Page 10 of Better Than Revenge
“Seriously,” Lee said.
Max shrugged. “I’m just saying….”
I thought about it for a second. He was right—Jensen would be crushed. But even if Theowantedto date me, which was a very low possibility at this point, I decided that using someone to hurt someone else wasn’t going to make the list. “No, this list will only include ways to stick it to Jensen. No collateral damage.” Not that I thought I could damage Theo, probably the exact opposite, butstill.
“I have a revenge idea,” Lee said. “How about you only suggest terrible ideas for the podcast. Since you’re the research specialist now and since he has no original ideas.”
“Yes, absolutely.” I wrote that down.
Theo and his friends across the diner laughed about something. When I looked over, our eyes met. I raised my eyebrows in a challenge, and he smirked back. Great, he was probably sharing the bathroom story. As if I needed another reason for the whole school to be talking about me. I turned my attention back to my friends. “First things first. I have a text to compose.”
My phone was on the table, and I picked it up. It felt weird to break up with Jensen over text. But why shouldn’t I? He’d told the whole school I wouldn’t make a good podcast host. I had spent hundreds of dollars on equipment and many years trying to be justthat.
“Compose it out loud,” Lee said as he watched me staring at my phone.
“Dear Jensen,”I said.
“Nodear,” Deja interrupted.
“Jensen,”I said, deleting thedear.
“Jerk face?”Maxwell suggested.
“Selfish pig?”Lee offered.
I smiled. “I think I’ll stick withJensen—that way he doesn’t know what’s coming right away.”
“Good call,” Lee said.
I turned my attention back to my phone.“Jensen, after today, I don’t think—”
“Too nice,” Deja said.
I grunted.“Jensen, you know what you did.”
“And you know what I have to do,”Max said in a deep voice.
Deja laughed.
“You know what you did,”I repeated.“Don’t pretend I should’ve seen this coming. Don’t pretend that me feeling blindsided makes me a bad, unsupportive girlfriend. You are the one who destroyed anything we could’ve had….”I trailed off, not sure if this was what I wanted to say at all. It was too little and maybe too much. He didn’t deserve to know I felt destroyed. What I really wanted to write was something sarcastic likeJensen, it’s been real but apparently not real enough because who knew you were such a jerk.
“It’s good,” Deja encouraged, getting me out of my head.
“Can you addbuttfaceto the end there?” Maxwell said.
Lee reached out and patted my arm. “How about you just addit’s over.”
I nodded, typed those two words to the end of my text and pushed send.
It was over.
My eyes pricked, and I clenched my teeth to keep the tearsat bay. I looked at my notebook full of half-baked, not-nearly-big-enough ideas for revenge. “He stole my dream,” I said out loud. “I need to figure out how toobliteratehis.”
“Football?” Max whispered reverently.
I nodded. “Somehow, we have to take football away from him.”
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