The Revenge Artist - Philip Siegel Page 0,7

the way; poor kid can’t handle fifty-degree weather.

We park a few rows away. As I walk by, he opens the passenger side door for his girlfriend. Her long legs stretch out before her.

“Looks like we just made it.” Wade dips his Prada prescription sunglasses down his nose and points his watch at us.

“With about forty-five seconds to spare,” Fred says.

“You ready, babe?” he says to his girlfriend. He offers his hand to help her, and her lithe body propels out of the car.

I freeze in place and try to have a moment of eye contact with her. Just a few seconds to let me know she sees me. But Huxley Mapother ignores me completely. The couple walk past, and Huxley doesn’t even look in my direction. She always was a master of the cold shoulder.

***

I blame Steve.

Such an idiot. I’ve gotten used to Huxley not speaking to me. When I got her and Steve back together, un-break up-artist’d them last spring, I could understand Huxley reverting back to ignoring me. Nobody knew of my good deed, only the bad, and Huxley couldn’t risk befriending the enemy. I figured it would take time over the summer for fences to mend.

They were planning to do the long-distance thing when Steve went off to college in Texas to play football. But at his going-away party blowout, he got so drunk, he wound up hooking up with another girl. Huxley walked in on them, and per the photos and videos circulating online, she unclutched her pearls for once and unleashed her inner Jersey girl. Cursing at Steve, shoving the other girl to the floor. All because Steve is an idiot. What guy cheats at his own going-away party?

The only person she spoke to after that was her new neighbor, Wade. He didn’t know anything about Ashland gossip or the mythical, iconic Huxley and Steve. I’m assuming he comforted her, wooed her with tales of star-gazing—which, in all fairness, I’d probably eat up like candy crack, too.

Huxley and Wade’s shoes clack on the asphalt. Steve would never wear clackable shoes unless the occasion involved a ring or a casket. Whether they want to admit it or not, people have a type. Wade is not Huxley’s type. Her ex-boyfriend Steve was Friday Night Lights, and Wade is Friday night at the club. Who makes such a 180? I follow behind them into school.

Huxley looks over her shoulder. It’s our first eye contact since who-knows-when. A memory of our brief re-friendship from last year peeks into my mind. Despite the calculated lies and deception involved on my part, those were good times.

But instead of a blank stare, her eyebrows slope to her nose like arrows ready to be shot. Her lips purse, and I realize I’m getting scowled at, genuine dislike funneling my way.

It’s a look I’m familiar with from last year, when everyone hated me for being the Break-Up Artist. But that was then.

What did I do now?

Finally—finally—after a month of petitioning him and garnering vocal support from my sister and mom, my dad finally—finally—lets me keep my bedroom door closed when Fred comes over. I promised him that the second I begin sporting a baby bump, the deal will be off. He didn’t laugh.

Fred and I lay T-shaped on my bed with my legs resting against his stomach. Books are sprawled across the comforter as we do some homework and do some making out. (Eighty percent making out, twenty percent homework.) While Fred reads a comic book, I type up a paper on my laptop. (Eighty percent surfing the net, twenty percent writing the paper.) I keep thinking about the candy hearts from today and how they found their way inside my locker. FIND ME. I think back to Valentine’s Days past, and I’ve never heard of that expression being written on a heart. You want someone to kiss you, marry you, email you. If you’re giving them a heart, they’ve already found you. I research candy hearts online and scan lists of popular phrases.

FIND ME is nowhere to be found.

So someone specially created a heart just for me, then planted it inside my locked locker. Who wants to be found? My train of thought vanishes once Fred tickles my feet. I spasm and nearly kick his front teeth out.

“How’s the magazine?” I ask. He raises his thick eyebrows at me. They’re like the third person in our relationship.

“Comic book.”

“Six of one.”

He waves said book in his hand. “This is an epic story about the