Cheat Sheets

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

When I show up for school on Monday I very nearly combust on the spot when I see Josh’s Hummer pull up into school with the car alarm going off, the windows rolled down and neon pink residue all over the windshield of his precious car.

Oh man… That is too good.

He parks the car, killing the engine and making the alarm turn off before he climbs out of the vehicle and heads towards me with a permanent scowl on his face and the unmistakable scent of fish surrounding him. “What are you smiling about?”

I clamp my hand down over my mouth to try and suppress my grin. “What on earth happened to your Hummer? Is this a joke?”

Josh’s scowl turns into a sulky pout as he folds his arms furiously over his chest and starts marching towards school. “Some punks vandalized my car and I can’t get it into the garage until Wednesday. I don’t understand, why would somebody do this, I’m perfectly innocent!”

I mock gasp and rub his back in circular motions whilst trying to smother my smirk. “You poor baby. Who would do this to you? This person is evil personified.” Me, I want to scream in his face, it was all me, well Braeden too, but in your face you pathetic piece of cheating-

Beneath my hand I feel Josh give a shrug and release an innocent sigh. “I’ve got no idea why anyone would do this. Everybody loves me.”

In that second I want to slap him up the side of the head for being so self-conceited, but to make this plot of revenge even more tasteful I have to maintain the charade of dutiful girlfriend. “It’s probably a rival football team then.”

He nods as if conceding before giving me an errant kiss on the cheek and looking down distractedly at his Jordan’s. “I’ll see you at lunch, I’m gonna catch up with coach and see if they can recover anything from CCTV yesterday.” With a small wave behind him, he’s off in the direction of the gym, thoroughly dejected.

I barely refrain from doing a fist pump once he’s out of view. Is it normal to feel this great at someone else’s misery? Because I am feeling all sorts of happy that Josh is finally getting what he deserves.

Skipping up the steps of the school, I walk with a swagger today as I make my way down the halls, daring to meet people’s eyes for the first time in my whole schooling life. There’s just something about being bad that’s so – deep breath – refreshing.

Mid step I’m snagged sideways and into a hard chest. All breath rushes out of me as I make contact with the solid surface and step back to rub my throbbing temple. “Ow, what was that for?” Blinking my eyes to get rid of the black spots, I almost gasp as I stare up at Braeden’s beaming face. “Hey you.”

“Hey yourself” Braeden rolls his eyes at me and tugs me into the supply closet behind him and firmly shutting the door behind us. “Did you see his face this morning? Oh man, that was priceless. We should have got someone to film him as he saw it yesterday after practice; that shit would be YouTube worthy!”

Throwing my head back, I giggle along with him in glee. “I know. It was so hard not to laugh in his face. All I wanted to do was scream ‘I did it’ and see his face fall. I feel so good right now. We need to do a lot more of this ‘bad’ stuff!”

“Alright, alright” snagging me by the elbow before I can run off to plan more evil schemes, Braeden reigns me in “cool your chemicals Heisenberg. You get too confident now you’ll get caught out. We need to lay off for a little bit to ease his suspicions. You did good this morning with your acting skills but he’s going to notice pretty soon that you’re acting different.”