Prank Wars (10 page)

“Every guys’?”

Tory glanced up at Eric’s question and her eyes narrowed. I flushed. It was one thing acting like a deranged psychopath, quite another getting caught. Tory teetered on the toes of her orange flats. “No, not
every
guys’ handwriting.”

“This is Eric,” I told her. Tory nodded. The suspicion in her expression didn’t change. Before she demanded a handwriting sample...or his fingerprints, I intervened, “Don’t worry Tory, he’s not our guy.”

Eric grinned widely now and I cursed myself for coming back to him so he could witness my
movie-like
behavior. My cell phone went off, but instead of the familiar ringtone,
I’m too Sexy
came on. It had to be Byron’s doing. A genuine smile curved my lips. Byron was on the other line. Well, it was his roommate’s phone. He knew better than to call us with his own. Everyone knew I had
Unmask
on my cell. It was just like
trapcall,
but a million times better. It was essential for prank wars and unblocked any blocked call or private number. Byron was onto me though. Ever since he upgraded to an iPhone, he fastidiously refused to let his number fall into enemy hands. My only hope was stealing his number from some girl’s contact list. I flipped open my pink camouflage cell, and answered his call.

“What?” He knew exactly what.

“
Move your stupid car.”

I smiled. “What’s the matter? You can’t get out? Too bad, Byron. Learn how to un-parallel park.”

Day 105

2102 hours

“
The debates rage around me as we stand over the plotting tables, ready to launch another attack. I’m not talking about Anbesol on toothbrushes to make your mouth numb and Methylene blue. We were beyond that. Long gone were the days of waking up with fake snakes, cold pop cans, and powdered sugar hidden in our beds, except now we were out of ideas.”

—Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Monday, May 28th).

“How about we toilet paper them?” Kali suggested.

“Really? Did you really just say toilet paper them?” I paced, my hands resting on my black yoga pants. This wasn’t the usual Monday night activity after FHE, but since the guys’ assault on us over the weekend; we were in a state of emergency. “That’s so…normal.”

Kali munched on a huge bar of chocolate, lounging on a green striped couch. It was the exact duplicate of our own next door, except cleaner.

After Lizzie declared the apartment next door empty, we claimed it as our headquarters. Sandra wanted us out of her hair, and I wanted out of her hair. The only one who had a problem with the new headquarters was…yup, Lizzie. She took a deep breath, staring out the window just waiting for us to get caught. The guys would never suspect where we were hiding if she didn’t keep fiddling with the curtain. “I shouldn’t have told you that no one lives here,” she said. “We could get in trouble for this.”

I didn’t look at her. “No way. Mike gave us the keys for a reason.” Never mind our landlord gave us the ring of keys to the entire apartment complex in case of an emergency, but there were benefits to having a landlord who didn’t care what we did. “It’s called house-sitting. I know people who get paid for this.”

Kali gulped down her chocolate. Why it didn’t go straight to her hips was a mystery. She raised her hand. “Oh, oh, I know! Let’s frost cupcakes with dirt, so they think they’re covered in Oreos.”

No. Cotton balls dipped in chocolate, caramel onions, and worms in Jell-O were our usual signature; they’d see through it. “You think this is Relief Society, Kali?” I rolled the batteries from the guys’ remote control through my fingers, thinking. We needed an insider’s view, and I turned to Tory.

“Okay.” She took her hands out of her cargo pockets. “It might sound desperate, but what about…a snowball! I’ve been saving it in the freezer for months. It’s crazy, but it just might work.”

I laughed. “What? You want the cops on us?” Everyone knew snowballs were illegal in Provo. I chewed on my tongue, trying to think of something that wouldn’t land us in the slammer, even for a few hours. “He doesn’t like bad fashion,” I said. “What if we fill his dresser with nineties clothes from DI? It’s his Achilles heel.”

“Really?” Lizzie’s flip flops smacked against her heels when she pulled away from the window. “I thought
you
were his Achilles heel.”

“If that were true, I would’ve used that by now.” I sighed. We could just avoid all this and give Byron the letter, but the request made no sense. No, he had to have something up his slick sleeves. Why would he exchange the cushions for his own threatening letter? I reread it:
“We know where you live. We want what belongs to us. Don’t cross us or we’re coming after you.”

But what did Byron want? We already had our decoders on it, well, Tory. I tried to decipher the message myself, but gave up and raked my hand through my hair. “I don’t get it.” It wasn’t often the hostiles had me stumped. “Maybe we should set up some baby monitors?” I spread the map of the guys’ apartment complex over the empty living room table. Our new headquarters were a mirror image of our living room next door, only everything was bare. It was like being in another dimension.

“You got a map of the hunk house?” Kali asked. By now she was texting madly, her oversized jewels a blur as her fingers flew over the keys.

“Bunkhouse,” I corrected.

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” My mind kept wandering back to Byron. He said he wanted to be friends. What did he really mean by that? He mentioned having a party during our civil week. Why? I squinted at the map. “Kali? Do you have a calendar?”

“Nope.” She unwrapped another candy bar.

“Tory? Tory?” She had wandered off. I was beginning to crack.

“Wait,” Lizzie said. “I have one. She rummaged through her huge monster of a purse and pulled out a mini calendar. I scanned the end of May. There was nothing there. I tried the beginning of June. Besides being the month of birds and bees and love, and my ex wedding date, and all that, why wouldn’t he want us to ruin it for him with our prank wars? There was the boyfriend-for-a-week coming up, which he didn’t care about. And then…
Battle of the Bands.
That was next week. His band was performing. Still, we’d never stoop to destroying him publicly. Did he just want the extra time to practice? It seemed so trivial. And then this letter? Why would he want it in return for the cushions? “Lizzie,” I whispered. “Is there anything unusual about this letter?”

She stretched tiredly. “The paper is normal. The handwriting is foreign. The message is completely cryptic.”

“They give us a cryptic message…and they don’t want us to figure it out?” I think I was getting somewhere with this. “Well, let’s give them a message that’s just as confusing as theirs.” Kali raised her hand with a jingle of bracelets. We stared at her. She didn’t talk, so I called on her, “Yes?”

“How about we deliver the love tree?”

Lizzie sighed. “Well, that would make Sandra happy.” The love tree was an ugly, wilted plant haunting our kitchen. We aptly dubbed it the love tree, since it was dying—just like all our love lives.

“That’s perfect, Kali,” I said. “We’ll send them a message they’ll never forget. Tomorrow night during ward prayer. Instead of trashing their place, we make their apartment the prettiest thing they have
ever
seen.”

Kali giggled. “What? Like a girls’ place?”

“They already have our pretty little cushions. Let’s just complete the look. Just act casual at ward prayer tomorrow like we’re through with this prank war.” The bishop had moved ward prayer to Tuesdays, which was a brilliant way to ensure we kept the Sabbath. Ward prayer was good for a great many things, distraction being one of them. And then we’d sneak out after announcements and make Byron’s place unrecognizable. I crumpled the paper in my hands solely for the drama of it, plus it made Lizzie’s eyes widen, which was also fun. Then I stuck it in my pocket. “Let’s make a list of demands, shall we? We’ll sign it
unsincerely, uncordially, thankfully, not yours
, the black hole.” I laughed at their looks of confusion. “Oh, you didn’t know? That’s what they call our apartment complex. No one goes in. No one gets taken out.”

“And then this ends it?” Lizzie asked hopefully.

I hesitated. The love tree was a terribly stupid campaign, which was why I liked it, but would it really stop Byron? Lizzie was waiting, so I nodded at her. “Yeah, he stops. We stop.”

Kali jumped up, interrupting Lizzie’s protests. “I know just the stuff to decorate their place with. We need curtains, beautiful curtains…and, and frilly lamps. I hate my lamp. It’s perfect. Oh, and anything pink! And doilies! Yeah!”

Lizzie’s mouth curled up unwillingly.

“Hey, wait.” I held up my hands. “Where are we supposed to get all that stuff this late in the game? Doilies? Do any of us own those?”

“Wait.” Lizzie went through her purse and we all gawked at her. She tugged out band aids, tweezers, books, random pieces of string, a glove, and…a doily? Before I knew it, the girls had left the apartment to collect the most beautiful girly things they could find, laughing and chattering on their way.

“Don’t forget any ugly stuffed animals you might have!” I called after them. My voice echoed through the empty room. They left the door open behind them and I could see the twilight settling in the soft sky. We were due for some powerful May showers. The clouds hung darkly overhead and for once, I realized just how dark this room could get. Normally, I would turn on the lights, but I was afraid it would alert outsiders to our presence in the abandoned apartment.

I gathered my things from the table. A soft wind pulled at the door and the hinges creaked. I watched the open door swing lazily back and forth. The sound set my nerves on edge and I worked faster, using the light from the outside porch to see my things. It lit the room in an eerie glow. I was beginning to wonder if using the empty apartment as our headquarters was such a good idea when I became aware of a soft scratching coming from the back of the apartment. I stiffened. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled uncomfortably. I wasn’t alone in here. A normal person would run. A sane person would run. I mean, the ones who didn’t run usually got killed in every movie I had ever seen. I gulped and listened to the scratching get louder. I took a step into the dark hall. “Hello?”

The scratching stopped.

I took a steadying breath. This was ridiculous. It had to be an animal, possibly a rat? I shivered and took a step away from the sound. There was no way I wanted a rat lunging at me from the darkness.

“Help me.” It was a whisper, so soft that I almost thought I had imagined it.

Wasn’t this place empty? Both Tory and Lizzie swore that we had chased our neighbors away, but that didn’t stop me from remembering a tiny girl with black hair coming in late one night. Was that during my watch? I had pulled an all-nighter cramming for a test when I heard the sound of a key scraping into the lock next door. Time seemed suspended during this prank war, but was I really
that
out of it? It couldn’t have been that long ago. My neighbor was only a memory now. If she hadn’t moved from here, what had happened to her? I thought of the threatening note we had found jammed into her door. Maybe it wasn’t meant for us. Was it even from Byron?

“Help me.” This time it was louder. It was definitely human, at the same time not, like I was hearing some sort of echo from the past.

Stop that.
What a completely idiotic notion. “Who is that?” I croaked out.

The scratching started again and I took a deep breath, steeling myself. Whatever it was, I couldn’t run like some scared little girl. No way. Not when Lord Byron could catch wind of it. I had always wondered what was going through the minds of potential slasher victims. Whatever possessed them to go investigate? Well, now I knew why. Pride. Plain and simple.

The sound was coming from one of the rooms. If it was our apartment on the other side, the room would’ve been mine. How ironic. Taking a deep breath, I sternly told myself to open the door. The handle twisted easily under my fingers, and I jerked it open. It was dark inside. I quickly flipped on the light to peer around. There were two mismatched beds. One consisted of a blue flowered mattress stacked on cinder blocks. The other lay flat on the dingy brown carpet. There was no way I was supposed to be here, but still I stepped inside the room.

The scratching had stopped. Yet, it had come from here. I turned a full circle, searching for anything. A forgotten clock that scratched out time, a CD player left on a crackly AM station, an air-conditioner pounding its way on, but there was nothing here that could’ve made such a noise. By now, it was completely dark outside. I could see the ominous clouds through the metal screen at the window. Everything inside me told me to run. And for once I decided to listen. I turned to escape and ran into the closet door. “Ouch,” I hissed in pain. I crumpled to the ground, holding my leg, trying not to look directly at that nasty closet. I’m not quite sure how to describe the horrible thing, but let’s just say that the closets in our complex had the creepiest doors ever. They reminded me of the closets found in every scary remake of Japanese horror movies. The flimsy wood could’ve been made of paper, it was so fragile. I could almost imagine what was behind it—and how easily it could get out. What had the little girl with the black hair left in there for me to find? No one had seen her. For how long had she been missing? What if I opened it…and she was in there?