Sunshiner

The first day of summer, 1999. That was the day it all began.

It happened when we were eight; it was the first summer Candace and I ever spent together. At first, we got along surprisingly well – I shared my toys with her and she always invited me to play in the sand with her. Back then, I avoided girls as much as possible because I thought they were gross, but Candace wasn't really a girl. She was into climbing trees and hurling dirt at people and playing nasty tricks on the neighbors. I don't think she owned a single Barbie doll. I don't think she had any girl friends, either, since she always played with the boys our age. The best day of that summer, I remember, was when she willingly dug for worms with me and then we walked down to the Lake to go fishing. She ended up catching the biggest catfish I had ever seen and had even taken it off the hook with her bare hands, ignoring the sliminess of its skin.

The first day of summer, 2000. The school year had come and passed and I got to see Candace again. I only saw her in the summer, because summer was the only season when we were both living in Dayton. Dayton was a small town, a perfect vacation spot; no one lived here in the winter. It was an old, cute-looking place – but living here permanently would erode that adoration and make you realize just how small and run-down the houses really were. It just wasn't a suitable place to be an all-year residence. During the school year I went back to Boston, and all of my summer friends also went their separate ways. But then the weather got warmer again, school was let out, and everyone flocked back to Dayton to pick up where we left off last summer. It was a never ending cycle of fun and freedom.

And the games we played were getting more fun as we got older. Instead of simply going fishing or playing in the mud, my group of friends would instead catch as many fish as we could and then put them in someone’s toilet, or instead throw the mud at strangers passing by. We found entertainment in scheming and joking around, and our favorite past times consisted of Ding Dong Ditch (you rang on someone’s door and ran way – a great game to play on the neighbors but it sucked if you got caught), Keep Away From Lesneski (we hated him), and the occasional water gun assault on the girls (Candace helped us out since she didn’t count as a girl).

The first day of summer, 2001. We were ten now, and the childish tricks we had always played on each other were becoming much more serious. It all started because I told Frankie Fat-Ass to steal Candace’s lunch. We replaced it with a worm-and-dirt sandwich and then everyone laughed as she unknowingly took a bite out of it. I meant it as a harmless joke but Candace was furious. She disappeared for the rest of the day, and I assumed that she was just angry and was avoiding me; I thought she’d get over it soon. But when I went home later that day I discovered a dead fish stuffed in my pillow case with a letter that read Love, Candace. After that, the Prank War ensued.

That was the summer when Candace and I became enemies.

The group of boys had divided into two teams: my team and Candace's team. I was surprised that a bunch of boys would actually listen to a girl, but I learned (and I learned this the hard way) that Candace was a mastermind when it came to pranks. She was bossy but she was fun, and she always had the best ideas.

What had started as a simple joke quickly transformed into an intricate, devious game. We all took it very seriously, and although it was awful to be the one getting pranked, we all thoroughly enjoyed making the other team suffer. The loyalties were fierce – treachery was unheard of. We all understood that if a boy betrayed our team we would prank him so badly he would cry. One of my favorite aspects of the Prank War was the end of the summer, since it was the most important. Whoever was able to play the final trick – and it had to be a good one, too, otherwise it didn't count – won for the year. Victory was short but it was definitely sweet. It would last all the way until the next summer, and then the record was fresh once again.

When Candace pranked my team she was merciless. I was a renowned trouble maker in my town, but Candace – despite that fact that she was a girl and an entire four months younger than me – managed to have an even worse reputation. I resented her for her infamy, and she knew that; she was sure to rub it in my face every day. That was the summer I knew I definitely hated her.

The first day of summer, 2002. That was the day she pulled the worst prank out of all of Prank War history. Somehow – and to this day I don’t know how she managed it – she snuck into my house in the middle of the night and drizzled super glue in my hair while I was sleeping, then proceeded to dumb an entire bucket of glitter on my head.

When I woke up, I was horrified at the sparkly fairy that was looking back at me in the mirror. After I furiously scrubbed my head for an hour and a half, I was forced to accept that this wasn’t going to come out. I then had to face my mother, who was either very angry or trying very hard not to laugh, and then I was brought to the hair dresser. As all of my hair was being buzzed off, I began to think. I thought about how much I wanted Candace to die; I thought about how stupid I looked since I was basically bald; I thought about how much I was going to get laughed at by the other kids. And then I thought about how I was going to get Candace back.

It took me quite some time to come up with a decent idea. I couldn't do water balloons – we had already done that trick last year. And putting spiders in her bed was something I was saving for later in the summer. A wicked smile suddenly spread across my face as the most horrible, most disgusting, and most brilliant idea popped into my head.

It was a sunny afternoon when I approached her on the playground. I had made sure that all of my friends were around, as well as all of her friends; I wanted everyone to watch this.

"What do you want, Kasey?" Candace snapped as I walked up to her, and I hid my grimace at the use of my middle name. My full name was Evan Kasey Ray, but that previous year everyone had somehow found out about my middle name and, since it was a girl's name, everyone – including my friends and even the parents – began to call me Kasey. I hated it just as much as I hated Candace, but no matter how much I protested everyone called me it anyway.

I saw her eyes dart to both of my hands, searching for any dirt that I may have been planning to throw at her, but once she saw that both were empty she relaxed a little.
"You just gonna stand there or are you gonna do something, Kasey Ray?" the eleven-year-old girl demanded. Candace definitely enjoyed making fun of my name more than anyone else in the world.

"I wanted to say thanks," I said, allowing a mischievous grin to spread across my face. I was almost as troublesome as Candace, so when people saw that smirk on my face they knew to back down. But Candace barely flinched. "I'm really glad you put the glue in my hair," I continued, nodding my head as I spoke.

A frown adorned her face. "Why?"

"Because now I can get back at you for it."

And then, with all of kids watching, I leaned forward and kissed her.

It was not romantic, not at all, because when we were eleven kissing someone of the opposite gender was the most horrid thing imaginable. And that's exactly what I was going for. Candace pulled back in a flash, disgust written all over her face.

That was the summer that I ruined her.

We won the War that year. And the year after that, and the year after that. That was the one single prank that was never forgotten, and despite the fact that we started fresh at the beginning of every summer, we never allowed Candace to forget the kiss.

For the next two summers, everyone teased her and taunted her, and for the first time since forever I actually made her feel embarrassed about something. I wasn’t made fun of because I was the one who had initiated the kiss; I had done it as a prank, not for enjoyment, and all the kids understood that. If anyone tried to direct the teasing towards my direction, I easily bounced it off by talking (in a very loud voice, so everyone could hear me) about how terrible of a kisser Candace was. Of course, I had never kissed another girl before, so I didn't really know what made a kiss good or bad, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that I had pulled the ultimate prank on Candace and there was no way she was ever going to get me back. Revenge was fantastic.

I almost felt bad about it. Almost. But afterwards Candace retaliated and pranked my team more than ever. After she had written I AM A GIRL all over my face with Sharpie (again, she did it while I was sleeping), I didn’t feel so bad about kissing her anymore.

The first day of summer, 2005. My dad had left my mom and me only a month before – apparently his pretty blond secretary was more important to him than his family was. I didn’t like talking about it, or even thinking about it – I still don’t. My mom and my friends tried to console me but I ignored them, choosing to brood in silence. The Prank War continued on occasion, but most of the time my friends did it without me. I was never in the mood for those sorts of things anymore.

That was the summer when I just didn't want to have fun. That was also the summer when I became friends with Candace again.

I don’t know how it happened. I think it began one day when we saw each other at the ice cream parlor, and instead of making a nasty face or calling her a name, I decided to give her a slight smile. She returned it with a small wave. And that’s all it took.

It turned out we had a lot more in common that I thought we did. We understood each other, as cheesy as that sounded. Sometimes we didn't even have to talk to know what the other was thinking. But our friendship was a secret because we both knew that our friends – and the entire town – would go insane if they knew that Candace and I were actually getting along. People would think that the laws of nature had been broken, that the apocalypse was near, that there was some sort of government conspiracy going on.

I would never in a million years admit to anyone besides her that we were friends. And I never like-liked her, of course, because she was so much of a tomboy. I saw her as one of us, as one of the kids I grew up around. I became so comfortable around her that butterflies never erupted in my stomach when I saw her, which was something that happened when I saw the other pretty girls at school.

But that didn't make her any less important. She was my friend, possibly even my best friend.

It was so easy to forget my old hatred for her; somehow, I just drifted towards her. Although she had always been so annoying and so bossy, she was always so, so happy. All of the time. She was constantly laughing and giggling and shrieking in excitement – and that's why I was drawn to her. Her laughs were a converse lullaby, because in the same way that a lullaby makes a baby go to sleep, her laughter was the music that woke me up and taught me to have fun again. She had been the one to bring an end to the darkness of my middle school years; she had been the one to shed some sunlight into my world. She had been my sunshiner.

I was so overwhelmingly happy and it terrified me. I knew that happiness could never last, that eventually misery would prevail. And as it turned out, I was right.

Summer ended; freshman year started. The usual nine months of school had never been longer or more boring in my life. I couldn't wait to go back to Dayton, to go back to see Candace again.

The first day of summer, 2006. I was back in my summer house in a heartbeat. My other friends trickled in throughout the entire day, and I greeted them happily, talking about all of the awesome things we were going to do this year. But my happiness did not lay in the excitement of games and pranks; it lay in seeing Candace's face again. But, just as I predicted, my happiness was fleeting.

That was the summer that Candace didn't come back.