Burn for Burn (Burn for Burn #1)

I let out a breath, and already I feel lighter, just a little bit lighter.

“Well, that’s that,” Kat says. “We have to kill Reeve.”

I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. I hope she’s joking. “I don’t want to kill him,” I say, to be clear. “I just want him to feel one ounce of the pain I felt.” I’m not even sure if that is possible.

“We’ll help you, Mary. We’ll make him pay for what he did.” Tears are spilling down Lillia’s cheeks, but there’s fire in her eyes.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Kat’s legs are shaking. “I want to drive over to Reeve’s house right freaking now, and punch him in his face. But I know we can do better, hurt him worse if we wait and think this through. We’ve got to take Reeve Tabatsky down in a major way.”

Lillia wipes her eyes. “So, what do we do?”

“You know him the best of all of us,” Kat says. “What does he care the most about?”

Automatically Lillia says, “Football. He cares about football more than anything.”

“That’s it!” I cry out. “Even back at Montessori he used to talk about how he was going to be some big football star when he got to high school!”

“Done,” Kat says. “We’ll get him kicked off the team.”

“How?” I ask. Is that even possible? Reeve’s the star quarterback. There’s no team without him. Even I know that.

Lillia’s face lights up. “Drugs! Jar Island has a super-strict no-tolerance policy. Ever since that kid from Menlow High got caught smoking weed, our coaches have been watching us really carefully, making sure we don’t do anything stupid. If we could somehow plant drugs in Reeve’s locker or something, he’d be kicked off the team for sure, even if he is the quarterback.”

“But what if he says the drugs aren’t his, and the school believes him?” I say. “He could take a voluntary drug test to prove it.”

“I guess we’ll have to slip him the drugs without him knowing,” Kat says. “Acid or ecstasy or something that will make him trip out.”

It’s one thing to plant drugs in the guy’s locker; it’s another thing to actually drug him. I look over at Lillia, expecting her to protest.

But she doesn’t. Instead she nods and says, “Let’s do it at homecoming, when everyone will be watching. He’ll definitely get homecoming king. We might as well knock him and Rennie out at the same time.” Twirling her hair around her finger, she says, “He might even get expelled. Then you’d never have to worry about him again, Mary.”

“What do you think?” Kat asks me. “This is your kill.”

“Let’s do it,” I say. I pinch my hand hard, the web of skin between my thumb and ring finger, just to make sure I’m not dreaming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

KAT

IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT. EVERYONE AND THEIR MOM IS OFF island for the first away game, and I’m down at the ferry dock, waiting for my brother’s drug dealer to come in on the eight o’clock. It’s so perfect, it’s almost cliché. If only someone was here to take a picture for the yearbook. Kat DeBrassio: Most Likely to Drug the QB.

My back is up against a dock post. I’m smoking a cigarette as the ferry comes in on black waves of water. Right on time.

I feel for the wad of money stuffed into my front pocket. Sixty dollars in fives and singles, enough for two hits of ecstasy. I didn’t bother asking Mary for money, because after that story she told us, it wouldn’t feel right to ask her to pay. But I did ask Lillia. We met up in the girls’ bathroom this morning. She unzipped her little pink purse and took out an even littler pink purse and unzipped that too. All she had in there was her ChapStick; a golden Chanel lip gloss called Glimmer, Rennie’s signature color; Lillia’s driver’s license; a red Jolly Rancher; and two credit cards.

I told her drug dealers don’t accept plastic.

Lillia felt bad, I could tell, and she promised to pay me back. I told her she could buy me a carton of cigarettes or maybe something for my boat, but then she started whining that her mother goes over her charges each month, so I said forget it. I got it out of what I saved from my summer job. Whatever. It’s not like sixty bucks will make or break my college fund.

When Lillia went into a stall to pee, I opened up her purse and took out Rennie’s precious lip gloss. What a wannabe. She probably spent half a night’s pay on it. Whistling to myself, I dumped it into the trash can.

Cars parked on the freight deck click on their headlights and drive off the ferry. I watch other passengers, men in suits, cleaning ladies, people in supermarket uniforms, file down the plank. It’s lit by tiny white Christmas lights.

I get pissed when I don’t see Kevin, but he’s the last one off. He’s wearing the same beat-up jean jacket he always does. I think he’s had it since he was my age. He strolls down, stops halfway to light his cigarette, and then keeps going.

I straighten up and walk toward him. He looks at my boobs first, then my face. Classic Kevin.

“Kat?” he says, squinting through the dark. “Is that you?”

“Hey,” I say, and shove my hands into my back pockets. “Pat sent me down to pick up his stuff.”

“Oh, did he now?” Kevin grits his cigarette between his teeth and gives me a dry laugh.

“Yeah,” I say breezily, trying to hide the fact that I’m lying my ass off. While Pat was in the shower, I used his phone to text Kevin for the drugs. Pat’s friends, my friends too, use Kevin. Mostly for weed. He makes the trip to the island every Friday to make deliveries to his customers. Even though Pat lets me smoke up with him sometimes, he’d freaking murder me if he found out I’d called Kevin on my own for harder stuff. “Pat’s up at the garage, working on his bike. He cheaped out and bought a rebuilt starter, and now he can’t get the thing to turn over. I told him to just return the piece of crap and get a new one, but you know how he is. Anyway, he sent me down here.” The way I say it, I make it sound complain-y. “Asshole.”

“Pat doesn’t really strike me as an ecstasy kind of guy.”

I’m not sure if Kevin’s on to me or just trying to chat me up. Either way, I have to think fast, because Kevin’s right. Pat is a stoner, through and through. “He’s finally hooking up with some girl,” I say. “Only, she’s not cute. So . . . maybe he needs help.”