We went back to Jack and Evan’s house and ordered pizza. Evan and Elise were in a good mood, talking and laughing about the prank we’d just pulled, but Jack remained quiet, watching them intently. I reached for him and he let me take his hand. This was a mistake, I thought. The dinner, the attempt to spend time with both of them. I caught Elise glancing over at us. Her smile was sweet, but I couldn’t help but wonder which victory she was thinking of: the mission, or the night itself. She saw an opening when she learned of Evan’s breakup and she wasted no time taking it.

“God, I wish I could be there,” Evan said. “See the look on her face.”

The next morning, Lara would wake up, get dressed, and on the drive to work or school, the smell of tuna would hit her. She might roll down a window, maybe think it was something from outside when the stink didn’t dissipate. But it’d only stay, grow stronger, work its way through her entire ventilation system.

Elise called it a prank but it wasn’t, not really. What we did permanently ruined Lara’s car. But Elise didn’t care about the damage, the fallout, or what would happen after. And drunk off revenge and his newfound power, Evan didn’t care either.

At the end of the night, when Jack took me home on his motorcycle, he lingered after he dropped me off. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he said with a shake of his head.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. It was done and there was no undoing it, though I was uneasy too.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ll be the first to tell you that Lara was a shitty person, but I’m not sure she deserved that. I’m not sure anyone deserves that.” He sighed. “I should’ve said something.”

“You did,” I told him. “Right before Evan poured the fish oil down the vents.”

“I should’ve stopped it. That’s what my grandpa would’ve done,” he said before sliding his helmet back on.

Elise said it wasn’t revenge, that this was about justice. But what we did that night wasn’t about righting a wrong. It was about payback. Maybe I didn’t have a right to complain—the very first prank we ever pulled was on my ex-boyfriend. And back then, it had seemed thrilling, had made me feel powerful when I was at my most powerless. Maybe it’s what Evan needed. Though I couldn’t help but think that when Elise was encouraging Evan to pour the oil down the vent, she wasn’t thinking about him at all.

Elise felt powerless, and in some ways, she’d always felt that way. The pranks, the Deadly Vipers, the “justice” she wanted to deliver—it was all just a means to wrest control when she had none.

It scared me, watching her. The pranks were escalating. At the beginning, it’d been setting off firecrackers outside someone’s dorm window, and now it was destroying someone’s car.