Sunshiner

When we got to my boat, I noticed that it was filled with water. So much, in fact, that it was a surprise that it was still afloat. And there were at least a dozen fish swimming in it.

I turned to Candace. “This better not be some prank of yours,” I scowled in a deathly tone.

She grinned. “I figured that putting water in your boat was too easy. The fish are there to make things more interesting.”

“Are you kidding me, Candace?” I said and let out a frustrated sigh, running a hand through my messy dark brown hair. “This is going to take forever! I have to catch all of these fish before I can even start bailing out my boat.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“I hate you.”

But I couldn’t let the anger get to my head. I knew that in a little less than an hour I would have my revenge, and I found comfort in that fact.

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Why don’t you think of something,” I growled. “You’re the one who got us into this mess.”

“We can steal Lesneski’s boat,” she said simply and walked over to wear the little blue put-put was tied up.

“We can’t steal his boat,” I sighed. “He’ll tell his mommy. You know what a pussy Lesneski is.”

“Yeah, well there aren’t any other boats around,” she stated and hopped in, her strong water legs quickly finding their balance so that the boat had hardly made a splash. Only Dayton kids knew how to do that; a newcomer would have toppled into the water already. Candace pulled the engine cord once, twice, three times, until the engine roared to life, spitting out a torrent of water like a dragon breathing fire. “The idiot always leaves his keys in the boat,” she muttered. She then turned to me. “Are you coming or what?”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess,” I grumbled. “Lesneski is going to be pissed.”

“It’s his fault for thinking no one would steal his boat,” she replied.

“That’s true,” I conceded. I didn’t like Lesneski much anyway and ever since I was eight I had regretted letting him on my team, so stealing his boat wouldn’t be something that would be clouding my conscience. And we would give it back by the end of the night. “Now move,” I ordered Candace.

She gave me an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

“Move. I’m driving.”

“Ha! You wish.” And then she revved the engine and we hurtled away from the dock. But then the boat whined miserably and jerked backwards, sending me tumbling on my ass on the front seat.

“Oops. Forgot to untie it.”

I let out an annoyed sigh as she untied the boat and revved the engine again. This time we sailed smoothly away from the dock, and she grinned triumphantly. “I should be driving,” I said.

“I’m doing all right,” she countered.

“Do you even have your boat license?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know how to get through the lily pad path to get to Devil’s?”

“Nope.”

“You idiot,” I groaned. “Let me drive.” I stood up and approached her, but she let out a shriek and swerved the boat dangerously to the right. I stumbled forward and landed nearly on top of her.

Our noses were nearly touching, and I would have been able to consider this a romantic moment were it not for the fact that we began to scream at each other.

“You have no idea what you’re doing! Let me take over.”

“No way! You ruin all my fun, Kasey Ray.”

“I wouldn’t consider our deaths as fun.”

“No, but your death would be.”

“Let me drive!”

“No!”

And then we were there.

I hadn’t realized how short of a drive it was from the dock, and I was very surprised when the front of the boat hurtled into Devil’s shore. I hadn’t even realized that Candace had gone through the path through the water weeds…Wait a minute. We didn’t go through the path.

“Where the hell did you take us?”

“This is Devil’s, isn’t it?” she asked as she stared up at the island before us. “It looks like it.”

“It is, but you took us to the wrong shore,” I said unhappily. “The docks are on the other side of the island.”

“Are we lost, then?”

“No. I know where we are,” I grumbled. “But we have to climb over the steepest part of the hill to get to the party. Thanks a lot, Candace.”

“No problem.”

I swore at her, which only made her grin, and then jumped out of the boat ungracefully. One of my feet made it to the shore okay, but the other one splashed into the water, and as I pulled my shoe out of the dirty brown much it made a disgusting sucking sound. I cursed some more; walking in wet flip flops was the worst. Especially when I knew I was basically going to be scaling a mountain.

Candace laughed in my face and then stepped out of the boat as well. I offered her my hand, but of course she refused it and instead landed on the shore, safe and dry and much happier than I was. She smirked and I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Mature, Kasey. Real mature.”

“Thanks. I try.”

“Can we go now?”

“Ladies first.” I held my arms out, indicating that she should go before me.

She gave me a skeptical look. “What’s with the sudden politeness?” she questioned.

“Oh trust me, there’s nothing polite about it,” I grinned cheekily. “If I trip and fall, I’ll be able to grab onto you and drag you down with me.”

“Well aren’t you a charmer,” she sneered, and after I tied the boat up to the nearest tree, we began walking up the hill. Not even two minutes later, we were both panting for breath. The stifling humidity in the air was making it hard to breathe.

“Can we rest for a minute?” she panted, leaning up against the bark of a white birch.

“No,” I replied, using a very dramatic voice. “We have to keep going!”

She caught onto my theatrics quickly. “Go on without me!” she shouted back, even though we were standing not even two feet away from each other. “Let me die here. Let the avalanches erode my body in peace.”

“I won’t leave you!” I yelled and grabbed her hand, trying to pull her up the mountain. “The bears will get you!”

“Oh no, not the bears!” she wailed, and then she tripped and fell to the ground, sending me tumbling down with her. We lay there for a minute and shared a glance, and then we burst out laughing.

“What was that about?” she giggled. “What the hell has gotten into us?”

“The humidity got to our heads, I think,” I replied, grinning stupidly. “And I was getting bored. Whenever I get bored I do stupid things like that to make life more interesting.”

“Scaling a mountain isn’t interesting enough for you?” she asked.

“The killer avalanche made it cooler,” I answered and we laughed again. I really couldn’t understand how only two minutes ago we had been bickering like an old married couple, and now we were on the ground, covered in dirt, acting as silly and as stupid as a pair of six-year-olds.

Our laughs subsided and we fell into a silence that was pierced only by the twittering birds.

“Can we stay here?”

Her question caught me off guard. “Here? You mean on the side of the mountain in the mud and the dirt – “

“Yeah,” she replied. “It’s nice here.”

“But…there isn’t anything here,” I said, confused. “Over the top of the hill, there’s the bonfire and the pong table and the beer…and here, there’s nothing.”

She remained silent.

“Candace?” I asked softly, wondering if she was okay.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she finally said and stood up, brushing the dirt and leaves from her jean shorts. “We should go to the party. Everyone’s waiting for us.”

“If you want to stay, we can – “

“No,” she said abruptly. “I want to go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Will you stop asking so many stupid questions?” she sighed. “Yes, I’m sure. That’s why you took me out here, right? To be surrounded by people. It’s not like you’d ever want to just hang out with me…alone…”

Ah. I saw what she was getting at now. I may have been a guy – a stupid, oblivious guy sometimes, sure, and maybe even a tad shallow – but I wasn’t dense enough to not pick up that hint. I could speak Girl if the time called for it.

“Candace,” I said, quickening my pace to catch up to her. I walked up behind her and firmly wrapped my arms around her shoulders, forcing her to stop walking. “Candace, Candace, Candace,” I murmured in her ear, “if you wanted to go out on a date with me, you could have just asked.”

“A date? Kasey Ray, don’t kid yourself – “

“Eight o’clock it is, then,” I said, still not letting her go despite all of her struggling. “Friday night. Be there or be square.”

I used to think that I wasn’t a stupid person. In fact, I would have liked to think that I was rather pretty intelligent. But after that maneuver, there was no way that was true. I knew I should not have done that. I should not be using any flirty tricks on Candace the same way I used them on other girls. Candace was…different from those other girls. I wasn’t sure if different mean that I still considered her to be “one of the guys” and un-dateable, or if different just meant, you know, different.

She was the only girl that had ever said no to me. The only one who had ever rejected to me. And I couldn’t deny that that had driven me wild; the more she said no, the more I came back looking for more. She was magnetic.

But that wasn’t the reason why I shouldn’t have asked her out. In about a half an hour, the boys and I were going to pull the worst prank ever in all of Prank History. And there was no way she was ever going to go out with me after that.

I suddenly noticed that she hadn’t said yes yet.

Internally I groaned; was I going to get rejected again? I didn’t think I could handle it.

She had fallen completely silent and was staring down at the ground. “What about Amie?”

Amie? Who the hell was – oh, right. The girl from the ice cream shop. “She doesn’t matter.”

“And what makes me different from her?” she asked. It wasn’t difficult to figure out she was testing me. “What makes me matter?”

“You’re Candace,” I said. And it was as simple as that.

I wasn’t sure if Candace could tell that I was actually being honest, because she didn’t reply for a minute. “Would you really take me out on a date?” she finally asked.

“Why are you so skeptical about it?” I laughed.

“I want to know,” she said. “Like I said before, you’re a menace, Kase. Everyone knows that.”

“I’ll take you on a date,” I smiled into her hair. “I promise.”

She tilted her face towards mine and gave me a reproachful look. “You’ve never kept your promises before,” she challenged.

“This one is different,” I replied coolly.

“Why?”

“Because you’re different.” I wasn’t really sure what I meant by that, but I think she understood, because at that moment a wide smile blossomed over her face and her honey-brown eyes were warm again.

“Okay,” she said.

“O-Okay? Okay as in yes?” I asked disbelievingly. Her one-worded answer had been quite unexpected. I was certain she was going to say no.

“Okay as in yes,” she confirmed, and then she tore away from my hold and began walking up the hill. She didn’t glance back to call over her shoulder, “Come on, Kasey Ray, we’re going to miss the party.”



And it was one hell of a party.

Everyone was there – people from my team, people from Candace’s team, even people from neither of the teams. (There were only two or three of these kids; they were either outcasts, newcomers, or they visited Dayton so rarely that they could hardly be called a part of the group.) There were even a few members of The Shenanigang, though thankfully these were the ones that were still unmarried and had quite a bit of the partying-oomph left in them. I could tell already that this was going to be the party of the summer.

I remembered spreading the word like wildfire, since I wanted plenty of people to show up; pranks were always the best when there was a huge crowd to humiliate my victim in front of. But I couldn’t remember inviting the Older Kids, or those two random guys who were smoking a bowl around the bonfire, who clearly didn’t belong in Dayton. And then I realized why they were all here: word must have gotten out that this was the Victory Prank. The name was pretty self-explanatory: the Victory Prank was the best prank of the summer, the one that signified which team won the Prank War for the year. It normally took place at the very end of the year, but I suppose this year triumph was going to arrive early.

I don’t know how everyone seemed to sense when a Victory Prank was going to take place, but somehow we all just knew. There was never a summer when we would look back and think, ‘Oh, yeah, that prank was the best, that one can be the Victory Prank.’ No, we all knew about it beforehand, as if all of us had some sixth sense that would tell us when a big prank was on its way. It probably had to do with all of the scheming involved; most pranks were done on a whim, but the big ones – the ones that really counted – took a lot of preplanning.

It was the anticipation of the Victory that had everyone on edge. I felt all of the pressure on me, since I was at the head of the plan, and I could see several people nodding approvingly in my direction with smirks on their faces. They were excited to see what I would do. And that was why so many people showed up.

It was supposed to be perfect. A prank like this was supposed to have a large number of onlookers to maximize the humiliation effect. But now…now I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through with this. I glanced over at Candace; she had already found her group of friends and was laughing loudly amongst them. She glanced over at me and our eyes met. She bit her lower lip and smiled slightly – a subtle hello – and then she returned her attention to the people around her. With a beer in her hand and a grin on her face, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Could I really ruin that?

Was I really that stupid?

“Kasey Ray!” someone shouted and slapped me on the back. “The man of the hour. Nice to see you, dude.”

I looked up to see a tall, ragged looking guy beaming down at me. I recognized him instantly as Ben, one of the Older Kids. Ben was three years my elder, and although that wasn’t much a difference now (well, it sort of was, since he was twenty-one and was now allowed to buy his own alcohol, whereas I still wasn’t; in his eyes, I was still a kid), but when I was younger it was a world of a difference. He had been the guy that I had always looked up to; I didn’t really believe in God, but in my book, Ben was pretty close to it. He had been the guy who told me all about girls and their secrets, he had been the one to teach me how to drive a boat, and he had been the one that introduced me to the wonderful liquid called beer. Basically, he was the man.

He had tattoos all up and down his arm, and because of it parents from all around looked always at him in disdain. And although I would never, ever, ever admit this to anyone, he was one of the main reasons why I had become such a trouble maker myself. I had wanted to be just like Ben, including even the bad side of him. And even at the age of eighteen, I still wanted to be just like him.

“Nice to see you too, man,” I replied heartily as he pushed a beer into my hands.

“Drink up,” he grinned. “Tonight’s supposed to be a fucking good night, I hear.”

“Yeah,” I nodded and took a sip of the Natty Lite. “Yeah, it is.”

“Don’t let me down, buddy,” he said and slapped me on the shoulder again before walking off.

“Oh, I won’t,” I said after him even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

It was decided, then. I would follow through with the prank. If Ben wanted to see something good, then I would give it to him.

I caught Johnny Boy’s attention and nodded to him, and he nodded back. That was the signal. He instantly turned around and began whispering to Lesneski and Frankie Fat-Ass, presumably informing them that the prank was on and they should get ready.

A wave of excitement passed through the crowd as the rest of my team began to get ready. And that was my cue.

“Hey,” I said as I strolled over to Candace. Unlike the last party, I was certain that she was drunk; she was giggling like an idiot and as I came over, she draped an arm over my shoulder and rested her head in the crook of my neck.

“Kasey, I missed you so much!” she yelled right into my ear. “We haven’t seen each other in twenty minutes! The bears almost got me,” she added, suddenly whispering. “The bears and the avalanche.” And then she burst out into giggles again.

“Come on,” I murmured into her ear and gently grabbed her hand. I led her away from the crowd, past the bonfire, through the curtain of low-hanging tree branches…and suddenly we were standing on a large, flat rock. Lucky Point.

It had been my goal to get her alone so the prank would work. Mission accomplished.

“Oh! It’s the STD rock!” Candace gasped excitedly and hurled herself to the ground. She was actually hugging the rock. “I missed you, rock.”

“Candace, um, how much did you have to drink?”

She held up four fingers. “Four beers,” she said, and then she put down her ring and pinkie finger, “and two shots.”

“Christ. Haven’t you ever heard of the phrase, ‘Beer before liquor, you’ve never been sicker?’ You’re fucked, Candace.”

“We should go scuba diving.”

I sighed; there was really no communicating with her at this point. Instead I sat down on the rock next to her. And I waited.

“Why did you throw this party anyway?” Candace mumbled sleepily, her bubbly and hyperactive demeanor now gone, and she rested her head on my chest. I, of course, made no protest to our sudden closeness. “Was it for me?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” I answered truthfully. “It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?” she gasped excitedly, her energy suddenly returning to her, and she bounced up and down and clapped a few times. “I love surprises!”

“You’ll hate this one, trust me,” I grumbled under my breath, low enough so that she couldn’t possibly hear me.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

And then suddenly her face was very close to mine and I could smell the liquor on her breath. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while now,” she whispered.

Oh shit. Those were the words that every guy dreaded. Not now, Candace I begged in my mind. Anytime but now.

Something in the bushes ruffled. I knew they were close.

“I’ve…I’ve noticed a few things about you ever since I came back,” she went on and her hand rose to softly brush some of the hair out of my eyes. “You’ve gotten taller. Your eyes are pretty. And I like your hair.”

“Candace, I – “

But my words were cut off as she abruptly pressed her lips against mine in a mind-numbing, heart-smashing kiss. Actually, I take that back. It wasn’t that remarkable – she was drunk, I was scared shitless – and the only part of it that could be described as mind-numbing was that I hadn’t been expecting it at all.

I was frozen in place, too shocked to even breathe, and then I did something that I definitely knew that I should not have done: I kissed her back. But I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do. Did I like the kiss, or had I been dreading it? I couldn’t tell. Maybe I was just dreading what was going to come after it. She was going to hate me forever.

She pulled away, only to see the horrified expression on my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked, and that at exact moment Johnny Boy and five other guys from my team sprung out of the bushes. They all had something white and round in their hands.

Johnny Boy had a killer smirk on his face. “Surprise,” he said, and then they threw the eggs at her.

I hurriedly scrambled out of the way, and all Candace could do was stare at the boys in surprise and confusion.

Throwing eggs at someone was boring and unoriginal, and that was why we had planned it out to make it even worse. The reason why we had waited four days to pull the prank was because we wanted to wait for the eggs to rot. And now Candace was covered in disgusting, putrid-smelling egg yolk and shattered shells.

They didn’t throw only eggs, though. There were the colored plastic Easter eggs, filled with only God knows what. I remembered Lesneski saying something about putting dog shit into one of them. And I knew there were a few filled with the black muck found at the deepest, smelliest pits of the Lake.

I watched for what seemed like an eternity when in reality it only took a six seconds. It only took six seconds to soak Candace in rotting egg yolk before the boys ran out of eggs and then ran away while laughing triumphantly. It took only six seconds to ruin the rest of Candace’s summer. It took only six seconds for her to begin hating me.

I heard more laughs and a few high-fives being passed around; I looked around and saw that nearly everyone in the party had gathered around to watch. Candace had noticed, too, because now she was giving me the most disappointed look I had received in my entire life.

I had expected her to scream at me or hit me or something. Or at least fucking cry. But all she did was remain silent and stare. And that was so, so much worse.

She stood up quietly, ignoring all of the cheers and jeers from the onlookers. Chad had appeared at her side in an instant – I realized that he had just run from the bonfire area. He hadn’t been here watching, probably because he and the rest of Candace’s team had no idea about the prank. So they were the only ones who weren’t guilty in this situation. “Come on, let’s get you out of here,” he murmured to her, and she nodded. Chad stared at me long and hard before guiding Candace to the trail that led them down to the boats.

She didn’t even look at me as she brushed past. Great. Now I wasn’t even worthy of her glares.

When Candace was out of sight, the crowd went wild.

“That was awesome!” Johnny Boy yelled and everyone shouted their agreements.

“Best prank of the year!” someone else shouted.

“Great job, Kase,” Ben said, coming up to me and handing me a beer. I drank it numbly. “I could tell you were the brains behind that prank. So awesome. I like, idolize you now,” he laughed. I knew at that moment that I should have felt immensely proud – my childhood hero was looking up to me now – but in all honesty, I had never felt more like a scumbag. I wanted to curl up in a corner and die. I would gladly let those fucking bears and avalanches take me down.

And I finally realized that I was a very, very stupid person.