Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood Read Online Free Page A

getting tagged in smiling groups mugging for the camera. She would be right in the middle, her giant, white horse teeth reflecting the camera flash. Her friends were always posting notes on her page about how she was their “BFF!!” and how her “party last night rocked!” Her friends used exclamation points for everything. She was at the top of the social ladder at Lincoln High.
    It wasn’t like I didn’t have my own life. Things weren’t bad or anything. I loved New York. I wasn’t popular in my new school, but I wasn’t unpopular either. To be honest, I was one of those people that no one noticed. When I first moved I didn’t want to make friends with anyone. I felt like my whole life was one exposed nerve, and I couldn’t stand to have anyone close enough to touch me. By the time I wanted to make friends, everyone else had moved on. I already had the reputation of being a loner. I wore a lot of black but didn’t quite go far enough to be Goth. I didn’t play sports or an instrument. I liked art, but drawing isn’t exactly a group activity. I didn’t really put an effort into changing things. Once you’ve been classified into a certain role, it’s hard to make a change. Or maybe it just seemed easier to be by myself. I was friendly with a lot of people, but I didn’t have any true friends. Sometimes it sucked that there wasn’t anyone to talk to about things, but on the bright side, no one was close enough to screw me over either.
    The only picture of me in this year’s yearbook was my standard school photo. No clubs, no sports teams, no student government. No shot of me surrounded by friends. In fact, it would be easy to forget I existed at all.
    Three years after she stabbed me in the back, Lauren was the queen of Lincoln High, and the fact that she lied and destroyed my life to be popular didn’t seem to matter to anyone except me.
    Sometimes karma does a shitty job of evening the score.

Chapter Five
    I was lying on my bed reading my history homework. We were studying the French Revolution, and I was doodling Lauren’s giant teeth on the picture of Marie Antoinette being led to the guillotine. I sat up when my dad tapped on the door. He and my mom stood in the doorway.
    “Hey, poppet,” Dad said, scratching his arm. My parents’ latest thing was clothing made from hemp. It was supposed to be super-renewable and great for the planet, but my dad was having some kind of allergic reaction to the whole thing. He kept breaking out in these red hives, but he continued to wear it. Saving the planet wasn’t supposed to be easy.
    Dad looked at what I was reading and broke out a big smile. “Ah liberté , egalité , fraternité .” He took the book from my hand and flipped through the pages. He had majored in French in college, one of those degrees that might have been useful if, forexample, we lived in France. My mom took a step forward so she was standing right next to him. She tucked her hair behind an ear. It was so curly that it instantly sprung back out.
    “What’s up?” I asked.
    “We have some good news.” Dad rubbed his hands on his pant legs and my mom gave him a reassuring nod. “The school has approved my research grant.”
    “Dad, that’s awesome!” The alternative school where my dad taught was always out of money, so for them to support anything was a big deal. Also, research wasn’t completely their thing. It was more of a live-and-let-live kind of place. His eyes shifted over to my mom.
    “Your dad will have a chance to look into the role of meditation in healing. He might even have time to write the book he’s always talked about.”
    “Okay.” I drew the word out slowly so that it was more of a question. My dad has talked about writing a book on alternative health care for as long as I can remember. He should be thrilled, and instead he seemed like he had come to break the news to me that he was going off to war or something.
    “We’d be living at the Shahalba