Get Even (Don’t Get Mad)

MARGOT GNAWED AT THE STUBBY NAIL OF HER LEFT INDEX finger as she filed into the gym with the rest of her AP Government class for Friday’s assembly. The white noise of student chatter punctuated by the occasional squeak of rubber soles against the highly polished maple floor faded into the background as her nerves overwhelmed her. Margot was crawling out of her skin—almost as if it was her first mission with DGM instead of her seventh—and it took every ounce of self-control not to flee campus at a full sprint and beg her parents for a transfer to the local public high school first thing in the morning.

Calm down.

Margot had known exactly what she was getting into when she agreed to join Don’t Get Mad. She remembered the moment vividly, as if only two hours had passed instead of almost two years. Freshman religion class, and Kitty, Margot, Bree, and Olivia had been randomly grouped together for a community service project. The four of them had virtually nothing in common: no mutual friends, no shared interests whatsoever. But when it came time to choose an outreach program for the project, all four of them picked the same one—an antibullying awareness group.

No surprise, really. There was a huge disparity between the wealthy students at Bishop DuMaine and their scholarship classmates, between those with privilege and those without. Bullying was rampant—from rich girls who label-shamed poorer students to locker-room fights and lunch-hour shake downs—and Father Uberti had turned a blind eye. All he cared about were high test scores and athletic championships, both of which boosted enrollment.

So during an afternoon study session when the conversation turned toward the latest hazing incident at school, and Kitty half-jokingly commented that someone ought to give the varsity football team a taste of their own medicine, Margot—who had experienced firsthand what happened when an administration allowed bullies to rule unchecked—had agreed. DGM had been born.

Still, the stress of what they were about to do was taking its toll. Margot squeezed her eyes shut and took a slow, silent breath through clenched teeth. Remember what Dr. Tournay says: panic is a state of mind—quiet the mind, quiet the panic.

Margot inched her way toward the bleachers; the excitement in the gym was palpable, increasing Margot’s antsiness. She had to remember that she was doing something important. She couldn’t go back in time and erase the nightmare that had been junior high, but she could make sure that no one else had to endure the same bullying, or be driven to the same desperate decision that she had made four years ago.

Just as her nerves began to steady, something heavy barreled into her from behind, knocking her off-balance. Her eyes flew open as her backpack sailed through the air from the force of the impact, hitting the floor of the basketball court so violently the flap ripped open, spewing its contents in all directions.

Her assailant spun around, flipping his own mostly empty backpack onto the ground next to her oversize cargo pack in a display of outrage. Rex Cavanaugh.

“What the hell, freshman?” Rex bellowed. “Watch where you’re going.”

Margot swallowed the biting comeback forming at the tip of her tongue as she eyed the entrails of her backpack strewn across the gym floor. The remote control! She dropped to her knees, frantically retrieving her belongings. If the remote was damaged or lost, the mission would fail.

Rex snatched his bag off the floor next to her. “Great manners. Not even a ‘sorry.’ Idiot.”

Pens, loose papers, an array of notebooks. But no remote. Margot seized her bag. She ripped open Velcro pockets and unzipped countless organizational compartments, rifling through her supplies in search of the palm-size remote. Please be there.

Inside the laptop sleeve her fingers closed around the plastic controller, intact and unharmed. Margot sighed. Crisis averted.

The loudspeakers crackled as the facilities manager set up a microphone. The assembly was about to start.

The near disaster with the remote galvanized Margot’s resolve. She caught up with her class and filed diligently into a row of bleachers, remote gripped firmly in her hand. She didn’t dare scan the gym to find Bree and Olivia, but she spotted Kitty right away, on a bench in the first row next to Mika Jones. Kitty looked so calm and composed, dressed simply in jeans and a blue and white Bishop DuMaine running jacket, her long black hair swept up in a tight ponytail, which swished from side to side as she whispered to Mika. Margot wondered if Kitty really felt so at ease or whether it was all a facade.

The side door flew open, and Father Uberti marched into the gym. Short and wiry, the school principal was meticulously groomed as always. His salt-and-pepper mustache and Van Dyke beard were neatly trimmed, his dark, wavy hair—dyed, Margot was relatively sure—tamed with a healthy dose of sculpting wax. He moved quickly; the black capuche he wore over his long cassock fluttered about his shoulders, and the tassels of his cincture whipped back and forth from the ferocity of his stride. His entire demeanor was cocky, and before he got halfway across the floor, Margot realized why.

Two Menlo Park police officers followed him into the gym.

All of Margot’s panic returned in an instant. Never in her most far-flung calculations had she anticipated law enforcement.

What if they got caught? She’d get arrested, or worse—kicked out of school. She’d lose any chance at Harvard or Yale and her parents . . . Her parents would kill her.

Margot’s right leg bounced up and down on the bleacher so furiously she was sure the entire row could feel the reverberations. Through her sweater sleeve, she gripped her knee, trying to squeeze it into submission, but her heart was racing out of control, her upper lip already damp with perspiration. Panic attack in three . . . two . . . one . . .

“Are you okay?” a voice said, close to her ear.

Margot let out a strangled squeak as she spun around on the bench and came nose to chin with a boy.

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

Margot opened her mouth to say something, but the capacity for rational thought had momentarily abandoned her. All she could do was stare at the most beautiful face she’d ever seen.

Not that there was anything particularly unique about him. His hair was a typical California blond—streaked by the sun with dark undertones. His skin was tan, and together with broad, muscular shoulders suggested a preference for spending weekends on a surfboard in Santa Cruz. But add in the off-kilter grin and the slightest hint of spicy aftershave, and it set Margot’s heart thundering in her chest once more.

“Sorry,” he said, with a smile that listed to the left like an unbalanced ship. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Margot forced herself to say.

“Oh!” His eyebrows pinched together in confusion. “Okay. I just . . . It looked like I startled you.”

Crap, Margot. Try not to sound like such a jerk. “I mean,” she started, “I was just thinking. About classes. I have a big paper due.”

“On the third day of school?”

“Um, yeah,” Margot rambled on. “It’s an extension class. At Stanford. That’s where my mind was. Why I was tense. No other reason.” Oh my God, stop talking!

The boy blinked several times, then smiled again, tilting his head to the right as if attempting to compensate for his crooked grin. “I’m Logan Blaine,” he said simply. “I’m new here.”

“M-Margot,” she said, stumbling over her own name like a halfwit. “Margot Mejia.”

“Nice to meet you, Margot.”

Margot was about to respond, when a current of laughter rippled through the gym. Coach Creed stood near the top of the bleachers, glaring down at the round face of Theo Baranski.

“Baranski!” Coach Creed barked, louder than was necessary. “Why aren’t you in your seat?” He swept his arm across the gym in a grand arc. “The entire school is waiting on you to start this assembly. Would you like to tell us why you’re having difficulty finding someplace to sit?”

“I . . .” Theo glanced down at the bench. There was a tiny sliver of space left at the end, maybe enough room for a fourth grader to squeeze half his skinny butt onto, and Theo was neither skinny nor a fourth grader. Margot cringed, waiting for the inevitable barrage of abuse from Coach Creed, but unlike yesterday, Theo was spared the humiliation. A freshman girl at the end of the bench stood up and slid into the row behind, leaving enough room for Theo to sit.

“Saved by a girl,” Coach Creed said with a laugh. “How sad.”

Logan leaned forward, his lips close to Margot’s ear. “Is he always such an asshole?”

“Coach Creed?”

“Yeah. That guy deserves a public flogging.”

Margot glanced at Logan, then fixed her eyes on Father Uberti as he approached the microphone. She squeezed the remote control more tightly.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, he does.”