Prank Wars

by Fowers, Stephanie

  I lashed out in anger, my fingers scraping over the door handle. Maybe someday I’d look back and call myself a fool for getting involved in this whole mess. But I couldn’t stop myself from doing what I was doing now, and for now that meant getting as far away from Byron as possible. I tugged the strap of my backpack over my shoulder while I still could. The door wouldn’t budge. I tugged at it ineffectually, but it must have some stupid child lock on it. I started getting anxious. “Hey!” My voice broke. He wasn’t holding me hostage, was he? “Byron!”

  He reached over me and unlocked my door. “Be careful out there, cuz.”

  I pushed the door open. “I’ll do what I want.”

  “I know. Don’t hate me when you get my message.” The moment my converses touched the pavement, I turned on my heel to stare at him. He could be talking about anything. He nodded at me, seemingly more in control of his emotions than I was, though he leaned back against his seat. I suppose I was back to wrinkling my nose I was so angry. We were quite the pair. “Talk to you soon,” he said.

  My breath caught at the sarcasm in his voice and for once I followed my own get-over-a-man tactic. “You’re not the only player around here, ya know. This whole thing…us—whatever this is—was only a wager.”

  He had the nerve to laugh outright. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

  I was pretty sure he hadn’t, but I slammed his door for good measure and stalked away.

  Chapter Six

  Day 113

  2154 hours

  “Have you ever made a mistake and realized it seconds too late. Those seconds yawned into deep misunderstandings that could never be corrected even if you had a couple million years? Those are some pretty powerful seconds, I’d say.”

  —Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Tuesday, June 5th).

  Eerie silence flooded my apartment. “Hello?” My voice echoed into our dark living room. Everyone had deserted me. I tried the switch in the hall and heard a dull click. The light had burnt out. I picked my way through the darkness, trying to keep a clear head. It was pretty hard, considering Byron had almost kissed me, and due to my lame interrogation skills, I knew less about him than before. Even worse, time was out. Creepy-voice was expecting a call from me to make negotiations. There had to be a way to stall him, forget that I had practically challenged him to come get me.

  I tried to hear past my shoes pressing into the ragged carpet. No heavy breathing. No shifting in the darkness. No one was waiting for me. I let out a shaky breath, my head finally clearing as I came up with a plan. I was going to outsmart this guy. He was meeting at Denny’s in two hours. I could crash the party, but could I do it without getting killed? I had Thanh’s control box as evidence now. What if I produced my evidence to the police and—? I sighed. They would just take it away and take me in. They wouldn’t bother investigating the scene at Denny’s. Thanh would be lost forever. And the control box was probably more important than everything else put together, which meant I had to plan a way to get Thanh and the box. In real life, it didn’t seem very simple.

  I tried the hall light and couldn’t get it to work either. I hesitated under the archway. Two lights out. That was way too much of a coincidence. My feet rooted to the carpet in response. “Hello?” My heart felt unsteady. “Is anybody here?”

  The seconds felt agonizing as I listened intently for some sound to give away the presence of an attacker. If some bad guy waited in the darkness, he would’ve grabbed me by now—I would have. My fingers scraped over the rough plywood of my bedroom door and I pushed it inward, feeling my way to the next light switch. It made a dull click under my fingers. It was either a blackout or Thanh’s kidnapper had a taste for suspense. Using the moonlight from the window to make out the shadows of my bedroom furniture, I felt my way through my desk drawer to find my flashlight. A hand flashed out from under the bed and twisted around my ankle.

  I screamed and Tory popped up from the bed, her red hair flying over her face. “How was the date?”

  “What? Date?” I tried to pull my jumbled thoughts back together. “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember? I heard your whole conversation in Byron’s car. I was on the stake-out, so spill.”

  “Why did you turn out all the lights?”

  “I didn’t.” She clicked on a flashlight and put it under her face, highlighting it in a most unflattering way. She wore her Simon says I’m Hot tee. “We have a black-out.”

  “Sounds convenient.” I threw the backpack off my shoulder and unzipped it. More than likely the twins were trying to get back at us for something. I wasn’t sure what, since I was sadly out of the loop with the latest pranks. I didn’t want to think about other reasons for a blackout. Unwinding my gym clothes from the control box, I found a physics book in its place. No...he...didn’t. The control box was gone! Byron stole it—maybe while he was putting the moves on me. I knew physics books were heavy, but…that dirty player! Was this his message? “He turned on me!” I shouted out. “He’s so...bad! He’s the bad guy!”

  Tory peered at the physics book, not getting it. “Why? Did he take Thanh?”

  “I don’t know!” I made a turn around the room, trying to gather my thoughts. It had to be true. Why did he steal her control box? I was going to make a deal for her. He didn’t want to give her back?

  “I don’t believe it.” Tory balled her hands into fists. It was an odd thing coming from her. “He’s too good for that.”

  Then what was he doing with the control box? I needed to get to it before it was too late, but I was running out of help. “Where is everybody?”

  “Oh, it’s terrible. The guys took Kali’s baby blanket and they’re holding it hostage. And they’re making her do all sorts of things to get it back, and AmyLee joined the guys, along with tons of other girls in the ward. Isn’t that lame? So Lizzie had an idea and they went…”

  “Wait, they’re out pranking?” I never felt so betrayed. My life was in danger here.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  I stared out the window, seeing all our hair supplies hanging from the windowsill just out of reach. That was the last straw. It was just another distraction set up by Byron to get my friends out of the way. He didn’t have to lift a finger, just rile up the twins and they’d take care of everything. “Rotten pranksters.” I tucked the heavy physics book under my armpit and threw Thanh’s cell phone into the side pocket of my capris. Tory grinned and followed me out the door. Though missing a few initials from her CTR ring, I knew I could trust her. We had real bad guys to worry about, not silly little boys.

  Shouts and screams littered the air in the guy’s parking lot, but I headed straight for the middle of the melee, determined to get my army if I had to drag them all out by their pigtails. The rain had stopped only to be replaced by flying toilet paper, silly string, cheese wiz. The Hunkhouse was making their final stand against the Black Hole.

  Kali rushed past me, looking like she had come straight from her cycling class. Her hair was scraggly and she had no shoes on. Even stranger, her face was free of all make-up. “It’s the guys’ fault!” she shrilled. She hid behind me, covering her ears. “Get rid of that noise! It’s killing me!”

  I glanced over at Tory and she shrugged. Blake peeled out of the shadows dressed all in black. Kali chucked some water balloons over my shoulder. Blake didn’t try to dodge them. She missed him every time. Kali shrieked at him, “If you asked us on more dates instead of hanging out all the time, we wouldn’t be doing this.” She heaved her last water balloon at him and it skidded harmlessly past his feet.

  “Unacceptable, Kali,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying. “Keep your eye on the target!”

  Kali rushed around me and fell into Blake’s arms, taking my advice quite figuratively. The girls were falling in droves, catching the men of their dreams—I had always assumed nightmares. Byron’s tormented roommate Rock stumbled out of his apartment, looking disheveled. When did he start living at his own place? His h
eavy rock T-shirt was rumpled beyond recognition. And he was after Lizzie. Did he even know she existed? She was laughing and flirting. The strings of her apron trailed after her as she escaped. Her shoes were missing too. I felt like a stranger in my own cause. “Turn off that noise!” Rock shouted.

  “Tell that to your roommates,” Lizzie retorted. “They’re the ones doing it!”

  I glanced over at Tory. What noise were they talking about? I couldn’t hear a thing. By the look of confusion on her face, she couldn’t either. It seemed the only one on my side was as deaf as I was, but at least she didn’t care about boys.

  Adam blocked our pathway, his track pants swishing. Tory stopped short and their eyes locked. What? No! The twin? The cocky one? She couldn’t possibly. She had no feelings that I knew of.

  “Tory,” I said in a warning voice. “I need you.”

  She nodded. “Right captain.” She tried to spin away…until Adam held up a poster of Justin Bieber. Her mouth gaped open.

  “Does this belong to you?” he asked.

  She glanced over at me. “That isn’t mine.”

  “Of course not.” I tried to make a hasty exit with my only ally in tow.

  Adam opened his big mouth: “Then I guess you won’t mind if I dispose of this?”

  We heard a ripping sound and Tory circled. Her long red hair flew around her shoulders like a flame. She was after him like thunder on lightning. “Tory, no!” It was just a trick. The ripping sound came from his mouth, but Tory tackled Adam before she realized he hadn’t done anything to her precious poster. Adam laughed, holding it out of reach. She beat on his back, the gray pinstripes of her skinny jeans a blur with each wild kick. They joined the throng of fighting couples, leaving me behind in stunned silence. I hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

  Thanh’s cell phone rang and after checking caller ID, I answered it in one fluid motion. “What do you want, Byron?”

  “Are you alone?”

  Of course. All of my allies had fallen. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Byron. Consider me clapping slowly and sarcastically.”

  “You got my message then?”

  “Of course. Why did you do it?”

  “I couldn’t let you get in the way, now could I?”

  My eyes narrowed. “Where are you?”

  “Coming for you.”

  I turned to see Byron striding through the airborne whipped cream and flour. None of it touched his pristine white tee. Everyone else was covered in it. Most of them clutched at their ears. That’s when I figured it out. No one over 26 could hear it, but it irritated everyone younger and sent them into this prank warring frenzy. Byron had stolen one of the frequency signals from Eric’s lab and amplified it. He was attacking my soldiers—and my age!

  Byron clicked off his phone and grinned crookedly at me. “Looking hawt, Dog.”

  I could only guess that meant I was covered in flour. “Well, if it isn’t the great and clever Lord Byron? You are such a June 6th!” A tortilla hit him in the shoulder, disturbing our clever banter.

  I laughed until something big and hairy jumped out at me. It had me by the arms. I shifted to see a gargantuan face leering angrily down into my eyes. Whoever it was looked vaguely familiar, but was covered in black war paint, blending in completely with all the other pranksters around here. It took me a moment to find my scream, but when I did, it startled even me. “Let me go!”

  My attacker dragged me painfully away from the group. It didn’t feel like a prank. His fingers dug into my arms and when I tried to twist away, he jabbed me hard in the side. I cried out in pain, a part of me realizing that he meant to hurt me. I panicked, knowing this guy had something to do with Thanh, not some flirty skirmish between girls and guys. I kicked him in the knee and he let out a grunt. His fist came at my face. I grimaced just before Byron jerked him back from me. I stumbled over my feet and landed into the ground.

  My attacker aimed a clumsy punch Byron’s way. He blocked it easily. The guy growled low under his breath and I stiffened when I saw him pull out a gun from his pleated jeans. Before I could shout out a warning, Byron had him by the arm, wrestling him back. I couldn’t see who was winning. Byron aimed an elbow in the big guy’s face. The guy grimaced in pain and butted his head against Byron’s. His head whipped back, but Byron didn’t let go. Instead he dealt the guy a vicious uppercut to the kidney. If the attacker got any more good hits in, we’d be in real trouble, especially if I didn’t do something fast. I couldn’t find a real weapon in the sea of fake ones. Water balloons, flour, toilet paper, whipped cream, cheese wiz, marshmallow cream. Old lady perfume! I grabbed it with trembling fingers.

  “Mad!” Byron shouted. “Get out of here. Don’t muck around.” There was that accent again. The guy shoved Byron back, his hand against his chin. Byron was a lithe devil, but this guy was huge. Byron couldn’t hold him back for long. “Madeleine!”

  I rushed forward with the perfume and sprayed our attacker in the eyes. Both Byron and the guy fell back, their eyes watering. Byron took advantage of the opening and knocked the gun away. The big guy stumbled back, screaming out. Now that the attacker was somewhat incapacitated, I tried to figure out how I knew him. Even under all that paint, I never forgot a face, well, I shouldn’t, especially someone clad in such outlandish clothes. He was wearing a Wile E. Coyote shirt for Pete’s sake! “You’re dead,” he hissed at Byron—mighty bravely for someone not holding the gun anymore. “You won’t live through the night.”

  Byron’s form went dangerously calm. “What’s your plan? To kill me with that stench?”

  The guy reeked of old lady perfume. Sweat mingled with paint dripped down his chiseled face. “We want the girl.”

  My stomach tightened when I realized he meant me and not Thanh, but why? I didn’t have the control box anymore. Byron cast him a menacing look, but he didn’t pull the trigger. I hoped he’d do the normal thing and call the cops. I think we had some pretty good evidence for Brady and Oliveira now. “Tell your superior to keep away from her or he can’t hold me responsible for what I’ll do.” Byron’s accent was all over the place like he wasn’t trying to hide it anymore. “He has what he wants. Now tell him to get lost.”

  Holding his head, the big guy glared and limped away with his message. I elbowed Byron. “Why did you let him get away?”

  Byron squinted at me with his one good eye; the perfume had grazed him. “What is that awful stuff? It’s nasty as…”—he didn’t compare it to anything.

  I identified his accent. “You have some explaining to do, New Zealand!”

  “You said you got my message!” he accused.

  “Yeah. You took the control box! Did you give it to whoever that guy works for? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t give it to him…I let him have it. And that wasn’t my message anyway.” The physics book lay on the ground by the dumpster back where that guy grabbed me. Byron picked it up, black paint smudged all over his fingers. “Here’s my message.” He handed it to me. “Behind the front cover.”

  I opened the book. “Don’t worry, I’m with the CIA.” I glanced up at him. No invisible crayon, no lemon water, no blood, no nothing. “That’s a really stupid message.”

  “Yeah, well your war journal wasn’t much of a read either.”

  I hit him with the physics book, not hurting him in the least. “New Zealand’s not with the CIA,” I told him.

  Byron took out a handkerchief and started wrapping his hand. His knuckles were covered in blood. “We’re the SIS and we’re your allies. The CIA needed my skills to make up a special team, mostly because I came to this school six years ago and know the culture already, plus I’m a physicist, speak passable Vietnamese and I’m fluent in German—that was a bonus from my mission.”

  No way. That would put him in his late twenties. Maybe early thirties. I always figured I was the older one. For once my age worked for me. “If you’re the CIA then why aren’t you after the guy who took the control box
? Huh?”

  “Yeah…because the CIA is a one-man operation? I thought you watched more movies than that?”

  I gulped. If I hadn’t just seen him fight, I would never have believed him. I didn’t want him to be anything else but Byron, though CIA agent was better than believing he was a black-hearted kidnapper. “Who else is on the team?”

  “Confidential.”

  I glanced around at all my friends with a suspicious eye. It could be any of them. They had the perfect cover; they were all idiots. “So what? You’re some agent playing the field? Why did you let Thanh get taken then?”

  “Just as you surmised.” He tied off his bandage with a snap. “Thanh made a little someth’nk someth’nk for the government. Grad students do it all the time, but this one got the attention of some undesirables. They called me and the rest of my team on a protective detail to watch her and the item of interest. It’s too powerful anyway. We’re gonna destroy it. It won’t see the light of day.”

  “But they have it now!”

  He led me behind the dumpster by my elbow, giving us some privacy. “They think they have it,” he said in an undertone. “We gave them a decoy…a fake. Get it?”

  All that for nothing? “But they have Thanh?”

  “No, we do. Everything’s under control. She’s in our protective custody.”

  Relief washed over me. I wasn’t going to die tonight. At the same time, I felt incredibly stupid. “So, who’s the bad guy then?”

  “We call him the white hawk, our female agent does actually. She thinks he’s hot.”

  “Sandra!”

  “Where?” Byron turned, looking for her. “I don’t see her.”

  “Knock it off. I get it now. She moved into the ward at the same time. You still talk after the break-up. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” I laughed, partly in shock. “Sandra was way too mean to be real.”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but that’s really how she is, cuz.”