Get Even Read Online Free Page B

the look on Theo’s face had been worth it. She’d watched in satisfaction as he smiled, at first tentative and unsure, then swelling with confidence as the video continued until he was absolutely beaming from ear to ear. At one point, a classmate two rows behind reached out and patted him on the shoulder. Then another and another, as if they recognized that Theo was finally getting retribution for all Coach Creed had put him through.
    Justice had been served.
    Even now as she trudged home from school, the memory calmed her. She was doing something good. She was making a difference. That’s what Don’t Get Mad was for: getting revenge for those who couldn’t get it for themselves.
    Margot held her breath as she opened the front door, her ears alert for any sign of her parents. Silence. The house was empty.
    She closed and locked the door behind her, exhaling slowly with relief. The last thing she wanted to do was answer twenty questions about her day.
    Not that her parents ever completely left her alone. There was always a to-do list on the kitchen counter, as if she was a twelve-year-old latchkey kid who couldn’t be trusted not to eat ice cream and watch cartoons for three hours until her parents came home.
    God forbid.
    Today’s list was one of her mom’s masterpieces.
     
    2:45—Arrive home
    2:50—After-school snack (apple or banana and one slice of cheese)
    3:00–4:00—Calculus homework (if finished early, move on to the next item)
    4:00–5:00—Additional homework as assigned per Bishop DuMaine
    5:00–5:15—Break. Perform at least one of Dr. Tournay’s meditation exercises, minimum ten minutes
    5:15–6:00—Homework for Stanford extension classes
    6:00–7:00—Family dinner
    7:00–7:30—Thirty minutes of television, either news or Jeopardy!
    7:30–8:00—Shower
    8:00–11:00—If your reading for Stanford extension is completed, in addition to all other school projects, you may read for pleasure
     
    Of course by “pleasure” her mom meant she could choose a classic of Western literature, predetermined by the Advanced English Literature course selections from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Margot laughed mirthlessly. Nothing more pleasurable than three hours of Chaucer or Hardy to end her day.
    And her parents wondered why she’d tried to kill herself.
    Margot’s suicide attempt almost four years ago had come as a complete shock to her parents. Not that there hadn’t been signs; Margot had done all she could to express her unhappiness. She’d cried every morning for weeks, desperate not to go to school. She’d told her parents about the bullying, about how she didn’t have any friends, about how she hated herself. But her parents refused to believe it, as if acknowledging that their daughter was in crisis was commentary on their parenting skills. And in the wake of her attempt, they decided that they had been too lenient on their only child, too accommodating of her free will, and so they’d taken a new tack. Margot’s days would be übercontrolled, overscheduled, and micromanaged to within seconds. She would have no free time and absolutely no opportunity to ponder how miserable she was. In her parents’ eyes, this would be happiness.
    For Margot, it was all about maintenance. Seven hundred and twenty-two days until she was off to college, preferably on the East Coast. Then she’d be free of everything—her parents, her past, and the thoughts of both that haunted her.
    With a heavy sigh, Margot reached out and dragged her overstuffed backpack across the dining room. Seven hundred and twenty-two days. But for now, calculus.
    Margot shoved her hand into the main compartment of her cargo pack in search of her favorite mechanical pencil, but instead, her fingers grazed something slick and hard. She pulled out the strange item and found it was a slim plastic case holding a single DVD.
    Probability that it wasn’t in her backpack at the start of her school day? One hundred percent.
    Curious,