Hell & Back || TYLER SBG

Chapter 6: A Good Girl's Guide to Revenge

Danica had woken up from the phantom realm—the name they'd finally decided on for wherever the hell they went at midnight—like she always did, and she couldn't bring herself to sleep. The other two nights, she tried to, but it always ended the same. She'd end up lying on her bed, frozen, unable to breathe, as one of the phantoms crawled over to her.

Both of her episodes of sleep paralysis ended the same. The phantom would finally reach her, it would unhinge its jaw, and just as it was centimeters away from her face she would wake up.

So, last night, she decided that sleep was overrated.

She spent those six spare hours mindlessly scrolling on her phone, fighting to keep her eyes opened, until she finally heard the beeping of her alarm.

Groggily, she forced herself out of her bed and walked over to her vanity. In her sixteen years of living, not once had she ever looked this rough. Her eyelids didn't just feel heavy, they looked it too, and there were large dark circles under her eyes.

She sighed, applying layers of concealer in attempts to cover it up. This wasn't the day for her to look like she was up late fighting a bear. She had a score to settle with a certain blond boy.

She had it all planned out. It may sound unhealthy to be putting this much thought into revenge, but it was either that or think about the other, much more terrifying, thing she was dealing with.

He always told her that he liked her hair in two braids, so naturally she split her brown curls into two even sections and braided them. He would get mad when she wore any sort of mildly low cut top, so she wore one along with his favorite pair of jeans.

It wasn't anything obscene, but it was enough to at least make Ryland's eye twitch.

When she got on the bus, Taylor wasn't at the Hernandez twins' stop. It was just Tyler, who gave her a knowing look before going to the back of the bus with his other friends.

It was safe to say that she was pretty anxious regarding the whole thing. For one, her and Tyler had been on decent terms for two and a half days max. They weren't necessarily friends. Hell, she wasn't even sure if he liked her at all, and vice versa. It just felt...weird to be so suddenly comfortable with him.

There was also a part of her that ached at the thought of hurting Ryland. She knew it was stupid. She knew that the way he treated her was awful—that he cheated and lied and manipulated, but at the same time, they had dated since the first month of her freshman year. It was hard to stop caring about someone who she'd been with through an entire lap around the sun, even if he couldn't care less about her.

The fact was though, that she wanted to get him back for what he did to her, and Tyler wanted to get him back for spreading things about him. The enemy of Danica's enemy was her friend, even if that 'friend' was the guy who makes her want to rip her hair out when he opens his mouth to speak.

Against every judgement of him she had made since they were kids, there she was, catching up to him and his friends in the hall, tapping on his shoulder with a light but forced smile. He turned to look at her before looking back to his friends.

"Hey, I'll catch you guys later," he said with a nod as his friends stood there wide-eyed, flicking their gazes between the two of them. As they walked away she could hear a faint laugh and a, 'Dude. No way.'

To her surprise, his hardly visible grin didn't disappear when he turned away from them. In fact, he actually lit up a bit.

Damn. He was really taking this whole acting thing pretty seriously.

Danica led the way, knowing full well where she could find Ryland in the morning. They were fairly silent until they realized that they needed to make things look legit.