Just Revenge

Chapter Three: The Duff

The second part of Phase One required quite a bit of research. And by research, I mean more Instagram stalking. Not so much of Max himself as of his exes. That Sunday, Lis, Abbi, and I all spent the night in Abbi's basement making a list of the girls' similarities. As Lis put it, we needed to figure out his "type", beyond the obvious looks he goes for, we needed personality traits he was looking for. Or something like that at least. It took us a solid six hours to form a list comprehensive enough to satisfy Lis. Honestly, she's such a perfectionist, but it was all for a good cause I suppose.

"So explain to me why exactly we needed to create this stupid list?" Abbi rubbed the sleep – or lack thereof – out of her eyes.

Lis rolled her eyes, "We need to know what type of girl he wants. He's obviously not into Carmen as is or he would've gone for it already. If we this to work, we have to figure out what needs to get fixed."

I picked up our notebook, "Besides, this'll help us come up with our plan."

"I thought this was supposed to be easy?" Abbi pointed an accusatory finger at me, "You said you were similar enough to Harper that this wasn't going to take much work."

"Seriously? I said that since I was similar enough to Harper, this should be possible. If me getting any boy was easy, don't you think I would've had one at some point?"

"Probably."

"But, like," Lis cut in. "he seems to like the girls that've never actually dated anyone before so...."

"This could work" I finished.

"This will work" Abbi corrected with a smirk. "I did not stay up all night for a maybe."

"Right. All we need now is a plan of attack."

"I still don't get why this is so hard. You have titties, you show them a little, you get guy. Bippidy Boo. True love forever. It's that simple."

Lis stretched her foot across me to kick Abbi. "Thanks. If we decide to take the ho approach, we'll come back to you. But back in the real world..."

I flipped through the notebook, reading all the notes we'd taken. He liked the girls that dressed as out there as he did. He liked girls who talked, like a lot. He liked the out-there type that seemed to be comfortable everywhere and owned every place they entered. He liked the rich girl, prissy type. He liked the girls from his friend group. He liked the girls on the wild side of the good kids. The only hang up I could find was the friend group. I could fake the rest of it, most of it wouldn't even be hard because it was kind of me. But the friend part? All I needed to do was find a way to invade his friend group, for real. I don't know how long I stared at those pages, searching manically for some kind of answer, before I finally gave up. It was impossible. I don't know why I thought I could do this. But as I looked up, my eye caught on one of the books on Abbi's shelf, The DUFF, and suddenly everything clicked.

I bolted upwards, "Cortland"

Abbi and Lis both shot me concerned looks "Excuse you?"

I elaborated a little, "Cortland Bellamy. He's our in."

I saw on Lis's face the moment it clicked for her, but Abbi still seemed unconvinced, "Yeah, I'm gonna need more than that."

"Cortland is Max's best friend and befriending Cortland won't be that hard. Max only goes for people he's friends with beforehand so if I can get Cortland to bring me into their little circle, it'll all fall into place from there."

A part of me felt bad for using Cortland to try and breach the friend group, but at the time I just brushed it off. I mean, he's kind of an ass. In case the name didn't spell it out for you, he's probably one of the most pretentious people you'll ever meet in your life. He also does this thing where he says whatever he feels like and whatever he thinks – even if it's offensive or rude. His parents are rich as hell and both him and his older sister are some kind of super genius spawn. Like, probably going to Harvard, perfect score on the SAT super genius. So, I didn't feel too bad about fake friending him. Neither did Abbi or Lis.

"I like it. We use the ugly kid to get to his more attractive friend. A time-honored strategy"

I couldn't tell if Abbi was mocking me or not, but I went with it, because she had a point. People had been doing this kind of thing for centuries and it usually worked out okay. Just because a different motive was leading this crusade didn't mean it was really any different. It was going to be fine.