Katharine was pissed, but I had to leave with Fernando and do what the little witch asked. We tossed Sydney’s tires into her truck bed, but I wasn’t about to wake the entire football team. Instead, we stole the team jersey—we sign one every year on our first day of drills, sort of a commitment thing—and in red magic marker, I wrote “SORRY” and tossed it in with the tires.

No cops at our door at one in the morning, so I guess apology accepted. But where was my apology? Nowhere, and that little snot always seemed to win.

Not today.

“What?” Jack was standing in the doorway. He bent down to grab a crumpled T-shirt off the floor. “You just mumbled, ‘Not today,’ and lifted a clenched fist toward the ceiling.” He dropped his eyes just outside the door, and I grabbed the CD from the floor, tucking it into the waistband of my shorts.

“What’s this?” he asked, hovering over Sydney’s gifts. Then he flipped the box open. “Oh shit. Sydney was here.”

I nodded.

“Okay. Did she tell you the exact location of the coffee lid and formation of the donuts?” He walked past me, threw on some basketball shorts, and pulled a pair of socks from the drawer. “Because that’s important.”

I shook my head.

“One time, some kids in my science class pulled a chunk of rat meat from our dissection table and tucked it into my tuna sandwich. It was my fault really. I left my lunchbox above my hook when I should have kept it in my backpack.” He threw on his Nikes and grabbed a sweatshirt from the back of his desk chair.

“Anyways, I ate the sandwich, and they all laughed at me. It was awful. When I got home, I felt sick to my stomach but couldn’t tell my mom because she’s horrible. So I made the mistake of telling Sydney, and she slashed all their bike tires.”

He started to laugh softly as he continued his embarrassing confession.

“And for the next three weeks, Sydney would walk into our classroom before lunch and move things on all their clothing hooks. Halfway unzip bags. Spray cheap perfume on their coats. They were terrified of her. One girl, Nicole Farris, didn’t eat for like a month. Nicole wouldn’t trust the food her mother packed because Sydney left a Barbie doll head with the eyes X’d out in her lunchbox.” After surveying the dorm hallway like a member of the Secret Service, he grabbed the coffee and donuts and pulled them inside. “Okay, let’s go.”

After less than a week of recon, I’d set phase two of Destroy Sinister into action. Now, you’re going to think I’m the biggest douche in the world, so I won’t spoil it now. Just wait for her reaction. Anyway, after much investigating, I’d discovered Sunday Lane had quite the following around campus. Half of which wanted to quarter her body four horses style, and the other half wanted to build a throne for her in the center of campus. I chose to focus on the out-for-blood fan base.

Late at night, pencil and paper in hand, I listened to every podcast I could find on the campus radio station website.

Here’s what I recorded and successfully decoded from the mouth of Sunday Lane:

1. Spanky (who, after careful analysis, I knew was the dean) has fruity breath. Not because he’s a known diabetic, but because he’s constantly tossing the salads of the higher-ups.

2. The shrieking T’s (which I determined were Tina, Theresa, and Tiffany from the cheerleading squad) wear off-white all the time because it makes it easier to hide cum stains. Since they apparently live in a land where it rains semen, and if they don’t get semen in their mouths before midnight, every day, they turn into Gremlins.

3. Number twenty-four (me) has a microscopic prick and you’d need to request Hubble telescope assistance and hover it within two inches of my crotch to even find an organ down there.

4. There are three girls in Psych 101 who meet in the upper level of the library and have an orgy every Thursday. (Note to self: get to the library more often). Then afterward they drink mochaccinos and swear to never do it again. But without fail, they arrive and the cycle continues. She refers to them as the Freudian sluts.

5. She calls her roommate a shallow puddle in human form. Just a babbling blond ooze steeped with insecurity. (Allison). Not too much on her, but the word “vapid” is used a lot.

6. This might have been the most important discovery. The Brown-eyed Virgin—a boy she describes has the grace of a blind one-legged man riding a bicycle across an ice-skating rink and the sexual prowess of a lamppost. She told a lot of stories about this guy. They were too personal and too detailed. I knew it was Jack.

Chapter Eleven

“Hey Bri-Bri,” I tweeted at Brian as I stepped into the studio.

He hated it when I called him that. So naturally, I did it in the most syrupy tone I could muster. Instead of his usual pep talk on how to be a respectable member of society (given at the beginning of each show), he pranced around in a circle, lowering and raising an envelope in his hands.

“You did it, you bitch!” He tossed the envelope at me. “They want you. I’m so jealous. Which dorm do you live in, so I can set it on fire and take you out for good?”

He was wearing a crazed smile as he plopped down in his rolling chair. Dramatically lifting his eyes to the ceiling, he released a growl. “Seriously. You are the worst person I know, Sydney, and good things always happen to you. So unfair,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yes, I was just thinking about how good things always happen to me the other day. Like, for example, a girl in line at the school café dumped an entire bottle of ranch on the linoleum floor. I conveniently stepped in it and slipped, smearing white cream across my black pants, and three guys called me DJ Cum Stain. Clever, huh?” Actually, I was pretty stoked they even recognized me.

Pretty soon the twenty-somethings would outweigh the octogenarians at the club. Rick, the sleazy gold chain-wearing club owner, said his weekend business tripled since I started six weeks ago. He said he’d pay me ten bucks an hour on top of my tips, and if I played on Halloween, he’d throw in an extra fifty bucks. I said I’d do it on one condition: two extra underage bands—for Allison and Jack.

Next Friday was Halloween, Jack’s and my birthday. Isn’t it odd we were born on the same day, two years apart? Rumor had it my mother was a werewolf who could only physically conceive a human when the full moon rose on the fourth Tuesday in January. Of course, I spread that rumor, which got back to her at a PTA meeting, and I was grounded for a month.

Jack would be nineteen, and I would be the blessed twenty-one. Legal drinker. Watch out world! Here I stumble. Rick agreed to my terms, but before I left his office, he’d said, “Wear a costume. Something that doesn’t look like a ten-year-old boy. No X-Men or Minecraft shit.”

Duly noted. Does everyone think I dress like a zitty gamer kid? Where did I go wrong?

I felt a light slap across my face and realized Brain was now standing in front of me. He’d swiped his chubby fingers across my cheek, pushing my mind from my Halloween costume dilemma.

“Read it, slutbag.”

I gave him a dirty look. No one touched me, but Brian was harmless. However, his six-foot-four boyfriend of three years, Dante, was not. He was built like a grain tower with the fragile and mercurial emotions of a mother bear. No doubt, he would tear your shit up if you gave him a reason.

I ripped out the letter and sagged against the wall.