The first slide said THE A TO Z OF RULES, REGULATIONS, AND REMINDERS. I got comfortable. Thirteen minutes left.
I’d missed A, whoops. “B is for Bathrooms,” said Leary. “No horseplay or gossip in the bathrooms. Bathrooms are to be used for one thing only.”
“We shouldn’t wash our hands afterward?” called out Sam Goldberg, a third grader.
“You know what I mean, Sam,” said Leary. “C is for Cafeteria Conduct….”
I swiveled around to find the triplets. Olivia was gazing in Flynn’s direction. Lila was admiring her certificate, and Tabitha was folding hers into a paper airplane.
“F,” said Leary. “Fights, whether of Fists or Food, are strictly Forbidden.”
Seven minutes.
“H is for Hallways, where students should be seen and not heard,” said Principal Leary.
Two minutes.
“L is for Lockers. No food is allowed in lockers, as well as no drinks, no electronics, and no biohazardous waste.”
One minute.
“M,” Leary began, but he didn’t get to say what M was for, because—
BRRRRRINNNNGGGGGGG!!!
Everyone leapt out of their seats. Principal Leary bobbled the wireless microphone, which hit the floor in an explosion of static. Mr. Pickett let loose the highest, shrillest shriek I’ve ever heard.
I basked.
It was chaos. It was like a fire alarm but better. The noise came from the windows, the chairs, the closet, the timer, the nets. Everyone’s reactions only made it more chaotic. The younger kids, on mats at the front of the gym, were rolling around, or yelling, or both. The third and fourth graders practiced their murder-victim screams. Lila and Olivia were on the aisle, and they jumped up to knock the big red exercise balls off their racks. The balls bounded across the gym, bouncing off the heads of anyone who’d stayed sitting down.
Flynn gave me a pointed look. I widened my eyes and opened my mouth in shock: Me? Why on earth would you look at me?
He cracked the tiniest of smiles, and I cracked one back.
We’d done it.
“IT WORKED?” said Alex.
“Yes!”
Those new purple glasses plus the lurchy Internet made it hard to read her expression, but I could tell that she was nowhere near as excited as I wanted her to be. “It was chaos,” I said again. “The clocks wouldn’t have been that noisy by themselves, but once everyone started screaming—you know how little kids are, one screams and the rest have to scream too—”
“Yep.”
“It was like flicking over a domino. Just starting something and watching what goes down. Remember what that feels like?”
“I remember.”
“You know what I’d forgotten about pranks?” I was grinning like a goofball and going on way too long, but I was feeling so great. Even tarping the chicken coop before this afternoon’s rainstorm hadn’t brought me down. “I’d forgotten the adrenaline. It’s like a roller coaster. But way better, because you’re the one who designed it.”
Alex nodded.
“And Leary actually called me into his office to ‘discuss a few matters’—you know, how he always did with you….”
Ever since those blasted plastic ants.
“But I said I was innocent and he believed me. He said that without your influence, he doubted I’d try anything. So it’s actually—”
“A good thing that I’m gone?” Alex said flatly.
“No! That’s not what I was going to say!”
I was going to say it was kind of a good thing.
A very, very small good thing. That obviously I would trade in a flash to get her back.
“We’re driving up on Saturday,” she said. “If you even want to prank with me anymore.”
“Of course I do!”
“You don’t like the triplets better?”
“No. No. We should prank all together. All five of us. It’d be epic.”
“I’m only there for an afternoon. We don’t have time for anything epic.”
“It’d be fun anyway.”
“I don’t know.”
Ruth knocked on the dining-room door. “Sorry, Soren,” she said, “but Dad says I have to do my online math stuff now.”
“Dad says?” I said suspiciously.
“He does!” yelled Dad from the kitchen.
“Okay. I gotta go, Alex. Bye.”
“Bye!”
I x-ed out.
“Why didn’t you argue?” Ruth asked me.
“Did you want me to?”
“Well, it would give me more time not doing math.”
I shrugged and stood up. I didn’t even push the power button, which is an annoying but satisfying thing that Ruth and I traditionally do to each other when we get kicked off the computer. “All yours.”
I wandered to the living room. I looked out the same window where we’d waited for Flynn to arrive. It was still raining. If the prank was a roller coaster, now I was at the end, where you have to pry yourself out of your seat, when your head’s rattled and the ground’s not as solid as it used to be. I watched the rainwater wash brown leaves into a clump at the bottom of the driveway. The reason I hadn’t argued, I could have told Ruth, was that I hadn’t wanted to talk to Alex anymore. She was acting like a drip, and I was a bit sick of her. I’d never felt that way before. She was my best friend.
* * *
—
AROUND NOON ON Saturday, Alex’s mom texted Dad to say they were half an hour away. Mom had taken Flynn and Ivan to the farmers’ market, and the quiet house made me feel even jumpier. I went out to kick on the woodpile until their car pulled up and Alex got out.
“Alex!” cried Dad, jogging out of the house. “Alex Harris! What a sight for sore eyes! Welcome back!”
“Hey, Mr. Skaar.”
He went over to the driver’s window. Alex and I nodded at each other. It wasn’t like we were going to shake hands or hug. I bobbled the ball between my feet. “Yep,” I said.
“Yep.”
“What’s up?”
“Not much. You?”
“Not much.”
It was a tad awkward, you might say.
Meanwhile, Dad was shouting into Mrs. Harris’s window, “Welcome back to Camelot! Your home away from home! Smell that clear country air! Soak in these prairie vistas!”
Dad claims he doesn’t act different after his Saturday-morning run. Ha. He basically transforms into a human exclamation point. A sweaty one, too.
“Your dad’s sure in a good mood,” said Alex. She quirked an eyebrow. “Might I guess—runner’s high is involved?”
I grinned. There she was. The person who got me. I didn’t have to explain the backstory because she’d been around for the backstory. “It’s Saturday morning,” I said. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Well, well, well!” Dad was saying. “So Ubercut is a success! I can’t say I’m surprised. My follicles miss your scissors, Marilyn!”
I rolled my eyes at Alex.
“See you around six!” said Dad. “And you”—he did a little spin move and pointed at Alex—“you must be hungry! Come on in, dudette!”
Usually parents make things more awkward, but sometimes they’re just so over the top and weird that they have the opposite effect and destroy everyone else’s awkwardness, like when a comet gets absorbed into the sun. Well, that’s what happened. Dad grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches and then he grilled Alex about her new life. Ol’ Butt-Braid, apparently, took a class in “scissor art” and was trying to get Alex to sign up too. “How nice!” said Dad. “How civilized! I wish Soren had a hobby that was so…so quiet.”
“Soccer is quiet,” I said.
Ruth slunk around the corner. “The whole house shakes every time you miss the woodpile. Oh.
You’re here. Hi, Alex.”
“Hi, Ruth.”
They’ve never gotten along. Well, that’s not true. Really, Alex has never accepted that Ruth is a person. Alex doesn’t have little siblings, so she sees them as tiny and annoying beasts who are always underfoot and/or trying to butt in. And sure, they’re annoying, but what your friends don’t see are all the times your siblings are your friends. They’re always around. They’re better company than real friends, sometimes. I feel like in books and movies the person with siblings despises them, and the only child wants to play with the other family’s babies, but in my experience, anyway, it’s the opposite.
“Want to go outside?” I asked Alex.
“The great outdoors!” said Dad. “The freedom of childhood!”
“Can I come?” asked Ruth.
Alex grimaced and shook her head at me as if we were behind Ruth’s back, which we weren’t. Ruth saw the whole thing.
Darn.
But what could I do? Alex was only here for the afternoon. “Sorry, Ruth,” I said. “We’ve got something we’re working on.”
“Let them have their time!” trilled Dad. “Ruth, come with me. Ivan’s about ready for big-boy underwear, and I think I remember where we packed away Soren’s. You can help me organize it.”
“Dad!” I said. “Stop talking about my underwear!”
“Though we might have to buy some new pairs, to be honest. Soren was so big by the time he finally got toilet-trained that Ivan might not fit—”
“Da-ad!”
“Not to mention the stains— What, Soren? Something wrong?”
I groaned. “Forget it. Come on, Alex. Let’s go outside.”
FROM THE TREE platform, we could see the triplets in their backyard, rummaging around in a longish patch of grass.
“What are they doing?” said Alex.
“Let’s ask them,” I said.
“I don’t know—”
“ANDREZEJCZAKS!” I hollered. They jumped and looked up, but they couldn’t find us. The tree platform has a lot of camouflage, mostly because it’s half-finished. That’s why we don’t call it a tree house. Dad and I were building it together, but then Ivan got born.
Alex said, “Do we have to—”
“YOO-HOO! UP HERE!”
Tabitha pointed, and Lila’s and Olivia’s gazes followed. They jogged toward the tree platform. “Trust me,” I told Alex quietly. “They’re fun.”
I unfurled the rope ladder, and Olivia grabbed it first. “Don’t mess with my ankles while I’m going up,” she told her sisters.
“Of course not!” cried Lila.
“We would never!” said Tabitha, wounded.
Olivia rolled her eyes and flew up the ladder like she didn’t believe them at all. “Oh my gosh!” she said when she saw Alex, who’d sat with her back against the trunk of the tree. “It’s you!”
“Hey.”
“Wow. Alex Harris. I always knew you were good at pranks, but Soren’s been telling us how good.” Olivia reached out her hand. “It’s an honor to be in your presence.”
The corner of Alex’s mouth twitched into a smile, and I could have kissed Olivia. (In a totally non-gross way, like on the back of the hand or something. And only if nobody was watching.) “What’s he been telling you?” said Alex.
“Well, a lot is still classified, he says,” said Olivia, and Alex gave me an approving nod, “but he told us a few details. Like that you were the one who got the kickball trophies out of Leary’s office.”
Alex would put that on her college application if she could.
“And how you stockpiled duct tape for months before Tapegate.”
Alex grinned. She couldn’t help it. Nobody in their right mind would call any Andrezejczak triplet “the nice one,” but Olivia is as close as it gets. “I heard about the Alarm Clock Incident,” said Alex. “Very impressive.”
“Thanks!” said Olivia. “Though we really should be thanking you.”
Alex’s expression soured. “Because if I hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have gotten to work with Soren?”
“No! No! Because you trained him so well.”
“Soren’s taught me a lot too,” said Alex.
“Aww,” said Olivia.
“Aww,” mimicked Tabitha.
Quick as a snake, Olivia reached out and pinched her neck.
So much for the nice one.
“You’ll regret that, Olivia,” said Tabitha.
“You’ll regret mocking me, Tabitha.”
“You’ll regret making me regret it, Olivia.”
“You’ll—”
Lila clapped her hands. “People! People! It’s time to get to work.”
“True,” said Tabitha, instantly switching gears. “Look at the collective prank power in this tree house.”
“Tree platform,” I corrected her.
“We’d be stupid not to take advantage of this opportunity.”
“That’s what we were thinking too,” said Alex.
Yes. Yes. I knew she’d come around.
“How much time do we have?” said Lila.
“Just this afternoon,” said Alex.
Just an afternoon. It was a crumb, and I used to have a cake.
Lila whipped out a legal pad. I don’t know where from. It’s one of her special talents, whipping out legal pads from nowhere. “I’ll take notes while we brainstorm,” she said. “Ideas, please!”
* * *
—
WE WERE LONG past brainstorming, deep into details, when Ruth and Flynn wandered over. “What are you guys doing?” said Ruth.
“Quick!” said Alex. “Pull up the ladder!”
“Who’s that?” I heard Flynn ask Ruth.
“Alex, Soren’s friend,” Ruth said. “Hey! Guys! What’s going on up there? Can we come up?”
“You mean, may we come up,” said Flynn.
Alex was rolling up the rope ladder, so the answer to both questions, obviously, was no. “Not this time,” I said, feeling a punch of guilt.
“Oh, come on,” said Olivia. “Can’t they?”
Olivia likes Flynn. Plus she has a soft spot for younger sisters because she’s the runt.
“You guys will make the platform collapse,” said Alex. “Five is as many as this thing can hold.”
That was honestly true. I could hear ominous creaks every time anyone shifted position. “Let’s play Catan tonight,” I called down. “The three of us.”
Ruth lifted a shoulder. Flynn didn’t say a word. They beat their retreat back to the house.
“I feel kind of bad,” said Tabitha.
“Me too,” said Olivia.
“I play with them all the time,” I said. “Seriously. All the time. And Flynn doesn’t even like pranking. He told me.”
“The thing about pranking,” said Alex, “is that if you let everyone in on it, there’s no point. There’s no prank.”
Lila fluttered the pages. “Back to the plan.”
I’d be extra nice to Ruth and Flynn tonight, I thought. I’d make it better.
But not now.
HERE ARE THE instructions for our small, domestic prank:
1. Sneak into the kitchen and find a box of uncooked macaroni. You also need Scotch tape. And one sandwich bag for each toilet you want to target.
2. Put a little handful of dry macaroni in each bag. Maybe ten pieces. Not much.
3. Go to the bathroom. Close the door like you’re actually, you know, going to the bathroom.
4. Tape the bag to the underside of the seat. Make sure the macaroni’s spread out enough that the seat looks flat when you close the lid.
5. Wait.
With five experts, it didn’t take long to hit every bathroom in both houses. Mom popped in just a
s we’d all met up in our living room for step 5. “Alex!” said Mom. “We’ve missed you so much!”
“Speak for yourself,” I said.
Alex looped back her leg and nailed me behind the knee. I crumpled to the floor. “Gotcha,” she said.
“Nice one,” said Mom, high-fiving her.
“Thanks for supporting your child,” I told her.
“You deserved it,” she said. “How are you, Alex?”
I waited for their chatting to die down. “Where are Ruth and Flynn?” I asked Mom as soon as it did.
“They’re walking to Coneheads,” said Mom. That’s the ice cream shop in town. “They took Jim Bob in the stroller.”
“Flynn agreed to get near Jim Bob?”
Mom gave me a look. “Don’t be mean, Soren.”
“I’m not. I was just wondering. So they’ll be gone for another hour?”
“At least,” said Mom.
Good, because I had a feeling they would not take it well if they were the ones who fell for the prank.
“Let’s play Pictionary Telephone,” said Tabitha. Before long, we were howling over how demented our drawings got. It was so fun I wished Ruth and Flynn were there too.
We almost missed Dad lumbering down the hall, the newspaper folded under his arm.
“There he goes!” I hissed. “P-Day! P-Day! The moment has come!”
“Shh!” said all four girls together, so hard that the breeze from their mouths practically knocked me over.
“Keep playing,” said Tabitha. “It’ll look suspicious if we don’t.”
Luckily, we were at a naturally quiet part in the game, everyone sketching the phrase that the person next to them had written. Nobody was paying much attention to drawing, though. We heard the bathroom door close. The fan whirred on as Dad turned on the light, and then there was silence.
And then—
“AHHHH!”
We were wide-eyed, trying not to laugh.
“LUCINDA!”
Dad rushed down the hall, holding up his pants with his hands.
“Yes?” said Mom. “Is there a problem?”
“I—I’m—”
Here Comes Trouble Page 10