"Is this supposed to tingle?" I nervously question.

The girls and I are upstairs in my bathroom trying out the face mask Kelly brought over for us.

"Yeah my face is starting to kinda sting a little. Kelly, what the heck did you bring us?" Rachel adds.

"Everybody calm down, I'm sure it's fine. Let me just double check the directions real quick." She starts rummaging around the messy bathroom countertop looking for the packaging the mask came in.

"I thought this was supposed to be soothing and hydrating. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not really feeling very glowy right now." Payton jokes.

"Ok, here it is. Blah blah blah, Rub the mask on clean dry skin....yada yada. Yeah I don't see anything about tingling on here?" Kelly tells us with a shrug.

"Let me take a look." Claire leans over Kelly's shoulder to read the package. "Kelly! These masks are expired! Look at the date on the bottom. They expired six months ago!"

"Everybody wash this off quick!" Payton yells and we all frantically start rubbing the purple clay mask off our faces as fast as we can.

"How was I supposed to know it has an expiration date? It's not like I was planning to eat it?" Kelly tries to defend herself.

"When did you get these?" I ask while rubbing a wet washcloth furiously over my face.

"Last Christmas. My mom put it in my stocking."

"So almost a year ago?!" Rachel yells.

"Okay, okay. My bad. Lesson learned." Kelly starts laughing.

After all of us girls are sufficiently scrubbed until we're red in the face (thankfully no other horrible side effects or allergic reactions happened, I think we got the masks off fast enough) we decide it's better to steer clear of any more beauty treatments tonight.

There's a knock at my bedroom door.

"Hey Lies, do you and your friends... Woah, what happened to all of you?" Charlie points to our pink faces when he opens the door.

"Don't ask." We all deadpan simultaneously.

"Geesh, ok." Charlie laughs. "What I was going to ask was if you and your girlfriends wanted to have a bonfire with Lucas, Tuck and I."

Tyler and the other guys left my house around nine after we finished dinner and I opened my birthday gifts. They stayed to hang out for a little bit but left kind of early saying they were trying to let us girls have some 'alone time'. I think more realistically they were all still pretty nervous around my older brothers. Apparently my brothers' protective instincts extend to my girlfriends as well as me. Charlie, Lucas and Tuck watched the guys' every move all night. It was unnecessary but still kind of endearing.

"Um yeah, that sounds good. As long as you guys are ok with that?" I ask Payton, Kelly, Rachel and Claire.

"Yeah, sounds fun! We know you don't get a lot of time with your brothers home." Payton answers for everyone.

"Cool. Bring some blankets down, it's cold out." Charlie exits my room.

"Ok so when are we going to talk about how HOT your brothers are?" Kelly blurts out not even a second after Charlie leaves.

"Kelly! Get a grip, that's Lila's brothers you're talking about. Plus you're with Chase." Rachel scolds.

"What? You all know I love Chase, obvi. I'm not allowed to appreciate how fine Lila's brothers are though?" Kelly asks unashamed.

"It's alright. I'm used to it by now." I laugh it off. "Besides, what kind of a hypocrite would I be if I got mad? Have you all forgotten I'm currently dating Payton's brother."

"Ok well good, cuz they are pretty hot." Rachel admits.

Everyone starts laughing.

"Come on, let's get down there." I tell my girlfriends.

****

The fire my brothers built is pretty big but it's doing very little at actually keeping us warm on this cold November night. It won't be much longer until we start getting snow.

"So girls, give us the tea. We want to hear all the juicy details." Lucas turns to all of my friends in his best 'teenage girl' impression. He was always the jokester of our family.

"Like what all do you want to know? Romeo's pretty boring most of the time." Payton says.

"There's got to be something exciting that's happened since school started." Tuck adds digging for information.

"Probably the biggest thing to happen at our school this year is Lila arriving. Everybody basically went crazy when she got here, especially all the guys." Rachel spills to my brothers.

"Now we're getting somewhere. Lila only gives us the cliff notes version of her life." Charlie teases.

"Hey now, first of all, I'll tell you what you need to know. And second, they're exaggerating. It wasn't that big of a deal when I got here."

"I beg to differ. Lila literally took down two varsity football players in our weight training class on the first day of school. If people weren't talking about her already, they definitely were after that." Kelly laughs.

"That's our girl! What'd you do?" Charlie asks.

"It wasn't that big of a deal." I start to laugh to myself thinking about the look on Tanner's face when I beat him at wall sits.

"Stop being modest." Payton interjects. "She took down skeezy Tanner without even breaking a sweat. She pulled a one legged wall sit out of nowhere and he didn't stand a chance. That was before she beat TJ at the rope climb. I wasn't there but man do I wish I was!"

"Tanner...Why does that name sound familiar? Is that the kid you told me about that started the fight with Tyler at Homecoming?" Charlie asks me.

"One and the same."

"Wait, that's the dude that tried to put his hands on you?" Lucas starts putting the pieces together. Clearly Charlie didn't leave out any details when he called Lucas and Tuck up about my heartbreak last month.

"Yeah. Tyler intervened though. Don't worry, nothing happened to me." I try to reassure my brothers. I don't need them spiraling out of control another time today.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Tuck looks at Charlie and Lucas with an evil grin.

"Definitely" Charlie responds.

"Wait a second, what are you three up to? I don't like the looks on your faces." I question them.

"You guys wouldn't happen to know where this Tanner guy lives do you?" Lucas asks us.

"Of course we know where he lives. Romeo is super small, everybody knows where everyone lives." Kelly says.

"Oh no, no no no. Don't even think about it." I finally am catching on to what my brothers are scheming.

"What are we missing Lila? Why do they care where Tanner lives?" Claire asks.

"If I had to bet, they are thinking about paying Tanner a visit tonight. Probably doing something super idiotic and very unneccesary while they're at it." I say disapprovingly.

"Ooooo, what do you guys have planned?! I want in! If there is one dude I can't stand, it's definitely Tanner." Kelly jumps on board the crazy train with my brothers.

"You know what, me too! Tanner is the worst, I'm in. What's the plan?" Payton asks my brothers.

"Oh great, why'd you both have to encourage them?" I say with sarcasm.

"Don't deny it Lila, you know you want to come to the dark side." Tuck taunts.

I look at Rachel and Claire for back up but instead they don't seem all that against the idea either, just not as vocal as our other two friends.

All eyes are on me, waiting for a response.

"Listen, I'll join in as long as we all agree to two major rules: One, nothing illegal. And two, he can't know it was us. I'm not trying to have a bigger target on my back with Tanner than I already do. My life is finally in a really good place and I don't want to jeopardize it."

"But then how will Tanner know to stay away from you if he doesn't know it was us?" Charlie whines.

"I'm not joking Charlie, those are my conditions. Take it or leave it."

"You take all the fun out of everything....ok fine. We can agree to those terms."

"Good. So...what's the plan?" A little smile creeps onto my face even though I try to hide it.

Everyone cheers around the fire!

"First, tell us more about this Tanner guy. We need some intel." Charlie rubs his hands together, ready to get to work.

"Let's see. He's a total slimeball. He thinks he's God's gift to women. He's way too arrogant to turn down any type of challenge, as proven by the way Lila was able to easily defeat him in weight training. His parents are super rich so he's a total snob who likes to flaunt his money. The only thing he likes better than himself is probably his Mustang." Payton tells my brothers.

"Bingo! That gives me an idea." Tucker wears a mischievous grin.

*****

"I can't believe you three talked us into this. I swear, if only you all used your evil powers for good, the world would be such a different place." I whisper-yell at my brothers as we all crawl around the side of Tanner's house in the dark.

"Shhh! You're gonna blow our cover." Charlie scolds me.

When we make it to Tanner's mustang we all hold our breath. Tuck grabs the handle to see if it's unlocked. Romeo is generally known for being a safe, small town so we're hoping to get lucky.

"We're in." Tuck whispers to us all and slowly cracks the door open.

We all do a silent happy dance on the ground behind the car so we don't get noticed.

Tuck is currently in trade school and has been spending the last four months working at an auto shop so he had a whole lot of ideas of what we could do to Tanner's car without actually ruining it. After a lot of debate we settled on moving it out of his driveway, putting some open tuna cans in the trunk and saran wrapping the exterior.

Phase one is the riskiest part. We have to quietly push Tanner's car from his driveway to the park down the street without getting caught.

"Lila, you hop in the driver's seat, pop it in neutral and steer. Everybody else can help push. We need to be quick if we don't want to get caught." Lucas signals to everyone. "3, 2, 1 let's go."

My heart is racing and I feel like I'm a navy seal or something right now. The terror of getting caught isn't outweighing the thrill of giving Tanner a little pay back. Tanner's car smells like his overpowering cologne which I hate and it only fuels my desire to prank him.

"Alright, phase two. Everybody focus on your zone. Claire, Rachel you have the trunk. Kelly and Payton you take the back doors, Lila and Lucas you take the front doors. Charlie and I will take the hood. We need to be done in fifteen minutes or less. We don't need anyone driving by to see us and call it in to either Tanner or the police." Tucker gives us all our orders like a commander.

We all work in almost complete silence. Too nervous to mess this up or get caught I think. It only takes us about ten minutes to completely cover the car in enough layers of clear wrap to satisfy us.

"Ok, we gotta move. Let's go." Charlie calls to us when we're finished.

"Wait! Picture or it didn't happen." Payton says. We all crowd around Tanner's mustang and smile for the best selfie I've ever been a part of.

"Alright, meet you girls back at the house. Make sure to post to your instagrams and tik toks the alibi pics we took before we left. We don't want anyone being able to trace this back to you girls."

"Wait, where are you three going?" I ask my brothers.

"Phase three." My brothers all say back to me at the same time.

"What's phase three?"

"Don't worry about it." They each give me a kiss on the cheek and pull black ski masks from their jackets. "Love you baby sis!"

The boys run off towards Tanner's house without any more of an explanation.

"Come on Lila, no time to worry about what they're doing. They're big boys and can take care of themselves. Let's get out of here." Rachel pulls my arm and we all runoff in the opposite direction from my brothers.

We made it back to my house in a few minutes. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super nervous about whatever shenanigans my brothers were getting into. But I was also so amped up from pulling off the prank with my best friends that I tried not to let it worry me too much.

Twenty minutes later Charlie, Lucas and Tucker come strolling in the front door laughing their butts off.

"Hey! Keep it down. Are you trying to wake up mom and dad? What happened? What'd you guys do?"

"Settle down Lila. Here, we'll just show you." Lucas hands me his phone and presses play.

The girls all crowd around the small screen I hold in my hands as we watch my three brothers on the video. Charlie is calling someone. We can't hear the audio super well but I'm guessing it's Tanner. A few seconds later Tanner runs out of his house in a panic. He's frantically looking for his car in the driveway and down the street. Then Charlie, Lucas and Tucker step out of the shadows into Tanner's line of sight. They are big, muscular dudes wearing ski masks, so with no surprise Tanner freaks out and starts running away.

"I can't believe you guys did this! Please tell me you didn't hurt him, that was not something we talked about." I ask nervously and keep watching.

"Nahh, just wanted to scare him, which wasn't hard. The dude was such a coward. All we did was hand him a note that said we'd be watching him and where he could find his car. Then we bolted. We snuck back over by the park without him seeing us so we could watch him find his car. Click the next video to see that, it's hilarious!" Charlie is practically rolling on the floor laughing as he tells us.

"I thought we agreed Tanner wouldn't find out it was us." I say.

"No, we agreed Tanner would never know it was you five. He's never met us before, plus we had masks on. For all he knows we're from some rival school, or the relative of any number of girls he's screwed over. We didn't say anything that would indicate you or your friends Lila." Tucker explains.

"Still, that was risky."

"And well worth it!" Lucas high fives my brothers.

"There's still one more thing I can't figure out. How'd you get Tanner's phone number to call him?" I ask.

"That was me, I hope you're not mad." Payton raises her hand in guilt. "Your brothers asked me when you were in the bathroom before we left. We didn't want you to say no."

"You all knew?!" I turn to each of my friends, a bit in shock.

"Maybe?" Kelly answers.

"Please don't be mad. You're not mad at us right?" Claire asks sweetly. She's the last person I would expect this from.

"Ya'll are crazy!" I bust into a giant belly laugh. "Remind me to never let my brother's around you four again. One night and they've completely corrupted you!"

All my girlfriends and I form a large group hug which gets encased by my three giant brothers over top of us.

"This might be my best birthday yet."

"But wait, it gets better. I hooked Tanner's car horn to his brake pedal. So anytime he hits his brakes he'll blow the horn." Tucker tells us and we all break into more laughter.