Chapter 8 - Vengeance& Lip Gloss (Continue)
2023 Words
Mr. Garrison had clearly already been warned they were coming. He stood by the window when they entered, hands clasped behind his back. His nose wrinkled slightly at the smell of artificial strawberries.
“Explain,” he said.
They both talked at once.
“She set up a bucket in my locker—”
“She’s been trying to start something for weeks—”
“Quiet,” he said, raising a hand. “Miss Frost?”
Karina straightened up. “It was a prank, sir,” she said. “I’ll pay for any cleaning needed. I didn’t mean for it to go that far.”
He looked at Kendra, who was still dripping onto his carpet. “And you, Miss Atchinson?”
“That wasn’t a prank,” Kendra said flatly. “It was targeted. She knew what she was doing. She pulled the string while I opened my locker.”
Karina rolled her eyes. “You can’t prove that.”
“I can check the cameras,” Mr. Garrison said.
For the first time, Karina’s smile faltered. “Sir, my father—”
“I am aware of who your father is,” Mr. Garrison said, irritation flickering across his face before he smoothed it away. “Which is precisely why I expect you to behave better, not worse.”
Kendra felt a tiny spark of vindication.
It burned out quickly.
“However,” he added, “no one was physically harmed. Miss Atchinson, your words in the hallway were also out of line. You both contributed to an escalation.”
Karina relaxed visibly. Kendra’s jaw tightened.
“So,” Mr. Garrison went on, “you will both serve detention this afternoon. One hour. And I expect this to be the last time either of you are in my office because of nonsense like this. Understood?”
One hour. No suspension. No extra punishment for Karina.
Kendra’s hands curled into fists at her sides.
“Yes, sir,” she said through her teeth.
Karina nodded primly. “Yes, sir.”
As they left the office, Kendra felt Karina lean in slightly.
“Told you,” Karina whispered. “They’re not going to do anything to me. My dad, Mr. Garrison, and I are very close friends.”
Kendra’s back stiffened.
Her father’s voice echoed in her head from years ago, calm and firm.
No crime shall go unpunished, Kendra. If you let people walk over you once, they’ll do it again and again.
Fine.
If the school wouldn’t deal with Karina Frost?
Kendra Atchinson would.
Detention right after school was boring and annoying and mercifully short.
They sat in a near-empty classroom under a teacher’s half-hearted supervision. Karina spent most of the time texting. Every so often, she’d glance over and say something like, “You know, my dad could probably get your little exchange program extended if I asked nicely. Shame I don’t feel like it.”
Kendra stared straight ahead and mentally rearranged Karina’s face.
By the time they were released, the sky was already turning orange. Sofia picked them up with a sympathetic wince at Kendra’s still-pink-stained hair.
“I’ll help you get it out,” she promised. “Glitter is evil, but we can try.”
All evening, Kendra scrubbed and scrubbed. The slime washed away. The glitter clung stubbornly in tiny flecks to her hairline, her hoodie, her shoes.
By midnight, she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
They say vengeance solves nothing, she thought.
She snorted.
Whoever “they” were, they clearly had never had a bucket of glitter slime dropped on them by some rich man’s daughter whose only punishment was a one-hour time-out.
They say vengeance solves nothing, she thought again. I say they’ve never had anything done to them that actually warranted revenge.
Her father’s words rolled through her mind once more.
No crime shall go unpunished.
She agreed with him completely.
Even if the school didn’t.
Early Monday – 4:30 a.m.
The school was almost eerie in the dark.
The parking lot was empty. Only a few security lights glowed through the doors. The air was cold enough to make Kendra’s breath fog as she slipped across the asphalt, her hoodie pulled low, and her backpack slung over her shoulder.
If anyone asked later, she’d say she was sleepwalking.
The side door Sofia had pointed out weeks ago—the one staff used, the one that was sometimes accidentally left open—gave under her hand with a soft click.
She exhaled.
Inside, the hallways smelled like floor cleaner and old paper. No chatter. No footsteps. Just the faint hum of the building itself.
“If you’re wondering if I’m by myself,” she muttered under her breath, “Yes, I’m by myself. I’m smart, not stupid. Not dragging my friends into this.”
She walked quickly down the hall toward the junior lockers.
Karina’s was easy to find. Glitter stickers. A tiny mirror on the inside. The memory of the bucket dropping just as Kendra turned the handle.
Kendra shrugged her backpack off and knelt.
Back in Jamaica, she’d hung around with a boy in her neighborhood who’d picked up some questionable skills over the years. He’d taught her how to pick simple locks using hairpins and patience. She’d never had a good reason to use that knowledge.
Until now.
She slid the pins into the keyhole; her tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth as she worked. A wiggle here. A turn there.
Click.
The locker swung open.
“Thank you, delinquent ex-friend,” she whispered.
Karina’s perfume was front and center—a fancy-looking glass bottle with a pale pink liquid inside. Next to it, her signature pink glitter lip gloss, her backup face powder compact, and an entire mini makeup bag of spare cosmetics.
“The plan,” Kendra murmured to herself, “is very simple.”
She pulled a small plastic bag from her backpack.
Inside were crumpled, sealed grocery bags she’d filled the night before.
One at a time, she opened them and pulled out the contents: several sweaty T-shirts and gym shorts she’d “borrowed” from the boys’ locker room on Friday evening while no one was looking.
The smell was… aggressive.
“Y’all nasty,” she muttered, then unscrewed Karina’s perfume cap.
She poured the real perfume into an empty travel bottle she’d brought, then carefully squeezed sweat from the shirts into the now-empty fancy bottle. When it was full, she added a few drops of food coloring until the liquid matched the original pale pink.
She screwed the cap back on and swirled it, watching the fake perfume slosh inside.
“New fragrance,” she said under her breath. “Eau de Locker Room.”
Next: the lip gloss.
Kendra popped the wand out. The sticky pink product clung to it.
From her backpack, she pulled a small tube of pink glitter glue she’d bought from a craft store with the last of her pocket money. Non-toxic. Very sticky.
She squeezed a generous amount into the gloss tube, mixing it with the real product until it looked the same but had a thicker, stringier texture.
“Enjoy that, princess,” she muttered, screwing the cap back on.
Then the powder.
She opened the compact. Perfectly pressed, expensive-looking, a shade too light for anyone without money.
From another container in her bag, she spooned in a small amount of dyed cooking flour she’d carefully mixed the night before. Almost the same color as the powder—but just off enough that, once applied, it would cling and cake weirdly when mixed with sweat and oil.
She closed it again with a satisfying snap.
“And now,” she whispered, “for the extra.”
Her eyes scanned the locker until they landed on Karina’s gym bag shoved onto the top shelf. Kendra tugged it down, unzipped it, and peeked inside.
Gym shorts. Top. Deodorant. A tiny body spray.
She grinned slowly.
Five minutes later, Karina’s gym outfit had been exchanged for one from the drama department costume closet—a slightly too-bright, slightly too-tight hot pink tank top that read PRINCESS IN TRAINING and shorts with glittery hearts on the butt.
Kendra folded the outfit neatly and put it back.
She stepped back, looking over her work.
Perfume: sabotaged.
Gloss: sabotaged.
Powder: sabotaged.
Gym clothes: upgraded to humiliation.
Once everything was back in place, she closed the locker quietly and reset the combination.
Then she walked out of the building the way she came, the sky just starting to lighten in the east.
By the fourth period, word of Kendra’s glitter slime incident had finally started to die down.
By the fifth period, something new had taken its place.
Kendra was at her locker when she heard it.
“Did you smell Karina in Bio?”
“I thought something died in there—”
“No, bro, I swear it was her perfume—”
“And what was up with her face? It looked like cake batter—”
“And her lips? Why were they stuck together like that—”
Kendra closed her locker slowly, fighting a smile.
She caught a glimpse of Karina storming past at the end of the hallway. Her usually flawless hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. Her lips were shiny, but the gloss clumped in little strings when she spoke. A blotchy, slightly too-pale patch of powder caked along her jawline.
And the smell.
Dear God, the smell.
She smelled like someone had bottled the boys’ locker room after a championship game.
“Ugh, what is that?” a girl gagged as Karina passed.
“New perfume,” someone whispered. “Eau de Garbage.”
Karina’s eyes were wild as she snapped, “It’s not me, okay? Something’s wrong with the product. My dad is going to sue that company—”
As if that wasn’t enough, gym class made everything worse.
Kendra wasn’t in Karina’s gym period, but the story spread fast.
Karina had opened her bag, expecting her usual cute, expensive workout clothes… and instead found the hot pink “PRINCESS IN TRAINING” tank top and glitter-heart shorts.
Her scream had apparently echoed down the hallway.
Now, walking into the cafeteria, Kendra passed a table where a few girls were scrolling through fresh photos.
“Look, look, that’s from her Snap story before she deleted it,” one said, showing her phone. In the picture, Karina stood red-faced in an awful outfit, clearly mid-rant.
“She looks like a rejected Barbie,” another snickered.
Kendra slipped past, head down, mouth twitching.
Dominic was at his usual table with his friends. He watched the barely-contained giggles ripple through the room, the way people glanced at Karina and quickly looked away, trying not to laugh.
His gaze flicked across the cafeteria.
Kendra sat with her girls near the back, calmly eating her food, expression carefully neutral. But he could see the satisfaction in the little tilt of her mouth.
His wolf nudged him.
She did this, it seemed to say.
Of course, she did.
He didn’t need evidence. He just knew.
Karina stormed toward his table, hair bouncing, the awful scent preceding her.
“Dom,” she hissed. “Someone messed with my stuff.”
He tried not to flinch at the smell. “What?”
“My perfume,” she said rapidly. “My gloss. My powder. My clothes. All of it. Somebody got into my locker. I smell like—like trash, and everyone keeps laughing and—”
Her voice broke off. For a second, he saw something under the anger. Embarrassment. Humiliation. The same thing Kendra had felt with the bucket of slime.
He glanced toward Kendra again.
She was looking right at him this time.
Her expression said nothing.
Her eyes said everything.
Vengeance solves nothing, people always say.
Dominic wasn’t so sure.
All he knew was that if this was a war, it had just moved into a new phase—and he was stuck right in the middle of it.
- Writer
