Revenge

                                      Revenge




      Josh stumbled out of bed and tripping over discarded clothes and toys made his way to the bathroom.
      “Locked, great! Stupid girls, why do I have to have sisters?” He mumbled as he danced.
      “Open up Tanya, My teeth are floating!” He called through the door.
      “Go away maggot, I’m busy,” Came the huffy reply.
Josh kicked the door and ran downstairs, finding the second bathroom locked also.

      His bladder screamed for release as he looked around desperately for a place to relieve it. Spotting the standing houseplant in the corner, he looked around quickly before opening the fly of his Star Wars pajamas.
      “Well, I had to go somewhere didn’t I? Why do girls have to hog the bathrooms anyway, it’s all their fault.” He rationalized. Finally relieved, he walked into the kitchen for breakfast before school; he hated the gunk the school tried to give him.

      “Josh I’m gonna kill you, you sick little freak!” screamed his other sister Jackie.
      “Uh, bye Mom, I don’t have time to eat.” He grabbed his backpack and ran out the door, hoping to run the three blocks to school before his sister caught him.
Giggling as he ran, he almost didn’t see his best friend Danny until he almost ran him down.
      “Whoa man, what’s with you? He asked.
      “I’m running from Jackie, she’s gonna murderize me.” He sputtered in between bursts of laughter. “I guess she didn’t like the red paint I added to her strawberry shampoo!”
      “Wow, she is gonna kill you. But I thought she wanted to be a red head, the way she’s always asking your mom.” Dan said giggling now also picturing the 14 year old who always had to look perfect, covered in red paint.
      “I guess not, c’mon maybe we can get Mrs. Osby to give us cereal instead of oatmeal mush,” Josh said and ran off down the sidewalk.

      Later that afternoon, Josh eased open the front door, listening for his sisters. The quiet house told him they hadn’t gotten home yet. He went into the kitchen and set his book bag down and pulled his homework out before going to the refrigerator for a snack.
      He found a plate of cookies and a glass of milk ready for him—with a note laying on top.
    “Josh, I had to run some errands but I’ll be home for Dinner; Tanya’s cooking. Do your homework and watch TV for awhile, NO outside until your sisters are home to watch you. Your father will deal with you later for the prank on Jackie, Love Mom.”
    “Great Tanya will probably make meatloaf again and try to poison me. That’s if I’m alive after Jackie gets me. I can’t even go to Danny’s to hide from her. Jeez I’m 10; I don’t need no stinking babysitter!”

    The phone rang as he finished up a long math paper.
    “Hello?”
    “Listen you little turd, I should kill you for what you did, but instead I’ve decided to leave you a little present.” Jackie said.
    “Huh…what do you mean?” Josh asked, not trusting her.
    “Well it’s more of a game. All you have to do is find all the clues.
    “Clues? What clues?”
    “Ok, the first one is under the lid of the mailbox, the mailman saw it earlier.” Jackie giggled and hung up.
    Josh set the cordless phone down on the table and ran to the front door.
Butterflies invaded his stomach as he reached up to lift the lid. “What if it’s a poisonous snake?”
    Taped to the lid was a picture and a sticky note. “Oh man! I’m gonna KILL her!” Josh screeched as he tore the picture down and read the note.
    “Look at cute little Joshy-Poo! He must go shopping for his next clue.”
    “Shopping, what’s that supposed to mean?” He asked the picture.
    “Yo Josh, wanna go play baseball?”
Josh turned, tucking the picture into his back jeans pocket and saw Danny across the grass.
    “Sure, as soon as one of my sisters gets home.” He hoped it would be Jackie.
The boys went inside and ate cookies while Josh finished his homework.

    “Josh, I’m home!” Tanya called slamming the front door. “Go down to the corner store, I need bread for meatloaf.”
    “Why do I have to go, you coulda gotten it on your way home.”
    “Because I said so, now go. Here’s five bucks, get me two loaves and pops or something for you and Danny.”
    “Cool Thanks.” He grabbed the five and raced Danny out the door.
Danny led by only two strides all the way down the block, but suddenly pulled up short.
    “Holy cow! Look at that, somebody tapped a picture of some naked kid in a superman cloak in the window. Wait, that’s you Josh!”
    “Oh no, she did it again!” Josh exclaimed and ran into the store to rip down the offensive picture.
    “Who did what?” Danny asked.
    “Jackie. She’s playing a sick game. I found another one tapped to the mailbox. It was a picture of when I was six and her and Tanya put a pink dress and makeup on me.”
    “Oh man, she really is out to ruin your life. What if the other kids saw them?”
    “There’s a note on the back,” Josh said turning over the photo.
    “Look at Super-Joshy showing off his little weenie—how lame. Find the next picture before everyone in town does, and maybe you won’t have to move away in shame.”
    “We gotta find these pictures Danny, she’s trying to get me killed. Man, what if Sonny and his crew find them!”
    “Let’s go then. Wait, we don’t know where to look next.”
    “Ok, the first note said go shopping, and the second picture was on the store. Ok, where does the whole town go?”  Josh asked.
    “Well, stores…the bank...”
    “No, people shop at different places and kids don’t use banks.”
    “Wait, City Hall has the cops, courts, the place to pay the light bill and stuff like that. People get their license plates there too.”
    “OH! And the sign-ups for soccer, baseball, football and all that is there too!”
    “Let’s go!” Danny shouted.

    They entered the large marbled lobby and looked around. There were four long corridors and two floors. Josh wondered where the evil witch would post the next so called clue.
    “Ok, she probably put it where a lot of people will see it, it’s not on this directory board, but where else would be good?” Danny asked.
    “Maybe upstairs. All the sports stuff and car stuff is up there.” Danny agreed and they ran up the wide marble staircase to the second floor, being told twice to “slow down” by grownups.
    They ran to the giant board with all kinds of for sale stuff and signup papers posted.
    There is was, larger then life it seemed; a giant 8X10 glossy photo of Josh with his pants down mooning the camera. His faced looked over his shoulder and grinned at the camera.
    “Man, I remember that picture; she was being a jerk taking pictures of me peeing on the tree in our backyard, so I mooned her. I didn’t think she’d ever blow it up and use it to destroy me!”
    “Better look for a note.” Danny said biting back laughter. He was glad for the millionth time that he didn’t have older sisters.
    “Here it is.” Josh said taking a large yellow square off the board; it was stuck where the picture had been.
    “Hey Josh listen, we all hope that someday you’ll grow up to be a decent person, but since you’re such a little punk now, we thought we’d show you how you act. Maybe it’ll help teach you a lesson. Will you change your evil ways, or live in embarrassment the rest of your days?”
    “She’s such a jerk. What does she mean, ‘live in embarrassment’?”
    “Who knows? Maybe she’s done with the pictures. Does that ‘we’ mean Tanya was in on it?”
    “Probably. Let’s go back to my house; it’ll be dinnertime soon. Call and ask your mom if you can stay.”

    They walked in the door and Tanya ambushed them.
    “Where were you? I told you hours ago that I needed the bread!”
    “Sorry, I forgot. But I had—“
    “I don’t want to hear it, go clean up and set the table. I already got the bread.”
    “Whatever.” He muttered and went upstairs to wash up while Danny called his mom.
      On his way to the bathroom, he passed Jackie’s room and heard her clacking away on the computer keyboard. Narrowing his eyes, he stepped into the room, ready for a fight.
    “Listen you—“ He started.
    “Joshy-Poo! Just in time; look here.”
    He looked at the screen on her computer and was horrified by what greeted his angry glare. She belonged to a popular web blogging site and all over her page were pictures of him under the heading, “Embarrassing Brothers.”
    There were naked toddler pictures, shots of him in various super hero costumes, makeup, all kinds of horrible things. Right there on the internet, where anyone could see them.
    “You can’t do that Jackie!”
    “Oh, but I can! I can also take them down…if I want to.”
    “Do it now!” He screamed.
    “No, not until you learn how to be a decent person, instead of a little freak.”
    “Whatever, I’m telling Mom!”
    “Go ahead, I’ll just make copies of these and give them to everyone at your school.” Jackie said smugly. Josh felt like a pot ready to boil over, but with a lid on too tight. His stomach twisted at the thought of those pictures at school. He ran out of the room and to his own slamming the door.
      He ripped up the pictures he had and stomped on them but it didn’t make him feel much better. “I’ll get her back. I swear I will!” he screamed at the Jedi poster on the wall. Soon a plan began to form. That evening, Jackie and Tanya went out with friends and he saw his chance. He snuck into Jackie’s room and pulled a small box from under her mattress.

      The next afternoon, he stopped at the library on his way home from school. He had business to take care of with the copy machine. He’d spent the day getting laughed at and even got into a fight at recess because of those stupid pictures. Spending his allowance on the copy machine would be worth it. Revenge weighed heavily on his mind.

      In his room later that night, he took the copied pages out of his backpack and sat on his bed to reread them; fantasizing about the kids in Jackie’s school reading about themselves in her diary after Danny’s big brother put them in everyone’s locker. It wasn’t hard to get Ron to agree once he read what Jackie wrote about him.
      Everyone would laugh about her stupid crushes, people would be mad about the mean things she said. Whoever Sally McAlister is, she’d probably beat Jackie up when she read that Jackie called her a “selfish, snotty, stuck-up slut.” No one would ever talk to her again. The more he thought about it, the more he started to feel bad for her.
      He imagined her spending every night at home alone, with no friends, no dates. Maybe even in the hospital from getting beat up so bad.

      The next morning, Danny caught up to him on the way to school.
    “Ronny says to give him the papers on the way. What do you think Jackie’s gonna  do to you when she gets home?”
      “Nothing.” Josh replied.
      “Nothing…no way man, she’s gonna kill you!”
      “Nope, I decided not to do it.”
      “Why not? It’s perfect revenge.”
      “I know, but…I don’t know, it’s just…I thought about it and thought that if I do it, she’ll get revenge again, and this will never stop. Besides, sometimes she’s cool. I don’t really want to ruin her whole life.”
      “But she tried to ruin yours!”
      “Nah, I’ll ask her to take the pictures off that site. If she doesn’t, oh well, it’ll just make her look bad I think.”

      When Josh got home, he found Jackie studying in the kitchen.
      “Here, I copied these and was going to have Ron put them all over in your school, but I didn’t.”
      “Jackie looked through the pages, and didn’t say anything at first.
      “Why didn’t you do it then, especially after what I did to you?”
      “I just couldn’t that’s all.”
      “That’s very…decent of you Josh. Thanks. Maybe you’re a good person after all...way down there.”