Sweet Revenge

I was trying to catch a few Zs on a quiet Saturday afternoon at the frat house when Myron Kaye burst into my room.

“Forbes, you got to do something. The damn actives did it again,” he shouted.

“Easy Myron. What did they do, and what can I do about it?” I said, sitting up on the side of my bunk bed.

“They stole the container of cookies my Mom sent me. Chocolate chips. The bastards, especially Bill Ames. He laughed and even offered me one. One. My own cookies.”

"How do you know they were your cookies? Maybe someone else’s Mom sent them,“ I said. Myron was always complaining about the active members of the frat and how they were hazing him in particular. I can’t swear that they weren’t. All of us pledges, however, got our share.

“Oh they were my cookies, alright. The wrapper they came in was right there on the table. I could see my name and address. And they took half of Egan’s Hershey bars his mom sent last week.

“At least they left him half of the bars.”

“Exactly half, only it was twelve halves. They cut every candy bar in half. It’s damn thievery.”

“So you want me to call the police and report the theft of your cookies?”

“C’mon Pat, you know what I mean, and you gotta do something. You’re the president of the pledge class.”

"Ok. We’ll talk about it Tuesday tonight at our pledge class meeting.”

A friendly enmity, if there is such a thing, exists in most fraternities and sororities, as I had discovered. And in our house, it’s an annual thing happening when freshmen choose a fraternity to be their home for the next four years. If they last that long. The freshmen, I mean, not the fraternities which, like ours, have been around for a century or more. And for part of that first year, hazing is a tradition.

I was convinced it was the sophomores who were the worst hazers, seeing a chance to “do upon the new crop of freshmen what was done upon them.” Most of it was good, spirited fun. In our fraternity, extreme hazing was banned.

On Tuesday evening, we pledges gathered in a meeting room at the campus Student Union. We stopped meeting at the frat house when it was discovered that the actives bugged the chapter room where we held our meetings. Friendly enmity!

Myron Kaye lost no time bringing up the cookie caper. “We gotta do something about it,” Myron said earnestly to the twenty-six pledges in attendance.

“Myron, you’ll just have to buy a cookie safe and keep the combination to yourself,” Les Green said. We all laughed.

“Or let us all help you eat them as soon as they arrive,” Ben Alpert said. Another laugh.

“Can we levy a fine at them for taking personal possessions?” Larry Knox asked.

“Pledges can’t fine actives and vice versa,” I explained. “It’s in the chapter rules. Pledges can fine each other, and actives against actives, and all must go through arbitration to weed out personal grudges. We've only had one such fine among us.”

“Oh yes,” Knox said. “I recall that it was you who fined your roomate, Irv, here. For wearing your shoes without permission. Ten bucks.”

“That was a special case,” I said. “It was a rainstorm that day. I purposely wore my oldest shoes, but at lunchtime here comes Irv sloshing through puddles in my best dress shoes.”

“There were extenuating circumstances,” Roommate Irv said. “I had holes in my sneakers, and I didn’t want to get my brand new shoes wet.”

“Well, I won the arbitration, and you still owe me five bucks,” I said. Even though the story had been told before, the laughter was loud and long.

Myron looked aggrieved. “Let’s be serious. What can we do about the actives taking stuff like cookies?”

“Looks like they got a sweet tooth,” Max Lerner said. “Can we capitalize on that?”

Irv said, “That’s it, Max. We’ll poison them all. Arsenic. No more hazing.”

“Wait,” Les Green said. “That’s really a good idea.”

“Arsenic?”

“No. Max said sweet tooth. Have you guys ever heard of Ex-Lax?” Les asked.

“What the Hell’s that?” I questioned.

“It’s a chocolate-flavored laxative. My mother used to give it to us kids when we got constipated.”

“Proves you were always full of crap, Les,” Ben said, and that drew laughter.

“A little order here, guys,” I said. “Les has an idea. Let’s hear him out.”

“What if we bake a cake and put in a liberal amount of Ex-Lax. Put the cake out in plain sight in someone’s room with some of it taken out like slices that have been eaten. And let the word out that someone’s folks had sent a delicious chocolate cake. If it goes like I think it might, the actives will steal the cake, eat it and then we watch the results. Revenge.”

“I bet it’s Bill Ames who’s behind it all,” Myron said, still nursing his grievance against the actives for stealing his cookies.

“Les, that’s a good idea but who knows how to bake a cake?” I asked.

“Lucy would to do it for us,” Irv said. “She works at Sloan’s Bakery and knows how to bake.” Lucy was Irv’s new girlfriend of the month.

“And she would go along with the Ex-Lax thing?”

“She’ll go along with anything,” Irv said.

“So we’ve heard,” Ben quipped. Again, general laughter. “And since my birthday is on Tuesday,” Ben continued, “I could claim my folks ordered it from Sloan’s.”

“Looks like we got a plan,” I said. “ Everyone pitches in a buck to buy all the ingredients. Les, you are in charge of getting the secret ingredient. Ben, Les, Irv and I will work out the details. Most importantly, nobody talks about this in the house, and we never, ever, admit to doing anything until pledging is over. All in favor?” The response was overwhelming.

On Tuesday, just before Noon, pledges and actives were lounging around the living room waiting for lunch to be served. Ben Alpert entered the front foyer carrying a white paper box.

As planned, Les called out, “Alpert, what do you have there?”

“Something for my birthday. My folks ordered it directly from Sloan’s, and I just picked it up. Smells good,” Ben replied, walked past the living room to the stairs and climbed to the second floor.

The seed has been successfully planted, I thought. The plan was underway. That evening, we held our usual, weekly pledge meeting at the Student Union. Ben reported that he had opened the box and cut out a big slice of the cake, threw that in the trash, and left the open box and the cutting knife on his desk.

“Sometimes it takes overnight for the Ex-Lax to begin its work,” Les explained. “And it works differently on individuals. We shall see.”

After our return from the Pledge meeting, Irv and I visited Ben’s room. Ben pointed to his desk. All that remained of the chocolate cake was a single slice on a napkin. The rest, including the box, had been taken. Now the fun begins, I thought.

And it did. In the morning, there was more than the usual flushing activity in the second and third floor johns. At breakfast, we noted that there were fewer actives present. We tried to hold in joyous laughter when Tim Jenkins left the dining room and raced up the stairs.

I whispered to Irv, “We don’t want the actives to think us pledges are responsible, so, you and I and a few others ought to fake the same kind of problem.”

Irv immediately stood up and announced, “Oh man, I gotta go.”

“Too early for class,” I said.

“Not to class. I really gotta go,” he said, and ran to the first-floor guest bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

But the real fun happened a little while later. We were standing outside the front door when Bill Ames, probably the instigator of Myron’s cookie theft and the likely culprit behind the chocolate cake disappearance, threw his books up into the air and ran as fast as he could back to the house. Not fast enough because when he passed us running, it was obvious that the runs had caught up with him before he made the front door.

Ah, I thought, revenge was really sweet!

The End

Author's Note: This story was written for and submitted to the Vocal Summer Fiction Series for the challenge to include a chocolate cake. Hope you like it. See my other stories on Vocal+.