The Shortest Distance Between Love & Hate

by Sandy Hall

  We need to find the right blend of funny and harmless.

  It’s thanks to all this research that I’m ready when the opportunity arises. She leaves her phone unattended at work. I’ve noticed she doesn’t have a passcode on it. She’s about to learn her lesson.

  I make a couple of quick changes to her keyboard shortcuts. Anytime she tries to type “hey,” “what,” or “you,” the phone will autocorrect that to “Carter Schmitt is the best.”

  I put her phone down just in the nick of time.

  It’s Monday, so we have three classes in a row and I can’t wait for her to figure out what I did.

  I see her check her phone a few times during our first class, and as we’re walking out, she starts typing.

  “What the hell,” I hear her mutter. I turn around just in time to see her shake her phone up and down, as if that’s going to help.

  As she walks by me, face screwed up in concentration, I say, “Maybe next time you won’t leave your phone unattended.”

  “Thanks for this,” she says, holding up her phone. “Now my mom thinks I’m in love with you.”

  I crack up so hard; I practically fall over there in the hallway.

  “Oh man, it’s even better that it was texts with your mom.” I hold my hand up for a high five, and for a split second, I almost think she’s going to do it.

  Instead she turns on her heel and stalks off. Doesn’t even look at me for the rest of the day. But I can’t help grinning every time I think about it.

  I feel lighter than I have in weeks.

  -PAISLEY-

  Stef and I are in the dining hall, selecting the perfect dinner, when her crush Melissa appears out of nowhere.

  I can feel Stef tighten up beside me when she sees her.

  I was in the midst of complaining about Carter’s dumb shortcut prank, but this takes precedence. I still can’t believe he thought I was going to high-five him over pranking me. Like I’m that stupid.

  “We’ll get through the line and then find somewhere far away from her to sit,” I say quietly. I’m actively ignoring the fact that I got a C on my history paper, and getting involved in this small drama in Stef’s life is a great distraction.

  “Thanks,” Stef says.

  We find a table far in the back corner, out of sight from where the swim team usually sits, and therefore, hopefully out of sight from Melissa.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t know she was dating someone. And it’s a guy,” Stef tells me. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Like, she’s bi, I’m a lesbian. That’s fine. But it was so unexpected.”

  She takes a big bite of mashed potato, expression thoughtful.

  She swallows and says, “That’s definitely why I didn’t realize she was in a relationship. I just thought she was flirty with everyone. Not that she was actually dating him.”

  I don’t bother asking “Him who?” only because the swim team bench goes deep and I have trouble keeping up with the members. Stef doesn’t mind. She made up the rule herself because it’s really hard to keep explaining who people are. I know the important ones. The people she’s friends with, the girl she has a crush on, and, of course, Luis of the epic parties and the brother of Carter’s roommate.

  This is good. I’m in a good place. Helping Henry with his girl trouble and now helping Stef with hers. I mentally pat myself on the back.

  “Oh god,” I say.

  “What?” Stef asks.

  “Do not look now,” I say through mostly closed lips, trying to remember anything from the ventriloquism book I read when I was in third grade, “but Melissa is coming over here.”

  “No!” Stef yelps, just as Melissa steps next to our table.

  “Hi,” she says, all perky and bouncy curls.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hey,” Stef says. “Sorry about the yell. I thought I lost my wallet.”

  Melissa chuckles. “Do you kids mind if I sit with you?”

  “So, how are the mashed potatoes?” Melissa asks when she’s settled.

  “Decent,” Stef says. She stares at me and I make a confused face.

  Melissa turns to me too. “Did I see you coming out of Professor Brightly’s class today?”

  “Yup,” I say. Brightly is the professor who gave me a C on the paper I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into over the past three weeks.

  “A word of advice,” she says. “Make sure you take copious notes. Brightly only tests on the notes. And she wants to see stuff in all your papers that she mentions in class. It’s kind of like she wants Easter eggs in everything.”

  “Well that explains why I got a C on my paper. I take the worst notes,” I say.

  Melissa says she’ll check if she has her notes from last year, but she’s pretty sure she tossed them.

  “That would be awesome,” I say.

  “So what were you talking about when I walked up? You looked like you were having a serious discussion,” Melissa says. “I almost didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “Um,” Stef says.

  “I was telling Stef about this dumb prank a guy at work played on me!” I say, nearly shouting.

  “Oh, a prank war,” Melissa says, nodding. Stef looks so relieved not to have to come up with a lie.

  “I guess that’s what this is,” I say. “I just don’t know how to play my next move.”

  “Well, if you ask me, you can never go wrong with a classic. Salt in his coffee or something like that. Doesn’t hurt him but definitely pisses him off.”

  “Are you a prank expert?” Stef asks.

  Melissa shakes her head. “I grew up with too many brothers and cousins and neighborhood boys who were always trying to make life miserable for each other. They left me out of it for the most part, but I learned a few tricks.”

  “You are just full of useful information,” I tell Melissa. I can see why Stef is so into her.

  The conversation moves on, but a few minutes later something clicks in my head. If Melissa doesn’t have her notes from last year, I’m going to have to ask someone in my history class for notes. Someone besides Carter.

  I’m going to have to make a friend.

  That task seems daunting.

  Maybe I’ll just fail the class instead.

  -CARTER-

  You’d think I’d be smart enough not to leave my stuff lying around after what I did to Paisley’s phone the other day, but you’d be wrong.

  Which is why I’m honestly not shocked when I return from the bathroom to find that Paisley has put salt in my coffee.

  “Hmmm,” I say, rather than spitting it out.

  She looks over at me and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. I hate when she’s cute.

  “Good coffee?” she asks, a genuine look of glee on her face.

  “Delicious. Must have gotten a new blend in the office,” I say, taking a large gulp. It honest to god tastes like it was brewed with seawater, but I’m not going to let Paisley know I think so.

  “That’s so great. I’ll have to try it later.”

  “You really will,” I say, swigging the rest.

  She starts to laugh.

  I start to laugh.

  “It was like a salt lick,” I say, my eyes tearing up. “How much did you put there?”

  “Way more than I meant to,” she confesses.

  I can’t believe we’re having a genuine moment over her putting salt in my coffee.

  Which is why I’m still thinking about it later when Ray finds me in the quiet study room on our floor. Now that my grade in history is secure, I need to seriously buckle down and get my calc grade up.

  I check the time on my phone as he walks through the door, and I have a missed call and a voice mail from an unfamiliar number. I’m pretty sure it’s my dad. I have to stop myself from immediately deleting the voice mail and blocking the number.

  Thea had warned me that he’d asked our mom for our numbers. But why would she actually give them to him? Why is my mom being nice to my dad when he s
crewed her over the way he did?

  I flip my phone over onto the table and turn my attention to Ray who’s standing there with barely contained glee on his face.

  “I had an idea!” he says, way too loudly for the quiet study room.

  Luckily, I’m the only person in here at the moment.

  “I’m proud of you, Ray.”

  He rolls his eyes. “I had an idea of the getting-back-at-Paisley variety!”

  “Oh, good,” I say. “Because she salted the heck out of my coffee this morning. I’m glad to hear you’re committed.”

  “Of course I’m committed. That woman stole a slice of my mom’s coconut cake. She’s just lucky it got back to me unharmed.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” I ask, closing my calc book. I think revenge sounds like way more fun than calculus.

  “Post-its,” he says, showing me a picture on his phone. Someone had covered a bed, desk, and dresser in Post-its.

  “I like it. Minus the fact that Post-its cost a lot of money and I have no idea how we would get into Paisley’s room for that length of time to completely cover all of her belongings.”

  “Oh, right,” he says, his face falling.

  “But I like where your head is at,” I tell him, not wanting to discourage him, especially now that I’m really in the mood to do something.

  “Well, my other idea was hot sauce,” he says.

  “Hot sauce?”

  “Yeah, I have some seriously hot Brazilian hot sauce—do you guys ever eat at work?” he asks, interrupting himself.

  “Sometimes. She’ll have a bagel or something but usually only on Saturday mornings, and we haven’t been scheduled together on a Saturday morning in a while.”

  “Hmm. Well, I can give you a little bottle, and when you get the chance, you could sprinkle a little on her food. She’ll be crying in no time.”

  “Another really good idea, but I want to do something now, you know? Like what could we do to her right this second? Not at some random time in the future when all the stars align and I can get some hot sauce onto her Saturday-morning bagel.”

  He taps his fingers on the table. “You’re right. And whatever we do to her, I want to see it happen because she stole my food.”

  “Right, you’re a part of this vendetta and you deserve to be there when it goes down.”

  “Maybe it’s time we stop worrying about pissing Stef off in the process,” he says.

  “Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing.”

  “Did you have anything in mind?”

  That’s how Ray and I find ourselves outside Paisley’s door at four in the morning, duct-taping her and Stef in.

  “She’s going to be so pissed off,” I say, barely able to stop myself from giggling. We added a sign on the inside of the tape that says “Good morning, sunshine!” She’s going to kill me. Stef is going to kill me.

  But I’m not sure I care.

  Ray is barely even awake, but he’s doing a good job of cutting strips of tape while I stick them across the doorjamb.

  He yawns as we step back to look at our work.

  “Good job,” he says, patting me on the back.

  We shuffle back to the elevator to head down to our room.

  “I can’t believe no one saw us doing this,” I say.

  “I can’t believe we’re not going to have live footage of her trying to get out.”

  “We should have installed one of those cameras, like the ones they have on roller coasters.”

  “Does she have work this morning?” Ray asks.

  “No.”

  “Do you?”

  “Nope?”

  “So maybe in a couple hours we should go back up there and wait and see what happens.”

  “Genius,” I say.

  We get back to the room, and I set my alarm for 8:00 a.m. I can’t imagine anyone will need to get up any earlier than that.

  But then Ray springs out of bed with a yelp.

  “What? What is it?”

  He shakes his head, his eyes holding a haunted look. “Stef has swim practice this morning at seven. She’s going to be so pissed!”

  “Hmm. And it’s not even going to really affect Paisley.”

  “Well, it will because Stef will really be that pissed. It’s going to take her a while to get out of there, and Paisley will have to deal.”

  “Yeah, good point.”

  Ray gets back into bed. “But I don’t think we need to get up to watch that.”

  “Even better point,” I say. I turn off the alarm on my phone and roll over, falling easily back to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  -PAISLEY-

  It’s very early in the morning when I hear Stef cry out from somewhere near the door. I leap from my bed, grabbing for Debra the zebra because she’s the nearest projectile, not because I continue to sleep with her.

  Fine. I continue to sleep with Debra the zebra.

  “What? What is it?” I ask, bleary-eyed. There’s a weird kind of light coming from the doorway.

  “What the heck?” I ask.

  Stef still hasn’t said a word, so I flick on the closest light.

  It looks like there’s a cocoon crisscrossing our doorway.

  Stef has her fingers knotted in her hair, just staring at it.

  “I overslept,” she says, her voice carefully metered. “And I need to be at the pool in the next seven minutes. But I can’t leave our dorm room.”

  “I don’t even understand.”

  She hands me a piece of paper. “Good morning, sunshine!” it says. “Have fun unraveling yourself!” Then there’s a heart followed by the letters C and R.

  “Looks like Carter and Ray had a bit of fun during the night.”

  Stef shrieks. I’ve never seen her look so stressed out. “What am I supposed to do about this?”

  “It’s fine. We’ll get out of here. I’m sorry you’re going to be late to swim practice, but it’s not like I asked for this.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  I grab for my scissors on the desk and start stabbing and cutting into the tape. There must be several layers.

  “Are you going to help me or are you just going to stand there watching?” I ask Stef. “Because you’ll get out of here sooner if you help.”

  She makes another sound of frustration, something between a grunt and a “harrumph,” but puts down her toothbrush and face wash and grabs her scissors.

  “I swear to god if they did any damage to the paint around our door and we get fined…,” she says as we work through the layers and layers of tape.

  “If that happens, we’ll explain it wasn’t us, and Carter and Ray will have to pay,” I say.

  “Sure, that sounds good now. But they’ll just deny it.”

  “Listen, that’s the least of our worries right now, isn’t it?”

  “Whatever,” she says. We finally make a hole big enough for her to fit through.

  “Go,” I say. “I’ll finish this.”

  She looks like she might cry. “You know, it might be time to call a truce with Carter or something. This is really shitty.”

  “Stef, this is not the time to talk about this,” I say, prodding her in the side. “Go.”

  She nods and jumps over the paper. I see her make a quick stop at the bathroom to brush her teeth and I get back to work trying to free our doorway.

  It takes almost a half hour and the entire time I’m seething. I’ve never been so angry in my life. Probably because it was one of my few days this week to sleep in. I begrudgingly admit to myself that this is a fair response to coffee salt and stealing Ray’s food.

  Though I’ll never admit that to Carter.

  I had this moment yesterday, when we were laughing about him drinking all that salty coffee, where it was like my body remembered how much I like him. How much I liked him. It’s a hard truth to come to terms with that I still find him attractive and charming and all that other garbage. But the feelings are there.

  I stan
d in the hallway when I’m done, surveying the area. There’s not much damage to the paint around the door. Luckily. I’d be even more pissed if we were going to get fined for Carter’s dumb prank. It might take a while to get all the sticky residue off, but that’s better than lots of damage.

  Carter should prepare for my revenge. It will be severe. Especially since he was so high-and-mighty about how my little food-stealing prank would affect his relationship with his roommate. Then those two fools go and do this.

  I shake my head. I really need a good plan.

  But first, I need a good T-shirt to wear to work tomorrow.

  -CARTER-

  When I get to work the next day at 6:01, Paisley is already inside, setting up for the morning. I was surprised that Paisley totally avoided me yesterday. It didn’t exactly take much effort since we only have one class together, but still. I wanted to get her reaction to the tape prank, but she’s playing it all pretty close to the vest.

  As I pass through the office, I put on a pot of coffee, which I’ve gotten much better at making over the past few weeks, if I do say so myself. I make my usual rounds, turning on lights and making sure doors are unlocked. Paisley and I can do the morning setup on autopilot.

  Then I head back out to the desk just in time for Paisley to unlock the doors and the first people of the day to wander in. I will never understand how or why some people look so awake at six thirty in the morning. What time do you have to go to bed to look that awake at six thirty in the morning?

  Paisley’s wearing a T-shirt that says “Good morning, sunshine,” so she obviously has some kind of feelings about my prank. It’s just weird that she’s not verbalizing them.

  I take my seat and a loud fart sound echoes through the front foyer, and I jump out of my chair. Everyone who was entering or leaving the gym pauses for a second, a few look annoyed but most smile and chuckle. One lady doubles over with laughter.

  “A whoopee cushion?” I ask, holding it up.