Excerpt 1 - Kiara | Excerpt 2 - Carlos| Excerpt 3 - Carlos (new)
Kiara
I shouldn’t have done it. It was immature. It was that sexy and stupid comment Carlos made. That, combined with him making fun of the way I say “marmalade,” was what pushed me to make him eat his words.
It’s Friday. Tuck and I came to school early this morning to rig Carlos’s locker. Tuesday after school Tuck and I made over a hundred double-chocolate chip cookies. When they cooled off, we glued a small but powerful magnet to the back of each one. Now they’re stale cookie magnets. When Carlos opens his locker this morning, the inside is going to be decorated with a hundred little cookie magnets.
When he tries to pull each magnet off, the cookie will break into pieces and crumble in his hand. I got superstrong little magnets the size of a dime. It’ll be messy, that’s for sure. So he’ll have two options: keep the magnet cookies stuck inside his locker, or take them off one by one and be showered with little broken cookie pieces.
“Remind me never to get in a fight with you,” Tuck says as he acts as a lookout. School won’t start for another forty-five minutes, so there are only a few people passing in the hallway.
I open Carlos’s locker using the combination that was written on top of his schedule, which Mr. House gave to me. I feel guilty, but not guilty enough not to do it. I place a few cookies, then look at Tuck. He’s on the lookout for Carlos or anyone else who might get suspicious. Each time I place a cookie, the clink of the magnet against metal makes Tuck laugh.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.
“He’s going to freak,” Tuck says. “He’ll know it was you, you know. When you punk someone, the goal is to do it anonymously so you don’t get caught.”
“Too late now.” I attach more magnet cookies, but wonder how I’m going to get all one hundred of them inside. I’m placing them on the top, back, inside door, sides . . . I’m running out of space, but I’m almost done. It looks like the inside of his locker has brown measles.
I reach into the bag. “Only one left.”
Tuck peeks his head inside. “This could be one of the best pranks ever at Flatiron High, Kiara. You could go down in the history books. I’m proud of you. Put the last one on the outside, right in the middle.”
“Good idea.” I close his locker before anyone catches us, attach the last cookie, then check my watch. Homeroom starts in twenty minutes. “Now we wait.”
Tuck looks down the hallway. “People are coming. Shouldn’t we hide?”
“Yeah, but I have to see his reaction,” I say. “Let’s hide in Mrs. Hadden’s room.”
Five minutes later, as Tuck and I peek through the square window in the door, Carlos comes walking down the hall.
“There he is,” I whisper. My heart is beating furiously in my chest.
His eyebrows furrow when he reaches his locker and sees a big brown cookie on it. He looks left and right, obviously looking for any sign of who did it. When he pulls the cookie off, it crumbles in his hand but leaves the magnet stuck to his locker.
“What’s his reaction?” I ask Tuck, who’s taller and has a better view.
“He’s smiling. And shaking his head. Now he’s tossing the crumbled cookie in the garbage.”
Carlos won’t be smiling when he opens his locker to find ninetynine more cookie magnets.
“I’m going out there,” I tell Tuck. I emerge from the safety of Mrs. Hadden’s room and walk to my locker as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
“Hey,” I say to Carlos as he eyes his open locker with all the cookies.
“I’ll give you an A for originality and execution,” he says.
“Does it bother you I get good grades in everything, even pranks?”
“Yes.” He cocks a brow. “I’m impressed. I’m pissed off, but impressed.” He closes his locker, the ninety- nine cookies still attached to the inside. As if the cookies don’t exist, we walk side by side to his first- period class.
I can’t help but smile while we walk down the hall. He shakes his head a few times, as if he can’t believe what I did.
“Truce?” I ask.
“No way. You may have won this battle, but this war, chica, is far from over.”
> Read excerpt 2 - Carlos
