Free Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood by Eileen Cook

then you’ll see: science.”
    As I bounced out of the house I felt my karma balance out with what I was going to do tomorrow.

Chapter Fourteen
    Your parents sent you something,” my grandma said as I walked in the house. She was in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine and flipping through Bon Appétit . “Should we make a cake or something? There’s a recipe in here for turtle brownies.”
    “Sure.” I sat down at the counter and opened the box from my folks. The box had large grease stains on it. Inside was a square of some type of baked good. It looked like it had twigs baked into it, and it weighed a zillion pounds. I gave it a sniff. It was hard to describe the smell, but the word “good” wasn’t even close to making the list.
    “What is that?”
    I looked at the note my parents included. “It’s a sugar-free high-fiber protein bar. It has fish oil in it.” We both looked down at the box.
    “Who makes brownies out of salmon?”
    “You want to make them out of turtles,” I countered.
    My grandma laughed and then looked at the box again. “You going to eat that?”
    “Are you going to make me?”
    “I’m pretty sure that would count as child abuse. I’m too old to do prison time. Do me a favor and don’t put it in the kitchen garbage; take it directly to the garage. That’s the kind of smell that sticks around.” She started pulling things down from the kitchen cupboards. “You look mighty happy with yourself. I take it the whole going to school with Lauren thing is working out okay?”
    “So far so good. I’m putting stage two of my revenge plan into place.”
    My grandma looked at me over her shoulder with her eyebrows raised. “Revenge plan?”
    “Yeah. Basically I’m going to ruin Lauren’s life, like she did mine.”
    “Honey, she didn’t ruin your life.”
    “She sure tried. High school is supposed to be the best time of my life and look at me. Do I look like I’m having the time of my life?”
    “I never trust people who had the best time of their lives in high school. That’s not the point. If you haven’t done what you wanted with your life then it’s up to you to change it.”
    “I’m working on changing it.”
    “Sounds like you’re working on changing her life, not yours.”
    I stood up, pushing the box from my parents away from me. The day had gone perfectly and now this.
    “You were the one who gave me the idea. You said I should seize the opportunity.”
    “I meant come back here and show them who’s boss. Prove to yourself that you’re fine. You’re pretty, you’re smart, and you have more artistic skill in your little finger than most people do in their whole bodies. I didn’t mean that you should go around trying to put some kind of half-baked revenge plan into place.”
    “It’s not half-baked!” I yelled, and both my grandma and I took a step back in surprise at my voice.
    “Okay.” My grandma wiped the already clean counters. “Look, sit down again for a minute.”
    I sat down with my arms crossed.
    “Maybe what I said when we talked about you moving out here got lost in translation. That’s the problem with doing all your deep talking on the phone.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Lauren is what my generation used to call ‘a real piece of work.’ She doesn’t deserve to polish your shoes, and I never knew what you saw in her. You can do much better in the friend department. I have no problem with you going back to school with a clean slate and a different name. I think it makes more sense than trying to deal with all that baggage, but the point of a clean slate is that it’s clean. If I knew you were going to drag all this mess with you, I wouldn’t have gone along with the plan of registering you under another name.”
    I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up a hand and cut me off.
    “You don’t have to like her. You don’t have to have anything to do with her, but trust me when I tell you that trying to hurt her