Chapter Eight: The Idea
658 Words
It was Tess who suggested it, on a Friday night with nothing better to do, the four of them piled onto Marissa's bed scrolling through photos from the pool party.
"Okay but what if we actually did something," Tess said, half-joking, half-not. "Like, something everyone would talk about.
The new girl's, like, become a whole thing. Might as well make it worth it."
"Worth it how?" Bree asked.
Tess shrugged, already warming to her own idea the way people do when boredom meets cruelty and finds it has a home.
"Homecoming's in two weeks. What if she got asked by someone hot — like, really asked, promposal-style, whole thing — and then got stood up in front of everyone.
"The room went quiet for a second in a way that felt, to Kayla, like the room deciding something without her."That's kind of insane," Marissa said, but she was smiling when she said it."It's not that deep," Tess said.
"She probably won't even go all in on it. And if she does, it's, like, one bad night. She'll get over it.
"Kayla sat on the edge of the bed, phone in her lap, and felt the familiar sour feeling rise in her chest again — stronger this time, sharp enough that she almost said something. Almost said
*that's too far.
* Almost said
*let's not.
*She didn't.
Because some ugly, wounded part of her — the part that had spent two months watching a girl effortlessly take the one thing Kayla had left, the part that had spent every dinner at home swallowing a silence that never got easier — that part of her wanted to see Sienna Reyes brought down to size.
Wanted proof that the universe still worked the way Kayla needed it to work, that being good, being smart, being *first,* still meant something, and that people who took what wasn't theirs eventually paid for it.
She told herself it was just a prank. Nobody said the word *humiliation.
* Nobody said the word
*cruel.
* They said *funny.
* They said *harmless.
* They said *she'll probably think it's funny too, eventually.*"Who'd even ask her," Bree said. "Like, who's popular enough that it'd actually land."All eyes turned, slowly, to Chase's name in the group chat thread still open on Marissa's laptop from an earlier conversation.
Kayla felt something cold drop through her stomach.
"Chase isn't doing that."
"Why not?" Tess said. "You said yourself she's weird. It's not like it means anything.
He's still yours after. It's one afternoon."
"It's not—" Kayla started, and stopped, because she didn't actually have the end of that sentence.
It's not what? Fair? Kind? She knew both of those things and said neither.What she said instead, quietly, was: "Fine. But nothing that gets anyone in trouble.
"That was the moment.
She would think about that moment for a long time afterward — the exact second she'd had the chance to end it and instead had only tried to control its shape, like negotiating the terms of something she should have refused outright.
Chase didn't need much convincing. He liked being the center of a plan, liked the idea of being talked about, liked, if Kayla was honest with herself in a way she rarely let herself be, almost anything that made people watch him.
"I'll make it a good one," he said, grinning, already pulling up ideas on his phone.
"Something big. Poster, flowers, the whole thing. She'll never see it coming.
"Kayla laughed along with the rest of them, because laughing was easier than sitting with what she actually felt, which was something close to dread, small and persistent, a warning she chose not to hear.
She went home that night and sat on her closet floor and told herself, one more time, that it wasn't that deep.
She was wrong.
It was about to become the deepest thing that had happened to any of them.
- Writer
