“So …” I flex my fingers to keep from cracking my knuckles. “How does wanting revenge lead to picking locks?”
Her thumbnail digs into the fake leather covering the steering wheel as she answers, “There was this girl in middle school. She was always coming at me. Not fighting me—which, even as scrawny as I was, I could’ve taken her.” Luna lets out a sharp exhale. “She would just talk at me. Whisper behind my back. Say things to my face.”
“What kind of things?” I don’t know why I ask. I’m perfectly aware of the shitty things kids will do to break someone down.
“There were the classic insults about being poor and dirty and ugly. And, hell, she must’ve Googled all the slurs she could. Never ran out of material.”
Now I’m the one who wants revenge. Against a teenager.
“I learned early on if you take people’s shit, they never stop shoveling it on you. So, I told her off one day. A teacher overheard me yelling, and I got detention. And I knew—Iknew—they’d heard at least some of the crap she’d said to me.” If eyes could burn, Luna’s would scorch holes in her windshield. “Next day, she started in on me again. We both realized none of the adults were going to help me. If I wanted her to stop, I’d have to do it myself.”
“You beat her up?” I guess.
Luna snorts. “Wanted to. But no. I was not going to get in trouble because of her again. I figured out a different way. You know those cheap locks you’d get in school for your locker?”
“Yeah.”
“I was messing with mine one day, and I realized it was easy to figure out their combination. If you get the feel for it, you can tell when the tumbler clicks.” Luna gets an evil grin. “I had an idea. Every day, I stayed after school, and I went to her locker. I figured out the code, and then I changed it. For two weeks straight, she had to get the custodian to cut the lock off, until, eventually, the principal said if she couldn’t remember her combination, then she couldn’t have a lock.”
“Okay.” I think that probably annoyed the girl, but doesn’t sound like too intense of a revenge.
Luna isn’t done. “With her locker open like that, it was free game. I’d leave things in it. Tuck an open bottle of milk in the back corner of the top shelf. She didn’t notice until it went rancid. Same with the thin slices of cheese I’d slip between the pages of her textbook. One of those turned into a pretty big mold bloom. Dairy products are surprisingly handy.”
I huff out a shocked laugh. “Clever.”
Luna nods, smirking as she drives us through the early morning. “Didn’t stop there. Because she didn’t stop either. She knew something weird was going on with her locker, but not who was doing it or why. I wanted to make her pay.” Luna’s triumph dims, and I catch a hint of pain in her voice. “But more than anything, I wanted her to stop.”
“Of course you did.” I keep my tone soft. “What did you do?”
“Well, after enough smelly items ended up in her locker, there was always someone watching. Teachers, one of her friends, other students who were curious to find out who it was. Even after school, people hung around to see.” Luna turns the wheel, and I realize we’ve made it back to Paige and Dash’s house. “So, I went at night. I’d found a video online about picking locks, and I tried it on a side door at the school. Worked like a charm. Then I took a permanent marker and wrote every shitty thing I’d ever heard her say on the inside of her locker. Space filled up fast. I wrote on the outside of the locker too. Then I dumped a can of cat food inside. Next day came around, and my art display was the talk of the school.”
“You didn’t get in trouble? When they knew it was you?”
“That’s the thing. They didn’t know. Because I wasn’t the only person she said fucked-up shit to. I wrote all of her hate down. Could’ve been any of us. All of us. She didn’t know.”
“Wow.” I let my head fall back on the headrest, awed and intimidated by my wife’s evil-genius mind.
“Plus, I left open cans of cat food in all of her friends’ lockers as a warning. None of them wanted to go through the stinky locker torment. She had zero backup.”
“That’s diabolical.”
Luna laughs, but there’s no humor in the noise. “Yep. That’s the kind of woman I am. Guess I should’ve told you before we got hitched. Bet you’re glad for that end date now, huh?”
“Luna—”
“But that’s the thing about bullies. It’s not only that they hit you or say mean things.” Luna turns a defensive glare on me. “It’s the fact that they steal your sense of safety. Maybe they’ll go an hour without bothering you. Or maybe a day. Or a week. But you don’t have their fucked-up schedule. You’re just braced every second you’re anywhere near them, waiting for what torture will come next.”
Her strong hands fist, and I want to reach across this small yet gaping distance between us.
“They tried taking my safety away. So, I took theirs away. They never knew what I would do or when. They were never completely sure it was me either. Not enough to prove it. But they figured out if they left me and mine alone, the chaos in their life stopped.”
“Luna, I’m not judging you.” I speak quickly and firmly. And I do reach for her, pressing my palm against her thigh in what I hope she sees as a reassuring touch. “I’m wishing I had been in that school with you so you didn’t have to fight back on your own. Hell, I would’ve carried the can opener for you. Helped you put the milk on the top shelf so you didn’t need a stepladder.”
She glares at me then, but this time, the expression attempts to cover a curl of her lips. “I reached just fine.”
In the dim car, I grin at her. My fierce wife, who’s had to fight her whole life.
Luna amazes me, and I long to do more than convince her I don’t judge her vengeful actions.
