Page 5 of My Rules for Revenge
I stood there and stared at him intently. Exactly five seconds later, I smacked his phone out of his hand, and it clattered loudly as it hit the ground. A smirk formed on my face.
“Hey, what the hell?!” Dilbert exclaimed.
My mom was a few feet away, and she was frozen like a popsicle.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I think I spazzed out.”
He appeared to silently fume while he bent over to pick up his phone. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t cracked. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t cracked.
“You what? You spazzed?”
While he checked out his phone, I executed my original plan of attack. I grabbed a bottle of squeezable hot sauce from the shelf and tore off the plastic covering. Yes, they had bottles of hot sauce that you could squirt like ketchup. Don’t ask me; ask the hot sauce fans. The second he looked up, I squirted hot sauce into Dilbert’s eyeballs while he screamed—it was one of the most glorious moments of my entire life. The look of horror on my mom’s face said it all. At this moment, she snapped out of her frozen state of mind and rushed towards us.
“Heather, stop that right now!”
“I will not!” I replied.
“My eyes are burning, lady!” Dilbert screamed.
“Good!” I shouted. “That’s what you get for disrespecting my mom and me and for calling me ‘bro,’ you stupid-ass Neanderthal. I’m not yourbro.”
After that fiasco, the three of us went outside the grocery store. My mom and Dilbert spoke to separate security guards from the plaza while I sat down.
Dilbert glared at me with his reddened eyes while I occasionally winked at him and made pouty faces. This seemed to enrage him, which made me happy.
When that was done, my mom and I went to the car. I wanted to continue to read, but I felt a lecture coming on and chose to keep my book away. We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. My mom began her lecture when I began annoying her with my random sound effects. I usually quacked like a duck or mimicked a fiery explosion whenever I was bored and wanted her to get on with it.
“Heather, you need to control yourself in these types of situations. You’re fortunate he didn’t press charges. You would have been in big trouble.”
“Pressing charges would’ve been such an overreaction. Oh, please, is he a little baby?”
“You assaulted him with a bottle of hot sauce. Do you not see anything wrong with that?”
“No, not really,” I replied, brushing it off.
“Heather, what is the matter with you?”
“What? It was fun, and he deserved it.”
“I understand that you feel the need to fight back, but I’ve had enough of this behavior. It needs to end. Now!” she reprimanded.
“Mom, if you don’t fight back, people will walk all over you like that stupid idiot.”
“You already know my feelings on this. Don’t push it.”
She turned the key in the ignition and started the car.
“Your feelings still don’t make any sense to me. If people are rude to you or disrespectful, you have to destroy them with giant lasers and long-range missiles. You can’t just let people bully you,” I argued.
“There are tons of people like him out there in the world. You can’t fight them all. All you’re going to end up doing is getting yourself into trouble. You might as well let the situation pass and forget about it. It’s not worth it.”
“Why are you so strict with me and no one else? You could’ve told that guy off, just like you’re telling me off.”
“You’re my daughter. I’m far more concerned with you than with anyone else.”
I scoffed in frustration.
“Dad would’ve thrown that guy into a fruit stand.”
