Page 3 of My Rules for Revenge (Twisted YA Mysteries #1)

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.”

“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 a Dilbert’s eyes, 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’m dead .”

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?”

“Wait, what?” Vivian asked.

“Yeah, look. He’s over there. He’s doing a pretty good job, I think.”

Jared’s eyes widened in fear as he quickly shot up.

“No, no, no, no, no. You got it all wrong. I wasn’t taking pictures of you guys. I was…I was just checking my camera. No. That doesn’t sound right…no, wait. Pretend you didn’t hear that.” Jared was panicking, and for good reason.

“Well, you should’ve just said so.”

“Huh?” Jared answered with a surprised look on his face.

“Jared was just checking out his camera, Viv.”

“Please don’t explode,” Vivian whispered.

“No worries, Jared. It’s all good.” I reassured him.

I gave him a toothy smile and a thumbs-up. He returned a scared look and a terrified thumbs-up.

“Are you sure we’re good? I mean, I wasn’t taking pictures of you guys anyway.”

“No, yeah. I believe you,” I said sarcastically.

“For real?”

“Nope.”

I hastily slid a textbook out of my book bag and launched it straight at Jared’s freakishly long nose.

This caused him to shriek like a frightened chicken as he tumbled backwards.

He groaned and massaged his nose while he squirmed on the floor.

Thankfully, the school’s librarian was eighty-six years old and pretty much slept all day while she sat at her desk.

I remember I even saw a mosquito fly in and out of her mouth without her moving a single inch. She was practically dead.

“Do that again, and I’ll throw a whole bookcase at you,” I warned.

“Sorry, Jared,” Vivian offered.

“Don’t apologize.”

“I know he’s creepy, but I still feel bad.”

“Don’t feel bad; feel gooooood ,” I slurred like a love-drunk hippie.

“Perhaps next time we can try peace and love?”

“Next time we’ll try war and destruction.”

“I hope you guys fall into a ditch and stay there without any water or nutrition!” Jared shouted.

“Shut the hell up, idiot.”

I walked over to him, picked up his phone, and made him unlock it by twisting his arm. I found the pictures he took of us and showed them to Vivian. She shook her head. I deleted the pictures and dropped the phone on Jared’s face.

“Ow.”

Vivian stopped me before I could drop a nine-hundred-page textbook onto his face next.

Instead, I saved the meme we made, and we exited the library before any teacher walked in.

I gave the disgusting snail a dirty look on the way out as he trembled.

I still ended up grabbing a seven-hundred-page history book on the way out and threw it near his ballsack.

I saw his dumb face twist with pain, and I almost cried laughing while Vivian lectured me for my violence.

The funny thing was, Jared wasn’t the worst of the boys I went to school with, at least not yet. At that time, there were some serious villains. I ended up having to stand up to the king of the assholes.