There was one boy at her school that she had never liked.
He was forever playing practical jokes. She didn’t think that any of his pranks were funny, in fact, the opposite. In her opinion, all his tricks were stupid, with some of them being quite dangerous, like a book being balanced on top of a door so that it falls when someone walks through. He would hide lunch boxes, put plastic spiders under books on school desks, lock all of the toilet doors from the inside then climb out, leaving them all showing they were engaged. At least he got into trouble for that one. Generally, she would just keep away from him. That worked until the day she walked straight into one of his pranks.
There was a small circle of kids in the playground, all standing around laughing, with him in the middle telling them something. As she approached, others were gathering around to see what was going on. When she got closer, a couple of her classmates let her through. The boy was pointing at the flower he wore, asking her if she thought it was pretty. As she moved forward to look at it, a jet of water hit her in the face. Naturally, there was a great burst of laughter, with her left wiping her face and feeling a rage she had never felt before. The teasing that followed meant that it took a long time before the anger that was burning inside her began to fade. It was an incident that would stay with her forever.
It was a couple of years after leaving school that she heard what had happened to him. Although the news was really sad, she found it hard to supress the feeling that some sort of justice had been served. It had been an accident at his home. The story she heard was that he was playing a practical joke on his parents late one night when it happened. He was prowling around, covered by a white sheet, making ghostly noises on the upper landing of their home. When his father got up to investigate, they had collided and the prankster had tumbled down the stairs.
When the invitations were sent out, indicating that it would be an open casket funeral, she called in at the town’s joke shop and purchased a squirt flower. On the day, she pinned it to her blouse, under her jacket.
As she took her turn to walk passed the coffin, she leant forward and whispered, “Goodbye.”
Only she knew that she could have.
Only she knew that she didn’t.
