It was several weeks ago that I was sitting here, typing away on my computer, when I came to the rude realization that life was boring. I and my siblings were stuck in an awful rut.
I hate being stuck in a rut. Adventure is the spice of life, which is why I try to live by the GK Chesterton quote: "Adventures are inconveniences rightly considered; inconveniences are adventures wrongly considered." I normally can live my life of adventures through my poor, pitiable characters in my books who don't protest when I put them through the most excruciating circumstances (usually). :0) But there are times that I have to spice up my own life.
So, since I was stuck in a rut, I snuck into my sister's room and, like the wonderful big sister I am, made her bed for her. The only problem was that I made it with the sheets tucked in at the head and the pillows at the foot. Then I also removed the lead from all of her mechanical pencils.
Hannah came running into my room not long after, laughing but trying to pretend to be mad at me. She ended up flopped on my bed, laughing so hard she almost was crying. I laughed with her, and being the idiot that I am, left my room to go get a drink or some such thing.
I came back ten minutes later (having been detained by my mom) to shredded paper coating my floor and bed, plus conditioner on the door handle so it made my hand all slimy (this is an old favorite in my house). Hannah laughed and thought it was over. I let her think that until she was in the shower in the evening, whereupon I swept up the paper and piled it on the top of her ceiling fan.
Before we went to bed for that night, I asked her, "Did you like your present on the ceiling fan?"
She flew into her room and turned on the fan. "Heather!!!" she yelled amid a snow-flurry of paper...and promptly swept it up and chucked it back into my room.
I remained calm and waited until she went to tell Mom and Dad goodnight. Then I swept it up again and dumped it in the foot of her bed. Hannah told me a smirking good-night, sure she had gotten the last word in.
The next morning, our friends the Ms were coming over to help us finish painting the outside of our house. When I looked in Hannah's room, she was still comfortably asleep, and she'd kicked the shredded paper out of her quilt in the middle of the night. It was all over the foot of her bed and her floor.
"Don't forget to sweep that up before they get here!" I said after waking her up.
Hannah groggily looked at the foot of the bed and moaned. "Great! Thanks, Heather!"
During the morning, my brother Josh, my friends Joe and Wyatt, and I painted away on the house. We didn't really get much paint on each other during the morning, which was amazing. I think the worst thing that happened was I almost fell off the ladder and was teased about having stubby arms (hence the nickname Stubby) and not being able to reach as high as the guys.
I should've known Alex and Hannah had something up their sleeves. I didn't even give the prank war the slightest amount of thought until Alex came running up to me after lunch.
"Go look at your room," she said with a snicker and a grin.
I ran to my room, Wyatt trailing because he'd heard about this prank war and was anxious to see the latest installment. When I got there, though, there was nothing wrong that I could see. Sure, there were stacks of paper on the floor, and my writing assignment book lay open on the floor, but it had been in the exact same position for two days. Then I saw a paper on my bed that hadn't been there earlier that morning. I grabbed it.
It was a picture of Alex and Hannah laughing at me. As I scanned it, trying to figure out how it fit in, I felt something lightly brush my ear.
"Uhhh, Heather..." Wyatt said behind me.
I whirled. The air was full of beautiful little squares of shredded paper, and Hannah was standing at the door, her hand on the ceiling fan switch.
I groaned and left the paper where it was.
"We also took your writing notebooks cause Wyatt said you took the lead out of Hannah's pencils," Alex piped up.
"Traitor!" I said to Wyatt as I ran past. Now, taking my notebooks was no prank--that was an act of war. Joe and Josh wandered in, watching with everyone else as I tore through Hannah's room. Hannah and Alex egged me on with "warmer, warmer...oh, now you're cooler" all the way into Hannah's closet.
I eyed the stack of boxes at the back of the walk-in closet and remembered Hannah once showing me a hidey-hole she'd built back there. I ran to the boxes and pushed them aside. Aha! There were my precious notebooks, all of them!
I grabbed them off the floor, turned, and...
SLAM! The worst sound in my life. The closet door seemed to shut itself of its own accord, right in my face! But as I listened, I could hear people laughing on the other side--Joe's high-pitched giggle that hasn't deepened even if he is fifteen; Wyatt's sharp, deeper laugh; Hannah and Alex giggling their little-girl giggles; Josh's low chuckle.
"Let me outta here!" I yelled, slamming into the door with my shoulder. It barely moved. "Josh! Let go of the door!"
"It's not Josh," a voice taunted.
"Josiah James Lee! You let me out of here, or I'll stuff spiders in your bed next Sunday night when we're over there!" I threatened. Strangely enough, that had no effect one him, though it would've usually gotten me my wish. I shoved against the door again.
"Ack! Hannah, help me, my socks are sliding on the floor!" Joe yelled.
Two more bodies...I later found out they were Hannah and Wyatt...flung themselves against the door. I stumbled back and sighed irritably. How had this happened? I wasn’t supposed to get shut in the closet while looking for my notebooks! That wasn’t right! They were all gonna get it when I got out!
“We should go out and work some more, or the moms will wonder what we’re up too.” Josh.
“But this is fun!” Alex.
“You’re not holding her in! She’s a pretty strong girl!” Joe.
“You’re telling me. I wrestle with her sometimes.” Hannah.
“You should be able to beat her, you’ve got longer legs and arms.” Joe.
“But her legs are really strong cause she did so much jumping stuff in track. She uses them a lot.” Hannah.
“Here, get the desk chair and push it underneath the handle, Hannah, then sit in it while Joe and I hold the door closed. That way at least one of us doesn’t slid on the wooden floor.” Wyatt.
I heard them rustling around and tried a chance at the door again. Since I was barefoot, I had advantage over sock-clad feet. But Joe and Wyatt are really strong guys, so it didn’t give me much of an advantage overall.
“Hurry! She’s pushing it open!” Wyatt yelled.
Hannah got the chair in place and sat. So much for that. I stood and yelled threats for a few minutes while they discussed what to do. Suddenly the door opened. I lunged for the opening and saw Joe standing there with a camera. I grabbed the door and slammed it.
“Put the camera away! You’re not taking pictures of this disgrace!” I shouted.
“Aw, c’mon, Heather! It’d make a funny story for the blog,” Hannah said.
“No way, huh uh! Put the camera away or you guys can go work and I’ll sit in here and write the rest of the livelong day!”
“OK, OK.” Wyatt opened the door and grinned. “Friends?”
I punched him and stomped back to my room, contemplating revenge. Half an hour later, as we worked outside, I had successfully planted a handprint of Taos tan paint on Wyatt’s face and chased a daddy-long-legs halfway up Joe’s ladder, where I threatened him with it while he clung to the gutter to keep himself from falling over and pleaded with me to knock it off. I left Josh alone because he hadn’t done much, plus if I started something with him I’d regret it for the rest of my life. Alex was easy; I just tickled her until she squealed for me to stop.
A repentant Wyatt helped me finalize the plans on Hannah. We snuck into her room and took out the light bulbs in her ceiling fan. After the M’s went home, I casually waited for Hannah to discover the missing lightbulbs. She went in and out of her room twice, flicking the lights on and off, without noticing!
“OK, my sis is definitely a blonde,” I wrote Wyatt in an email. Then I went to Hannah’s room.
“Hey, Hannah,” I said, flicking the light switch on and off several times. Hannah just looked at me, her eyes blank. Then she looked up at the ceiling fan.
“You!!!” she yelled. I fled to my room, glad to prove that I had the last word!
(Epilogue: Or maybe not. The day after I wrote this, we had our Bible study group out to help us clean up all the brush and trees that had been knocked over when clearing a spot for the house. I was taking a drink break when Hannah’s friend Shelby came to me and said sweetly, “Heather, I haven’t seen your room yet, and Hannah won’t show it to me cause it’s your room. So can you come show it to me?” Like the nice person that I am, I went with her, opened the door to my room, walked in, and received a shower of shredded paper in the face! Hannah, Sarah, Amanda, and Alex had hidden in my closet with cupfuls of the stuff! They were very sweet about it, and after laughing and giggling, decided to sweep my room for me. Now Hannah can say she had the last word, although I’m plotting what to do to her next. However, if she’s going to enlist the help of her friends every time, I think I’m digging a very deep hole…six feet under and counting).