and Lauren leaned forward to see the situation for herself.

“He’s waving,” she whispered. She looked at me and we burst out laughing. “Is he looking at me?” Lauren asked.

“I’m not looking again. You look.”

“No way. You look.”

I leaned forward again and risked a quick glance. He was staring over. He gave another wave. I found myself smiling and then figured what the hell, and waved back. Lauren grabbed my arm, practically snapping it off at the elbow, and yanked it back down. I leaned back so fast I nearly fell off the bench, my legs kicking out.