Marisa's plan was in place. It meant some large sacrifices on her own part, for which she would make Lucy pay at some date in the future.
Jack's girlfriend Holly was having a birthday party, to which she'd invited more or less everyone in her year, including Marisa (they'd been rivals before, and Holly had learnt the hard way that she needed to be nice to Marisa). Lucy and Sarah were also attending.
Marisa, however, had faked an illness on the day of the party, and her mother had called Holly's to apologise and say Marisa couldn't come. Now she was sitting up in bed, phone gripped tightly in her hands, waiting for the signal from Sarah.
A message was already typed on its screen: How's it going, Jacky?
There was an evil smile on her face as she pictured the scene at the party: Jack's friend Sam would ask to see some messages on Jack's phone (secretly blackmailed by Marisa into doing so on pain of revealing exactly what had happened between him and Holly two years ago).
Holly being the gossip she was, she would of course want to see the messages, and would look at Jack's phone. At that point Sarah would text Marisa, who would press send on the message, and… the fallout from that would be interesting. She couldn't wait.
Her phone vibrated in her hand. She took a deep breath and pressed the send button, then began typing as quickly as she could.
Sorry I couldn't make it. Being ill sucks
She waited for a little while before sending another message: Sorry, is this a bad time?
Are you busy?
Then she waited some more until she got a reply: WTF are you doing?
Trying to talk to you, obvs.
Her phone went silent then. She smiled. So far, so good.