I looked up from my bowl of cereal and stared at my mother—what I could see of her, at least, from behind her laptop screen. “But why?” I asked, more surprised than anything else. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
My mother was typing, rapid-fire, which was what she’d been doing for the last two weeks, starting the night I’d seen her writing at four a.m. Ever since then, she’d been writing constantly, barely even stopping to eat. She had a frantic look in her eye, one that I’d never seen when she had been writing before. Then, she’d written slowly, considering each word, and usually going back and deleting as she went. Now, it was like she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, her hands pounding the keyboard. She paused now and lowered her screen to look at me.
She also wouldn’t tell me what she was writing, saying vaguely only that she was starting something new, and didn’t want to jinx anything by talking about specifics. “I know you don’t,” she said, and even though she was looking at me, it was like I could practically feel how much she wanted to get back to her book. “But I need to get someone in here. They won’t be a babysitter, exactly, just someone to clean and make sure you’re eating more than pizza. I’m sorry I’ve been so out of it recently.”
I nodded. While I was happy that there was going to be someone helping out, I really wasn’t sure we could afford it—especially since my mother seemed to have given up the job hunt entirely while she wrote this mysterious book. “But…” I started.
“Her name’s Masha,” my mother said as she turned to her screen again and started typing, fingers already flying over the keyboard, clearly finished with the conversation. “She’s starting today.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from a temporary housekeeper/ babysitter, but Masha was definitely not it. We’d never really had one, though there had been a husband-and-wife team who had come in to clean our Hamptons rental, both of whom seemed to blame me for the amount of sand tracked in from the beach. But Masha was tall, rail-thin, with black hair and bright red lipstick that she wore in a slash across her mouth. She seemed to wear only jeans and button-downs, and I had no idea if her hair was long or short, since it was always pulled back into a severe bun, without a single strand out of place.
While her English was good, she spoke with a thick accent. I’d assumed she was Russian, until I mentioned this to my mother (in the few seconds I got to speak with her, when she wasn’t writing like her life depended on it). She’d said she thought Masha was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, but wasn’t sure where. And then she’d gone back to typing so fast that her hands were like a blur.
Masha hadn’t said much to me for the first few days, just nodded whenever she’d passed by, heading down to the basement of the building to do laundry. She had sighed over the state of my room and said, “You pick it up, so that I can clean. Okey-dokey?” I hadn’t entirely understood this, but I’d nodded, and then forgotten about it entirely until I’d come back from the library one day to see Masha in my room, muttering under her breath as she vacuumed my carpet.
“Um, hi,” I said from the doorway as she straightened up from the vacuum and looked at me.
“Hello,” she said, her accent as thick as ever. “Here. You sort please, okay? Or else I throw away.” She pulled the box my mother had given me out from under the bed and pushed it across the carpet toward me.
“Throw away?” I echoed, taken aback. I wasn’t sure there was anything in the box worth saving—if there was, wouldn’t I have missed it already?—but I also wasn’t sure I wanted someone tossing out my stuff willy-nilly. “You can’t throw away my stuff.”
“Oh, no?” she asked as she unplugged the vacuum and started to wheel it toward the hall. “Maybe you don’t know yet, but the world is tough place. And it only gets tougher. Best to learn it now, and not the hard way.” She raised an eyebrow at me and then left, taking the vacuum out into the hallway with her.
I rolled my eyes and looked down at the box. There was a piece of me that just wanted to put it back under the bed, call her bluff, see if she’d actually try to toss anything out. But then I dropped my library books on the bed and decided to just deal with it. The last thing I needed was my mother finding out that I hadn’t, in fact, gone through this box when she asked me to.
I sat down on the ground and started sorting through it. There was the button-down of my mother’s she’d worn as a bathing-suit cover-up all summer, and a T-shirt of mine that I now remembered leaving by the pool one day when it had started to rain unexpectedly and Gemma and I had dashed inside. There was a paperback my mother had been reading, a souvenir key chain I’d picked up at one of the local shops, and my journal. I sorted the clothes into piles, set the book aside for my mother, and tossed my journal on my desk. I was breaking down the box so it could go in with the recycling, when I froze. I looked over at my nightstand, where my journal—the green one that Paul had bought me at Southampton Stationery—was lying open. I’d been writing in it last night before I went to bed.
I dropped the box at my feet and hurried back over to my desk. I picked up the journal, and sure enough, it was Gemma’s handwriting across the front, not mine. Paul had bought them for both of us, so he must have just assumed this one was mine.
Even though I knew I should stop before I started, I flipped to the first page and felt myself smile as I read it.
Having so much fun with Hallie. Maybe we can still hang out when the summer’s over and school starts again? Will have to ask Dad. After all, she’s only a train ride away.…
I knew that I shouldn’t be doing it, that I should be respecting Gemma’s privacy, but I found myself flipping more pages, a warm feeling spreading through my chest as I read through our summer together, filtered through her eyes. She wrote about us making s’mores together (she burned hers and we shared mine) hanging out at the beach, eating saltwater taffy. It was a reminder of how great a friend she’d been all summer, and as I scanned through the pages, I felt that I should really call her. No matter what her dad did, we’d been friends, and I was feeling, as I read through these entries, just how much I was missing her.
I flipped another page and felt my breath catch in my throat. I frowned, then squinted down at the paper, sure that I’d read it wrong, sure that I was misunderstanding.
I was wrong this whole time about Dad and Karen. Everyone knows except me. They must think I’m so stupid. My parents are never going to get back together if she’s around. Their trial separation will turn into a real one.
So I have to get Karen to leave.
I have to make Hallie miserable so she’ll take her mom with her and go.
I don’t want to but it’s what I have to do. This is the whole future of my family. I have to see it through, no matter what happens.
I blinked down at the page, willing the letters to arrange themselves into some different kind of order, trying to get them to make some kind of sense. Because this … this meant … I flipped the pages and felt tears start to slide down my face.
Tried to sabotage Hallie’s first kiss. Didn’t work … will have to try something else.…
Thought the birthday party thing would work—she looked pathetic sitting all alone, her mom comforting her, not knowing it was me. I felt bad, but I thought it would work for sure. But it didn’t.… I have to think bigger.…
Dad told me he’s thinking about getting a place in Brooklyn when the summer’s over. I know it’s because he wants to keep dating Karen.… What happened to him and my mom thinking things over this summer? How’s he supposed to do that from Brooklyn? I need to do something big.…
I have an idea. I’m hoping it’ll work. It’s going to happen tomorrow night, at the dinner party. And if things go according to plan, Karen will think my dad’s behind it and break up with him.…
I had reached the end of the journal. There was nothing else after that—but of course, I knew what happened next. It was my mother’s career wrecked, our exit from the Hamptons, my mother barely able to get out of bed for weeks.
I sank down to the ground, as though that would help me process what I’d just read. Because I couldn’t get my head around it. It was like my brain wouldn’t let me believe in this new reality. But there it was, in front of me, in ink and pencil, in Gemma’s own handwriting, refusing to be ignored.
Gemma.
It had been Gemma.
All of it, this whole time, had been Gemma.
She’d been my friend to my face while secretly plotting the best ways to hurt me behind my back. She’d gone to her journal and made notes when things hadn’t seemed successful enough, or when I hadn’t seemed upset enough that she’d ruined my birthday and botched my first kiss. She’d been thrilled when I’d broke down and cried, because that meant her plan was on track. And sure, she expressed moments of doubt that she should be doing this, but those were quickly swept away, and she was on to the next thing.
My tears were falling faster now, and I stopped even trying to brush them away. I’d never felt a betrayal like this, ever. It felt like a rug had been pulled out from under me. More than a rug—it was like the ground underneath my feet was shaky and I didn’t know how to balance.
I just couldn’t get over the coldness of it, the planning that had gone into it. She was making notes about the best ways she could hurt me, devising strategy … and this whole time, I hadn’t had a clue. I’d just thought she was one of my best friends, and so I was confiding in her and sharing my secrets.… I took a shaky breath and wiped underneath my eyes.
I was starting to feel nauseous as I stared down at the last entry, the one about the dinner party. She seemed to think it would just get my mom to break up with Paul. But I figured Gemma must have been thrilled things had gotten so bad. She was probably back in the Hamptons celebrating, and laughing at how easy I’d been to fool. Suddenly, her expression in the car made sense. Of course she hadn’t wanted to look me in the eye—I would have seen how thrilled she was with her victory.
Something cold and hard started to take shape in my chest as I brushed the last of my tears away. I wasn’t going to let her get away with this. I needed to tell my mom, at least, that Paul had nothing to do with it. And then Gemma would get in terrible trouble, and then … I wasn’t sure what came next. I was hoping there was something I could go to the police with here, but I just figured I’d take it one step at a time.
I grabbed the notebook and ran out of my room, heading for my mother’s room. She had to know the truth. She had to know that Paul hadn’t done this to her.
I opened my mother’s door without knocking, expecting to find her hunched over her laptop, but the room was empty and dark. I backtracked toward the kitchen, where Masha was sitting at the kitchen counter, slowly peeling potatoes in a methodical manner. “Where’s my mom?” I asked, and even I could hear how frantic my voice sounded. “I need to talk to her.”
“Mama went to library,” Masha said, looking up from her potato and raising an eyebrow at me. “She said she needed to work. What is problem?”
“I need to tell her something,” I said, clutching the journal so tightly, I was in danger of ripping the pages. “I have to talk to her.”
Masha raised an eyebrow at me and then pushed out one of the kitchen chairs with her foot. “What is up, child?” she asked, and I could see a slight frown appearing between her eyes. “Tell Masha what’s what.”
I looked at the door, considering just making a run for it and not stopping until I reached the carrel at the library that my mom liked to write in. But as I thought it through, I realized I didn’t even know what I would say to her. I hadn’t been able to get my thoughts together, and would probably just confuse her. And even though I wanted to get this taken care of now—and make sure Gemma was on her way to the grounding of her life by dinnertime—I realized that I probably should get my thoughts in some kind of order.
“Someone…” I started, hearing my voice shake, “did terrible things to me. And my mother. She…” I closed my eyes tightly, trying to block out the thoughts of the betrayal that still were hitting me with what felt like physical pain.
Masha shook her head. “And you want her to pay,” she said, and I could hear the slight amusement in her voice. She probably thought this was something small, some kids’ problem. “I can tell you are mad, Hallie. But in my country, we have a saying—Do not kill pig before blade is sharp.”
“Ew,” I said, pretty sure that this was an expression I’d never heard before. I had a feeling I would have remembered it.
“Or, Do not burn the field when it has not yet given corn.”
“I really don’t understand these,” I said, feeling more lost than ever, and also quite sure this had nothing to do with my situation.
Masha sighed and shook her head. “You know, is like…” Suddenly she smiled, like she’d hit upon what she’d been looking for. “I know how you say here. Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Her words hung between us in the kitchen, and suddenly, it was like I could begin to understand what she’d been saying this whole time. “Oh,” I said softly, my mind starting to spin with new possibilities. Maybe I didn’t need justice—not the kind that either of our parents would mete out, at any rate. Maybe I could get her back.
“Not that I’m saying revenge is good,” Masha said hurriedly, maybe seeing where my head was going. “But that you shouldn’t do anything when you’re so mad. Think about it, yeah? Sleep on it. Things will seem better in the morning.”
“Right,” I said quickly, nodding, giving her a wide smile. “You’re right. I’m going to think about it. Right now, in fact.” I headed out the door, still gripping the journal.
“Good girl,” Masha called after me. “You come and set the table in fifteen minutes.”
I hurried down the hallway to my room, then closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. My head was spinning, and my thoughts were going in a direction they’d never gone before.
Revenge.
Revenge.
What if I did this? What if I figured out a way to do to Gemma what she’d done to me? Getting Gemma in trouble for a few days or a week or even a month no longer seemed as appealing. I hadn’t even known this was an option ten minutes ago, but now it was the only thing I could think about. I wanted to wreck her life the way she’d wrecked mine. I wanted her to feel that horrible sick sense of betrayal I’d felt when I’d read the journal. I wanted to do to her everything she’d done to me—but worse.
I could feel hot tears forming behind my eyes and closed them hard against it. Had Gemma even realized what she’d done to me? What she’d done to our family? She’d broken my mother’s heart and wrecked her source of income. Since it was just the three of us, I’d felt protective of my mother, and the fact that Gemma was so willing to hurt her, to hurt all of us, so easily.…
I realized with a cold feeling stealing over me that she did probably realize. She just didn’t care.
I could feel my heart pounding, and I wanted to begin immediately—the problem was, I had no idea how to start or what to do.
“Best served cold,” I muttered to myself. That meant being cool and calm and not acting in the moment. I needed to let go of the idea that I’d be getting Gemma back tomorrow or the next day. And in the meantime, I had to figure out how to go about this.
My hands clenched into fists at my sides as I thought about Gemma, lines from the journal playing over and over in my mind. There was no way I was going to walk away from this wrong. Gemma had hurt me and my family worse than anyone ever had. And I wanted to burn her life to the ground.
I suddenly had an idea, and I headed out of my room and down the hall to my mother’s room. I scanned her bookshelves and the piles of books on either side of the bed, and finally found it—The Count of Monte Cristo.
I took it back to my own room, locked the door behind me, and settled back against my pillows.
And then I started to read.