I tried to fix all the mistakes in the chapter. If I missed anything, please kindly point it out :)

Thanks for reading!! Love ya, peeps!

Chapter 3: Valentine's Day Revenge

Valentine's Day.

February fourteenth.

The worst day of the year.

This wasn't happening to me. Maybe it was a dream or a nightmare or a nightmare dressed like a daydream. Lightly, I slapped the side of head and looked around.

Nope.

No Taylor Swift or anyone special.

It was still Valentine's Day.

Nevetheless, I looked around for an escape route. With my not-so perfect attendance record, I couldn't afford an absence. Julian sauntered by my side since he didn't know where the Forensics classroom was. I searched for someone who could show him where to go. Where were his cousins on his first day of school?

The Crowells lacks a sense of responsibility.

Julian wasn't their enemy's guest.

"Are you alright, Cassie?" Julian asked concerned.

"No," I replied. "Where's Stacey, Macey, and Lucas?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "They said something about coming in late since they had study hall first period. I didn't wanna be tardy on my first day, so I got dropped off."

"Sorry to break it to you, but Lucas is in our Literature class," I said with a pitiful glance.

I know.

Reality checks are quite fatal, but I took my chances with him.

"So, he's skipping," Julian said in realization.

I shrugged. His cousin wasn't my problem nor will he ever be. My eyes landed on my closest friend, Piper Hurst. She stood next to her locker, taking out a textbook. As she slammed her locker shut, I stood in front of her.

One look at her blotchy face and messy blonde bun made me forget all about my plan on escaping. Her emerald green eyes lacked their usual brightness, looking red and puffy. Some of her mascara was smudged. Overall, she seemed glum which happened once in a blue moon.

Julian stood next to me waiting. He didn't have another option because for me, friends always come first.

"Piper, you okay?" I asked genuinely concerned.

"I'll tell you in class." She examined the foreigner as she said that. He offered her a smile and waited for us rather patiently.

I nodded in understanding. She didn't want to mention anything in front of Julian.

"Let's go."

¤》¤《¤

I ended up introducing Julian and Piper in the Forensics classroom because Piper was unexceptionally quiet on our way. I didn't want to poke around and interrogate her with Julian sitting behind us.

Since we had a substitute, the class wasn't too exciting. Our regular teacher had left us some boring investigation to watch. I almost fell asleep the first five minutes in.

Notice how I said almost? Yeah well, the new edition to the Crowell family kept poking me. He asked random questions like, "do you think the little girl was the killer?" "why are we watching this?" and "why does everyone keep staring at me?"

Maybe if you'd shut up, people will ignore you.

I responded only by shrugging. It was better than me snapping at him to leave me alone. People needed to keep their personal problems to themselves.

Conversely, I tried to approach Piper, but she told me to wait till last period. Both of us had a free period that we often spent in the library. I didn't push her or anything.

Some of the girls saw depressed Piper as well, and attempted to approach her about it. Gosh, I hated them. Knowing them, they needed a new gossip topic. I told them to back the hell off and leave Piper alone. I wasn't going to let them gossip about my friend. If Piper received too much attention, I, being her sketchy friend, would also come under the rays of the spotlight. I couldn't allow that to happen.

They shot me glares, but left us alone, nonetheless.

I saw both Julian and Piper crack smiles when I had told the girls to " Get busy going or get busy dying.

¤》¤《¤

"No, you can't. You have to sit at the Crowell table," I told him as he took a seat across from me on the round cafeteria table.

"Why?" Julian asked confused.

Great. 

Now, I was going to have to explain. I pointed to the table at the center of the grand room. Seniors in my school were lucky to have their own little cafeteria.

"You're somehow related to the Crowells, right?"

"Yeah, we're cousins. But I don't know the triplets very well nor do I have any classes with them," he said as he examined the Crowell table. Maybe if his cousins showed up to the first three classes, he might have classes with them.

This table consisted of the triplets: Stacey, Macey, and Lucas Crowell.

None of them were anything alike.

Stacey had short, shoulder length, brown hair and light blue eyes. She was the soccer champion in our school. She kept to herself the majority of the time.

Macey was the cheerleader and the most popular girl in our school. Her wavy, light brown hair reached her mid back. She had coffee colored brown eyes that were always narrowed for some reason. For example, at the moment, it looked like she was trying to stare down her salad. Why would you even try to intimidate food?

My gaze fell on Lucas Crowell. The boy with the chocolate brown hair and warm brown eyes. The boy who was the star soccer player. The boy who I despised a lot. The boy who had never paid any attention to me. The boy who didn't know of my existence until we came to high school.

I hated that jerk with a passion.

Trust me, on my hate scale, Lucas had his own level.

Preparing to tear my gaze away, I accidentally locked eyes with Lucas. He caught me. I saw him give me a wink followed by a grin. I glared at him and turned away. He had hurt me already even if it was unintentional. No need to get my hopes up and then crushed like . . . Like the last time.

Shaking my head, I found Julian watching me in amusement.

"If you want to stare at me, you better pay a high fee," I said.

"Are you generally like this or is today a special day?" He wiggled his eyebrows. "You and Lucas?"

I looked around to check if anyone had heard him, but fortunately, no one paid us any attention.

"Don't ever say something like that, again!" I warned him.

One word about Cassandra Evans liking somebody would ruin me. The Lucas Crowell fan club would hunt me down and force me to join. Yes, you heard me right. Lucas had his own fan club. Those girls were the ones who would be going to him, today, to ask him out or give him carnations or something stupid like that. Coming back to the topic, I would be the gossip of the school, if he and I were a couple. For as long as anyone remembers, I hadn't shown likeness towards any guy in my school. If I start now, it would downgrade my image. I wasn't the one to just start crushing on anybody. Needless to say, my standards were higher than the Great Wall of China. Lucas would never be able to climb it, even if he tried.

"I was just saying," Julian said, raising his hands up in the air in front of him in defeat.

Glaring, I kept mum and focused on my home-made lunch. Contrary to popular belief, high school cafeteria food didn't taste terrible. However, I got food poisoning from the school food once and I couldn't risk that again.

Piper had gone to the bathroom to wash her hands. I was too lazy to move, so hand sanitizer it was. My eyes landed on the guy still perched on the seat next to me.

"Move already! You can't sit here. You're a Crowell!" It wasn't polite of me, but to hell with politeness. Honesty was always the best policy.

"Why?"

I was about to make a snarky remark when Jenna Weston approached my table. She had a fake smile plastered over her face that didn't quite reach her gray eyes. Her light brown hair was wrapped up in a ponytail that bobbed as she walked. The gossip queen stood in front of my table. She was obviously a part of the Crowell clique.

"Hi!" Jenna said in her normal, chirpy voice.

Just the opening of her mouth irritated the hell out of me.

She had made my life intolerable when my family and I moved to this town. I joined her elementary school. Being the new girl, I would've expected warmth and acceptance, but Jenna made up horrible rumors about me and lost all of my chances of making friends. The rumors never abolished because she would make a new one up every week. As a sensitive six year old, I had felt so hopeless. It was sheer bullying. No matter how hard I tried, I still cried myself to sleep during my whole elementary school. Nobody ever found out about that. 

She ruined my life.

"Hi," Julian said with a polite smile.

"You're Julian Crowell, right?" Jenna asked Julian. I was simply happy she ignored me. One mean word and I'd tear her throat apart. Believe me, there are certain people who can piss you off just by breathing. Jenna was that person.

"Aylmer. Julian Aylmer," he corrected. I was so completely lost with the Aylmer-Crowell thing. He couldn't possibly be from Mrs. Crowell's side because her last name was different. "I'm their cousin," Julian added, nodding his head towards the Crowell triplets.

"You're still a part of their family. You should sit with us," said Jenna. She glanced back at her table for a quick second before turning to face Julian again.

Julian turned his attention to me.

I nodded at Julian and nudged him. "You should! You'll have better company there. Plus, you can get to meet more people."

Julian ran a hand through his messy dark hair and looked at Jenna. After a couple of minutes, he nodded and stood up. He took one last glance at me before picking up his lunch tray and following Jenna. I knew. The reason why he left was because he knew he wasn't wanted here.

I shook my head at nothing and looked at my food.

He was one of them. Someone I wasn't going to talk to again the rest of the school year.

The rest of the lunch went by fairly quickly. When Piper creturned from the bathroom, she claimed to need time to think.

I left her alone until last period.

¤》¤《¤

"Talk," I ordered Piper.

We convinced our free period class teacher to let us come up to the library. After sprawling our stuff all over one of the wooden tables, we took our seats. There were a few other students, but they were busy doing their work.

Piper took a deep breath and said, "Gabe and I broke up this morning."

"What?!"

I was shocked beyond words. Gabe and Piper had started dating last Valentine's Day. Today was their one year anniversary.

Fiddling with her hands, she swallowed hard. 

"But why?"

"I told him how much I loved him when he called me," she explained and I flinched a little at the mention of the 'L' word, "After that, he said he had called to tell me we were done."

"That little son of a--"

"Sandy!"

"Gun," I finished, "Son of a gun. That's what I was going to say." I gave her an innocent look.

"Yeah, right," she said sarcastically.

We sat there not knowing how to proceed.

"What's the plan?" I asked finally.

She gave me a confused look and asked, "What plan?"

"The plan where we make your ex-boyfriend pay for breaking your innocent heart," I elaborated.

"No, leave it alone," she said, not meeting my eyes.

I rolled my eyes and pulled my backpack from the floor. I unzipped it and took out one of my notebooks. There was a pen stuck in the spiral part. I flipped to the last page of the notebook and began brainstorming.

"Sandy, you're not quitting, are you?" Piper asked as she leaned from across the table to peek at what I had written.

I shook my head at her with an evil smile. "Never. Nobody gets away with hurting you."

She was the only student in this school who was my friend. I couldn't let some idiot boy hurt her.

Piper gave me a grateful smile. I knew she would want revenge. "Thanks. That's why I love you so much!"

I winced at her words. Piper said that a lot, but honestly, she didn't understand the value of the word. Piper cared for me. That was it.

"Sure. Now, help me brainstorm."

With that said, Piper and I worked hard the whole time, contemplating different ideas and schemes. Naturally, the retaliation wasn't going to be easy. We had devised a plan that would only work if executed correctly. Gabe went to an all boys' school near our school. We were going to have to pull a lot of strings to get in there and go through our plan.

"Wait, we need someone else to help us. Someone who Gabe doesn't know," I told Piper as I read through our final draft.

"Gabe knows everybody. He went to our school during our sophomore and junior year," Piper pointed out. We fell into silence. "Wait, what about that foreign-exchange student?" Piper asked excitedly. The color had returned to her face.

Running a hand through my hair, I thought about it. I wasn't really on the best terms with Julian. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

"I'll ask him after school," I said and nodded at her.

"Awesome! I can't wait!" my friend exclaimed. Her mood had lifted up so much simply because of this vengeance scheme.

"Neither can I. This plan better work." I was serious about this. Gabriel needed to regret breaking my best friend's heart.

Piper nodded and looked at the notebook in my hand. "What should we call it?"

I thought about it for a second before grabbing my blue ink pen and writing on the top of the page:

Valentine's Day Revenge

¤》¤《¤

A/N

So far, two people are involved in Cassie's past leading to her bitterness. Can you guys name those two?

There are more reasons why Cassie is the way she is!

Cassie does care about her friend ^-^

Any predictions on what the plan is?

Thanks for reading! Any suggestions on making this story better are welcomed!! :)

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