CHAPTER 12 – We Light Him Up
974 Words
The study room smelled like printer ink and salted chips.
Lia had brought snacks. That was the first thing Mila noticed—Takis, Oreos, and peach iced tea, lined up like offerings to the revenge gods.
“Someone came ready to commit a felony,” Mila said, eyeing the chips.
“My crimes are crunchy,” Lia replied, already chewing.
Savannah was already seated, blazer lavender, leather-bound folder open like she was prepping a lawsuit.
Imani had rigged her tablet to a pocket projector, beaming a spreadsheet onto the wall—color-coded, labeled, painfully precise.
Lia sat cross-legged in a wheeled chair like she might levitate if anyone said the word manifest out loud. Her sketchbook was open beside the snacks—half doodles, half plans. Across the top:
Operation Make Him Wish He’d Never Been Born—in bubble letters, naturally.
But they were all here.
Ready.
“Okay,” Savannah said. “Let’s talk logistics.”
It started with her folder.
“We control the exposure,” she said, sliding printed outlines across the table. “Screenshots, timelines, DMs. But we make it look unplanned. Let it breathe.”
“Organic but orchestrated,” Imani added.
“Exactly. If it looks too polished, it’s drama. But if it looks like truth—layered, messy, sourced—then it’s undeniable.”
“So we’re curating chaos,” Mila said.
“Precisely.”
Imani took over. She shared the screen—files already organized: message screenshots, timestamped photos, overlapping DMs, recordings, calendar grids.
“Brunch with Savannah on Saturday,” Imani said, highlighting a box. “Leadership Council with me Monday. Borrowed Lia’s car Thursday.”
“Didn’t borrow it,” Lia muttered. “Just took it and said, ‘What’s mine is yours. Or the other way around?’”
Savannah groaned. “I hate that I know exactly what voice he said that in.”
“I hate that I would've thought that was deep,” Mila added.
“He was efficient,” Imani said. “I’ll give him that.”
Then came Mila’s turn.
She dropped a stack of mock flyers like playing cards.
“Visuals,” she said. “For lockers. Bathroom mirrors. Parking lot sidewalks if we’re feeling bold.”
Each flyer had a single statement:
He Told Me That Too.
Pattern: Detected.
Jordan Said It. We Have Proof.
And the last one—minimal. Just a QR code and the words:
He Deserved It.
Savannah raised an eyebrow.
“QR goes to what exactly?”
“Linktree,” Mila said. “Multiple file drops. Timed releases. First one hits prom night.”
“We’re doing this at prom?” Lia blinked.
“Where else do you burn a golden boy?” Mila grinned. “Center stage.”
“We don’t make a scene,” Imani said. “We make a statement.”
Then they turned to Lia.
No folder. No screenshots. No stack of flyers.
Just her sketchbook.
She opened it slowly.
The first page: a drawing.
Four girls, faceless, standing before a bonfire.
The next: notes. Quotes. Memories, scribbled like confessions.
“He told me things,” Lia said quietly. “Things he didn’t tell anyone else.”
Flip.
“His brother’s not in Colorado. He’s in lockup. Jordan didn’t want anyone to know.”
Flip.
“That car he drives? It’s his mom’s. He only posts photos when she’s on night shifts—so no one sees the house.”
Flip.
“He said… ‘I’m nothing like my father.’”
Her voice cracked.
“He meant it. Or wanted to.”
She looked up.
“I’m not saying we use this. Not to humiliate him. Not to be cruel. But if we’re serious about making him feel it—the way we did—then this is where it hurts.”
Savannah studied her.
“You still care about him.”
“I care about the version of him I’m not sure ever really existed.”
She closed the sketchbook.
“But I care about us more now.”
And something shifted.
Not just strategy.
Not just revenge.
Purpose.
They got to work.
Savannah mapped the timeline—receipts released steadily, leading up to prom. The biggest drop would land that night.
Subtle captions. No names. Just truth.
Imani uploaded the final doc—cross-referenced timestamps, emojis, locations, overlaps.
Mila resized the flyers to fit inside the clear frame of the prom photo booth.
And Lia?
Lia wrote the final words.
Not cruel. Just cutting.
Truth with teeth.
She tested caption after caption like she was holding a match to her own skin:
“I thought I was the main character. Turns out, I was scene three.”
“Love letters. Copy-pasted.”
“We weren’t a warning. We were the pattern.”
“The truth isn’t loud. But it doesn’t go away.”
Mila leaned over.
“You’re scary when you do this.”
Lia didn’t look up.
“I’m not trying to scare him,” she said. “I’m just done protecting him.”
The sun dipped low behind the library windows.
Savannah slid the last printout into her folder.
“So it’s set,” she said. “The drop is prom night. Our terms. Our timing.”
“First hit drops before dinner,” Imani said. “Second after the king and queen announcement.”
“Finale hits with the last song,” Mila said. “When everyone’s drunk on glitter and bad punch. Perfect.”
They looked at Lia.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“We light him up.”
“We light him up,” Savannah echoed.
Imani, softly: “He deserves it.”
Mila: “Let him burn.”
No high fives.
No hugs.
Just four girls.
One plan.
And a match in every hand.
- Writer
