Better Than Revenge (Sweet Secrets #1)

by Taylor Henderson

  “Wait. How come you aren't on the track running with everyone else?”

  A smirk played on her lips as she began, saying, “I can’t run today,” she rubbed her stomach with her hands and feigned a pained face, “I’m having killer cramps.”

  I squinted my eyes at her, but still nodded and held my hand out toward her, “Lucky you. I’m Violet Forrester.”

  She glanced down at my hand for a moment before placing the napkins in it and speaking, “I’m Lena, and I don’t plan on telling you my last name. It’s ugly.”

  I let my hand drop. “Sounds good to me. So what was it that you were saying earlier about watching the boy’s gym class?” I smirked and raised an eyebrow causing Lena to smile knowingly.

  “Follow me, Forrester,” she commanded as she motioned for me to follow her with her hand. She swiveled her head around and said, “You might want to wipe your mouth first though,” before she turned forward again.

  I wiped my mouth with the napkin she had given to me and made a mental note to rinse my mouth out as soon as possible.

  Lena and I walked across the field side by side. We passed by Ms. Botch who was far too consumed in yelling at a few girls to notice the two of us. Lena led me to the end of the track and over to the football field where the boy’s gym class was doing sprints.

  She sat down on an empty spot at the edge of the field and patted the damp grass next to her. “Take a seat, Forrester.”

  I sat down next to Lena and winced as the wet grass soaked through my gym shorts. I scanned the field for Blake, but I didn’t see him amongst the other boys that were sprinting across the field. I found it quite odd that each boy had large smiles plastered onto their faces while almost every girl in my class was haggard. I would have spent a few more minutes pondering over the differences between the two gym classes, but Lena’s voice brought me out of my reverie.

  “He’s kind of cute, huh?” I followed the direction that Lena’s finger was pointed in until my eyes landed on a familiar boy with dark hair falling into his eyes as he waited for his turn to sprint across the field.

  I laughed, shrugging my shoulders nonchalantly. “That’s Blake Edwards.” Then, with a sideways glance in Lena’s direction, I added, “He’s all right.”

  “All right?” Her expression contorted to mirror one of shock and disbelief. “That boy is more than all right, he’s fine.”

  I shrugged in response. “If you say so,” I joked.

  “I bet you five bucks I can get his number before class ends.”

  “I’ll take that bet.” I laughed, causing Lena to throw me a sideways glance.

  “You don’t think I can get his number, do you?” One eyebrow rose as she stared at me with a daring expression on her face.

  I smiled and tried not to laugh, “I think he has a girlfriend though. He doesn’t seem like the type of guy to flirt with another girl while he’s dating someone else.”

  With a thoughtful look on her face, Lena stared across the field at Blake while he sprinted from one end to another. “Nope,” she said popping the ‘p’. “He definitely looks like he’s the type to me,” she chirped in a sing-song voice.

  I furrowed my eyebrows and gave her a dumbfounded look, “What makes you say that? He looks pretty faithful to me.”

  Lena shook her head and smiled while tapping a finger to her temple. “I have boy intuition. I can tell exactly who a guy likes by the way he looks at her, and better yet, I can tell whether or not a guy is a good kisser by the way he smiles. Boy intuition runs in my family.”

  I nodded, rolling my eyes at her words. She had to be kidding me with her supposed ‘boy intuition’ as she had called it. Suddenly, opening my mouth I called out across the field, “Blake! Blake!” Blake turned toward my voice, scanning the field before he spotted me and held his palms up toward the sky while a questioning face crossed his features. “Come here,” I mouthed while beckoning him over with my hand, not wanting to scream again and risk attracting attention from one of the teachers.

  Blake shrugged and walked over to his teacher before turning and sprinting toward where Lena and I were seated on the grass. As he came, a goofy grin slipped onto my face.

  Lena glanced at me with a horrified expression lining her features. “Why did you call him over here?” Her hands went to her face as she tried to fix her hair before Blake got to us.

  “Don’t worry, Lena, Blake is very down to earth. He won’t care how you look.” I smiled sweetly and waved at Blake as he stopped in front of us.

  Dropping to the ground beside me, Blake waved at Lena and smiled a friendly smile which she returned with a flirty wink causing Blake to look a bit taken aback.

  “Blake, this is Lena,” I pointed at Lena and then back to Blake, “and Lena this is Blake.”

  “Hey Blake,” Lena cooed, batting her eyelashes, and leaning forward in the grass.

  Blake glanced at me with a confused look on his face, to which I shrugged nonchalantly, trying desperately not to allow the laughter to escape from my mouth.

  Blake scooted closer to me and tossed his arm over my shoulder, “Hey, why aren’t you participating with your class?” he questioned, looking over my shoulder at the track where my classmates had transitioned into walking.

  I was about to answer, but Lena beat me to it. “Forrester here got sick, and being the caring citizen that I am, I traded my precious exercising time to sit with her.”

  I scoffed, “Yeah, because that’s definitely what happened.”

  She shrugged. “It was something along those lines.”

  Blake focused his eyes on me, furrowing his brows. “You got sick?”

  “It was nothing, really.”

  It was Lena’s turn to scoff. “Yeah, right. Tell that to the trash can.”

  His blue eyes pierced into mine. He looked concerned, when really he had no reason to be. I was just out of shape; which wasn’t uncommon in America.

  He sighed, “Okay, well just take it easy.” With that, he stood up, told Lena that it was nice to meet her, and went to rejoin his class.

  I bit my lip as I watched him go, not even noticing that the whole time Lena was watching me with a small smile on her face. I gave her a questioning look and she just shrugged, smirking.

  “My boy intuition says that Blake likes you.” She turned her head toward me and whispered, “He’s also a good kisser.”

  I laughed, shaking my head at her words, “Maybe that ‘boy intuition’ of yours actually works.”

  Chapter 3

  Lena and I were surprised to find out that we had most of our classes together. We spent the rest of the school day finding classes, sitting next to each other, and getting to know each other more. Apparently Lena’s family had just moved to Virginia from California over the summer, and was just getting settled into their new house.

  Like me, Lena also had a little sister, except hers was in the tenth grade and was also attending Bradbury High. Lena said that her sister, Gabriella, was said to look exactly like a miniature version of her, except she kept her hair straight and her eyes were brown. She also mentioned that Gabriella was one of those girls who strived to fit in with the “popular crowd” and often made friends with the wrong people. She talked for a little bit about how she was going to have to keep an eye on her throughout the year. Supposedly she had a huge incident happen at her last school and she wasn’t looking forward to it happening again.

  Another thing that Lena and I had in common was that other than the occasional bonding with our sisters we felt as if no one in our households understood us. Lena didn’t go into too much detail about her family, but I didn’t expect her to considering how she had just met me. The most she said about her parents was that they used to be extremely strict, but now they weren't. I had noticed that she seemed slightly hesitant to talk about them so I switched the focus of the conversation from her parents to mine.

  “I’m sure your parents aren’t nearly as bad as mine. My dad is a work-a-holic who is ha
rdly ever home, and my mom has dedicated her life to annoying the hell out of me. I swear she sits around all day making lists of new ways she can get on my nerves.” I sighed deeply. “Don’t even get me started on the list of things that I’m not allowed to eat.”

  She patted my shoulder sympathetically as she spoke through her laughter, “Your mom can’t be that bad. Does she work?” Her head tilted to the side questioningly causing her fiery red hair to spill over her shoulder.

  “Nope,” I answered. “That’s the worst part. Since she doesn’t work she has extra time to sit at home and find more things to worry about!”

  Lena and I turned down a corridor and headed into the direction of the buses. We had already gathered the items that we needed for the next day from our lockers and were ready to head home. “I know it’s normal for a mom to worry about her children, but my mom takes worrying to another level. She refuses to buy Popsicles for Lilly and me, not only because they “contain all kinds of artificial flavoring and unhealthy sugars,” but also because, “they could give us tongue splinters”.” My voice rose to a high pitch tone that closely resembled my mother’s voice.

  Lena turned her head to look at me as we walked. “You can’t be serious. Please tell me you’re exaggerating.” When I shook my head she started to laugh again. “I have to meet your mom! She sounds hilarious!”

  I shrugged and rolled my eyes. “I guess you could say she’s kind of funny in a crazy, nut job kind of way.”

  Lena laughed but stopped abruptly as we walked through the front doors of the school building. She nudged my shoulder with her elbow and winked at me as she said, “Hottie at twelve o’clock.”

  I turned my head to the direction that I assumed was twelve o’clock to see Blake sitting on a bench with his nose buried deep in a book. Smiling, I wrapped my fingers around Lena’s wrist and pulled her toward him with a smile on my face.

  When I was within hearing range I called out his name to get his attention. He tilted his head up and scanned the area in front of him before his eyes landed on me. Once they did, he smiled and looked back down at his book, flipping a page as he continued to read.

  Lena spoke from behind me. “You know, you two make an extremely cute couple, Forrester.”

  I turned my head slightly so that I could get a good look at her smirking face. “Who told you we were dating?” I racked my brain trying to recall everything I had said to her in the last few hours during school, but I didn’t remember saying anything about Blake and me other than during gym this morning. I thought it would be funny to see how long it would take her to figure it out without me having to tell her.

  Lena smiled, giving me a full view of her straight white teeth. “I could say that I’m extremely good at reading people, but that would be a lie.” She shrugged and looked tremendously proud of herself as she said, “I saw the two of you “chewing on each other's tongues” on the bus this morning.”

  I laughed as I remembered how our strict and extremely inappropriate bus driver, Mrs. Gross, had reacted to Blake and me kissing on the bus in the morning.

  “So that explains your so called “boy intuition”?” I shook my head, feigning disbelief.

  Lena shrugged. “What can I say? I have a good imagination.”

  I nodded in agreement as we continued to walk toward Blake. When we reached him, I took a seat next to him on the bench and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. I hadn’t seen him since first period and I couldn’t wait to hear about how his classes went. I was a little sad that we didn’t have any together other than gym, but I was also happy that I wasn’t put into any of his advanced placement classes so I couldn’t complain.

  Blake looked up from his book and held up his pointer finger. “Let me just finish this chapter.” Before I could reply, he buried his nose back into the book and began reading intently. Lena smiled and tugged at my arm, getting me to turn toward her.

  She pointed an immaculately painted finger at a horde of our classmates that were gathering off in the distance. “Is that normal after-school behavior?” she asked with wide eyes as she popped a stick of gum into her mouth, offering me some and putting it away when I declined.

  I shook my head at her question, focusing on the steadily growing crowd of people and noticing the fact that a majority of the onlookers had a Y chromosome, and seemed to be synchronized as they all pumped their fists into the air and chanted. Although I was too far away from the mob to hear what they were saying, I wouldn’t have hesitated to bet my entire life savings that they were chanting the word, “Fight!” repeatedly. After I voiced my thoughts to Lena, she did something that I had not expected. Instead of shrugging and focusing her attention on something else, she hopped off of the bench, grabbing my hand in the process, and pulled me along behind her as she ran toward the rapidly growing throng of high school students.

  As we got closer to the group, the shouts from the crowd that had gathered to watch were loud and distinct. Each spectator was shouting, “Girl fight!” at the top of their lungs as they pushed themselves forward to get a better view of the fight before them.

  Lena pushed her way to the front of the crowd, paving a narrow path for me as I followed along. I had the back of her shirt grasped into a tight fist, and as we drew closer to the front of the crowd I began to get a little antsy at the thought of who would be dumb enough to fight on the first day of school. Even I knew that was wrong.

  As I made my way past a few people I felt a hand graze my butt, and as a quick reaction, I dropped hold of Lena’s shirt and slapped the hand away. I regretted it instantly when I looked ahead of me to see that we had made it to the front of the crowd. Suddenly, a look of recognition covered Lena’s face, and to my surprise, she jumped right into the middle of the fight.

  Chapter 4

  I watched in shock as Lena launched herself at one of the fighters. Although her blonde hair was spilled over her face, I could tell that the girl lying beneath Lena was Brianna. She kicked her feet helplessly as Lena held both of her arms restrained above her head. Lena’s lips moved quickly and her eyebrows arched low on her forehead as she yelled at Brianna for a moment before pushing herself up from where she was sitting on Brianna’s stomach and turning toward Brianna’s opponent with a heavy scowl of disapproval lining her face.

  Afterwards, she stomped over to the skinny redhead who had been fighting with Brianna. In a few quick strides, Lena was standing in front of the girl and was wagging her index finger in the girl’s face; the same way that a mother would while reprimanding a small child. Lena roughly grabbed onto the girl’s arm as she turned toward me, still frowning as she dragged the little redhead closer. I couldn’t see the girl’s face due to the fact that her head was hung low causing her straight red hair to spill over her face, but I was sure that she was Gabriella, Lena’s little sister. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as the two redheaded sisters walked toward me.

  As they passed by, Lena grabbed onto my wrist, pulling me along with her and Gabriella. By the time we had gotten back to Blake he was shoving his book into his backpack and shrugging it over his shoulder as he looked at me with a confused expression etched onto his face.

  Before I could fill him in on what had just happened, Lena said, “Don't ask.” She shoved Gabriella into the empty space on the bench next to Blake before she continued. “Let's just get on to the bus, and forget that it ever happened. Our parents have enough to worry about right now.” Lena threw a pointed look in her sister's direction.

  Gabriella glanced down and rubbed the back of her neck as she slouched deeper into her seat as if she was trying to disappear.

  Lena seemed oblivious to her sister’s obvious discomfort. She cleared her throat before adding, “Guys, this is my little sister, Gabriella. Gabriella, meet Violet and Blake.” Lena gestured to us and smiled.

  Raising an eyebrow, she looked from me to Blake and then crossed her arms haughtily. “It’s Ella. Besides, we’ve met already,” she said with a scowl lining her delicat
e face.

  Blake glanced at me to see if I knew what she was talking about. Although her face looked kind of familiar, I didn’t remember meeting her before. Noticing our puzzled expressions, Ella spoke again to clear up our bewilderment. “I saw you this morning...” She waved both of her hands in small circles as if she was trying to jog our memory. “I was with Brianna and the other girls when you guys were being rude to her. It was uncalled for really. She did nothing to you.” Ella tossed a glare in my direction before she popped a stick of gum into her mouth. The whole time her eyes stayed focused on mine.

  “You and Brianna seem like good friends.” My words dripped with sarcasm. “It was obvious from the way she was pulling your hair back there.”

  Lena shook her head. “I hope this isn’t going to be a repeat of last year. Can’t you just find some normal friends to hang out with?”

  Ella finally looked away from me. Instead, she focused her glaring eyes at her sister. “Shut up. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Her words came out in a low growl. “Brianna is nice. We just had a misunderstanding. And besides,” she shrugged her shoulders and smirked, “we have two different definitions of normal. You refer to these losers as normal? Brianna told me all about Violet. She’s a freak. Always has been and always will be.”

  Her words may have hurt if I was the type of person to give a damn what others thought. The only thing I was mad about was that she was judging me based on someone else’s perception. I was about to voice my thoughts when Ella pushed up off of the bench and repositioned her skirt, smoothing out the wrinkles in the material, before walking off. She sauntered over to where Brianna and two of her lap dogs were standing around Brianna’s little red hatchback. When Ella was in their vicinity, she walked straight up to Brianna and—from the look of it—was apologizing to her. In response, Brianna smiled smugly and patted Ella on the shoulder before she climbed behind the wheel of her car while her followers, Ella included, climbed into the remaining seats.