A subtle wooden tap resounded throughout the small bedroom. It was late afternoon. The bed was unkempt, clothes of the day in a small heap at its foot. Jessica sat in her undergarments at her desk, thinking.
Tap tap tap
The pencil kept softly striking wood of the Ikea-bought desktop.
Jessica was plotting.
Her black hair cascaded carelessly behind her chair, swaying slightly with the small movements of her head. The golden touch of the sun occasionally filtered through the thickness of her Asian tresses, painting them brown. Music softly steamed from a nearby speaker.
Jessica let out a small sigh, biting her lip as she furrowed her brow in concentration. The delicate composition of her petit face at the moment was pervaded with an aura of intense concentration, the studies in front of her forgotten. She pulled up a long leg, tucking it under her thigh, shifting her skinny frame. The air of the heated room softly blanketed the creamy complexion of her bare skin, but she let out a shiver regardless.
Tap tap tap
Jessica kept plotting.
A dainty unoccupied finger began twirling through several strands of her long, frizzled hair. She looked in a mirror to her right, sighing at what she saw. Her thin lips were almost curved into a pout, eyes still laced in eyeliner, the only makeup she ever wore.
A flash of anger sparked in her eyes.
Tap tap tap
"Ugh, what the hell am I going to do..."
She said muttered concedingly. She needed to come up with at least an essence of a plan before Katie, the other tenant of their two-bedroom apartment returned. They had rented it out at the beginning of their university career, half a year ago.
It was unorthodox, living together with someone when their uni offered suites to individual students. But Katie and Jessica had wanted this since their first year of sixth form. They had met at the beginning of that first year, and instantly, they clicked. They understood each other's jokes, shared almost all the same interests, shared the same food. When it was discovered they were pursuing the same career and attending the same university, it only seemed natural that these two friends would agree to living together.
Jessica and Katie seemed inseparable. Of course there were occasional disagreements, but all of those small, petty arguments were drastically outweighed by the special times they shared. When Jessica had broken up with her long distance boyfriend of almost three years, Katie was there to help her cope. When Katie's parents divorced, Jessica was there to hold her down as she cried.
That enthusiastic redhead kept Jessica always on her toes. She never knew what sort of spontaneous things she would say or do, a key factor of their friendship.
But as Jessica sat there, counting down the minutes until Katie would return from errands, that spontaneity was the key factor in why she hated her.
Katie didn't know, of course. Jessica was gifted with the talent of subtlety.
"Look, I'm sorry. I really am. It just slipped out, I didn't know the girls would spread it around like that," Katie had apologized, practically begging at Jessica's feet after they had fallen out the day before.
Jessica had smiled. She gave Katie a hug.
"It's fine, Katie, it really is, okay? I forgive you."
Kate didn't see the pure malice behind her friend's eyes.
When Jessica uttered those words, she promised herself that she never would. Katie had explicitly said that she'd keep it a secret, keep that dark side of Jessica's mind between the two of them. She trusted her. She had never told anyone, and if her boyfriend was still around, she didn't know if she'd have told him either. But she trusted Katie. She never knew Katie would have betrayed her like that.
So it only seemed fair that revenge was in order.
She wanted to break her heart. Tear out the carefree smile from her face, those carefree lips that had oh-so-nonchalantly ruined Jessica's reputation. She was going to make Katie cry and she was going to enjoy it.
But how?
Aside from her study guides and notebooks that lay splayed in front of her, a list scrawled in her neatest print lay anticipant. So far her ideas had been quite shit. They ranged from juvenile to felonies worthy of jailtime.
What could break Katie? Jessica knew her better than anyone else did. There had to be something.
Tap tap tap
Her pencil's monotonous drone kept the wheels of her brain slowly spinning, slowly, slowly...
Frustration began to ease into her thought process. The minutes ticked by and soon her pencil began to tap faster. There had to be something she could do. Something in her skillset that would flawlessly execute the revenge on that bitch who broke her trust.
Jessica suddenly heard the front door unlock with a metal click and a digital
beep
.
Katie was home.
"Fuck," Jessica said aloud. She looked at the clock.
An hour had passed by since the last time she checked it. And still, no progress.
Hurriedly she buried the list of potential plots beneath her class notes and study guides before Katie burst into her room in a her usual manic flurry of red hair.
"Jess!" she cried out as she embraced Jessica from behind, uncomfortably squishing her bare skin against the cold leather of the gaming chair.
"Welcome back, Katie!" she said, trying her best to sound enthusiastic. She smiled wide, swiveling the chair around before jumping onto Katie with a hug.
"So, what have you been up to?" Katie asked. It had been about a day since they had last seen each other, leaving Jessica to write that short list of revenge down. Katie was involved in much too many extracurricular activities, as opposed to Jessica's only hobby of playing League of Legends.
"Nothing. Just the usual. League, revising, plotting your murder in the middle of the night."
