C H A P T E R 2 9
?Don't grow up. It's a trap.?
I burst into thunderous laughter as Ethan's face contorted in what looked like pain and it looked like he was going to throw up. He quickly ran to the bathroom to spit it all out while I still couldn't control my giggles.
After I had somewhat calmed myself down, I grabbed a glass of water and drank it. All that laughing made me so thirsty. I quickly sat the glass back down in its place and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
There was a morning newspaper lying on the coffee table and I quickly lunged for it to see if there was any news about a certain runaway daughter who had been found.
There was front page news about the car launch party.
I quickly skimmed through the article which mainly described the features of the car and what Mr. Jenson had said.
Then it mentioned the celebrities and socialites who made an appearance at the party.
Nowhere was it mentioned about Mr. Jenson's daughter.
There were pictures of the guests on the second page with one of the picture being of Ethan and Heather kissing. Yuck.
I was in one of the pictures though. It was one of the guests' pictures. There was a woman and a man and I was a little behind them. I was barely recognizable but I was there in the background. The lighting managed to conceal half of my face. I doubted anyone would pay close attention to that.
Ethan came stomping angrily into the living room. He looked like he had puked. He grabbed his glass of water and downed it in one go. There wasn't much water left in it anyways. He had drank half of it already and I had taken a few sips.
"You shouldn't have messed with my cookies. Not the cookies." He growled and I put on a mock sympathetic look.
"I was hoping you would like the flavor I added to it," I said and chuckled.
"Shut up."
He snatched the paper from my hands and left after giving me one last glare.
My phone vibrated in my shorts pockets and I took it to see I had received a text message from an unknown number.
Hey sexy.
Want to go on a date with me?
Send nudesxxx
My eyes widened at the vulgar text message and if I had been eating something I was sure it would have been thrown out and across the room my now.
Who the hell would text me something so indecent? How did the person even get my number?
I was afraid to text back. The message was marked as read and I saw that the person was typing something. The text was never sent, but instead I got a call from the unknown number. I bit my lip, debating whether to take the call or not.
I finally slid a finger across the screen and accepted the call.
"Hello?" I said nervously.
"Hey!" A weird manly voice spoke through the phone and I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion. The voice sounded a little girly to belong to a man, but sounded like a man nonetheless.
"Hi, who are you?"
"That doesn't matter, babe. All that matters is that I want you. And I want me inside of you."
I was too shocked to respond.
"So tell me cupcake. Where, when and how? Oh, and do you like chocolate flavored condoms? That one is my favorite."
"What? Who the hell are you? How did you get my number?"
"Like I told you before, doesn't matter."
"Don't call me again," I warned, about to hang up.
I heard weird sounds before laughter suddenly erupted from the other end.
"Uh..." I trailed off, not knowing what to say.
"You should've heard your voice. You sounded so scared." The person said, howling of laughter again. This time it was a feminine voice and it sounded familiar.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Hmm...how about you try to guess it, Julie?"
There was only one woman who knew about me and my real name other than Olivia and I would've recognized Olivia's voice if it were her, but it wasn't her.
"Heather." It wasn't a question. I knew it was her. "You scared me with that prank."
"Well, I intended to scare you."
"How did you get my number?"
I heard her snort. "Please, do you think it's that hard for me?"
"No, it's probably not. So, why did you call me?" I asked, which I later realized sounded too demanding. "I don't mean to sound rude," I added quickly.
Heather laughed it off. "I need to have your number if we're going to work together to keep your real identity a secret."
"Oh," I said stupidly.
An awkward silence settled over us, well it was awkward for me. I didn't know about her.
"Thank you."
"No problem," She said after some time. "Well, I should get back to work."
"Okay, bye."
"See you later."
I waited for her to hang up. It would seem rude if I hung up first.
I let out a breath after she finally hung up. I felt somewhat uncomfortable interacting with Heather. She was really intimidating and whenever she was around, she seemed like such a powerful woman. I was almost afraid of her.
"Boo!" Someone yelled right next to my ear, making my heart leap in my chest. I let out a small scream and my phone slipped from my hand.
In a flash, a hand shot out to catch it and held it up in front of my face. The hand belonged to none other than Tristan Harris.
"You scared me," I said, clutching my chest as I snatched my phone with my other hand. My phone didn't receive any damage and I was thankful to Tristan's ninja skills for that. I didn't even hear him sneak up on me.
"That was what I was aiming for."
I glared at him. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I was just looking forward to spending some guy time with my best friend but he's sitting in his room, grumpy and all as if he's on his man period."
"So?"
"So I thought you had something to do with it."
"And you thought right," I said, nodding approvingly at him.
"What did you do?" Tristan asked curiously as he moved to take a seat on the couch.
"Nothing really major for him to be such a grumpy pants. And besides he was the one to start this mess."
"What?"
"We have a prank war on. He pranks me, I prank him back and this cycle just continues. I doubt we'd ever stop. He's that stubborn."
"So why don't you be the bigger person and stop?"
"No. That would be like indirectly admitting my defeat. And that will never happen," I stated as I took a seat opposite him. There wasn't anything for me to do anyway. Keith had gone to visit his family for the day and we had to cancel our cooking session for today.
"You're as stubborn as him," Tristan said. "How did all this start anyway?"
"Well, I bumped into him and he accidentally fell into the pool and then he pushed me into the pool the same day.
Then I accidentally kneed him in his...uh, balls and then he put shampoo all over my bathroom floor and I slipped and sprained my ankle.
So I put alarm clocks all over his room and so he sneaked into my room when Olivia and I were sleeping and played a song very loudly, almost giving me a heart attack.
So I stole his clothes and so he put itching powder in my clothes," I said, excluding the fact that I saw Ethan's manhood and he saw my bare chest accidentally.
"I pushed him into an inflatable pool filled with water while he was sleeping and in return he gave me the biggest scare I ever got.
He transformed my bathroom into a horror show, let's not talk about that because it still gives me nightmares.
So today I put toothpaste oreos in his breakfast," I said, grinning proudly.
That pretty much summed up all that had been going on between us.
"So that's why he's in such a bad mood."
I nodded.
"You know what you both need?" He asked after a moment of silence.
"What?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, curious about what he had in mind.
"You both want to show each other that you're the best. You both want a face off with each other. So that you both would be satisfied. These stupid pranks would get you nowhere," Tristan said.
"What's your point?"
"My point is that you two should meet me out near the pool exactly after one hour. I'll need Olivia's help in this though," he said happily.
I shrugged. "Whatever you have in mind is not going to work. We'll still be at each other's throats after this."
"Trust me. After this you both would be in each other's arms."
I rolled my eyes. "Right."
"Okay, not exactly in each other's arms but you two might actually be friends."
"Okay, that's bullshit."
"Just wait and watch."
Tristan disappeared off into the mansion, probably to Olivia's room. I doubted she would even want to see his stupid face but I was shocked out of my mind when the two came out of the library together, sporting mischievous smiles.
The two then proceeded towards Olivia's room and shut the door. I had no idea what they were doing inside together but I was positive that I wasn't going to like it one bit.
Half an hour later, the two finally got out of that damn room. I was sat outside, staring at the door as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. I was continuously stuffing my mouth with ice cream, chocolates and a piece of chocolate cake while I waited.
When they came out, Olivia instantly started dragging me away and into my room where she locked me in, ignoring my protests. I pounded on the door and yelled for them to let me out but to no avail.
What the hell were these two planning?
I heard yelling and complaints from the other side of the door and I could make out that Ethan was annoyed as he was shoved into his room too.
After that, it became deadly silent. There was no one around to let me out of my room and I was sure Tristan and Olivia had warned the servants to not open our room doors.
I was bored so I decided to take a nap.
It felt like hours had passed until I was rudely woken up by Olivia who was bouncing on the bed, yelling for me to wake up.
In my sleep ridden state, I didn't know how she managed to drag me out in the pool area, just where Tristan wanted me to be.
Ethan was also present there, along with Tristan. Ethan looked pissed, more angry than he had been in the morning. It made me smile.
"So, you little kids ready for this?" Tristan asked us enthusiastically.
"What the hell have you dragged me here for?" Ethan asked angrily.
"We four have gathered here for a fair competition between Ethan Noel Evans and Juliet Katie Jenson.
" I stared at him with my mouth open, not because of his announcement of the competition because frankly I saw that coming, but because of Juliet's middle name, Katie.
It was too similar to mine. So similar that it was starting to creep me out.
I was Julie Kate James and I was pretending to be Juliet Katie Jenson, the daughter of a billionaire.
It couldn't be another coincidence, could it? It seemed impossible to me. How could our first and second names be so similar? It was too close.
"Before we start this, I want you two to promise us something," Olivia said.
"What?" I asked cautiously.
"The one who wins this, is the better one between the two of you.
You two will have to accept that fact and move on with your lives.
We don't want to hear of any more pranks that you two pulled on each other.
Don't even try and hide it because that'd be useless.
" Tristan said, pointedly glancing over at Ethan.
"After the winner is declared, we want you two to at least be civil to each other. Please try to be friends, you don't know how amazing you guys are individually and we would love it if you two try to get to know each other's amazing side," Olivia added.
"I'd love something else too, babe," Tristan whispered in her ear but we all heard it. Olivia turned red and jabbed her elbow into his stomach.
Tristan groaned in pain, which he tried his best not to show.
"You're mistaken. All the amazing stuff is right here." Ethan said, gesturing to himself from head to toe. "Not over there," he said, pointing at me.
"It's sad how delusional you are." I sighed, shaking my head at him pitifully.
"Guys, this is what we're talking about. You two have an image of each other set in your mind and it's not pleasant at all and you just don't want to see each other in a different light. You both are so stubborn," Olivia said.
"So we want you two to promise us that after this face off, you both will be friendly and not say nasty things to each other."
Olivia looked at me expectantly. "So you agree to do that, right?"
I thought a little over it. If I emerged as the winner, I wouldn't have to worry about Ethan's silly pranks. I was getting tired of how childish we had started to act. It was so unlike of me.
"Yes, I agree," I said, nodding at Olivia as she gave me a wide smile.
Ethan snorted. "You're such a coward."
"Agreeing with making peace with you doesn't make me a coward. It makes you a coward. You're so scared to be friendly with me. You're scared that I'd turn out nothing like you think of me till now. So Ethan Noel Evans, tell me, are you afraid of me?"
He stared at me for a long moment. It must be a first that he wasn't glaring at me. I kept my gaze on him as he exhaled sharply through his nose.
"Fine, I agree." He said somewhat reluctantly. "But I'm not afraid of you. I'm perfectly sure you're just like what I think you are."
"Well then, you're in for a surprise because I'm nothing like that. You don't even know me," I said, smiling victoriously at him.
"We'll see about that."
"Ooh, yes! I didn't expect you two to give in so soon. Anyways, Tristan tell them about the game!" Olivia said excitedly.
"Okay. So this has three rounds. The first one is where you jump into that pool," he said, gesturing behind us towards the pool, "and collect an object - a key to your room.
We've locked your rooms and both of your room's keys are similar so it doesn't matter which key you find.
The first one who manages to find it, will win the first round. "
I look around the vast pool in front of us. "But the stupid key would be anywhere in that pool. Don't tell me we have to search the entire pool for that key," I whined.
"Well, what did you expect? Nothing easy, I hope," Tristan retorted.
"The second round?" Ethan asked casually.
"Is hide and seek. The one who got the key first will have an advantage.
She or he will go second so they might know the strategies.
It's not really hide and seek. All you have to do is get to your room without being caught by the other one.
" This one seemed pretty easy. The mansion was huge and one could get lost easily.
I was sure I could sneak up to my room without any problem.
"However, if you were to encounter your enemy outside your room, then you have to get to your room.
How? I don't know. You can wrestle past them, do anything to get into your room.
But make sure you don't end up killing each other.
Once you enter your room, you're safe. Then you have to search for three notes where we've wrote riddles from the internet.
The one who takes the least amount of time to complete the task is the winner of that round.
If you win these two, you're the winner!
If not, then you two must enter round three! "
"And what is it?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. This better be a little easy.
"Nothing strenuous, we're all going to sit around and let you two figure out the answers to the riddles. No cheating allowed, meaning you're not allowed to search the answers up. The one who takes the least amount of time will be the winner. That's it. I think it'll satisfy you guys."
"Okay, let's start. Shall we?"
"Wait, are we supposed to jump into the pool with these clothes on?" I asked, looking down at my shorts and tank top.
"Unless you want to do this in a bikini," Tristan said, wiggling his eyebrows.
"No," I said quickly.
"Let's start round one!" Olivia said excitedly as she clapped her hands.
Here goes nothing.
Whoa. What do you guys think about this one?
I hadn't planned a face-off between the two but then I got tired of them pranking each other so I thought I should end it and give them a closure.
So what did you want?
The prank war to continue or a face-off? !
Don't forget to vote, comment, share and follow!
Check out my other stories.