“Katie! Is everything all right?” Erika asks.
I grimace. “You don’t have to start every conversation asking me that,” I mumble.
“I’m sorry. I just want to make sure that you’re good. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So what’s up?”
“Is Tyler around?”
“Yeah, he’s in the other room. You want to talk to him?”
“He’s the prankster one, right?”
“Who do you want to prank?” she asks.
“Some bullies.”
“Get ‘em, girl. Here’s Tyler. It’s Katie,” she says, clearly talking to Tyler.
“Hey, Katie, what’s up?” Tyler asks.
“I don’t know if you heard much about the guys who have been giving me a hard time or not, but I think you might be the right person to help me.”
“Help with what? Burying bodies is more for Shane, I would think.”
I laugh.
“I’m serious. He’s spent some time in jail.”
I blink a few times, shocked. “Oh…”
“Not for murder or anything like that.” Tyler laughs.
“I was thinking more along the lines of harmless pranks,” I say.
“Harmless pranks are no fun,” he says.
“I don’t want to piss them off,” I protest. “I might’ve started a war as it is.”
“You started it? How?”
“I spray painted their motorcycles.”
“Nice. Well, if you want harmless, there’s the classic peace offering.”
“Hmm?”
“Bake them some brownies but add a special ingredient.”
“That’s gross!”
“You wouldn’t eat it,” he says.
“Actually, knowing them, they would probably insist that I eat a bite of it first.”
“Then you make two bathes and cut them both up and swap out one piece of the perfect brownies for one piece of the shitty brownies. Boom. There’s the piece you eat.”