Prank Wars
Authors: Stephanie Fowers
Prank Wars
Stephanie Fowers
© 2011 Stephanie Fowers
Published by Triad Media and Entertainment at Smashwords
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, incidents and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.
Published by Triad Media and Entertainment, Salt Lake City, UT
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
2012930391
.1. Fiction. 2 Romance. 3. General
Cover art by Kristi Linton
Cover Design by Jacqueline Fowers
Typeset by Heather Justesen
To my family, who laughs at dreams but can't resist helping me reach them.
To my friends, who see past me to see me.
To my hopes, who will never rule my life but still make life fun.
To God, who gave me all of them.
from Madeleine’s
War Journal:
Day 114
0134 hours
“
People are getting hurt. I’m not talking broken hearts or Jell-O packets in the shower heads; I’m talking real scary stuff. Things like this happen in New York, Chicago, Ogden even, but here in Provo? Something strange is going on here...and it’s not just the students.
No one is what they seem. The player? A terrorist. The heart-breaker? A no good spy. My neighbor? They’ve taken her. The jerk? A pretty decent guy. My roommate? An utter sneak—but then again I always knew that.
Grades? Dates? Pranks? They’re nothing to the danger that stares us in the face. You’ve got to believe me. If I could go back before everything—before the world went terribly wrong—would I change what I’ve done or have these meaningless pranks made me better able to fight this?”
—
Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Wednesday, June 6th).
Madeleine’s
first War Journal
Chapter One
Day 47
1345 hours
“
War rules my life, though strangely I find myself attracted to it.”
—Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Friday, April 1st).
“Hey, Madeleine! Your name’s Madeleine Doggett, right?”
He knew very well what my name was.
I swiveled in my seat and scowled, seeing Byron…or
Lord Byron
as I called him when he was really bugging me. It made him angry and that was my target. Normally, I would pretend I didn’t hear him, but he was looking straight at me with those devilish blue eyes.
“What do you want?” I hissed. Our chemistry teacher lectured in the front, completely oblivious to the talking and fluttering of papers common to a class of four hundred.
“You dropped this.”
He scooted forward until we were almost nose to nose and held up a note. My hand lifted, but he grinned, keeping the note out of my reach.
“From your secret admirer,”
he read it to me.
“I couldn’t help notice how gorgeous you are. We really need to go out sometime.”
He glanced up at me with a knowing look. “Did you give this to me?”
My face got red...until I remembered what today was. April Fool’s Day. Apparently Byron really got into the season. I recovered with a snicker, earning a few glares my direction for disturbing the class. “Nope, sorry,” I whispered. “Maybe the note wasn’t meant for you. Give it here. It’s probably for me.”
“Oh, really? I must’ve written it then.”
I turned even redder. So, that’s how Byron got all the girls. Not that he meant me to go for his game, he just liked to hijack my emotions and see me squirm. The guy had been a constant thorn in my side since he moved into my ward, and now he had the nerve to be in my chemistry class. I blew my dark hair out of my eyes and faced him squarely. “Did you also blow up a picture of yourself and send it to all the girls in our apartment complex?” His eyes took on a challenging glint, and I smiled disarmingly. “I saw you autographed it for us too,
Lord Byron
. How sweet. Now we can all have a part of you.”
Byron matched my smile, his expression cool. That meant he already knew I was the culprit behind that little prank. “You realize you’re over your head, right?”
I ignored the threat. He might have the face of an angel, but he had the heart of a devil. I knew how to handle his kind. Ripping paper from my binder, I wrote in my
girliest
handwriting:
“To my secret admirer, maybe you should pay attention in class and stop harassing the ladies.”
I dropped the note behind me. “Oops.” It fluttered to the ground.
A minute later, a new note dropped into my lap.
“I would never deprive the ladies of my attention—especially when they are in need of my social help.”
“
At least they don’t need psychiatric help.”
I threw that one behind me.
A tap on my shoulder signaled me to reach back and Byron folded my fingers over his latest retort, his hand resting too long over mine. I jerked away, refusing to give into his psychological warfare. Unfolding it, I read:
“Maybe we should stop all this fighting and learn to love each other?”
I wrote
April Fools
on it and sent it back. It earned a laugh from him and my lips curved up unwillingly. If I wasn’t careful I’d end up liking Lord Byron as much as his laugh. I forced my lips back down. He was much too smooth and practiced. I needed a guy more…
not breathing
. I still hadn’t recovered from my last relationship.
“Hey, did you give this to me?” I glanced behind me, expecting Byron again. Instead another guy beside him met my eyes quizzically. It was toenail guy. He left a pile of toenails on the floor every week in class and had to be the sole reason BYU discouraged flip flops. He handed me a folded up piece of paper, unable to meet my eyes.
I opened up the note and figured out why. “
You’re pretty cute,
” it said.
“Here’s my number.”
And there was my number in black and white.
My gaze shot to Byron as he edged wickedly away from the civilian caught in our crossfire. He was as slick as
James Bond
and twice as rude. “Thank me later,” he mouthed. It was like he didn’t know what I had been through this last semester. My eyes narrowed at him. I had the dark eyes of a Russian spy, which I fancied made me sinister enough to break an enemy with a glance, but Byron seemed unruffled by it.
“Finals are in two weeks,” the teacher droned on with an emotionless voice. “You are allowed one 3 by 5 index card in the testing center.” I stared up at our teacher. He looked as bored as we were. Would he never dismiss class? I had a bad case of jumpy leg this time. After a dozen parting remarks, the teacher released us and I scrambled out of my seat with only minutes to execute my perfect evacuation.
Taking a deep breath, I turned to Lord Byron’s latest victim, not knowing how to explain the phone number disaster, but toenail guy was gone. No one stood between me and the devil. “Byron!” I tried to find him in the crowd of mingling students. “You can’t just…” I stepped back.
Byron was already halfway across the room. He pressed his palm against the wall, leaning over one of the many TAs from our chemistry class. I couldn’t tell if she was pretty because I could only see her from the back, but Byron sure acted like she was. Her hair was long and two shades blacker than mine. To top it off, she seemed way more delicate and fragile than me. Byron dripped with charm—something I had never experienced personally from him, but had witnessed plenty of times at ward prayer with his other doomed victims. The girl twisted her Gucci flats shyly against the gray carpet and wrote her number down for him. Typical. Just typical.