Chadwick's Epic Revenge

by Lisa Doan

  I briefly considered diving under the Chex Mix table.

  But no, this was my moment. I had won.

  “Mr. Vance,” Principal Grimeldi said, “I am sure there is some explanation for this—”

  “Never mind,” Mr. Vance said. “The kid seems fine, I’m going home. Carry on with whatever kind of crackpot show you’re running. I’m always glad to see my tax dollars at work.”

  Mr. Vance strode out of the gym, seemingly unaware that he had just played a part in his offspring’s utter takedown.

  Jana said, “I don’t get it. That was your dad? Why does he have all his fingers?”

  Terry seemed to be searching his mind for some explanation. I decided to explain it for him. “Terry lied about the whole tragic story,” I said. “Terry Vance? Not tragic.”

  Jana stared at Terry. Then she said, “That is just disgusting,” and stomped away.

  I crossed my arms. “Well,” I said, “it looks like you’re about to be a loner again.”

  “Or,” Terry said, “it looks like you’re about to be suspended again.”

  I ignored that threat. I’d already been suspended once and it wasn’t that bad. “Everybody knows you lied,” I said. “There’s nothing interesting about you; you had to make it all up to get Jana to like you.”

  Terry took a sharp intake of breath. I had hit home on that one. He knew he would have never been a part of Jana’s clique if he hadn’t pretended to be tragic.

  And now he had been humiliated in front of the whole school and he knew that I had done it. I was finally vindicated.

  I waited for the surge of confidence, the swagger of the apex predator.

  I stared at Terry, daring him to say something.

  His eye twitched and he turned away.

  My victory congratulations came to a halt. Terry’s eye had twitched. Just like it had twitched when I took the crayon in first grade. On that day, I had wondered if he would cry. Was he going to cry now? He was supposed to be mad but admitting defeat, not twitching. We were supposed to be two worthy opponents, going mano a mano, with me claiming victory and him waving a white flag in defeat. This was just sad.

  A sick feeling began to crawl all over me.

  “Geez, Chadwick,” Rory said, coming up behind me, “why couldn’t you just give him back his stupid crayon?”

  Why couldn’t I? Why didn’t I? How did I ever think this was a good idea? Suvi had thought it was a good idea. Could I blame it on her? Could I blame Dr. Singh? Anybody?

  No, it was all on me. I’d thought up the epic revenge. I’d bought the fake bloody fingers and the slingshot. I’d made the video. I’d recruited my army of two. I had humiliated him in front of the whole school. I had been successful, only now I was starting to think that what I had really done was turn myself into … Terry Vance.

  I was him. I was everything I didn’t like about the Nile crocodile. I had executed an apex predator ambush. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now it didn’t feel like such a good idea.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  Terry wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking at Jana, who was now surrounded by Carmen and Bethany. They were picking out the good parts of the Chex Mix to try to cheer her up.

  He liked her. I could see that he actually liked her. He had been trying to drive me crazy by turning Jana against me, but instead I had ended up driving him crazy by turning Jana against him. It should be justice, like Suvi said, an eye for an eye. It didn’t feel like justice, though.

  This wasn’t first grade. I couldn’t just forgive myself and then blame my teacher. I had to fix it.

  I grabbed Suvi’s arm. “Don’t let Terry go anywhere,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”

  “There’s more?” Suvi asked with real enthusiasm.

  I didn’t answer. I raced to the back of the gym. With any luck, the door that led into the school would be unlocked. I grabbed the handle.

  Yes! I was in.

  I ran down the hall toward the art room. I threw on the lights and jogged toward the shelves that had the markers and colored pencils and chalk … and crayons.

  I dumped a box of sixty-four on the floor and got down on my knees, searching for the sunset orange.

  I grabbed it and stood up victorious. This madness had to end. I would finally give Terry Vance his crayon back. Then, I would figure out what to do about the rest of the school. Maybe say that Mr. Vance was Terry’s uncle and that I had seen his fingerless dad with My Own Eyes? It worked for Marilee, so why not me? Whatever I would become on the savannah of Wayne Elementary, it was not going to be a crocodile.

  * * *

  When I got back to the gym, the music was on again, but Principal Grimeldi was looking at the main monitor and talking to one of the other chaperones. She pointed at the flash drive and then took it and put it in her pocket. It would only be a matter of time before I was busted.

  Where was Terry?

  Rory stood next to Susie Townsend, who appeared to be leaning away from him. I guessed he hadn’t found any breath mints.

  I ran over to Suvi. “Where is he?” I asked. “I got the crayon.”

  Suvi said, “He left. I told him you wanted him to stay, but he left anyway. What are we going to do with a crayon? I don’t remember that being in the plan.”

  Was I too late? No, I couldn’t be. I had to find him. “Suvi,” I said, “I’m going to ask you to put on your Dr. Singh hat for a moment. No more revenge plots—I’m going to apologize to Terry like I should have done in first grade.”

  Suvi nodded and said, “That is very mature, Chadwick. Though Suvi still stands by an eye for an eye.”

  I left Suvi and Dr. Singh and ran out the doors of the school. In the distance, I saw Terry striding down the drive.

  “Terry,” I shouted. “Terry, wait!”

  I ran after him as fast as I could.

  “Terry,” I said, grabbing his sleeve.

  Terry Vance stopped and turned to look at me. “What do you want now?” he said.

  “I want to apologize,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was really stupid. I was really stupid. I’ll stick up for you. I’ll tell everybody that was your uncle, not your dad. That way, you can go on having a fingerless dad and Jana will still like you.”

  Terry stared at me, expressionless.

  I slowly held out my hand and unfolded my palm. The sunset-orange crayon lay there, lighted by the moon.

  “I came to give you back your crayon,” I said solemnly. “You had every right to color with it. I should have never taken it from you.”

  Terry stared down at the crayon.

  “It’s finally over,” I said. “You won. I gave you back the crayon I took all those years ago. We can finally stop all this.”

  Terry took the crayon from my palm. He examined it, rolling it between his fingers.

  Then he snapped it in half.

  I stared at the pieces of crayon, the ragged edges of the paper hanging off the broken ends of wax.

  Terry leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “Here’s the thing, Musselman—you could have apologized that day, or the next day, or even the next year. But you didn’t, and now you’ve just raised the stakes, my friend. I’ve been dogging you for so long that it’s turned into a hobby, but now I’m going to make it a full-time career. I’ve got three notebooks full of plans to go home and look at.”

  The crocodile smiled at me and flung the two pieces of sunset-orange crayon over his shoulder.

  Terry Vance had three notebooks full of plans. It had been a hobby; now it was going to be his career. Full-time.

  I would go forward into the future knowing that the crocodile would always be lurking on the riverbank, biding his time and waiting to strike.

  No, I wouldn’t let that happen. I might not want to be a crocodile, but I wasn’t going back to being a helpless flamingo either. “Oh, yeah,” I said, “well, how do you know I don’t have my own notebooks full of plans?” />
  “Who cares?” Terry asked. “They’ll never be as good as my plans. I’ve even got one where you get arrested for robbing a bank. That one’s not until high school, though.”

  Robbing a bank. And it was scheduled? There was an actual schedule?

  I clasped my hands in front of me so it wouldn’t be noticeable that they were shaking. “That’s nothing,” I said. “I have one where you think Tom Brady from the Patriots is following you on Instagram, but it’s really me.”

  I was pretty impressed with myself for coming up with that on the fly.

  Terry snorted. “You kinda gave that one away, I’ll keep an eye out for it. That is, if I have time while I’m busy cutting the brake lines on your bike.”

  I noticed I had a hard time swallowing the saliva in my mouth. “When is that scheduled for?” I croaked out.

  “It’s a surprise,” Terry said.

  My mind was racing in two different directions—one, imagining riding my bike down Chancery Hill only to discover I had no brakes and was plummeting to my death, and two, what to say next.

  “Tampering with a bike,” I said in as dismissive a tone as I could muster, “is so unoriginal. Especially because I plan to set off fireworks. Inside your house.”

  “Are you sure you won’t run into any booby traps that might guillotine you before you got inside?” Terry asked. “I’d hate to see your head rolling down the driveway because of a careless accident.”

  “We’re both going to end up dead, aren’t we?” I whispered.

  “Probably.”

  “I don’t want to die,” I said. “Do you?”

  “No,” Terry said, “but I will if I have to.”

  And there it was. The most important thing to know about Terry Vance: He would die if he had to.

  “Maybe we don’t have to die,” I said, trying to keep the sound of desperation out of my voice. “Maybe we could negotiate some kind of settlement.”

  “What’s in it for me?” Terry asked.

  What was in it for Terry? What weapon did I have against the Nile crocodile? What did I have over the guy who had me scheduled to rob a bank?

  The answer hit me like a bolt of lightning.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not just me you’re up against now. Suvi is pretty enthusiastic about what she calls an eye for an eye. I’ve actually had to rein her in on a couple of her ideas. She’s as unpredictable as a wolverine.”

  “She’s just a girl,” Terry said, but I thought I heard the smallest amount of hesitation in his voice.

  “She’s just a girl,” I answered, “whose first idea was to break into a morgue and get real fingers to launch.”

  Suvi hadn’t suggested that, but if she had I wouldn’t have been that surprised.

  Terry considered the matter of Suvi Singh breaking into the morgue.

  “And,” I went on, “when she talks about an eye for an eye, I think she might mean actual eyes.”

  Terry chewed on his lip as he mulled over Suvi coming for one of his eyes.

  “Her parents are doctors,” I said. “They probably have scalpels lying all over the house.”

  Terry rubbed at one of his eyes like Suvi was already on her way to get it. Terry Vance might not be afraid to die, but it appeared that he was afraid of being maimed.

  “For all I know,” I said, “she already has a whole collection of eyes from people who have crossed her.”

  Terry slowly blinked as if he was checking that both of his eyes were still there.

  He folded his arms and said, “If I’m going to give up making your life miserable, I’ll need a lawyer to negotiate the terms. And confirm that I won’t lose any eyes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After Terry and I worked out the where and when to negotiate a settlement, I went back into the gym and turned myself in. I figured why spend days looking over my shoulder when I already knew I would get caught? This way, I could just get it over with. I claimed I had worked alone, a rogue prankster, so Suvi and Rory wouldn’t get in trouble. Naturally, my mom and dad were disappointed in me. (Though my dad seemed way less disappointed than my mom and kept asking for more and more details.) I was suspended for another week, but I had become an old hand at suspension so I just grabbed a plate of bacon and kicked back with the Reality 24/7 network.

  Now I was back. Marilee stood on the bleachers and silence descended on the crowd. There had been so much gossip swirling around the school that the briefings were now held daily. I had edged in closer than I usually would because I knew I would be one of the subjects. Rory had told me that I had been in the briefing every single day while I was out. Apparently, there had been talk that some of the bloody fingers had been real and the police were trying to locate citizens with missing fingers. I supposed Terry had told somebody that Suvi had considered getting them from the morgue and the rumor mill had taken it from there.

  “I saw, with My Own Eyes,” Marilee said in a grave voice, “what our own Terry Vance is creating. I do not exaggerate when I say it’s a masterpiece.”

  I looked at Rory. Masterpiece? What masterpiece?

  Rory shrugged.

  “Terry is a gifted novelist,” Marilee said. “Perhaps one of the greatest of our time. Like many artists before him, he is brooding and troubled. He even, at times, has difficulty removing himself from the compelling fictional world he is creating. That was how he began to believe that his own father had lost all his fingers—because the hero in his novel lost all his fingers in a tragic Jeep accident.”

  The crowd began to chatter. “Oh, so his dad never lost his fingers, Terry just thought he did.” “I heard artists have to be a little crazy to create a masterpiece, he must be really good.”

  “Gifted novelist?” I whispered. “Where did that come from?”

  “So wait a minute,” Jana said, “Terry wasn’t lying, he was just lost in a fictional world because he’s an artistic genius?”

  “Precisely,” Marilee said.

  Jana stood up and gazed around the school yard. “I’ve totally wronged him,” she said softly.

  “What is going on?” I whispered to Rory. “Now Terry Vance is a tortured but talented novelist? Are you kidding me?”

  “Further,” Marilee said, “the settlement negotiations between Terry and Chadwick are scheduled to commence on Thursday, after school. I will be following that story closely and you will be the first to know any breaking news on that front.”

  Great. I had thought I would start the settlement negotiations from a power position. Now it looked like not only would Terry be forgiven for lying, but he was going to get credit for it. It wasn’t enough that he was a likable vampire, now he was a brooding novelist too.

  Terry Vance, the guy who had only gone into the library one time in his whole life, to check out a book about gaslighting, was now a novelist. There was no way that Marilee believed it. She hadn’t seen any kind of literary masterpiece with Her Own Eyes. But I thought I knew how she had been inspired to say that she had.

  The crowd dispersed and I climbed the bleachers to Marilee. I leaned close to her ear and said, “How many Snickers bars did Terry give you to float that ridiculous story?”

  Marilee smiled and said softly, “Quite a few, Chadwick. Quite a few.”

  * * *

  Representation for the parties in the settlement negotiations between me and Terry had been finalized. I had Rory and Suvi on my side of the table. Mark had been ruled out because he was too big and didn’t go to our school and would be intimidating to the other side. Suvi was almost ruled out because she was too smart, but that would have left me with only Rory, and even the other side agreed that would be a bloodbath. Terry had Jana firmly on his side again, and Hiram Heskell—smart, lawyerly, and still holding the voter-fraud incident against me because he wanted to be a judge someday. Marilee was ruled out from Terry’s side because I successfully argued that she could be bought with a certain candy bar. Terry realized I was on to his Snickers-bribery scam and gave her
up pretty quickly.

  Mr. Samson had agreed to be our mediator. As he told me when I asked him, “Why not? It’s not like I have anything else going on in my life.”

  We had gathered in Mr. Samson’s classroom, turning the desks to face one another while Mr. Samson sat at one end. “All right,” he said, “I still don’t know what this is about, but let’s get started. What are we negotiating?”

  “How to stay alive,” I said. “Terry and I have been feuding since the first grade. It used to be all on his side but now I’m fighting back and it’s starting to get … dangerous.”

  “I’ll die if I have to,” Terry said, crossing his arms.

  “He’s a novelist,” Jana said to Mr. Samson. “He’s full of dramatic feelings.”

  “Right,” Mr. Samson said, glancing up to the sky like he wanted to make sure that God was viewing what his life had come to. “What are the terms?”

  “I’ll start,” Jana said, waving her hand. “I have to protect Terry from his own feelings. Yes, he’s willing to die, but I have to make sure that doesn’t happen. I am literally Belinda Swankwell in Vampires Have Feelings Too.”

  Terry nodded in agreement. Apparently, he was totally on board with being Lance Stalwart to her Belinda Swankwell.

  “Chadwick can’t play any more tricks,” Jana said. “Terry has too much important work to do on his novel.”

  “Wait a minute,” I cried, “except for the last one, it’s him always doing stuff to me!”

  Suvi laid her hand on my arm and whispered, “I’ll handle this.” She turned to Jana and said, “I have counseled my client that an eye for an eye is the best course in this matter.”

  Terry reached up and covered one of his eyes like Suvi was sharpening a scalpel under the desk and preparing to take it from him on the spot.