Prank Wars

by Fowers, Stephanie

  The officers stared at me like I was a raving lunatic. Sergeant Brady forced his voice into dulcet tones: “Other than breaking curfew, we don’t have anything on her, but we could find something on you if that’s what you’re looking for.” He glanced around at the remnants of the battle on the grass. Luckily, it was starting to melt away under the rain. “Curfew breaking is the least of our concerns right now.”

  “But we don’t have to be in our apartments. Just out of the guy’s apartm…” my voice trailed off at their grim faces. Sergeant Brady meant it. He would slap charges on me if I wasn’t careful. No amount of charm could get me out of this one—not that I had any. “Okay, well, are we done here?” I clapped my hands, “or do I have to fill out some paperwork?”

  “We’re done…for now.”

  I nodded, and quickly made my escape, belatedly noting Tory had already done so. The little deserter. Before I could move past Byron, he squeezed my arm and tugged me next to him. “Hey,” he whispered into my ear, “you did the right thing.”

  I could just imagine the police beat on this one. Brady and Oliveira returned to their patrol car, their bodies stiff. “Yeah.” I was drenched and cold and bitter. Byron actually felt pretty warm. I shivered and he pulled me closer.

  He ran his hands down my wet arms, splashing away some of the rainwater. It warmed me instantly. He cracked a smile. “Just because someone has a love life, there’s no reason for us to get jealous, right?”

  I almost laughed at that one. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  After a moment, he let me go, taking his warmth with him. He jogged away in the rain, his Nikes sloshing against the wet grass. Byron didn’t have a love life? I gave myself a mental shake. That was a strange thing to get out of this night. I dripped past Thanh’s window. Her curtains were open slightly. The mess in her apartment cast looming shadows across the checkered linoleum inside. A black backpack sat on the kitchen floor. The zipper closed. Thanh had her backpack. I was a raving lunatic.

  I tugged on my door and let myself in, dripping over the blankets that made up the fort in our living room. Kali and Lizzie looked cozy with their towel covered heads pressed together, their skin bright and rosy from the storm. They stopped talking as soon as I entered. It meant they were talking about me. Most great leaders were betrayed by their most loyal supporters in the end. I should’ve expected it. I hesitated in the entryway. “What?” I asked. They looked blank. “Why don’t you just lecture me and get it over with, Lizzie?”

  “Do you want me to?” Lizzie said with the predictable lecture to her voice. “Kali was just talking about…” Kali gave her a warning look to stop her from saying it.

  “…a boy,” I finished for Lizzie. And they couldn’t tell me? Was this what my life had come to? Riddled with paranoia? It hurt that I couldn’t be trusted with normal girl talk anymore. Boys weren’t to be trusted. I saw a kidnapping when there was none. Thanh’s messy house was a ransacking. That threatening note on Thanh’s door was a...was a…wait? Was it really meant for us or for Thanh? I wished that I could look at it again, but Byron had stolen it. Why did he do that?

  I heard a phone go off in my room. It didn’t sound like my ringtone. Lizzie sighed. “It’s been going off all night.”

  I flung open my door and shuffled past my opened physics book on my desk. The ringing wasn’t coming from that mess. I moved to the laundry hamper and followed the sound through my dirty clothes. I scraped my jeans out from the bottom and found a cell phone in the pocket along with some keys. The cell was cute and pink with diamond studs just like I remembered it. Thanh’s. Oh no. No wonder she couldn’t answer her cell.

  It stopped ringing as soon as I had it in my hand. Those were the jeans I had been wearing when I tried to return Thanh her backpack on Saturday. The keys didn’t work in her door and I had thrown them in my pocket. Her cell phone followed the keys after I got that threatening call from Byron that day. I winced, knowing I was in for it. My room was a thief’s den. I checked the caller ID and saw the number unblock again. I could just press the call back button like I did last time and fess up to the dirty deed. I pressed it against my wet cheek, took a deep breath, and called the person back.

  A guy answered. “So there you are.”

  “Oh, I’m not Thanh.”

  “I know.”

  I readjusted the phone against my ear. It was so small that it was threatening to slip away. “Look, are you with her? I need to talk to her?”

  “I want something from you first.”

  He wasn’t making any sense, though it was beginning to sound like the same guy I talked to on this phone before. I stared at the number. It was the same one. “Byron?” I accused. What was he doing? The idiot was trying to get Thanh’s phone back for her. He was a man of his word I was coming to find out.

  A soft knock sounded at my door and Tory barged into my room with drenched hair. The bells above the door rang merrily. I set them up there to make sure Tory couldn’t sneak in without my knowledge—apparently they worked. “Just a sec,” I told her. I went back to my conversation with Byron. “What do you want?”

  “Something in that backpack is missing. And I think you know what it is.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, this cell phone for starters.” He was silent on the other line and I knew an apology was in order. “Look, I’m sorry. I saw you returned Thanh’s backpack to her. I’m glad she got it back.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I saw it on her kitchen floor tonight.” I laughed in realization. “Unless it was yours? You got yours back, right Byron? Oh, I’ve got your physics book too. Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t make me come for you.” He was starting to sound testy.

  “Or what are you gonna do? Call the police on me? I guess that would work. They already hate me.” I flopped on my bed, enjoying the conversation. If there was one thing I loved, it was teasing Byron.

  “I’ll do worse.”

  I laughed again. “Okay, come and get me, tough guy. I’ll be waiting for you. If that’s your backpack at your girlfriend’s apartment, you might want to pick that up too. Seriously man, don’t you ever study?”

  He clicked off his phone and I giggled. Tory’s eyes widened and I covered my mouth. Did that sound just come from me? Like I said, I was seriously going crazy.

  “Who were you talking to?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Byron.”

  “How? I thought you stole his phone.”

  “For the last time, I did not steal his ph—!” My eyes widened and I dropped the pink cell phone to the floor. “Holy cow!” Yes, that was an understatement. Byron had lost his iPhone. Who did I just talk to?

  Madeleine’s

  Last War Journal

  Chapter One

  Day 112

  2217 hours

  “Who is my enemy? To be honest, I have no idea. They don’t know who I am either, so in a way that gives me the advantage.”

  —Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Monday night, June 4th).

  “Something weird is happening.” I tugged some dry clothes onto my wet body, and stuffed my war journal into the back pocket of my red sweats. The rain from outside had turned into a torrent, raging against our little red brick apartment. I picked up Thanh’s cell phone from the floor, staring at it. Whoever had been on the phone was angry.

  I turned to Tory. I only had a hunch, a very crazy hunch. I replayed the whole phone conversation through my mind. I had asked to talk to Thanh, but the guy said he wanted something from me first. Did that mean whoever called really had Thanh, assuming he wasn’t her boyfriend? I saw her taken, didn’t I? The police had talked to her on the phone, but there was no way to know it was Thanh. Even if it had been, was she somewhere she could talk openly? She had been taken! I knew it. Before I could get the police to listen to me, I needed cold hard evidence—or at least someone chasing me. I could arrange that.

  This guy said he was missing something. He didn’t seem interested in Thanh’s cell phone.
I glanced over at the keys I had taken from her backpack. Maybe those? They didn’t open Thanh’s door; they opened something else…obviously; they were keys. My thoughts kept circling to the backpack. Whatever this guy wanted could be resting on Thanh’s messy kitchen floor. I brushed past a wet Tory; her mean shirt clung to her, her red hair curling. “Don’t let anyone in. Lock the apartment up and I mean it.”

  These were orders that Tory understood. She nodded. “What about Sandra? She isn’t in yet?”

  I tilted my head at her. “Of course, she’s the exception. You can let her in.” I thought that was obvious, but maybe to a soldier used to strict orders it wasn’t. “As much as I hate the thought, Byron might have something to do with this.”

  “Just as you were beginning to like him,” she said under her breath.

  “What?”

  She gave me a playful grin. I wrestled with the idea of telling Tory everything, but there was no time. Mystery man was onto me. I might as well have begged him to break back into Thanh’s place to steal her backpack and help himself to whatever else he wanted. The only thing I didn’t spill was her bank account number. If there was something vital in that backpack, we’d have nothing to bargain with to get Thanh back. She’d be lost forever.

  I rushed out into the hall, thinking hard. There was no way to get into Thanh’s unless I broke a window. I didn’t know how to use bobby pins or credit cards like Byron did to pick the lock. Our ring of keys to the apartments was missing. It was way too late to call Eric—Mr. Magic fingers himself—no way inside Thanh’s at all…unless?

  I looked up and saw our trapdoor to the crawl space. We had a trapdoor, so would Thanh. The crawlspace over the ceiling would take me to her place. I took a steadying breath. This guy was practically a Nazi anyway…if my landlord ever cared to question me. I tugged on the string. The trapdoor ripped away from the Velcro. I felt warm air rush down on me. “Get me a chair,” I ordered Tory.

  Before I knew it, I was stomping against the floral seat, but I couldn’t get up into the ceiling. Tory put some books under my feet until I was tall enough to poke my head through the trapdoor. I stared into the blackness. If this was a scary movie, this would be the moment something would fly at me from the shadows. Even Tory held back. I propped my elbows on either side of the crawlspace. “Get me a flashlight.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I flinched. Lizzie! She wouldn’t let me go without a fight. Kali made squealing noises beneath me, her towel falling off her head. “I have to get to Thanh’s,” I explained. “Something big is going on, bigger than all of us.”

  “You’re gonna hurt yourself!” I nodded and kicked my legs to force myself up. “There could be spiders!” she warned. I hesitated. This was bigger than spiders. I kept going. “What if the ceiling caves in?”

  “Lizzie! I’ll keep to the rafters. I’ve been in an attic before.”

  “At least protect yourself from the insulation!” I heard her scurry from her room and back. She threw a long sleeved hoody up at me and some gloves. “Put those on.”

  Was she mental? I was burning up, but at her insistence, I wrestled on the extra clothing. It was worth it if it kept spiders away from me. The black hoody was tight over the bulging pocket that held my war journal. I grimaced at that. When had I packed that along? It was too late to dump it now. Tory clambered up the chair onto the books, shining the flashlight through the crawlspace. I winced through the beam of light, expecting to see a metallic layer of spider webs. Everything inside this deep hole was covered in insulation, though surprisingly clean of bugs.

  Grateful for the gloves, I pushed into the darkness, keeping to the rafters as promised, sliding hand over hand and keeping low like a Russian dancer. I passed something loud and whirring like a fan beneath me. I think it was the bathroom. I gave it some space. The kitchen probably was on the other side. How far was Thanh’s apartment? Tory’s flashlight faded, and I barely caught sight of the depression ahead. It was covered in torn insulation. I brushed it free and found another trapdoor. I wasn’t sure how to open it, so I pushed. Nothing happened. I extended my leg in front of me and kicked it with the heel of my converses. It flew open. Darkness gaped below me. I turned to Tory. Her head was a silhouette behind the shaft of light. “I got it!” I said. “Close the trapdoor on that side and get rid of any evidence I was up here.”

  “Don’t come back this way!” Lizzie warned. “Just use the door like a real person, okay!”

  I nodded. After a moment of staring down into the dark abyss of Thanh’s apartment, I dropped to the messy ground, landing on my hands and feet. My eyes adjusting to the shadowy hall and overturned tables in the living room. I tore the gloves off, feeling the piles of rough paper under my fingers and stood up. This was real illegal trespassing. “Hello?” I hoped Thanh would answer back, but no one was here.

  Standing on my tiptoes, I closed the trapdoor and kicked through the papers. The sound of them crunching beneath my converses broke the unnatural silence on the way to her kitchen. I tugged the fridge door open on a whim. Nothing there, except some moldy food. I kept it open, but it wasn’t enough light to keep my legs from colliding squarely with the table, which woke up the computer. It added a blue eerie glow to the kitchen. I squinted through the blue light, seeing Thanh’s email was open. A full page of unopened messages sat in her inbox. A few in Vietnamese. I clicked on one of the more recent messages.

  “Thanh, this is your boss. Lydia gave me your email. why haven’t you called me back?” —Maybe because I had Thanh’s cell phone. I felt terrible. I returned to her inbox, marking the message unread. If anything, it made me realize I had missed some vital clues. I should’ve checked Thanh’s cell phone before this. It made a square lump in my side pocket. I tugged it out and went to the messages, setting it on speaker phone. The first one was from her boss again. She hadn’t come to work in days.

  I placed her cell phone on the table and searched for the backpack. It still lay on the floor next to the table. My hand hovered over it. If I took it, the guy with the threats would know I was onto him and come after me. Was I prepared for that? No. I landed on my knees, listening to Thanh’s boss go off on the next message about how this was so unlike her.

  I had to work fast. Keeping one ear trained on the front door, I unzipped the front pocket and found Byron’s school ID. Byron Schipaanboord. No wallet. If so, he might’ve tried harder to get this back. The backpack was officially his, but I wasn’t sure if the switch was an accident anymore. The next message was in Vietnamese. The tone was motherly, worried. Someone’s daughter was missing. It only made me work harder. I opened the middle pocket and found some physics notes and a test graded by Thanh. I read the comments on the bottom: Byron, we really need to talk—Your TA. He got a perfect score, the jerk, so why would he have to talk to the TA—unless Thanh thought he cheated? Or was it something else? A break-up? Right now I leaned towards something more serious. Without another thought, I folded the physics test into a neat little square and stuffed it in my back pocket.

  “Thanh.” I recognized the voice in the next message and it sent a jolt through me. It belonged to the same guy I had talked to earlier. “You know who this is. I’m tired of waiting.” Same clipped voice. Same threats. Same hang up style. No, it didn’t sound like Byron. After suffering a few more messages like this, Thanh’s inbox was empty. Not sure how much time I had, I searched the side pockets in the backpack. My fingers brushed Byron’s missing iPhone. I recognized the screensaver immediately. It covered the front of his sleek touchscreen iPhone with a shot of him skiing. It would look better if the jump had been off a bunny slope. I tucked it into my pocket, not wanting anything important to fall into enemy hands, but what was the guy really looking for? I heard a key sliding into the front door.

  “Tory?” It came out a squeak and I stopped myself from saying more. What if it was Thanh? If it wasn’t, I couldn’t take my chances. I pushed the fridge door shut. It shuttered out the light, leaving
me with the eerie glow from the computer. I tried not to imagine Thanh’s surprise once she flipped on the lights and found her snoopy neighbor sitting in the middle of her kitchen floor—or worse, my surprise when I saw it wasn’t Thanh.

  The front door creaked open and I army crawled my way to the cupboard door below the sink. The whole set up in the kitchen was just like ours; I knew it by touch. I opened the cupboard below the sink, hearing the footsteps in the hall. They came for me. I squeezed inside, folding my body next to some stinky garbage. The door wouldn’t close behind me. I was in the way. I had no time to wrestle with it. The kitchen lights flipped on, sending shafts of brightness through the cracks of the cupboard door. I closed my eyes, putting my head down.

  “Yeah, I’m in.” I didn’t recognize the voice. It seemed muffled and out of breath, but I could tell it was male. I opened my eyes to face whoever it was, seeing only two feet clad in Nikes and some muscular calves. “Yeah, find out what she knows.” His voice jarred the silence. The intruder was either talking to himself or he had a cell phone. I opted for the latter. “I almost had it Tuesday night. A bunch of kids got in the way. One of them walked right into it. Scared her good.” He gave an impatient growl. “Yeah, it works. It messed with the cell phones, didn’t it? It’ll do the job. We just have to get to it.”

  He leaned over the backpack and I peered forward, trying to see his face. My makeshift lookout was terrible. I could only see hands. He lowered an android phone to dig through the backpack. After a moment, he raised it up, narrating, “Still looking. What does it look like?” He wrestled with the backpack, getting more agitated and less understandable. “I think that…yeah, yeah. You know what?” Now he sounded angry. “She’s been here.” I held my breath. Had the computer screen tipped him off? My knee hanging out from the cupboard? “No!” he shouted. “I’ll get it. I said I’ll get it! You’ll have it by tomorrow night, okay? We won’t need her anymore after that.”