Page 6 of My Rules for Revenge
“I’m sure he would have.”
My mom began to back out of the parking lot. I spotted “Dilbert” through the rearview mirror. He was walking to his car.
“Mom, go a little faster. You can run him over.”
“Heather, I am not going to do that.”
“That’s disappointing.”
As you could probably tell from that whole fiasco, my mom and I didn’t see eye to eye on this particular subject of standing up to people. This was just one of many instances where I made sure no one disrespected me or my mom. I made certain that people knew how they had to treat me. Was it a bit much? Perhaps, but in this world I didn’t care.
In Brightwood Lake, there was no shortage of assholes and douchebags. I was always on high alert when the time came to go to war. Okay, maybe not war. At least not yet. I would declare war later, when it mattered most.
After my mom and I had our little argument, I went straight into my ruby-colored room, where I had my space sword and Dark Lord helmet mounted on the wall. I always wished I had special powers. I could elevate people who bothered me into the stratosphere.
I stared at myself in the mirror and felt genuinely pretty. It had taken a long time for me to accept myself as I was, and I promised myself I would never look back. I enjoyed taking selfies and had hundreds in my camera roll. When I looked through them from time to time, I felt no regrets or shame. Not anymore.
That wasn’t the case when I sent some photos of myself to a boy back in my freshman year. I was over that, though, and he moved away anyway. He was out of sight and out of mind.
I sat down on my bed and picked up a bedside picture of my father and me when I was little. He had gotten me strawberry ice cream that day. I always loved anything with the color red.
“Today, I squirted hot sauce into aDilbert’seyes, Dad. I know you’d be proud.”
I closed my eyes and recalled a memory of when I visited my dad in the hospital when I was little. I remembered him being very thin and pale. He was hooked up to a machine, and his breathing was irregular. I was seated with an ice cream cone and waited for him to wake up. I opened my eyes. I didn’t want to relive that specific memory—it was far too painful.
On most school days at the prestigious Brightwood High, I would either be at the school’s library or in the book club room. Today, I was in the library, a large, shaded room with tall, wooden bookshelves and many computer stations.
I was with Vivian Forrester, my best gal pal. She was a peaceful, hippy girl with Jamaican roots. She usually wore tribal print shirts and colorful headbands. Unlike me, she was very unproblematic and got along with most people. We were at a computer station and did what we usually did whenever we weren’t reading—we created memes or watched social media nonsense. This one was a meme of an extremely tanned, muscular man with the head of a dog.
“So, the hot sauce went into his eyeballs?” Vivian asked.
“Yep. It was sensational.”
“That must have been very painful.”
“It was—for him.” I sneered.
“I suppose peace and love were totally out of the question?”
“Absolutely. Peace and love? Have you lost it?”
I gave her the side-eye. I couldn’t believe she’d suggest that.
“You know I accept your ways of dealing with these problems, but I have to say, I think you could have at least given my method a try.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll try it…when I’mdead.”
I laughed aloud while Vivian shook her head in disbelief.
“Not even then,” she interjected.
Vivian knew the way I was and that we were polar opposites in that regard, but I appreciated that she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. I considered her approach from time to time, but I never saw the value in it. The road to peace was littered with mines for me, and I had a hard time navigating through them without an explosion.
While we worked, Jared Goldberg walked in. A tall, ghoulish classmate with a creepy face and an even creepier stride. I swore he walked like he was always up to something. I also caught him staring at Vivian’s “desirables” one time. I yelled at him and threatened to snap him into two pieces like a wooden stick, but Vivian forced me to pull back. She was similar to my mom. She didn’t enjoy confrontation. Vivian also felt he wasn’t a threat. Years later, that was proven to be very wrong.
Jared quietly sat down at an adjacent table and sneakily pulled out his phone. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. A couple of minutes later, I saw that slimy little worm taking pictures of us—it was too obvious.
“Hey, Viv, I think Jared’s taking pictures of us. Do you remember hiring him to be our photographer?”
