Page 50 of My Rules for Revenge
“I bet you can. He had some trouble with another girl last year. I don’t know if he told you.”
“What girl was it?” I asked.
Frankie awkwardly rubbed his neck and looked away. He obviously regretted bringing this up.
“Look, whatever happened with her is his business, but it was this girl named India or Indira or something, I think,” Frankie said, uneasy.
“Oh, yeah, I knew her. She kind of disappeared last year. Eddy told me she helped him study a few times—that’s all,” I explained.
“Oh, alright. Yeah, it was probably just that then. Honestly, my friends tell me so much stuff, I mix up names all the time. Anyway, I know he messed up with some girl, and she ended up ghosting him. He doesn’t want that to happen again,” Frankie explained.
“He shouldn’t have to worry about that. I won’t ghost him unless he does something stupid. I don’t think he will. He’s a good guy,” I admitted.
“He really is. He’s better than me,” Frankie admitted.
Frankie nodded and gave me a peace sign as he walked to the boys’ locker room.
As I walked out of the gym, I thought about what he mentioned about Eddy and this girl. I highly doubted that he mixed up the names. I knew the type of guy Frankie was. He was the captain and star of the basketball team. He knew many faces, and many faces knew him, especially if it was a pretty brunette at Brightwood High.
Despite this, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. He helped me get payback against Jacob and got most of the basketball players on my side. He also texted me after my fight with the Terror Twins. He talked to them for me and assured me that nothing like that would ever happen again.
He didn’t have to do things like that, but I supposed that since Eddy and I were about to be a “thing,” he felt the need to put me under his protection. I felt like I was able to handle myself in most situations, but I won’t lie, the things he did for me were definitely appreciated.
I was still suspicious, though. A guy like that definitely had skeletons in his closet.
CHAPTER 12
JACOB
Iusually stayed at the school in our Man Cave until dark. I had my very expensive gaming PC plugged up in there because the internet at my place was totally useless—it was like we were functioning off a mobile hotspot from 2007. Eventually, my PC would’ve gotten stolen if I’d left it at my house, anyway.
I lived on the bad side of town, the eastern side of Brightwood Lake, which was mainly made up of large farmland, failing businesses, and very suspicious-looking food trucks. I never ate at one of those. There was no way they were caught up on their health codes.
I usually walked the forty minutes from school to my rinky-dink apartment. That meant I had to endure potheads and hobos pleading for me to spot them five dollars for drugs and beer. They always said they needed it for food, but I wasn’t an idiotby any stretch of the imagination. I knew they bought cigarettes and other junky bullshit.
The other degenerates who inhabited the eastern side of town were a bunch of gangster wannabes, obnoxious fishermen, and hooligans who rode on ATVs. These were the type of people I dealt with on a daily basis. Clearly, I didn’t belong there, but I couldn’t do anything about it until graduation. My mother thought I was going to stay with her forever, but that was never an option for me.
When I walked up the steps to get to my apartment, I had various liquor bottles and pieces of garbage viciously thrown at me. This was the ninth time this month. I wasn’t even counting the time a gang of stupid cheerleaders decided to ambush me with rocks at school.
“You women-hating douchebag.”
“Kill yourself, dumbass.”
“Shoot yourself in the head, you creepy twat.”
“Your dick is smaller than my ballsack.”
“Your sweet little ass is gonna get jumped like a cereal with honey and nuts.”
This is the exact thing these people said to me. Those videos of me that Heather made went viral. Nearly everyone in my neighborhood saw it. Whenever I was scared about getting jumped, I practically ran through my door and slammed it shut behind me.
That day was no different. I was already sweating. The lack of air conditioning in my apartment didn’t help. My mother felt it was too expensive to pay, despite the fact that we lived in Florida. It was always hot and humid. She didn’t have a job—she just sold things online. Most of it was expensive jewelry that my grandmother left behind for her. The other stuff…I never wanted to know where she got it from.
When I walked in, my mother was sitting on the couch as she twirled her short, choppy hair. She was watching a trashy reality show. She smoked a cigarette on our torn-up couch, which was missing two cushions, and seemed to be on her second pack. The offensive, intoxicating fumes entered my nose, and I gagged. I never got used to that horrible smell.
My mother noticed me and smiled. I always felt disturbed when she did that because she was missing four front teeth. That was a result of a bar fight she started in her youth.
The story was that she got mad at an annoying “fish guy” who wouldn’t stop talking about a spotted bass he caught. She told him to shut his mouth. He refused. She then grabbed a beer bottle and smashed it over his head. His wife happened to be around and saw the whole thing unfold. They got into the most ferocious catfight in the history of Brightwood Lake. Apparently, the fish guy’s wife was worse off than my mother after the fight came to its natural conclusion.
