Lights Up

This Is War

Happy Holidays, folks! Here's another update for all you beautiful people out there. This chapter has absolutely no plot relevance whatsoever, but it was fun to write.

Things have been pretty normal lately, and I was expecting today to be the same. I was NOT expecting Jesse to drag me into a janitor's closet as I walked to my locker.

"Jesse, what are you doing? I need to get my books!"

"Frances put a glitter bomb in your locker."

"What?"

"I don't know how she got the combo, but I saw Frances put something in your locker, and I heard her talking to Jack. It's rigged so that as soon as you open your locker, you'll get blasted with pink glitter."

"Ok...thanks for the warning I guess. Any idea why?"

"Yeah, I was getting to that. Apparently it's this unofficial thing some of the clubs do. It's a prank war. One day of the school year, band, theatre, the newspaper, and the mathletes prank each other all day. The club that falls for the least amount of them wins."

"Alright, wait, why do you know all this? You're new here too."

"Crutchie decided to tell me about it this morning. Conveniently AFTER he wrapped all of my notebooks in double sided tape so they stuck to everything. Even though I'm not even in one of the clubs that are a part of it."

That gave me an idea. We didn't have any time to set pranks of our own, but if we could flip some of the pranks onto other people...

"Maybe it's time orchestra got in on the action. I have an idea."

Jesse and I spent as much time as we could planning in that janitor's closet. Then we went over to my locker for the first step. I put the combination in, then waved Phillip over. I almost felt bad doing this, but hey, all's fair in love and prank wars.

"Hey Phillip, can you get my locker open? I already put the combo in but it's stuck. Jesse and I already tried."

"Sure, no problem."

He pulled up the latch easily, considering it wasn't actually stuck. Now I'm just hoping Frances came through.

"AHH."

As soon as Phillip opened the door, pink glitter sprayed all over him. When it finally stopped, he just stood there blinking in shock as sparkles fell out of his curly hair. Jesse and I could barely contain our laughter. I carefully reached around him and pulled my books out, shutting the door.

"Thanks, Phillip. You're a lifesaver. Oh, and, orchestra's in on the prank war. See you at lunch!"

We walked off laughing. This should be fun.

Time Skip

The next prank we heard about was by the newspaper staff. Darcy, one of the kids on it, is in orchestra with Jesse and I, which is how we heard about it. The period before, when they were in journalism, the staff had snuck over to the band hall and wrapped all of the chairs in copies of the school newspaper. So Jesse and I thought, hey, what if we swapped the wrapped chairs with the chairs from the journalism classroom? The only problem is, we'd need help. Which is why we stayed after class to talk to Miss Taylor.

"Hey, Miss Taylor?"

"Yes, Jesse? Is there a problem?"

"No, we just had a question. Are the teachers aware of the club prank war?"

"Yes, they normally help their students with it. No one has ever brought it up to me, so orchestra doesn't normally participate."

"Well, we've been "participating" though we didn't know about it till today. And we need your help with something."