Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
A scar is proof
That even healed wounds
Are never erased
12:00 a.m.
“I was the one who kept stealing your homework packet from the basket in fifth grade.” Truth or dare was starting to get a little too honest ...
“You devil!” Lucas screamed at me.
In the fifth grade, at the end of each class, our teacher, Ms. Wagner, would distribute a homework packet that we were supposed to complete and put in the homework basket the next day. While this may seem simple, my life’s motto has always been—and always will be—'work smarter, not harder.'
Every day, when our class shuffled into the room and placed their homework packets into the bin, I would stand behind Lucas in line.
As he put his homework in the pile, I pretended to rest my packet on top when, in actuality, I was switching our papers.
I quickly stole his off the top, ran to my desk, and frantically erased his name before swiftly writing mine on top, then returning it to the basket without anyone noticing.
My masterful Houdini act worked for four months until Lucas started inspecting the messy handwriting littering his homework, with a low grade of 64% stamped on the front.
He frantically bickered with Miss Wagner, screaming that this was not his homework and that someone had to be messing with him.
But his tantrum sounded remarkably like a child blaming the dog for eating their homework.
“I was kicked off the honor roll because of you,” Lucas huffed, hacking over his words as smoke left his lungs.
The bed rocked as Kayla uncontrollably laughed. She was always the giggly kind of high. Two puffs and she turned into a patient on laughing gas.
I rolled my head on the pillow behind me. “Oh, don't be so dramatic. I stopped once my grade was high enough.”
Lucas's face was now turning a stop sign shade of red. He plunged his fingers into his pants pocket and pulled out a decade-old phone. “You are calling Ms. Wagner right now to vindicate me.”
I sat up straight, the world lightly spinning as I tried to focus my eyes on my brother's flushed face. “Why do you have her number?”
“Because I knew the day would finally come when you admitted to sabotaging my life.” He looked like a proud detective who had just solved the biggest mystery of his career.
Kayla shuffled her wobbly knees to the middle of the bed and put her hands between me and Lucas like a referee at a boxing match. “You two need a truth timeout. Can somebody please pick Dare before the slapping and scratching begin?”
I sat up from my comfortable pillow and slumped into a crossed-leg position. The smell of smoke filled my room, stinging my nose as I took a breath. “Okay, fine, I'll pick Dare.”
Kayla tapped her finger on her head for a dramatic thinking effect, “I got it!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around Lucas’ shoulders. She was very touchy when her better judgment was clouded. “I dare you … to make pancakes!”
I scrunched up my face. “That is the worst Dare of all time.” I wasn't trying to be rude, but coming from the girl who once dared me to spray paint a cop car pink and staple bows to the seats, this was not one of her best.
Lucas intertwined his arm with Kayla’s; the weed was getting to his brain. “And probably the most dangerous one,” he shot back at me.
I scoffed. “I know how to make pancakes.” I think.
Lucas played with Kayla's fingers as if the five years they were apart were merely a bad dream, and they were two eighteen-year-olds disgustingly in love. “Toaster waffles don't count,” he jabbed back.
I was going to argue, but I didn't have the energy to provide a rebuttal between my brain spinning like a mouse caught on a ceiling fan and the dizzying sight of my brother getting handsy with my ex-friend.
“Come on, please! I'm starving!” Kayla whined again.
I gave in. “Let's go make pancakes.”
“Yay!” Kayla sprang off the bed with an impressive bounce, like Tigger on his tail.
“I wouldn't be cheering yet.” Lucas stretched his arms in the air as he stood up. “We're probably all going to die of salmonella.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I swung my legs over the bed and slowly rose to my feet.
The room seemed to spin slightly as I walked out of my bedroom.
I carefully placed each foot on the steps as I descended the stairs.
My legs felt shaky, and I shuffled to the kitchen, gripping the counter for support.
The cool surface steadied me as I inched toward the fridge and opened the door to peer inside.
“Wait … what was I doing?” I slowly looked back at Kayla, who was now propped up on the kitchen island, her toes dancing on the concrete counters.
“Pancakes!” Kayla yelled back like a sugar-high six-year-old.
“Oh, right.” I grabbed the butter from the top shelf and put it on the counter next to me.
I stuck my head in the fridge to find the eggs, knowing my mom had probably hidden them in the back somewhere.
A small carton of expensive farm-fresh eggs was in the left corner, nestled against the wall.
I retrieved them and opened the carton to inspect how many were left.
What the heck? I fiddled my fingers around rows of shell carcasses. Every time my mom cooked breakfast, she put the shells back in the container until there were no eggs left. The carton would end up in the fridge empty, with nothing left but yoke-covered egg carcasses.
“We're out,” I declared.
Lucas snatched the container from my hands. “Why does she always do that?” he bellowed, throwing it into the trash. “Sorry, Kayla. It looks like you're out of luck.”
“But I want pancakes!” Still straddling the kitchen island, Kayla pulled Lucas’s shirt collar and yanked him close to her. “I need the pancakes!” she begged, her black braids making a swishing sound as she rocked Lucas's body with her grip on his shirt.
I rubbed my two fingers on my temple. Her cries ricochet through my skull like a pinball being smacked too many times. “I’m sorry, Kayla. Let me go break into the market and steal you some eggs.”
Lucas yawned greatly and then said, “I thought you were banned from there?”
Did he think I was going to break into the market? It truly hurt my brain to see someone so smart being so dense. “Yes, Mr. Valedictorian, I'm still banned. I was trying out this new thing called sarcasm!”
He crossed his meaty arms at me and clenched his over-sharpened jaw.
Kayla stood straight up on the counter, towering over us like a Pixie-voiced giant.
“Your bickering will not help fulfill my need for puffy carbs smothered in sticky sugar!” If I didn't know better, I could have sworn I heard a light bulb click on in Kayla's brain as her eyes widened and her smile grew.
“Wait ... doesn't your neighbor have a chicken coop?”
“Yes ... what does Mr. Heckel's yard have to do with this—” Oh. “Yes, yes, he does.” I smiled back.
Lucas shoved his palms down on the counter's edge, smacking the space between where Kayla sat and where I stood. “No,” he said with more force than when Julian told me I couldn't dye my hair blue when I was fourteen.
It was adorable how he thought his disapproval would prevent Kayla and me from dragging him into one of our moderately illegal plans.
“Stop kicking me in the face with your shoe!” Lucas roared as he lifted me over our neighbor's fence, my heel planted directly in his forehead.
“Stop putting your face under my foot!” I said back as I gripped the fence's edge and pressed my body upward, flinging one leg over at a time. Then, slowly, I lowered myself into my neighbor's yard, which desperately needed to be mowed and sprayed for weeds.
Despite what people in the town said, Mr. Heckle wasn't a bad guy.
Everyone liked to spread rumors accusing him of being a monstrous man who never left his house because he was a psychotic murderer.
The truth was, he was just lonely. Julian explained to Lucas and me that before Mr. Heckle's wife passed away, he was a jolly older man who baked cookies for the holidays and organized the neighborhood kids' Easter egg hunts.
But his wife was everything to him. She was his oxygen, and without her, he couldn't function.
A grunting sound rumbled behind me as Lucas hoisted Kayla onto the top of the fence.
“It's a good thing you always preferred being on the bottom.” Kayla winked at him as she threw her legs over.
I felt my stomach revolt into my mouth. “Gross!” I gagged. “I am this close to pulling a Van Gogh because of you two.”
Kayla plopped her feet on a patch of weeds and dusted off her palms. “Oh, please, we both know your life has been endlessly boring without me.”
“It was certainly less nauseating.”
With the ease of a freaking jungle cat, Lucas hopped straight over the fence and landed perfectly on his two feet. “I can't believe you two are going to steal eggs from Mr. Heckle’s chicken coop,” he blurted out to us in hushed yells.
Kayla and I stood side by side, our eyes meeting with a discerning amount of mischief. Kayla grinned back at Lucas. “Who said anything about us stealing the eggs?”
Lucas glanced at the chicken coop made of old coffee tables Mr. Heckle collected from dumpsters across town. “Never going to happen. I enjoy not having a criminal record.”
For the record, those charges never stuck. “Sorry, that's the rule. I dare you to crawl your mammoth shoulders into that death trap of wood and snatch us some farm-to-table breakfast.”
“This is not how Truth or Dare works!” He stomped his foot on the muddy ground. “The person who's asked the question gets a choice.” Lucas ran his hands through his shiny black hair, smoothing it back down on the sides.
“Yeah, I don't like that. If you get to choose, you'll always pick Truth. It's my job to throw you into the deep end of life. Besides, I got five years of torturing you to make up for.”
Lucas opened his mouth to argue back.
“Less talking, more egg stealing!” I interrupted his dispute. “Now, hop to it before Mr. Hackle wakes up and buries us behind the shed.
“Fine,” Lucas caved. “But only because I want to get out of this yard as fast as humanly possible!” He stomped over to the makeshift chicken coop.
He crouched near the ground and carefully unhooked the pin that secured the door shut. A flutter of wings issued from the pile of wood as Lucas crept through the tiny door. He smooshed his shoulders together and forced them through the small gap, his shirt scratching against the door frame.
“Nice chicken. Nice chicken.” I heard Lucas' plea. “AHH!!” A loud thud came from inside the coop. “Devil bird!” Lucas screamed as he tried to unwedge his shoulders from the hole.
Kayla hurried to Lucas’s aid and squeezed her hands into the narrow spaces between his shoulders and the coop's frame. After several tugs back and forth and a few more screeches from Lucas, he fell backward and landed on the ground, his body collapsing on top of Kayla's.
I ran over to them to inspect the damage. Lucas's cheek had an angry-looking red peck mark, but the key ingredient to our night's sweet victory was clutched in his hands. “You got the eggs!” I cheered, hovering about their tangled mess of limbs.
“I was almost a chicken’s dinner!” he screamed in a whisper.
“We eat them, so it's only fair.”
Lucas balled his fists, and just as I thought he would lunge toward me, a loud, squawking noise erupted from inside the coop.
I turned my head towards the noise, and the sight that greeted me was a blur of feathers and beaks.
Three chickens burst out of the coop like race cars out of the chute, quickly scattering in different directions.
As the chickens sought their revenge, Kayla and Lucas sprang to their feet and ran in the opposite direction like rabbits fleeing from a dog.
I was doubled over in laughter as the chickens chased them around the yard, my stomach heaving with each chuckle.
I winced in pain as I felt a sharp object pierce my skin. “Ouch!”
A fourth bird loomed behind me, its beak gaping wide as it charged me like a knight thrusting a sword. I stumbled and wobbled while attempting to run toward Lucas and Kayla, resembling an even drunker version of Captain Jack Sparrow.
"Up here!" Lucas yelled as he grabbed Kayla's waist and lifted her into a giant oak tree that rested about four feet from Mr. Heckle's deck.
"Hurry up!" he yelled at me. At this point, I was seeing three of Lucas and wasn't sure which one was shouting at me.
I picked the one towards the middle and put my hands on his shoulders.
I was correct because he suddenly hoisted me upward.
I gripped onto one of the tree branches and pulled myself up for dear life.
We climbed up a few branches until we were in the middle of the tree, Lucas hurrying closely behind.
“Death by chickens.” Lucas breathed.
“What?” I gasped for air as I clung to the tree branches, feeling increasingly dizzy.
Lucas hugged the trunk. “Just imagining what my tombstone is going to say.”
It suddenly dawned on me as we sat here perched on the branches of our neighbor's tree, trying to avoid the murderous chickens that seemed to be closing in on us, that this was the most fun I had experienced in five years.
Sure, my head was spinning into the heavens, but with all of us together, it just seemed right.
A sudden burst of blinding light emanated from the base of the towering tree. The yellow rays bounced off the branches and leaves, causing a sharp impact on my retinas.
“The chickens have developed powers!” Kayla screamed.
Lucas peeked through the branches. "It's worse than mutant chickens." He gulped.
“What could be worse than mutant chickens?” I poked my head through the bouquet of leaves in my face.
“Oh shit …” My eyes focused on the blue and tan blobs that were now forming into the shapes of two police officers, their flashlights shining up at us.
I squinted my eyes harder to zero in on their faces.
Unbelievable … UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE! I internally screamed as the tallest cop’s face came into focus.
“Emmett ...?” My jaw dropped.
“What's going on?” Kayla appeared next to me. When her eyes fixed on Emmett’s face, her expression contorted into a mix of anxiety and dread. “We are so screwed.”
“Doesn't anybody leave this freaking town!?” I exclaimed. Emmett wasn't just a former classmate; he was my former junior prom date. My date that I left on the dance floor with a broken nose and a missing front tooth ...