by Sarah Lyu
“Yeah,” I said, mostly still taking it all in—the destruction of the classroom, the security cameras, the clever key theft. This was also classic Elise: brilliant plans, even better execution. But I didn’t feel the thrill I used to, though it was clear she did.
“He’s so gross,” she said. “An obvious first target.” That was true. I hated walking by his classroom, especially if he was standing by the door looking out onto the hallway.
“I wish you were there,” she said, not letting it go. I knew what she wanted me to feel—left out, jealous even. But I had no regrets over spending my night with Jack, and if I had the choice, I’d choose to be with him again.
“When did you guys plan this anyway?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Just last night,” she said. “That’s why you should always come hang out with us.”
“But you said you got the keys—”
“Yeah, earlier that day, but I hadn’t tried them, wasn’t even sure I’d gotten the right ones. Then we got bored and it kind of just snowballed from there.”
Elise remained jubilant all day, thrilled with what they’d accomplished in just one night. She replayed every moment with excruciating detail, how she’d swiped the keys, how they parked at Jae’s house, the closest one to school, and walked the whole way. How they basically strolled in, cut the cameras, and destroyed Dawkins’s room.
“The only thing we haven’t figured out is what to call ourselves,” she said at the end.
“Why not just use Deadly Vipers?” I asked, surprised she hadn’t thought of it already. “It’s catchy and seems dangerous.”
“See, this is why we need you, Rem,” she said. “You have all the good ideas.”
“Ha, ha,” I said, nudging her with an elbow.
“I’m serious,” she said. “You should’ve been there. You should’ve seen us.” She was so proud, and I was impressed. But the message was clear: You should’ve been with me, not Jack. I didn’t tell her that I was happy with the choice I made.
But it wasn’t just Jack or the prank. The truth was I hadn’t wanted to see her. But I couldn’t really explain why. All I knew was that I had begun to experience a sense of guilt around her since the night she told me about her father.
She was my favorite person in the whole world and this was the first time I’d purposely avoided her since we met.
SUNDAY // APRIL 9
37.
They were arguing again, my parents. I was supposed to meet Jack, but in order to get to my car, I would have to go downstairs, where they were currently screaming at each other.
Me: Sorry, I’m going to be late
Jack: Everything okay?
Me: Tell you later
I sat in my closet to wait it out, the small, dark space always a comfort, but I could still hear them. Dad was yelling about some work thing he needed Mom to go to.
“I told you,” she said. “I can’t. I have back-to-back surgeries that day.”
“It’s three weeks away. You can’t possibly know what surgeries you have yet.”
“I don’t have to know which surgeries I’m going to have to know that I’m going to have back-to-back surgeries because I always do. I’m the head of neuro. I always have surgeries.”
“It’s just a two-hour lunch thing. You can’t take a few hours off? Or use a personal day?” he said through gritted teeth.
“No.” Her voice was deadly calm, her answer final.
“Let me get this straight. So when you need me to spend a night sucking up to donors and board members, it’s nonnegotiable, but when I need you for two fucking hours you can’t make it.” He was exasperation, she was anger. These were roles they’d played for years.
“I don’t know how many times I have to explain to you that while you’re off crunching numbers or whatever it is that you do all day, I’m off saving lives.” These were all words she’d flung at him before. This was an old argument.
“Fuck you,” he said, and I flinched, curling more into myself.
My name is Remy Tsai.
I am seventeen years old.
This won’t last forever.
It worked, a little.
“Fuck you and your bullshit,” he said. “I’m sick of your self-righteous posturing.”
They went at it some more. He called her cold, she called him unsupportive. He accused her of lying, she accused him of adultery. Finally, they wound down, with him driving off, her going to the downstairs office.
They didn’t want each other anymore but they couldn’t let each other go.
Me: Leaving now, be there soon
Jack sent me a picture of him and Lola with big smiles, and I felt a little better. He was already outside with Lola, talking to a woman who had to be his aunt.
“Hey,” he said when I pulled up. He walked over and greeted me with a kiss to the cheek before finding my hand with his.
His aunt waved us over. “Call me Diane.”
“Hi, I’m Remy,” I said.
“Oh, she’s so pretty,” she said to Jack, and I blushed.
“I know.” He smiled.
Then his aunt laughed warmly and patted him on the shoulder. “Have fun.”
“Sorry about that,” Jack said when he was in my car, though he seemed at ease. He reached back to clip a doggy seat belt to Lola’s harness and gave me directions to an access point to the Chattahoochee that had hiking trails.
“You okay?” he asked after we parked and got out to pick a trail off the large welcome map. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”
I shrugged. “I’m fine. Sorry I was so late, by the way,” I said, but he sensed something was off.
“Come here,” he said, leading me to one of the picnic tables by the parking lot. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s fine. Let’s just go.” I didn’t want to talk about it. The only person outside of the family who knew was Elise and that was bad enough.
Jack finally acquiesced, but as we walked through the woods, I couldn’t concentrate on anything he was saying.
“Seriously, are you okay?” he said when we finished the loop.
“It’s dumb.”
“I promise, whatever it is, I won’t think it’s dumb,” he said, and we sat in my car watching the sky darken as I told him about my parents.
“They’re fucked up.” I told him about the fights, the multiple divorce announcements, the time my dad took me on a business trip to Chicago, the fundraising dinner from a few months ago and what’d happened after. I told him about the weird, fucked-up dynamic we had, my mom’s favoritism, my dad’s absences, Christian’s coldness.
He listened patiently, only occasionally interrupting to ask a question or two.
“I just wish they’d do it already,” I said. “Put us all out of our misery and just leave each other.”
Jack nodded. “My parents split when I was two, and honestly, it’s for the better.”
“Really?” I didn’t know much about Jack’s family, but there had to have been a reason he was living with his aunt and uncle.
“Yeah. My dad moved across the country, and for a few years I’d see him at Christmas or for a few weeks in the summer, but now I don’t even bother. Good riddance.”
“And your mom?” I asked.
He sighed. “We’re not really speaking right now. Mostly because of how she handled everything that happened with my grandpa.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it’s okay. We all have different reactions to tragedy—or lack of reaction,” he said, tensing. “Besides, she’s hardly ever home anyway, and my grandpa was really the one who raised me, so it’s whatever. My aunt and uncle are all right, though.” Behind us, Lola had fallen asleep and was now snoring. Jack and I laughed.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry this is happening to you.” It was so simple, but so powerful. I couldn’t help but think about how different he and Elise were.
Elise cared about me, I knew that. But where she was all a
bout taking action and vanquishing your enemies, he didn’t offer simple answers or any answers at all. He acknowledged my pain but he didn’t try to fix it. They both talked about the ugliness within their families, but Jack didn’t place our experiences side by side for comparison.
We drove back to Jack’s place in a comfortable quiet. When I pulled up to his house, he didn’t leave right away. “There was this thing my grandpa said to me all the time, and I never really got it until after he passed away.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“Life’s hard, shit happens, but what’s the point if you don’t try anyway?” he said.
“I like that.”
“Me too. I always thought it was just a pithy line, but lately I’ve been thinking about it more and more. Maybe because I miss him, but also maybe because it helps.”
Long after I said good night to Jack and Lola, what he said lingered in my mind. It reminded me of what Elise said: What’s the point of living if you’re not going to exist?
Elise was a striver, a crusader. She wanted to be remembered and she wanted life to be fair. She seemed to be waging a never-ending war against the injustices dealt to her, while Jack was just trying to make the best of it and move on. It’d been thrilling at first, being caught up in Elise’s rebellion, but what about the things we couldn’t do anything about? Her father, my parents. She wanted to rage, but I didn’t want the capacity for endless anger.
Like Elise, Jack knew life wasn’t fair, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it. And what he seemed to be saying—what his grandfather was saying—was that there could be power in acceptance. In knowing life was unfair and trying anyway.
SATURDAY // APRIL 15
38.
The first time Jack and Elise clashed was at the end of spring break. Even though I still saw her almost every day and kept my phone on when I was with Jack so Elise could reach me, she complained that I was ditching her, so on Saturday, Jack brought Evan and the four of us went out for dinner together. I couldn’t be ditching her if I brought her with me, and now that I’d had some time alone with Jack, I wanted them to get to know each other, become friends.
We went to the Good Place again to have breakfast for dinner. It started off okay but devolved quickly after we all ordered.
When I said I couldn’t decide if I wanted something sweet or savory, Jack stepped in and said, “We could get both and share? You get sweet and I’ll order savory.”
“Okay!” I said, excited that we were ordering as a couple. Elise, on the other hand, seemed less thrilled.
“So,” Elise said, turning to Jack. “What do you do all day?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Since you’re not in school.” The question itself wasn’t rude, it was the way she’d said it that was oddly dismissive.
Jack ignored her tone and answered politely. “I work at a gym. I read. I sometimes go on a run with Lola, my dog.”
“That’s a cute name,” she said, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Everything okay?” I whispered to her while Jack and Evan were in a side conversation.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” She seemed confused, but I knew she understood what I was asking. I hadn’t brought it up since the night she told me about her father, afraid of what she might’ve said, but it was still there, following us. Most moments with her felt like they had before, like we could almost forget she ever told me. Almost.
“Elise—” I began.
“I’m fine,” she said, shooting me a look that shut me up.
Halfway through dinner, Evan got a call from his girlfriend, Lara, and had to step outside.
“Those two break up like every other week,” Jack said, shaking his head.
Elise glanced out with interest at the parking lot where Evan was sitting on the curb hunched over his phone, clearly anxious.
When he came back inside, he sat back down next to Jack, looking distressed.
“Everything okay?” Jack asked like he already knew the answer.
“It’s over. Like really over this time,” Evan said.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said with a sigh. “But you say that every time—maybe it’s not really over?”
Evan shook his head. “She’s already with some other guy. Apparently for a few weeks now.”
“What?” Jack looked genuinely shocked.
“I think I’m going to head home early,” Evan said, avoiding all of our gazes.
“Yeah, of course,” Jack said. “Remy can give me a ride back later.”
“Wait,” Elise said, reaching across the table to catch his wrist. “Don’t go. I know just what you need.”
• • •
Not all of the Deadly Vipers were available on such short notice, but there were more than enough people for Elise’s idea.
“I don’t know,” Evan said after she pitched it to him. “It seems like a lot.”
“I mean, she just did that to you—cheated on you and then humiliated you. Doesn’t that seem like a lot to you? What’d she say exactly?”
“She said she was bored of walking all over me,” Evan said, flushed with embarrassment.
Elise shook her head sadly. “You have to have some respect for yourself. You have to stand up for yourself when no one else will.”
Her words took me back to the night we watched Kill Bill for the first time. It’s not just about revenge. It’s having respect for yourself. It’s believing you don’t deserve all the shitty things that people do to you. It’s believing that even if you get knocked down, there will be a day of reckoning. There’ll be a day you’ll rise out of the ashes and destroy the people who tried to destroy you.
“People are always saying you have to let it go, you have to move on, you have to focus on yourself, forget about them. Because success is the best revenge,” Elise said. “But that’s total bullshit. You know what’s the best revenge? Actual revenge.”
Evan paused to think, then nodded. “Okay.”
Jack shot me a confused look. “What’s Elise planning?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a little worried about what she had in mind. Her plans were so unpredictable, anywhere from completely benign to destructive. Whatever it was, I hoped it stayed on the tame side.
First, we stopped by Publix to buy five large cans of tuna.
“Salted or unsalted?” Evan asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” she answered. “As long as it’s in oil.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Jack said when Evan and Elise were ahead of us in the checkout line. “Have you guys done this before?” He frowned.
“Not this specific prank, but pranks in general. Small stuff,” I said, even though that wasn’t quite true—what we’d done to Dana, Jae’s ex-girlfriend, wasn’t small.
“What are we doing?” I asked her in the car.
“You’ll see,” she said with a sly smile. Elise had a flair for the dramatic and liked saving her plans for a big last-minute reveal.
Back at the Pink Mansion, we met up with Julie and opened the large cans of tuna suspended in oil, cautiously draining them into Tupperware, tossing out the fish before we left again. A little before midnight, we arrived at Lara’s house, parking near her car. We went up to Lara’s car, a black Corolla. Everyone stood still in anticipation, staring at Elise for direction.
“When you turn on the heat or AC, when you have the fan on and even when you don’t, air from the outside comes into the car through tiny vents located underneath the windshield wipers,” Elise explained. “We’re going to pour the tuna oil into those vents.” Jack looked at me in sharp surprise, but Evan seemed excited.
“Are you serious?” Jack asked. I was shocked too, by both the genius and simplicity of it. She always knew how to accomplish a lot with very little—a ruined car with a can of tuna fish. But Jack didn’t seem to be balking at her genius, and underneath my awe, I was worried, too. We’d never destroyed someone’s car. We’d ne
ver done anything so permanent.
Elise tilted her head slightly, as if pausing to consider an answer. “Yes,” she said. “I’m dead serious.” Then she turned to Evan. “You should do the honors.”
“Don’t do this,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Evan said. He was getting keyed up, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.
“Come on, it’s not worth it,” he said. “Let’s just go home.”
“Go ahead,” Elise encouraged him, ignoring Jack.
Evan looked between them but nodded at Elise. Then he carefully popped open the Tupperware and began to pour slowly. From now until the day the car would be flattened at a junkyard, the pervasive smell of rotting fish would haunt Lara. She’d have to take the entire car apart to clean it but even then, the scent of bad tuna would linger. “The scent of justice,” Elise called it.
“Where’d you get the idea?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I considered it for Christian but then realized your parents might just get him a new car.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe she had considered it for Christian, or at least thought of it then, but she never told me, never seriously entertained the idea. I couldn’t see her doing something so extreme then, but now here she was, charging ahead with it.
“Okay, that’s it,” Evan said, tapping the container empty against the windshield. Elise and Evan stood there for a while admiring their work as Jack shifted his weight between his feet in obvious discomfort. I turned away, trying hard to not think too much about what we’d just done.
We went back to Jack and Evan’s house and ordered pizza. Evan and Elise were in a good mood, talking and laughing about the prank we’d just pulled, but Jack remained quiet, watching them intently. I reached for him and he let me take his hand. This was a mistake, I thought. The dinner, the attempt to spend time with both of them. I caught Elise glancing over at us. Her smile was sweet, but I couldn’t help but wonder which victory she was thinking of: the mission, or the night itself. She saw an opening when she learned of Evan’s breakup and she wasted no time taking it.
“God, I wish I could be there,” Evan said. “See the look on her face.”