Phoebe

Sara was given three days of detention and a week's worth of lunch duty. Dava and Kara were each given a day of detention and that only because they were causing a scene in their attempts to stop Sara. Joey didn't get in trouble at all; the same could be said for Lisa.

However, I quite possibly received the worst punishment of all.

Posting flyers declaring parties at Kevin's to be unendurable fell under my Constitutional rights to the freedom of expression. Giving a punishment for that would be unconstitutional and, in other words, a good reason why I could sue and win. Therefore, the school could only discipline me for the bowl of dog food on the hood of Kevin's car, the silly string strung out all over the vehicle (which was really Lisa), and the purple words declaring "Kevin is a dog" on the windshield.

I had to serve five days of both lunch and after-school detention, write an apology to Kevin Royce, and actually wash his car.

The punishments didn't really come as a surprise to me -- except washing the car was a bit odd -- so the girls and I took them with dignity. Revenge served. Almost.

Even though we had succeeded in giving Kevin what he deserved, it wasn't enough. Ivy was still with Kevin. And once Ivy was replaced there would still be more victims.

Sitting in Lisa's mom's van after school, we decided to take this to the next step.

"We could always burn his house down," suggested Dava from the back.

"No, his brother's pretty nice actually," I mentioned. "Would be a pity to penalize someone who's decent."

"Then what can we do?" asked Sara from the passenger seat. "We're already in trouble for today's shenanigans. Anything else happening to Kevin will automatically be put against us."

"Too bad that there are only a few of us that hate Kevin Royce," remarked Lisa from her position at the wheel.

"A few of us! Are you kidding me?" interjected Joey to the left of me. "Basically the whole football team hates Kevin. They're just too scared to say anything against him; they're afraid he'll quit the team and we won't win state."

"That's it!" shouted Kara suddenly. Everybody glanced to the trunk of the car. Apparently, she had elected to sit there instead of the seat to the right of Dava.

"What is?"

"Safety in numbers," she lured. "Who all hates Kevin? The people who have been affected by him. And those people are mostly . . . ?"

"Girls," I gasped.

Joey was close -- so close.

"Remember, Joey?" I whispered. "When you first met me and I said I was mad at Ivy because of Kevin? You thought it was because we were fighting over him."

He didn't answer and so I returned, a bit defeated, to the conversation around me.

"If we can get all the girls who have ever been involved with him to come forward and state why he's an ass . . . well he would definitely be ruined."

And thus a new idea was born.