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Kimmy rolled over. It was another one of those boring summer days, and she and Tammy were literally lying about, soaking up the A/C. They had attempted a bike ride about the neighborhood, but it was late August, and it didn’t get any hotter in Omaha. So the two had given up their ambitions and had retreated back inside, where they were now wasting one of the last days of summer vacation.
They would both be entering the 5th grade in just a week, but this year they were in different classes. Kimmy had pitched a fit about it, and her mother had called and called the school asking to transfer her into the same class as Tammy, but it was no good. They were not to be together.
It was sooo boring. The sound of the katydids outside was loud enough it could be heard through the walls. Outside it was deafening. Kimmy blinked and let her mind wander. She listened as Tammy took a deep sigh for a little girl and said, “I’m bored. Wanna play Wii?”
Kimmy forced herself up, pushing back the hair that had escaped her ponytail. It would be a few years yet before these two would begin to care about their hair and skin. Tammy had brown hair that was frizzed out from the humidity and streaked with love from the sun. Kimmy’s hair was the type that couldn’t get any more blonde, it was nearly white and slightly green tinted, from the chlorine of the inflatable ring pool in Tammy’s back yard. Her mother had done everything she could to keep the green out, and Kimmy had screamed about it, but she could only handle so much shampoo, too.
“Mmm. I’m sick of playing Wii. Besides, one of the controllers is out of batteries, and mom’s hid the spares.”
Tammy asked, “Why’d she do that?”
“Because I still haven’t finished my summer reading.”
Now Tammy sat up too. “That sucks. So, what should we do?”
“I don’t know.” Where do ideas come from in the human brain? As Kimmy sat there, thinking about how cruel her mother was for hiding the batteries and her dad for not forcing mom to give them to her, a thought came into her head. She flipped around and looked at Tammy, who raised her eyebrows in expectation. “Hey, have you ever prank called anyone before?”
Tammy put her finger on her chin, and twisted her head a bit as she thought about it. “Well, no, but this one time I called my mother and then hung up cause I didn’t know why I was calling.”
“Oh. I see. I’ve done that before, too.” That was a lie, and Kimmy didn’t know why she’d done it, but now that she had gotten started, she might as well continue doing so. She crossed her arms and took on an air of superiority. “Well, you should definitely try prank calling someone, for real prank calling. It’s super cool.” Tammy leaned forward, impressed. “I have prank called people like, a hundred times before. You wanna do it?”
It didn’t take Tammy more than a second to agree, but once ‘yeah!’ was out of her mouth, the nervousness began to spiral in her belly. Kimmy rolled back and then jumped straight up onto her feet, she was nothing but skin, bones and wiry muscle, and showed all the signs of being on the verge of yet another growth spurt. She tramped out to the kitchen,
Tammy right behind her, and pulled out the Yellow Pages. Kimmy then grabbed the phone off the wall, and took it, the phone book and Tammy back into the living room.
The five pound phone book made a pleasing ‘boom!’ as it hit the floor, and Kimmy flopped down next to it, Tammy coming down beside her. Kimmy deftly opened it to the white pages. “Ok, first, when you’re doing a prank call, you have to find a good number.”
She and Tammy briefly conferred on what they should do, and Tammy couldn’t stop giggling once the decision on what the qualifications for the number were and what they were going to do when it was answered was made. It took a little while to find a number that would actually work. Kimmy dialed as Tammy slowly read out to her.
Once the last digit was entered, it started to ring, and Tammy’s heart really started to beat.
Ring one.
Ring two.
Ring three. Kimmy narrowed her eyes, she would never admit it, but she was feeling the nerves, too.
The line suddenly picked up, and a wavery feminine voice said, “Hello?”
Both Tammy and Kimmy sucked in air and then began to make every fart noise they knew, taking deep breathes between each berry blowing session. “Pfffft! Pfffft! Thhhuuuuupt!”
What came next was not something two little girls could have ever expected. The woman on the line immediately began to sob, and then in a hysterical voice she asked, “Why are you doing this!? Why do keep calling me? Can’t you get enough?”
Both girls stopped in surprise, and the woman continued on. “My husband just died, and left me with nothing but medical bills. I’m going to have to sell our house to pay for them! My useless children can’t help me, they ask me for money! And the government is good for nothing!”
As the woman continued to rave, Kimmy and Tammy looked at each other, both of their faces pale with shock. The woman continued to shout at them like they had done this many times before, but the girls honestly had no idea who she was.
Kimmy was about to slam the end button when the woman sob-screamed at them, “Why are you doing this?! Can’t you just leave me alone!?”
Tammy caught Kimmy’s arm before she could end the call, and then, with a heroism she didn’t know she had, she brought the phone up so she could speak. “Ummm, the last four digits of your number spell ‘poop.’“
The line went suddenly quiet, and before anything else could happen, Tammy pressed the end button. Tammy and Kimmy’s hearts were beating at a thousand miles a minute, and with a shaking hand Tammy set the phone down and looked at Kimmy.
“Whoa.”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna go try and find the batteries?”
Tammy was still staring at the phone. “Yeah.”
As one they got up, not thinking about the consequences should they actually find the batteries. It would have been a waste of summer vacation time, of those precious days to always be together.
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