A Not So Bad Day

I was walking along the pavement that day, glaring at everything that crossed my path because I was in a really bad mood. The reason, you dare ask? Fine, I’ll tell you. You see, that day I woke up late for school, got splashed in my clothes by a huge truck passing a puddle while going to school, got an F in my History quiz for the first time in my life, found out that every other person in my grade have been invited to a party hosted by the Carlene Winters, to which I was not invited, missed my bus back home and now had to walk four miles to get back. See? You pretty much get the idea of why I was this angry. Furthermore, just thinking about what I had in store when I got home to Mom made my head spin. Yes, to put it short, that was indeed the worst day of my life at that time.

In my frustration, I tried kicking a stray rock which, unfortunately, ended up hurting my toe.

And to just add to my misery, a pigeon pooped on my shoulder the next moment.

It was too much bad luck to have in one single day. Cursing the universe, I removed my bag, stamped my foot and threw it away into some bushes, which gave me short term satisfaction. And as all those highly optimistic motivational speakers say: Short term satisfaction is never good. Ever.

Because the next second, I regretted doing it after realizing I had my English assignment inside it. Swearing so hard that would have made a sailor proud, I went after my bag amidst thorns and leaves, wincing every time they pricked my skin. Still cursing, I at last found my bag at the very bottom, and felt a relieved smile spread over my face for the first time that day.

“At least you aren’t lost,” I murmured, extracting myself from the thorns, careful not to tear my clothing. I sighed, standing up and stretching.

“Maybe this isn’t that much of a bad day after all,” I said aloud to myself, trying to be optimistic. “Maybe this bad luck would be over— OOMPH!”

I started struggling against the grip of a human, or possibly an alien, I couldn’t see which since someone had covered my face.

“Let me go!” I yelled, kicking my legs when another pair of hands grabbed both of them by their ends to restrain me from hurting them. “Help! Help!” I screamed, wishing for anyone to save me, and you know what they did in return? A person placed a cloth in my face, which somehow silenced me. My heart thumped wildly, my senses on overdrive. Just when I had thought that this day couldn’t get any worse, I couldn’t have been any more wrong.

I was vaguely aware of being lifted and stuffed into vehicle which felt like a van. Is this a dream? A hallucination?

I couldn’t tell. What would happen to me? Maybe I’d be buried in some little cemetery in a town that wasn’t on the map. Or, my body could be parceled and sent to my home in a tiny bag. Maybe I’d just end up in a dumpster for the rats to mourn for me. Yeah, probably that.

And that was the happy thought in my mind before everything turned black.

-------

“Shall we remove the mask?” A somewhat familiar voice asked, and to my delirious state, it echoed a few times before it settled in my mind.

“Yes, man. I can’t wait to see her reaction,” another voice replied, and before I could prepare myself, someone roughly pulled off the thing covering my face. Blinding lights hit my eyes, causing them to water, and it took me a couple of moments to adjust to the lighting. Silence was the only thing that greeted me. Then a loud curse that made me flinch.

“What th— you have got the wrong person!” The first voice yelled, and just then, three figures came into focus. One brown haired, black eyed, tall and skinny guy was the first to register in my mind. The second one was slightly stocky, black haired with rich brown eyes. The third, in my opinion was the most familiar and the most handsome one with light blond hair and sea blue eyes which I had seen so many times, but never ceased to amaze and irritate me at the same time.

“You,” I said, ignoring my throbbing cheek and glaring at Jordan Russell, of course, the most popular guy of my rival school. How someone unpopular and utterly idiotic like me could have encountered some one popular like him, you ask? He couldn’t have bothered me if he didn’t have the brains to compete with me in every single competition between our schools. Unfortunately, he did, and always managed to worsen my mood with that smirk of his. To my satisfaction, he didn’t have that obnoxious smile on his face like he always did.

“Yes, me. Noah! Brett! Haven’t you ever seen Carlene Winters in your whole life? What does she have common with—her?” He said the last word as if me being totally opposite from Carlene was the most obvious thing in the world.

Noah, the brown haired one, Brett, the other one, looked apologetically at each other, then at me. Even though they were his best friends, I didn’t have a reason to hate them until now. Until my throbbing cheek.

“She has the same hair like Carlene!” Noah tried to reason, and Brett continued, “And the same figure!”

Even I knew that was an exaggeration. Carlene, just like every other Queen Bee out there had the perfect hourglass figure, and while I, well, there is no easy way to put this, simply looked like a potato. Jordan seemed to share my thoughts, and disbelief was clear in his stupid face.

“How? How can you compare Carlene with her?” he asked, and to be honest, I felt a teeny bit hurt, and my ultimate defense mechanism was switched on automatically.

“That ‘her’ you all are talking about is sitting right next to you, tied up in an uncomfortable chair, wishing death upon all of you.”

They, unsurprisingly, ignored me.

“You’re right,” Brett apologized, glancing at me, and then at Jordan. “What are we going to do with her?” My irritation shot up a notch when they addressed me as if I wasn’t there.

“Dispose her,” Jordan replied, and I gaped at him. I was right in the first place. I was going to end up in some dumpster along with cockroaches and who-knows-what. But I was not going down without a fight.

“Dispose me? Excuse me? If you’re planning to kill me, know that I will come back as a ghost and take revenge."

And again, they chose to ignore me.

“But how?” Noah inquired, and Jordan shrugged.

“Knock her out and just throw her beside her house?”

“But what if she tells somebody about this?” Brett asked, and Jordan nodded thoughtfully.

“We have to make sure she doesn’t,” he said, before shooting a truly wicked smile my way which made me still in my chair. “Grab her phone.”

Oh, crud.

“No,” I said, thrashing against the ropes that bound me to the chair, regretting my decision to not put a password to my phone. Jordan didn’t pay any attention to my struggles, but said to Noah who had my phone,

“Go through her photos. If you find nothing in there, proceed to the text messages.”

No no no no no—

I willed myself to calm down and do what I always do when I face something difficult: Think a way out.

Think, Blaze, think, I told myself as Noah went through my photos one by one reluctantly.

Why did he kidnap me? Because he wanted to kidnap Carlene.

Noah’s fingers moved rapidly now.

Why Carlene? They have been dating for three years.

Jordan was tapping his foot on the ground while Brett was looking over Noah’s hunched shoulders at my phone.

If they have been dating, why would he kidnap her? Unless he had planned her a surprise, but this place doesn’t look like the type of surprise a sane person would give to their girlfriend. Or else—or they could’ve—

A surge of excitement traveled up my spine at the discovery as I gasped, breathlessly, “You two have broken up, haven’t you?”

The three of them stopped and stared at me. Jordan shot me a slightly impressed look, and a plan formed in my head.

“I hate Carlene. You hate Carlene. What if we team up together?” I asked, and Jordan let out a snort.

“A pathetic attempt at escape, sweetheart. I am sure we can manage well without you,” he replied, and I quickly said to him,

“Yeah, I can see that. You’ll probably kidnap Carlene’s mother instead of her next time, and trust me, she wouldn’t be too eager to plot against her daughter as I am.”

Jordan actually thought about it for a while, his eyes focused on me, before grudgingly saying, “Fine. What do you want in return?”

“Nothing. Just give me my phone back and we can make a plan together.”

And so it was. They untied me, and I snatched my phone back before sitting together, brainstorming our perfect plan to bring down Carlene Winters.

My mind immediately set to work, and I was honestly surprised how Jordan and I worked so well together.

When the planning was over at last, I couldn’t help the wide grin on my face. Jordan raised an eyebrow at it, but I ignored him, thinking about this opportunity to get revenge on Carlene who had always humiliated me every single day ever since middle school.

That night, Jordan, much to my surprise, gave me a lift home in his car. Something about his smile unsettled me as he dropped me off in my front porch under the moonlit night.

“Next time,” he said before speeding off, “Remember to text like your lawyer would read it one day,” leaving me utterly speechless. So he had already gone through my phone.

I was scared. Not because of my secret, but I was scared about how I wasn’t scared he already knew it when I should be making plans to move out of this town right now. Funny how things change in a day, eh?

-------

My doorbell rung loudly, and I tossed in my bed, not wanting to get up on a Saturday morning. Once again, the sound of the bell echoed around the house, and I yelled, “Mom! Get the door!”

No answer.

Through my groggy eyes, I looked at the clock and groaned. She had a town developing meeting today. Muttering and not caring that I probably looked like a bird caught in a storm, I trudged downstairs and opened the door.

And felt my face redden at Jordan, standing like a male model in front of me with a wide smile.

“Good….morning?” He said, and I saw with humiliation that he was trying not to laugh.

“Blaze? Who’s that?”

So she hadn’t gone at all. Refraining from cursing, which I did a lot these days, I put on my pleasant face the best I could.

“Jordan, this is my mother. Mother, this is Jordan.”

Mom frowned, and I could literally see the wheels turning inside her head.

“Jordan Russell? That guy you said that lived with a family of orangutans in Ethiopia eating toffee wrappers instead of—

I shut the door on his face, red as a tomato and glared at my mother.

“Mom!” I said, embarrassed. “Stop! How can you—ugh! I hate you!”

Plastering my best smile, I once again opened the door to a silently laughing Jordan, and my mind automatically said, He is cute when he laughs.

Shaking my head, I looked quizzically at him, and asked, “Why are you here this early?”

“Here,” he said, handing me a box of chocolates. “In return for your…..help.” To say that I was surprised would have been an understatement.

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it heartily. Mom just slipped out with raised eyebrows, and I smiled softly at him.

“About the plan…..today at six, right?” He asked, and I nodded, closing the door behind me to make sure Mom couldn’t hear our conversation.

“Okay then. See you at the park.”

With that, he walked back to his car, whistling, leaving me clutching to the box of chocolates.

--------

I shifted nervously on my feet as the sky around me darkened, and a car pulled up near. Carlene stepped out, glaring at the woods around me.

So the anonymous text had worked.

“Hello?” She said tentatively, stepping into the woods.

I half expected her to go back when there was no response, but to my delight, she stepped further in. For a few moments she kept searching for the person who sent her the text message, which was Noah.

Suddenly headlights filled the forests, and Carlene shielded her eyes against the bright light. Brett at work. Silently whooping, I watched as the car sped off, and Carlene’s gaping face was visible under the moonlight.

Her eyes widened as she realized that she was stranded alone in the outskirts of the city with no way to communicate with my signal jammer in place.

Her panic was palpable as she stepped deeper into the forest like an idiot. The fool of the decade award goes to: Carlene Winters!

Carlene jumped at an owl hoot, which was Noah’s signal for me to work. I pulled the strings attached to some branches directly above Carlene’s head, resulting in a bucket full of mud to fall right above her head. Her ear spitting scream echoed throughout the hopefully empty forest, and I had to place my hands over my ears as Carlene ran straight in the direction of Jordan, who had another trick up his sleeve. From where I stood, I could clearly see the glint of his silver knife tainted with red as he stepped from the bushes, his face painted like a maniac, matching that grin of his. Carlene stilled, her green eyes widening, and then blinked twice before shrieking at the top of her voice, running towards me. With the same grin on my face, I jumped down from the tree with an axe in my hand, yelling unintelligible words at her face, and watched with a tiny bit of guilt as her face paled further and her eyes popped out.

“Aaaaaaaah!” She yelled, and I kind of felt sorry for her as she ran away, tears in her eyes.

She kept running and running, tripping over our carefully set traps so often, luckily avoiding some of them. She ran all the way to the other end as we expected her to, right into a public park. I know, it sounds weird. But the government had decided to build a park there, and who am I to say anything about it? And the park is always filled with people, no matter the time, especially at a time like this. My cheeks hurt so hard from grinning that I tried not to. Carlene, seeing the yellow lights shining some distance ahead of her, hurtled gladly towards it, and out in the lights amidst a surprised group of people.

I stopped behind a cluster of trees, joined by Jordan, Noah and Brett a few minutes later, who were panting like three dogs deprived of water.

“Is she gone?” Jordan asked breathlessly, wiping away the paint from his face. I nodded as the scene unfolded in front of us.

“Help!” Carlene gasped, grasping the collar of a man standing there. “Help me!”

“There are…..There are…..things inside the forest! They….They…..Knives……Blood….."

I didn’t blame the townspeople for the way they looked at Carlene like she was the mini Bigfoot emerging out of the forest.

But woman did ask kindly,

“What do you mean? Is someone out there to hurt you? Some type of animal?”

Carlene shook her head frantically, gulping down air.

One burly man said, “Then what? Speak clearly if you want us to help you.”

Carlene nodded, breathing in deeply before letting the words fall out.

“There are people with knives in there, they drove away with my car and tried—tried to kill me so I ran and ran and ran—

 “Let’s go and see whether this girl is saying the truth.”

And so they went. Almost half of the people in the park, which was like a twenty five something people, followed Carlene as she led the way through the woods as if she had known it for ages. Thankfully, the other three had already disabled the unused traps, so the people following Carlene didn’t suspect anything. It took almost thirty minutes for them to reach the spot where it all began, and I distinctly realized that they wouldn’t be too happy when they saw that she was lying.

And that was what exactly happened. Carlene, to her bewilderment found her car exactly as she left it, thanks to Brett. And so did the townspeople.

“You said that they drove away on your car?” The man asked suspiciously, and she had no response but a miserable look.

“Let’s search for the killers then.” The woman sounded a bit doubtful, but started searching all the bushes and trees as we stood far away from the action.

They found nothing. Carlene was speechless, and the people, not so much. Claiming that she had been fibbing all along, they dispersed, muttering under their breaths. Carlene was left to get back to her car and go home alone in her muddy clothes, while we, on the other hand, were ecstatic that we had succeeded.

And this prank was just the beginning of a new unbreakable bond that lasted for a lifetime: Friendship.