Nicole

17

The sun rose and everything fell into place.
It was common knowledge that epiphanies came to people during strange moments, but Alex Moretti’s earthshattering realization occurred at 4AM during his own intervention, right when he was scooping out the remaining whipped cream, courtesy of his brother’s latest prank, from his ears. "I've got it," Alex declared, reverently staring up at the ceiling. "I've got it."
His annoying friend, Clark, followed his gaze upward from his seat on the edge of the bathtub. "I don't see anything," he stated blankly. "What're you looking at?"
"Oh, please, Alex," Rose, his other annoying friend, rolled her eyes and placed a hand on his shoulder, "not another scheme. Face it, you're never going to kill Elli…" she stopped at his murderous expression. "Um, your brother."
"What makes you say that?" Alex asked slowly, shaking off Rose’s hand.
Rose tossed her annoyingly pink hair and fixed him with an annoying stare.
"You need to come up with some better adjectives," Clark inserted.
Alex blinked, making a mental note to examine his brain to mouth filter. He needed his self-control in tip-top shape if he even hoped to kill—
…
Elliot Moretti was well aware of his little brother’s literally murderous intentions toward him, and knew that he should probably stop antagonizing ‘widdle Awex” before one of his assassination attempts inevitably succeeded.
But pranking Alex was one of the finer pleasures of life. The histrionics that followed each stolen towel, each muted alarm, each misplaced cockroach; oh, they were music to his ears. Alex’s reactions were always blown way out of proportion—he was trying to kill Elliot in retaliation, after all—but that was what made them so hilarious.
Elliot was well aware that the line needed to be drawn somewhere, someday, but that day was not today.
…
"Your eyes are glazing over, Alex," Rose said, annoy—superciliously. There.
A thought crossed his mind. "Wait, why do you think I can't kill him?"
"Well… Remember that time you put an alligator—"
"Crocodile."
"—right, crocodile, in Bobby Tiburon’s swimming pool?"
Alex frowned at the mention of Elliot’s genetic mutation of a roommate, the marine biologist whose skin was tinted blue from a couple too many close calls in the deep. How dare she speak of The Incident That Was Never To Be Spoken Of? "How was I supposed to know it wasn't Elliot’s pool?"
"I don't know, maybe because there were sharks in there as well?"
"I thought someone ELSE was trying to kill him!"
Rose rolled her eyes, and Clark looked up yet again. "What about the time you put a banana peel on the staircase?"
"It would've worked," Alex protested, shooting a venomous glare at Clark, "if our very own town idiot hadn't slipped on it first."
"He could've been killed!"
Alex shrugged. "A necessary sacrifice."
"Hey!" Clark shouted.
They both ignored him.
…
“Bucket? Check. Ropes? Check.” Elliot inwardly cackled with glee as he looked over the rest of the items laid out on his bed. “Mystery liquid? Check.”
This was going to be the prank to top all pranks. Alex might just explode after he got done with him. After all, Elliot wasn’t just going to push Alex’s buttons; he was going to annihilate them.
Elliot was going to mess up his hair. “Pure, unadulterated evil? Check.”
…
"Alex," Rose said, more gently, "I could go on. The point is, your plans don't work."
"I know that," he replied stubbornly. "That's why I'm trying a different approach."
Rose considered this. "Will it be your last one? If this one doesn't work, do you promise to stop trying to kill Elli… your brother? I care about you both, mostly you, and I don't think you two have a very healthy relationship.”
"Whatever."
She nodded, pleased. "Okay, what is it?"
"I'm going to write a To-Do-List," Alex said proudly. He waited for the shock, for her eyes to pop in wonder, her hair to frizzle in awe, her—
"You're kidding."
"It's a brilliant idea."
"It's a," she swallowed, like she couldn't believe she was about to say what she was about to say, "brilliantly stupid idea."
Clark gasped. "Ouch.”
They ignored him.
"It is not."
"Yes, it is!"
"It is not."
"It is!"
"Not," Alex said with finality. "And if you've noticed, 'it is' plus 'not' equals 'it is not'. Therefore, it is not."
Rose stared at him incredulously. "Alex, we've just established that your plans never work. Why on earth do you think writing down your plans is going to make it any better?"
"Technically, I'll be planning out my plans. My theory is that all my genius ideas," he glared at Clark, who was turning blue in the face from holding back laughter, "unfortunately failed because of extraneous factors that I did not take into account. So, if I include multiple plans of action, along with various alternative strategies to deal with any possible occurrence, there is no reason why my plan will not succeed this time."
"You're missing the point," Rose said simply.
"Plans never go as planned," Clark interjected. "It's, like, Murphy's Law!"
"Stop trying to sound smart. Just by opening your mouth, you collectively lower the IQ of the entire country," Alex scoffed.
“I’ll stop when you stop stealing comebacks from ‘Sherlock,’” Clark glared at him. "And you haven't even heard my idea yet."
They waited with absolutely no expectations.
"Okay," Clark began excitedly. "Plans don't work out exactly like you want them to. It's a fact. A universal law. So what you do is…"
Alex unconsciously leaned in.
"Reverse-psychology the universe! Instead of making a To-Do-List, make a To-Not-Do-List! That way, by planning to not do something, the universe will contrarily make it happen. And then everyone'll be happy." He produced a piece of paper from his pocket, scribbled “TNDL” at the top, and handed it to Alex. “Test it out.”
Alex considered this. “So I write things I want to do and, using this list, pretend I don’t want to do them in hopes that the universe will do the opposite of what I say and make everything happen?”
"That's…" Rose stared, slack-jawed.
"… A brilliantly stupid idea," Alex finished. But he wrote “GET FREE FOOD” underneath “TNDL” to test Clark’s theory anyway because his desperate need to wipe his brother off the face of the Earth happened to outweigh his pride.
Clark huffed. "Geniuses are never understood," he said, exiting the bathroom with a dramatic flourish of his hand.
…
Tweaking the position of a rope, Elliot observed the final product with a satisfied smile. It wasn’t just a bucket-over-door prank—it was much, much better.
Weeks of calculation and models—adjusted for Alex’s height so that opening the closed door would cause the bucket to fly out of the corner and upend its delicious contents over his unsuspecting head while he paused to turn on the lights—had amounted to this.
Bucket-Over-Door Prank 2.0 was a go.
…
"Why're you still here?" He asked Rose after a minute or two of silence had passed.
"I'm going to help you."
"You think it's a stupid plan," he bitterly pointed out. "So why?"
"Truthfully, I thought I might have a better chance of scoring a date if I helped you out with this. You know, like you'd owe it to me… or something." She smiled coquettishly, tucking a strand of pink behind her ear and sidling up to him.
"Oh."
She waited expectantly. "So…?"
"No."
…
Elliot was a block away from Alex when a blur of pink barreled past him, muttering a string of foul words under her breath. Ah, Alex’s little friend. “Hello, Rose,” he greeted good-naturedly.
“You…” The pink-haired girl screeched to a halt and immediately changed directions, advancing on Elliot with a furious expression. “This. Is. ALL. YOUR. FAULT.”
Elliot took a step back. And another. And bolted, Rose hot on his heels.
…
Alex blearily trudged down the hallway, failing to notice the trail of empty Campbell soup cans that, coincidentally, also headed toward his room.
Blissfully unaware of the fact that he was two seconds away from becoming the unfortunate victim of the oldest prank in the book, or, if you looked at it a different way, becoming the fortunate recipient of “FREE FOOD,” Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.