Get Even (Don’t Get Mad)

IT HAD TAKEN MARGOT MOST OF THE DAY TO GET HER NERVES IN check after the assembly. Her hands shook all through the rest of first period, and her heart was still racing when the bell rang at the end of sixth-period PE.

Normally, DGM missions weren’t so much about public humiliation as they were about evening the playing field between the powerful and the powerless, but Coach Creed had been a special case. She’d been half-afraid that he would pop a blood vessel in his head and stroke out right there on the basketball court, making her an accessory to murder, but the look on Theo’s face had been worth it. She’d watched in satisfaction as he smiled, at first tentative and unsure, then swelling with confidence as the video continued until he was absolutely beaming from ear to ear. At one point, a classmate two rows behind reached out and patted him on the shoulder. Then another and another, as if they recognized that Theo was finally getting retribution for all Coach Creed had put him through.

Justice had been served.

Even now as she trudged home from school, the memory calmed her. She was doing something good. She was making a difference. That’s what Don’t Get Mad was for: getting revenge for those who couldn’t get it for themselves.

Margot held her breath as she opened the front door, her ears alert for any sign of her parents. Silence. The house was empty.

She closed and locked the door behind her, exhaling slowly with relief. The last thing she wanted to do was answer twenty questions about her day.

Not that her parents ever completely left her alone. There was always a to-do list on the kitchen counter, as if she was a twelve-year-old latchkey kid who couldn’t be trusted not to eat ice cream and watch cartoons for three hours until her parents came home.

God forbid.

Today’s list was one of her mom’s masterpieces.

2:45—Arrive home

2:50—After-school snack (apple or banana and one slice of cheese)

3:00–4:00—Calculus homework (if finished early, move on to the next item)

4:00–5:00—Additional homework as assigned per Bishop DuMaine

5:00–5:15—Break. Perform at least one of Dr. Tournay’s meditation exercises, minimum ten minutes

5:15–6:00—Homework for Stanford extension classes

6:00–7:00—Family dinner

7:00–7:30—Thirty minutes of television, either news or Jeopardy!

7:30–8:00—Shower

8:00–11:00—If your reading for Stanford extension is completed, in addition to all other school projects, you may read for pleasure

Of course by “pleasure” her mom meant she could choose a classic of Western literature, predetermined by the Advanced English Literature course selections from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Margot laughed mirthlessly. Nothing more pleasurable than three hours of Chaucer or Hardy to end her day.

And her parents wondered why she’d tried to kill herself.

Margot’s suicide attempt almost four years ago had come as a complete shock to her parents. Not that there hadn’t been signs; Margot had done all she could to express her unhappiness. She’d cried every morning for weeks, desperate not to go to school. She’d told her parents about the bullying, about how she didn’t have any friends, about how she hated herself. But her parents refused to believe it, as if acknowledging that their daughter was in crisis was commentary on their parenting skills. And in the wake of her attempt, they decided that they had been too lenient on their only child, too accommodating of her free will, and so they’d taken a new tack. Margot’s days would be übercontrolled, overscheduled, and micromanaged to within seconds. She would have no free time and absolutely no opportunity to ponder how miserable she was. In her parents’ eyes, this would be happiness.

For Margot, it was all about maintenance. Seven hundred and twenty-two days until she was off to college, preferably on the East Coast. Then she’d be free of everything—her parents, her past, and the thoughts of both that haunted her.

With a heavy sigh, Margot reached out and dragged her overstuffed backpack across the dining room. Seven hundred and twenty-two days. But for now, calculus.

Margot shoved her hand into the main compartment of her cargo pack in search of her favorite mechanical pencil, but instead, her fingers grazed something slick and hard. She pulled out the strange item and found it was a slim plastic case holding a single DVD.

Probability that it wasn’t in her backpack at the start of her school day? One hundred percent.

Curious, Margot slid the DVD from its case. It was homemade, with a note scrawled across its face.

Rex, dude, check this out!

The DVD must have gotten mixed up with her things after her collision with Rex Cavanaugh. A private video for Rex? This had opportunity written all over it.

Margot fired up her laptop.

“Why do we always have to use the back entrance?” John asked, leaning against the doorway.

Bree sighed. “Because my dad monitors the security footage from the front door.” She nudged John aside so she could reach the security keypad by the servants’ entrance, then keyed in the four-digit entry code, waited for the lock to click, and swung the door open.

John paused, glancing at the two security cameras. “So what are these, decorative?”

Bree shoved him into the house. “No, but he doesn’t check the feed.”

“Why n—”

Bree slammed the door in his face and hurried back around to the front of the house so her dad would have video proof that she was home, on time, and alone. Not that he cared, particularly, what she did after school, as long as it didn’t make the six o’clock news. But the less her father knew about her friends, the better. It gave him fewer opportunities to criticize.

John might fantasize about how cool it would be to have a superstar politician and heir apparent to the governor’s mansion for a dad, but for Bree, the reality had been sixteen years of being reminded that she was the black sheep of the family who didn’t conform, didn’t appreciate her advantages, didn’t understand how important it was to maintain her dad’s carefully groomed image as the perfect family man.

Bree had never understood why he couldn’t leave her alone. He already had one perfect child—Bree’s older brother, Henry Jr., an honors student at Columbia. Why did he need two?

“So what shall we listen to today?” Bree called out as she tramped up the stairs. She dragged her army surplus messenger bag behind her and derived a sense of satisfaction from the way it thudded against each hardwood step. “Killers or—” She pushed her bedroom door open, expecting to find John ensconced in the beanbag chair as usual, but the room was empty. “John?”

A heavy thud echoed from her walk-in closet. “Damn,” John said, leaning against the closet door. “You’ve got a lot of shit in here.”

“Private shit,” Bree said. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

John collapsed into the beanbag chair. “You let me drive your dad’s car. I know the security code for the house and your locker combination. Why freak out because I’m in your closet? Afraid Senator Deringer will catch me perving through your unmentionables?”

Bree stiffened at the mention of her father. “He’s in Sacramento.”

“And your mom’s with him?”

“Sure,” Bree said. That was as good a lie as any.

“Oh.”

“Why do you care where my parents are?”

John stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I thought maybe they’d get off your case if they met me.”

“A rock musician and the number-one name on F.U.’s DGM suspect list?” Bree copped a snooty accent. “You’re hardly a suitable friend for the daughter of Senator Henry Deringer.”

John heaved himself out of the beanbag and headed toward the bathroom. “I’d kill to know who’s actually behind DGM. They’re amazing. Seriously.”

Bree smiled as he closed the door. Knowing that her best friend approved of DGM made her feel kind of warm and—

Bree’s phone buzzed, interrupting her thought. An incoming text? Weird. The only person who ever texted her was John.

Olivia was bone tired by the time Peanut dropped her off. She’d barely been able to focus on her friend’s nervous chatter, and as she climbed the stairs to the one-bedroom apartment she and her mom shared, Olivia felt the weight of her body in every exhausted step.

All she wanted to do was vegetate in front of some bad TV for a couple of hours.

No such luck.

“So! Who drove you home in that gorgeous convertible? New boyfriend?” Olivia’s mom leaned back against the kitchen counter, dressed for her bartending job. Her thick, dark hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail, and her makeup was dramatic to match: liquid-liner cat eyes, highlighting shimmer, deep-red lips. Tight jeans tucked into a pair of knee-high boots completed the look, along with a black scoop-neck T-shirt that showed so much cleavage, Olivia had to avert her eyes.

“Aren’t you late for work?” Olivia asked, hoping she didn’t sound as annoyed as she felt.

Her mom sighed like a peevish child. “Don’t be such a mom all the time, Livvie.”

Olivia grabbed a can of diet soda from the fridge and sat down at the table. Someone had to.

“I wanted to hear about the fall play.” Her mom leaned forward. “Has Mr. Cunningham announced it yet?”

“I told you,” Olivia said slowly. “Mr. Cunningham is out all week. He’s not back until Monday.” Did her mom listen to anything she said?

“Hm. We should probably start prepping your audition over the weekend.”

We? “Mom . . .”

“I’ve already flagged a few monologues. Just a cross section of genres, so you’ll be prepared. I realized today that we haven’t even touched the classics in months, so we’ll start there.”

Olivia cocked an eyebrow. Her mom’s manic moods were almost always triggered by something acting related, which made Olivia extremely nervous. As excited as her mom got for each and every local theater audition, the depression that overwhelmed her when she didn’t get the part frequently left her unable to leave her bed for days. “Did you have another audition today?” she asked warily.

“Yes!” Her mom paced back and forth in the minuscule kitchen. “And you’ll never guess what for.” She didn’t even wait for her daughter to hazard a guess. “Olivia in Twelfth Night! My favorite role. Have I ever told you about my performance of Olivia at the Public Theater?”

Only about a million times. “I think so.”

“The reviews were amazing. ‘June Hayes entranced as Olivia,’” she quoted from memory. “‘A fantastic, exhilarating new face at the Public.’”

Her mom’s eyes drifted to a framed picture on the wall, showing Olivia’s mom in an ornate Elizabethan costume. She beamed in the photo, her eyes bright with excitement and joy. That production of Twelfth Night was one of her mom’s last stage roles. She’d gotten pregnant soon after and now the only time she saw that spark in her mom’s eyes was after one of Olivia’s performances.

Olivia could feel her mom slipping into the darkness of lost dreams and unrealized potential. It was not a pretty place. “Aren’t you going to be late, Mom?”

Her mom glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Shit!” She gathered up her purse and keys, then planted a hurried kiss on Olivia’s forehead. “Study the monologues tonight and we can pick one this weekend.”

Olivia didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until the echo of her mom’s heels had faded to nothing. She released all the air in her lungs, then slowly stood up and walked to her room. The day bed in the living room was still rumpled, a clear sign that her mom had slept late into the afternoon, but Olivia didn’t stop to make it up. She’d do that later. Instead, she glanced out the window and caught sight of her mom’s blue Civic turning onto the street.

Confident she was alone, Olivia crouched next to her bed and groped around underneath until her hand rested on a large Tupperware container wedged behind some old shoe boxes.

The smell hit her the moment she cracked the seal on the rubber lid. Sugar. She inhaled deeply, letting the tangy, sweet odor invade her nostrils. She dug past candy bars and dark chocolate peanut butter cups, and pulled out a pack of frosted cupcakes. She’d have to do her Pilates DVD twice to make up for the calories, but she didn’t care.

Olivia flopped onto her bed and shoved one entire cupcake into her mouth. The Bishop DuMaine fall theater production seemed so frivolous in comparison to what DGM had accomplished that day. Another bully given a taste of his own medicine. Another victim given a sense of retribution.

A soft chime drifted up from Olivia’s purse. A text coming in on her cell.

Olivia sighed as she reached for the phone. Each time DGM pulled off another mission, Olivia hoped it would make her feel better, erase the mistakes she’d made and the overwhelming sense of her own compliance in the reign of terror perpetrated by Amber, Rex, and the rest of the people she called “friends.”

It never did.

Kitty’s eleven-year-old twin sisters tackled her the moment she came through the front door.

“Kitty!” Sophia screamed as she tore down the hallway.

Lydia was barely two steps behind. “Why are you home so early?”

“Practice was cancel—”

“Play with us,” Lydia demanded.

“We’re doing Percy Jackson,” Sophia added.

“We need you for Blackjack,” Lydia said. For some reason, the twins loved to pretend their big sister was a talking Pegasus.

“Okay, okay.” Kitty laughed, extricating herself from too many pairs of arms. “Can I drop my stuff in my room first before you guys pull me limb from limb?”

Lydia stuck out her lower lip. “Five minutes, that’s all.”

“Or we’re coming to get you,” Sophia said.

Kitty couldn’t help but smile as she trekked down the hall to her room. There was something comforting about coming home to her sisters, who were still so innocent, so happy, and so trusting. They hadn’t yet discovered that boys were anything other than gross, or that everyone in their world wouldn’t always be nice, wouldn’t always have their best interests at heart. One of the reasons Kitty fought so hard for DGM was the thought that somehow she was protecting her sisters.

Kitty stashed her duffel bag in the corner of her room. She’d deal with homework later. It was time to role-play a talking, flying horse for her sisters.

She was just leaving the room when her cell phone buzzed.

“Five minutes!” Lydia shrieked from the living room.

“Hurry up, Kitty!” Sophia chimed in.

Kitty grabbed her cell and opened the text message as she walked down the hallway. She paused midstep, immediately recognizing the phone number of the emergency DGM burner phone.

We need to meet tonight.