Apex Predator

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Quinn and Sy carefully place large balloons in a padded duffle bag. The balloons look identical to basketballs and Quarter-Brain wouldn't notice that they are too soft before it's too late. When these balloons pop they would spread a layer of maple syrup over anything they land on. We are going to school three hours early so that we can switch out the basketballs for the syrup-filled balloons before basketball practice starts.

Today is April Fools Day. The entire school participates in the holiday. We take it seriously and the best prank is respected the rest of the month. The second best prank, that is. My friends and I always pull the best pranks but we're never respected. The football team—who also make up most of the basketball team—pull a slightly lamer prank and get the respect. As always, they rage war—a prank war—on us. We tend to win but they don't often admit their defeat.

We finish loading the last of balloons and walk out the door to walk to the school. The sky is the same purple-blue color it always is at dusk. The early air is cool and refreshing. Birds sing their morning songs and dogs bark at unseen animals scurrying around behind the bushes.

"Did you bring the saran wrap?" Cindy asks.

"Yep," Karla says and pats her bulging grey backpack. We are using the plastic wrap to cover every one of the classroom doorways so people run into it. "Alaina, did you bring the jell-o mixes?"

"Of course," I say devilishly and hold up a black trash bag filled with small boxes of blue jell-o mix. This year's April Fools is going to be great but there is a downside. I am paired with Xeon to carry out my prank. I had suggested that we fill the pool with jell-o so that people would get stuck when they tried to swim and Sy argued that I'd need help to mix in all of the jell-o so he asked Xeon to help me. If we get caught we'd probably be in a lot of trouble but no one ever gets caught. Every student—even some teachers—join in on the pranks.

"Do you have the duct tape?" Cindy asks Zayx. He reaches into the bag, pulls out a piece of duct tape, and begins chasing Cindy around with it, threatening to tape her mouth with it.

"Cindy, wait up!" he shouts. "I think you'd look great in grey!" We laugh as they run in zigzags in front of us. We are using the duct tape to run across all of the lockers so it is hard to open them. Sy is helping Zayx tape up all of the lockers. Cindy and Karla are putting saran wrap over all the doors. Quinn had insisted that he could switch out the basketballs on his own so we let him. We walk faster than usual and arrive at the school in half of the time.

"Alright," I say when we stop just outside the front door. "You all know your prank," they nod. "Let's do this!" My friends smile and Quinn picks the lock to the front door. We enter and split up to carry out our job after Cindy hands out walkie-talkies to each of us. I make Xeon carry the bag of jell-o mixes as I lead him to the pool. He doesn't complain, though. I sneak into the pool through the girls' locker room and Xeon follows. It takes most of my will to refrain from screaming at him for it. I kneel by the pool edge and he sets the bag next to me. I reach in, pull out a box and open it.

"Can you find me something to stir with?" I ask as I rip open the package.

"Does this work?" Xeon asks. I hear the song metal sings as it glides through the air and Xeon's scythe is thrust in front of my face.

"I'm not touching that," I say and dump the contents of the package into the pool. "Find the pool sweeping rod and start stirring before this settles to the bottom." Xeon walks away and returns with a long rod with a broom-like structure attached to the end. He submerges it into the water and slowly walks around the pool and sweeps the rod back and forth. I continue to open packages and dump the jell-o mix into the pool. By the time I dump all of the packages into the water my fingers are raw and the liquid is thickening.