Just Revenge

Chapter Two: The Plan

"So what were you thinking of actually doing" Abbi was stretched out across her bed, her feet splayed on top of her pillow as she leaned over the back edge to peer down at me.

"I'm not sure yet. But it's definitely gotta be something good. I wanna end this thing" I l turned my head up and locked eyes with her for emphasis, "for good."

She rolled her eyes and turned over to stare at her ceiling, "It's about time. You guys have been at this since like freshman year or something. Everybody's kinda over it by now."

"I know" I kicked my feet gently on the worn-out carpet, "I just have to find something that will really put me ahead. Like so far ahead that she just gives up and quits."

"You could get her kicked out of the show"

"No. It has to be me 'asserting dominance'" I added finger quotes to try and sound less pretentious, but it didn't really work, "It can't just be about her. It has to be about me beating her."

"Yeah, okay" Abbi was losing interest in the strategizing and just starting to scroll through her phone.

"Come on! I need a plan" I could feel my motivation fading as hers did though and I was pretty much done with this. I'd put in a solid twenty minutes worth of work, this was good. Time to move on. "Have you looked at the calc homework yet?"

Abbi ignored me and just kept scrolling.

I grabbed my water bottle from the floor next to me and threw it at her.

"What the hell?!?!?"

"Don't ignore me for your phone then"

"Bitch." She threw a pillow at me, but I slipped my hand in the air and caught it easily.

"Yeah. Like a pillow makes us even."

"Whatever. I guess I just won't show you what I found then." She shot me a pointed look and turned her phone's screen away from me.

"Okay, I'll bite. What'd you find?"

She smiled, "A plan."

Then she showed me her screen. On the phone was an Instagram post – Harper's Instagram post. It had a picture of her and her ex-boyfriend, Max Casella, surrounded by a group of their friends. It was a photo taken at the Renaissance Fair last year and the caption was something about how much fun it was last year and how she was looking forward to going again or something stupid like that, but as I looked at the picture, I knew exactly what Abbi was thinking.

"Not bad, huh?"

The corner of my mouth tipped up in a sly kind of grin, "I knew there was a reason I hung out with you."

"Bitch." She threw another pillow at me, but this time I was too busy laughing to even try catching it. I couldn't believe it, I was so happy – I'd finally figured out a way to win.

The next day, Abbi and I and our friend Calista – the only three of us in on the plan – were gathered in Salvation Army to start on Phase One.

"Okay, we need to find things bold and bright, no more emo days for a while" Calista reminded me.

Abbi and I had spent all last night pouring over Instagram and Facebook for pictures of the types of things Max was into. You see, Harper and Max had dated for over a year when she dumped him, but after a couple months of awkwardness, the two of them kind of fell back together in this, we might or might not be getting back together way. The tea for like the last month or so had literally just been about how Harper was trying to hit him up again, even though he didn't seem totally sold on the idea of taking his ex-girlfriend back just yet. The plan was fairly straightforward. We'd found something she really, really wanted and now we were going to take it from her. We just had to take a few steps to make me more Max's type first. So, we'd compiled a list of the girls he had dated or had a thing with and searched social media for any similarities. Now we just had to adjust me to fit those without making the fact that I was trying to pretend to be someone I'm not super obvious. Luckily, I didn't really know Max that well. I mean, we were both theater kids, but that's about as far as the familiarity went so this wasn't really going to be difficult, theoretically at least.

I grabbed a cute, floral crop top from the rack, "Lis, think this is trying to hard?"

She glanced at the top for a second, "Only if you wear it like you are."

I smirked, "Helpful."

Abbi snatched it from my hand and shoved it into our basket with a couple pairs of shorts she had found, "That's one. Let's keep looking. We're gonna need a hell of a lot more than that."