Prank Wars Page 4

  “Then I’ll meet you. How about in five minutes?”

  “You don’t have my address,” I stalled, trying to think of all the addresses of the most annoying girls I knew or maybe of an insane asylum. I gave up. “Or maybe you just don’t know what today is?”

  “Monday.”

  “April Fool’s day.”

  He was silent on the other end. It was just enough to make me sweat. “Oh, so you mean you called me up so you could make me believe that a girl would actually be interested enough to ask me out just so you could tell me it was all some cruel joke?”

  That sounded terrible. “No, not really. I…” explaining made it sound lame because all of a sudden when he repeated it back to me, it did sound lame, plus everyone was staring at me. I was supposed to look strong and somewhat clever.

  “How charming of you,” he added.

  I gave a weak laugh. I couldn’t let him turn this on me. “As if you have any problem with girls asking you out!”

  Tory straightened nervously. I wasn’t supposed to compliment the enemy, even if it was backhanded. I felt my face go red for a lot of reasons. Maybe Byron would think this was funny and it would all be okay. I mean, we just wanted him to sweat, not…not—I don’t know—to have feelings. I forced my voice into more teasing tones. “Just admit I got you, Lord Byron.”

  “Only one person calls me Lord Byron, Suzy Q.” Before I could hang up in sheer panic, the doorbell rang. “Hey, let’s not fight,” he said softly. “In fact, I left a little present on your doorstep just for you…to celebrate the holiday, of course.” My heart made a skydive out of my chest. “Hope you like it, cuz.”

  Cuz? Was that short for cousin or something?

  He hung up, leaving me in stunned silence. I turned to the other girls and we listened to Sandra’s heels catch on the carpet on her way to the door. Nothing would stop her from finding this latest humiliation. The front door creaked open. It was followed by a shrill shriek. I thought I had executed the plan flawlessly, but apparently Lord Byron had been onto me almost from the beginning, but when? He had set a perfect diversion by acting the part of the nice guy. That was usually when guys got the best of me.

  Sandra stormed into our room, her long fingernails digging into a bunch of crumpled flowers. “Why would someone pick my tulips, huh? I just bought these!” She flung them at me. “I can only assume it has to do with your stupid pranks, Madeleine!”

  I picked them off the floor. “I’m sure it doesn’t.” I said it out of habit.

  “There’s a note.” Lizzie pointed out.

  Sandra flung the note at me and she slammed my bedroom door shut behind her. I turned the note over. It was written on the back of some chemistry notes from yesterday’s class. Underneath, Lord Byron had colored in a dark black spot like we were pirates in Treasure Island. He had declared war. He had officially declared war! I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that kind of commitment until I read the note: “In your dreams, Mad Dog.”

  Kali was the first to find her voice. “Mad Dog?” She glanced over at me. I could almost see the rusty batteries working in her brain. “Madeleine Doggett! That’s you!” She giggled. “He’s so very clever, isn’t he?” I cringed at the compliment. “Mad Dog. I’m going to call you Mad Dog from now on! It’s perfect.”

  Tory murmured an excuse and left for her own apartment downstairs. Her red hair shot behind her like a flame. She disliked losing a battle as much as I did.

  Lizzie sighed. “I hope you’re not planning some sort of counterattack, Mad Dog.” It disturbed me how easily my new nickname rolled off her tongue.

  “Are you kidding?” I crumpled the paper in my hand. “Lord Byron is no match for me. He won’t last a day.”

  Chapter Four

  Day 103

  2232 hours

  “The night was crisp, deceptively peaceful. My squadron sat on the green shag carpet in their wary positions next to an open window. We listened to the rain tapping softly into the cold ground as we waited for a counterattack from Lord Byron’s men. These scribbles might be my last. But I must tell my story though pen cannot describe the horrors of this last semester.”

  —Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Saturday, May 26th).

  I was supposed to be a regular college student, you know, the kind who eats peanut-butter sandwiches and Ramen noodles, and occasionally goes on a date? Now I cared for one thing only: survival. Okay, maybe just keeping my cool, but still this war was bigger than me now. Had it only been two months since that ill-fated prank call to Byron? Red dye frosted our fingers from pranks gone bad. We never got out of our parking spaces because the guys purposely blocked us in. Anything remotely valuable had gone missing, but nothing could stop me now.

  If I could keep Byron busy with meaningless pranks, it meant fewer broken hearts. The only problem was that Byron was a master at delegating. He never had to lift a finger, just coldly executed orders to his men, leaving him freer than we were now. Even worse, I was buried in homework. As much as I hated to admit it, Byron managed to turn every male in the 73rd ward against me. Well, I might’ve done some of that to myself since I gave dating advice to most of their ex-girlfriends, but still Byron was the mastermind.

  A knock sounded on the frontlines, and I stared at our front door with eyes that had seen too much: lobsters in the bathtub, garlic powder in our toothpaste, cow eyeballs served on plates. And now I was caught in my Lucille Ball pajama bottoms. I put down my physics homework and took a steadying breath. “Would somebody open that?”

  Lizzie lounged on our ugly green-striped couches. She glanced up from her homework. Her hair brushed against the pages of her Shakespeare book. I coveted her hair in a bad way. It was long and wavy and twisted into a million braids. She looked bored. “Are you sure you want to do that, Mad Dog?”

  I grimaced at the nickname. “What? It could be a visitor. Are we just going to let her stand outside in the cold? Fine. If that’s what you want. You’re the Relief Society President. You know best.”

  Lizzie stared at me. Was it possible for her to make someone wait? Crickets chirped inside the house. They were left over from the great cricket sting last week. With a fed-up sigh, Lizzie pushed off the couch. “And who broke your legs?” She trudged to the front door in her bright blue pajamas.

  “The peephole doesn’t work,” I warned her. She gave me a weird look, and I shrugged. “The guys put it in backwards. They can look through it from the outside and see us, so we—”

  Lizzie gave a fed up sigh and jerked the door open. An ugly yellow stuffed animal sat on our porch. I peered closer. It was an ugly duckling, in fact, the ugliest duckling I had ever seen. No, it wasn’t some sad commentary on us. None of Byron’s pranks were that clever. Lizzie didn’t look surprised. “Huh? We’ve been hit again.”

  “What do we do, Captain?” Kali ran out from the back wearing a shirt with a peace sign. Her blonde hair was in pigtails. I gave her an exasperated look. She had picked up the captain thing from Tory.

  I pushed off paper debris from my lap and rushed to the porch. The enemy was nowhere in sight, but they were definitely out there. I gave the ugliest duckling a wide berth. Who knew where they got it. Possibly D.I. I’m sure it was covered in fleas—just another way to get back at us.

  Lizzie fumbled with one of her white canvas flats and put it on, limping forward, a war vet with her share of battle wounds. Her left shoes had all been stolen by Lord Byron’s spies just yesterday. “There’s a message with that stuffed thing.” She threw it in my hands.

  “What do you and leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving have in common?” I read. “The same thing you have in common with a deer playing on the highway.” That didn’t even make sense, which made the enemy’s coup even more triumphant. I raked my hands through my black hair. It had a streak of premature white in it—compliments of Lord Byron…and possibly genetic, but whatever. The phone rang and we jumped. I fumbled with it. “Yes?”

  “We have an emergency in th
e third infantry division, requesting immediate backup. We’re stuck in our apartment.” I recognized Tory’s gruff voice. She sounded frantic. “Get us out!”

  “We’ve got a code red downstairs,” I told Kali. “Move.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes, but she followed us out anyway. Kali tripped over a forgotten plate of old mashed potatoes left on our porch, which was where all of the guys’ rotten food usually ended up. She gasped, but this time in pure hatred. “Ooh, gross,” she squealed, kicking the potatoes off her Sketchers. “I just bought these!”

  Too late, I understood the note. What did we have in common with mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving? Indeed. It was gooey and moldy and had to be months old, but nothing could deter us from this rescue operation. We ran downstairs to force open Tory’s front door—except she didn’t have a door anymore. We stepped back in shock when we saw the wall of cinder blocks covering it.

  “Clear it out!” Tory shouted behind the wall.

  I grimaced when I saw the flash from behind. Kali was our little blonde paparazza. She snapped another picture. I’m sure I looked great with my ratty hair. Besides the loss of her Sketchers, Kali never took anything seriously. “I look like Medusa,” I warned. “Take another picture and I’ll break your camera with my face.”

  She giggled and another flash burst from her camera.

  “Hurry up!” Tory shouted out from the other side of the cinder block wall. No doubt she was eager to get revenge on whoever did this. At least she still had some fighting spirit left. It was more than I had. After the obligatory pictures, we went to work, hauling away the cinder blocks.

  Correction, some of us got to work. Lizzie just leaned against the blocks, giving me one of those fed-up looks again. She tied all of her braids into one long side braid. “When is this going to stop?” she asked.

  I heaved a cinder block to the ground and tirelessly tugged at another. “Why don’t you ask the guys?”

  “You’re going to leave it up to them?” she asked. I worked even faster, hoping to avoid the now familiar conversation. “You know you could be the bigger person and end this first,” she suggested.

  “And let them win? Please.”

  “Are you even getting any homework done?”

  I froze her with a look. Well, I tried to freeze her with a look. She just lifted a brow at me. “I don’t sleep very much,” I admitted, “and I don’t need that much sleep, so…”

  “They’re winning.”

  I grimaced, desperate to free Tory from her apartment so that I could get someone with some fighting spirit on my side. Already I could see Tory’s agitated red hair bobbing over the cinder block wall; it was in a looped bun on top of her head like ’Cindy Lu Who’ from the Grinch. After taking down another cinder block, I saw her narrowed hazel eyes through the cracks. It startled me and I fell back. Kali slammed a cinder block on her own fingers and screeched out in agony.

  “Hurry up!” Tory ordered behind the wall. “Just wait until I get my hands on them. Ooh!”

  Kali sucked on her fingers. Lizzie let out another sigh. “They’re long gone now,” Lizzie said. “You’ll never catch them.”

  “Then why don’t you help us? You’re the only one, who...” With my eyes on Kali, I lowered my voice. “Lizzie, you’re more capable than any of my…ur…” Lizzie’s steady eyes were on me, so I modified my speech from soldier talk to girl talk. “I can’t do this alone. If you want this to be over then help me. I mean, really really help me.”

  She tugged on her thick hair, and I knew that meant she was thinking. “Only if you promise to end this, and I mean really really end this.”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” She smiled sarcastically back at me, and I stopped hauling cinder blocks much to Tory’s dismay. “You actually think I enjoy this?”

  “Well, you know you’re flirting, right?”

  My mouth fell open. She said that to annoy me, didn’t she? “Take that back,” I said. “This whole thing…is not…don’t get the wrong idea. I’m no flirt.”

  She smiled even wider, only now I wasn’t sure if she was teasing me. “It’s okay to flirt—especially if you mean something by it.”

  How could she? My dearest, wisest friend, accuse me of actually liking someone like Byron? I saw how players like Lord Byron went through women, a different one every weekend all in the name of “hanging out.” And those same women pretended not to care, even though they really did. And the guys were getting away with it. Well, I wouldn’t let them—not anymore. Not that I was making much of a difference right now. It just felt better than doing nothing. “Look.” My hands landed over another cinder block. “If I want to flirt, I’ll flirt…as soon as I find a man worthy of it, but this, sweet Lizzie,” I set the cinder block down heavily, “does not fall under the same category as flirting.”

  She nodded with mock grimness. “Yes, things couldn’t be more serious.”

  “I’ll give you a lesson on flirting in more peaceful times, but for now—”

  “We stop the bad guys, right?” Again, I detected Lizzie’s sarcasm, but I decided to ignore it as long as it came with her cooperation.

  We were down to the last half of the cinder block wall when Tory scrambled up and over the side like a bat from all that was unholy—well, she sported a Batgirl shirt anyway. “What are you waiting for?” she shrieked. The rest of the cinder blocks toppled under her running legs. Her face was red with fury and she flew down the stairs, taking two at a time. By the looks of things, she looked mad enough to fill the guys’ bathtub with an entire school of goldfish—maybe their sinks too.

  Kali giggled and scampered happily after her. I jerked my thumb after Kali. “Now, that girl is flirting.” Already Tory and Kali had reached the lawn below and were sprinting as fast as their short legs could carry them to the guys’ apartments. I had no idea what they were planning on doing once they got there. “Now Tory, if you notice the stiff set to her shoulders, is not flirting. She’s in it for the blood. She’s also classified as clinically insane, so...”

  Lizzie cracked up at that. “And you?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  I noticed the trail of mashed potatoes that Kali had left on the stairs. “I’m in it for the food.” I leaned over the balcony, cupping my hands over my mouth like a megaphone. “Hey girls, wait! A little strategy is in order here, don’t you think? Girls? Hey!”

  But Tory wouldn’t listen. She had turned into a little dot in the distance. Kali was a bigger dot in the distance, seeing as she couldn’t quite keep up with Tory’s fury. Kali’s pajama bottoms were a burnt orange blur. She was laughing something. I could hear her high-pitched voice from here. They were both goners.

  I sighed. Lizzie and I took the stairs at a more sedate pace. Lizzie was right. The tide this war was taking a ridiculous turn. There had to be a better way to get our message across. “We need a new strategy,” I said.

  Lizzie thought for a moment. “Do you know anyone with a fog machine?”

  “Redundant,” I said. The guys put one outside our window to make us think our food was burning. It worked, but on the wrong person. Sandra freaked out. I still couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t moved yet, and to an apartment that cost twice as much as ours. At least then she’d be happy.

  “Well, maybe if we used the fog machine to stage a ghost?”

  I laughed outright. The boys weren’t that stupid. “What we need, Lizzie, is something of theirs they can’t bear to live without, something we can bargain with.”

  “What? Like their hearts?”

  I laughed. “No, like a Care bear. Maybe that Tenderheart bear they have as their apartment mascot. And then we’ll take pictures with it all over campus…”

  But Lizzie wasn’t listening. She had stopped on the last stair that led up to our apartment at the top of the complex. I almost bowled her over as two guys walked out of our front door. They were strangers. The one closest to me dressed in a red button-down shirt and retro jeans like he
was ready for a night out in the town. My eyes narrowed in suspicion. They had been in our apartment instead. I stepped in front of the guys, blocking their escape. “What do you think you’re doing?” I said in a dangerous voice.

  I was standing too close to red shirt guy, so close that I could smell his cologne. Was it Hollister? My nose wrinkled. I couldn’t let him know that I liked how he smelled or that I thought he was actually attractive. I took a careful step back. He had blond choppy hair and he gave me a considering look with hazel, heavily hooded eyes. It just figured that Byron would send this guy. Any girl in her right mind would let this guy cause all sorts of mischief in her apartment, but I wasn’t any girl—or in my right mind. Besides the cologne, the blond smelled of bad boy smoothness mixed with boy-next-door charm—and yes, I’m aware I can’t really smell that. He gave me a disarming smile, his gaze trailing to my Lucille Ball pajama bottoms. “Hey.”

  I crossed my arms. “Poor things. Are you lost? We can show you your way out.”

  The other guy next to him chuckled, though his eyes darted uncomfortably around. This guy was oilier, and thankfully had less charisma. A lot less. And he was a giant. His Dune t-shirt was tucked into high-waisted pleated jeans were a little too short to meet his socks. He stared a little too hard at Lizzie and me, taking in our flushed faces. “Uh, we were just visiting,” he said in a voice that was much too quick.

  “Sure, right.” Visiting? That didn’t happen. The oily guy watched me with a knowing look like I was flirting with him. Apparently everyone thought that. I turned to Lizzie, not bothering to keep my voice down. “They’re spies.”

  The beautiful blond laughed appreciatively. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What’s your name again?” That was the last thing I wanted—for him to know I was Mad Dog, the target he was sent to terrorize.