Page 43 of Echoes of a Muted Song

“Though we aren’t above letting someone think we had,” Rebel added.

“Ohh yeah, that’s how it all played out after the Big League Chew incident,” I said.

“Dash was certain Ozzy was gonna go nuclear once he found out who was responsible for the gum, so he set up a little distraction to keep Ozzy running around chasing his tail trying to figure it out, meanwhile, I was the one who’d started finding little notes in the food.”

“Wait, in the food?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I unscrewed the lid on a jar of strawberry jam one morning, and there was literally a jam splattered note tucked there that read,are you sure this is strawberry? I have never closed a jar so fast.”

“There was one on a slice of pizza that read,I sneezed on this,and a carton of takeout had a note on the inside flap that read,I don’t think this is beef,”Rebel said.

Snickering, I shook my head at the memory. “It was horrible. Nothing was safe. Not even the Cap’n Crunch.”

“Do I even want to know what someone did to the cereal?” Cyril asked.

“Nothing,” Rebel declared. “That’s what made it the most epic prank of all.”

“Dash put notes in everything,” I explained. “But he printed them, so there was no way oflooking at the writing to see who was behind it. Ozzy figured that the person behind the notes had to be the one responsible for the gum in his dinner, so he was being super paranoid about everything.”

“When he saw the note in the jam, he was immediately like, there’s peppers in there, I just know there are peppers or hot sauce, or something,” Rebel explained. “So none of us was willing to taste it. Ozzy pulled out pancake mix, only there were these bits in it that looked like rat droppings, and he freaked and threw it in the trash.”

“They were chopped up raisins,” I explained, giggling. “Another of Dash’s pranks.”

“Ugggh, diabolical,” Cyril groaned.

“Right!” Rebel declared. “And Ozzy was correct, there were peppers in the jam. Dash had painstakingly steamed the label off a jar of strawberry jam and pasted it over the label on a jar of strawberry pepper jelly. It wasn’t until I scooped a little out to examine it that we noticed the difference.”

“There were little differences in everything. Like the coffee syrup for coffee milk? It wasn’t syrup, it was just bitter coffee. Really strong, bitter coffee without a hint of sweetness to it whatsoever,” I said.

“Oh man, what he did to the marshmallow fluff was simply diabolical,” Rebel said. “Fucker literally swapped the real fluff label onto a jarof vegan fluff, Cyril! Vegan fluff. Have you ever heard of such blasphemy?”

“I would have thought marshmallows were vegan,” Cyril replied.

“Yeah, well, so did I,” Rebel declared. “Only we’d both be wrong about that. Vegan fluff is made with chickpeas, can you believe that crap? Chickpeas. Do you know what chickpeas are, Cyril, because I didn’t, until I put a spoonful of that stuff in my mouth and nearly died.”

Giggling, I shook my head at the faces Rebel was making, while Cyril cracked up. I wished folks could see it, because they’d have been cracking up at the sight of Rebel with his nose scrunched up and his tongue half stuck out.

“Was your own fault,” I remarked. “It’s rude to stand there eating out of the jar.”

“It was a clean spoon and one bite,” Rebel snarked. “One. The most miserable bite of my life.”

“That does sound like it would be a little, umm, unexpected if you were expecting a spoonful of marshmallow,” Cyril declared, smothering a laugh.

“Exactly,” Rebel said. “I’ve got nothing against vegan food, just warn a guy, ya know? My tastebuds were expecting a different sort of sweet and a different texture altogether.”

“At least it wasn’t paste,” I offered. “Or Mrs. Bourassa might have popped out from the back to wag her finger at you and remind you to eatyour breakfast before you came to class.”

“Ohh man, it took weeks for her to stop asking if I’d remembered my breakfast before I came to school,” Rebel groaned.

“Did you?” Cyril asked.

“Sometimes.”

We all chuckled at that, as Rebel scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Anyway, this went on for like days,” Rebel said. “And by that point, everyone was starving and scared shi—eerr, terrified to try any of the food in the RV. So we asked the driver to pull in at the next exit that had a Denny’s, a Perkins, a Waffle House, or an IHOP.”

“Good call,” Cyril remarked.

---