Prank Night by Symone Craven

Tonight is it. This is the big night for Lonnie, if he’d only
get his head out of his ass.
    He strolls over to his
favorite lunch table, where his best friends Bobby and Nick hang
out every week. Lonnie bites his apple while his buddies look up at
him and sneer. He’s the kind of guy meant for the cool kids table,
way on the other side of the cafeteria. Neither Bobby nor Nick
knows why Lonnie puts up with them. He has long brown hair and
plays the guitar, for Christ’s sake! Girls eat that shit up! Nick
and Bobby? They spend their Friday nights on separate computers in
the same computer lounge playing World of Warcraft. Neither of them
have the lean body or charisma that Lonnie possess.
    Tonight is the night. No
screw-ups. Bobby and Nick are eager to boost their reputations.
They ply the new kid Dennis with a sip from Bobby’s mother’s
bourbon and some porno magazines. Once he hides them away in his
locker, the three of them huddle close to one another at the lunch
table and study a crudely drawn map. “Y’see Dennis,” Bobby says. He
points to a section of the crumpled paper. “We go through that
backdoor. Down the hall is the staircase. Upstairs are the
girls.”
    “ There are three floors,”
Nick says. “Ten rooms each means we got to get all thirty.” He
points to a row of boxes. “These are all the rooms. If we don’t get
‘em all, that’s okay. But we need to get enough to win this
year.”
    Dennis looks at him,
confused. He wrinkles his freckled nose and scratches his ginger
hair. “What are we gettin’?” He asks.
    Nick and Bobby glare at one
another. “I thought you told him,” Bobby says.
    “ I thought you,” Nick
replies.
    Finally, the two of them
awkwardly smile at Dennis and both answer in unison:
“Panties.”
    “ Panties?” He asks. Dennis
winces as he repeats it. “We’re gonna steal girls’
underwear?”
    “ Of course not,” Nick
says.
    “ We’re borrowing them,”
Bobby adds. “Each year we collect them and make our
trademark.”
    “ We need a trademark in
order for our prank to count,” Nick says. “Otherwise, it’ll be bad
news for us.”
    “ Why?” Dennis
asks.
    Bobby shrugs. “You
basically get your ass kicked by the Reagan brothers.”
    “ Who are the Reagan
brothers?” Dennis asks.
    Both of the young boys
groan. “Jeez, where are you from that you don’t know who they are?
It’s those two over there.” Nick points to a gregarious couple of
young men leaning against the quad statue of Seymour Crest, founder
of the Burrows Boarding School. There are several other teens
chatting around them. Amidst the vast battlefield of the outdoor
cafeteria, it is clear to see that the two of them wield the most
power. “Mitch and Kenny,” Nick says. “That tall one with the dirty
blonde hair is Mitch. And, well, the smaller muscular guy next to
him is Kenny.”
    “ As long as we pull of our
prank,” Bobby says. “We don’t get messed with.”
    Dennis smiles. “Cool. So
then you guys are pretty good at this, huh?”
    The two of them shake their
heads. “Not at all,” Nick replies. “We’ve had a losing streak since
we started three years ago. And we have Lonnie James-Osmet to thank
for that.”
    “ Who is Lonnie
James-Osmet?” Dennis asks, his voice phlegmy and shrill. When he
speaks, he slides his coke-bottled glasses up his nose.
    Both of the young men nod
to Lonnie, whose headed in their direction.
    Dennis snickers. “That guy
is like a model from one of those JC Penny’s catalogues,” he says.
“Why does he hang out with you two?”
    Bobby and Nick both look
insulted at first. But when they take one look at each other they
relax and shrug. “We’re still trying to figure out why,” Bobby
says. “All I know is that he chickens out of the panty raid every
year.”
    “ Which means that every
year we get our asses kicked.” Nick wipes his nose, thinking of the
numerous times he’s had to go to the school infirmary. Bobby could
no longer count how