I should have known not to trust myself; I get out of one punishment, only to land me deep in another. And the most frustrating thing was, that I only had to blame myself. I know I should have left it, but I couldn’t. There was no way I was going to let her get away with telling mum about the cigarettes. Right then, it seemed like the most unforgivable sin. Before I learnt that there were worse things in life than groundings, far more scary things than pissed off mothers…

I need to get her good, something that would leave its mark on the history of all pranks. The idea came to me in a junk yard. It was a short cut on our way back from school that I often took when I was in a mood (which I was). I kicked along random bits of rubbish until I kicked too hard and it disappeared under another mound of crap, then I found something else to kick along until that too disappeared. It took a second to realise what I was kicking- Aussie Deep Treatment 3 Minuet Miracle Moist- Graces brand, and while being reminded of the betrayal stung, an idea struck me.

Maybe I could fill it with something gross- like maggots or pesto. Nah, that’s too short lived, if I had to suffer for 2 weeks so should she. I felt the change left in my pocket- about £3, which should be enough for a cheap bottle of hideous hair dye from Poundland.

Revenge was mine.

When we moved into this house a few years ago, Grace got her own on suite bathroom, which I wasn’t really that bothered about it, and made my plan complete. Without her own bathroom it wouldn’t have worked. Or it would have got someone else; probably mum and I’ll be in even deeper shit.

Snuck into her bathroom while she was still at gymnastics that evening, poured the contents of the bottle down the sink, washing it down with water, and replacing it with the bottle of hair dye and a bit of bleach from under the sink. I heard somewhere that you had to bleach dark hair for the dye to take. I didn’t really know what I was doing- if it worked then great I had an awesome prank, and if not no-one was to know about my failure.

By the time Grace got home, I was safely sat at the kitchen table finishing homework under careful parental supervision. Or at least I was pretending to. I couldn’t concentrate.

I wonder what her reaction would be, would it be a scream, or an angry shout followed by countless swearing and curses?

The shower goes off. Splatters, then drips, then silence. I tense with excitement. I know Graces routines inside out, like clockwork she pulls the towel off its rack after she’s showered, I can’t hear her footsteps, but I imagine her taking three or four steps. Reaching up. Glancing up into the mirror….

Then I heard it. The scream. A shocked scream at first. Then a torrent of them, one running into another. I push my soggy cornflakes aside I prepare myself for the biggest laugh of the century.

Mum is at the sink washing up the plates left from the night before, and Mitchell is leaning against the side talking to her, neither of them are prepared for what happens next, so when they hear the screams, their bodies go stiff, just for a moment, before running to the stairs.

Which, (like the jerk I am), is when I burst out laughing.

Grace crashes out of her room, screaming, “Mum, my hair! My hair!!!” is all the words she can say. She standing at the top of the stairs, wrapped loosely in a towel with patchy green and yellow strains of hair, pulling at it as if she's trying to pull it out.

Once Mitchell and mum get over the shock, their faces turn red, livid. And I know I’ve gone too far, but I’m too busy laughing to realize, only to be brought back to earth by the screams and shouts.

“Mum, look at my hair! What happened to my hair?” She screams, not quite knowing how to describe it. “I... I...” She stops she spotted me laughing. But I not really that concerned, it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Each of them, one at a time turn in my direction, their stares of disbelief burning into my head, and I fail to notice the deafening silence between gasps of giggles.

Grace picks out a chunk off her leg, and this time, studies it. “What did you do? What is this, you little shit?”

“What does it look like? I thought green was your colour!” I laugh, laughing too hard to realize she isn’t, and the tears threatening to spill, but I’m laughing too hard, grabbing my chest and heaving my breath in.

Mum stares at me. Mitchell stares at me. Grace stares at me.

Then-

“You lousy son of a-”

I don’t catch the rest of the insult- she flies down the stairs, dropping her towel on the way. I don’t have time to react to that before she’s on me, slapping and scratching at my face.

“Scum!” She screeches. She lunges at me sharply, tackles me to the floor and starts thumping on my chest, hitting me with all her frustrated might. I stop laughing instantly “Get off!” I roar, lashing out blindly. Mum and Mitchell suddenly recover and shout at exactly the same time.

“Stop that!”

“Don’t hit your sister!”

“She’s a lunatic!” I gasp, pushing myself away from her,

“He’s an animal.” She sobs in a response, picking at her hair her hair, and I realise she’s crying- not the attention seeking type, serious waterworks- and her face is as red contrasting deeply against the awful yellow-green strands- red from anger, shame, and... Fear?

Mum picks up the towel, and wraps it around Grace. Mitchell just behind her, expression...well, let’s just say if looks could kill, I’d be six feet under. She looks pitifully at what is left of the smooth ginger hair that she was so proud of, then howls with anguish.

“What’s wrong with you?!” She yells the throws some more guts at me. “It’s like I’ve got bogies on my head!! I’m gonna kill you!!!” she cried.

“I’d say more slime green but I haven’t got a colour chart” I gave a final jab, and she dives for my throat.

“No more!” Mitchell shouts. His tone stops us dead. He’s been so nice, even before with our excessive childish wars that usually last for weeks, and I never heard him raise his voice like that. Some part of me wants to take it seriously, some part of me feels guilty, but I crush it, and ignore the nagging feeling.

“Molly, go and sort Grace out, I need to have a talk with your son.” It wasn’t the anger in his voice that frightened me, it was the sheer disappointment, and the way he said ‘your son’ not ‘our son’, like he was glad we weren’t related. Before, it’s never been weird that we weren’t his kids, he didn’t pretend we were either, that’s what I liked about him, but the way he said it, made me wonder if he’s had enough. But I didn’t want that, despite what my actions said, I liked having him as a “dad”.

Mum and Grace went upstairs, grasping her by the shoulders as if holding her up, and I was left to the lectures.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“It was funny.” I say, probably to convince myself more than to convince him.

“No it wasn’t, there are things you should never do, and that’s one of them.”

“It was just a joke.” I defend spiritlessly.

“You humiliated her, invaded her privacy, and…” he goes to say something more, then thinks better of it “Couldn’t have picked a better day, could you?” he growls.

I often wondered what he might have said, and if it would have made a difference, but I think maybe in some twisted way what happened in the next few weeks, was meant to happen.

“She told you and mum about me smoking- and I know it was her.” I growl, knowing that even as I said it, it wouldn’t make anything better.

“That was wrong. It gave you no right to do that, it was uncalled for. You...” he sighed, suddenly exacerbated. “Finish your homework in your room. I need to discuss with your mother what to do with you.”

I trudge upstairs miserably; I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I was a great joke; I’ll laugh for hours when I think of it. And all that hard work- buying the dye, getting them in without being seen, sneaking into her bathroom while she was out, mixing it together, getting rid of the evidence and carefully putting everything back the way she left it- wasted!

I walk past Graces room, and I hear her crying pitifully. Mums whispering softly to her. My stomach goes clenches, the way it does when I know I’ve done something wrong. I ignore it. “I don’t care what they say” I mumble to myself, kicking open my room and ripping various books off my shelf that I needed. “It was a brilliant joke!”

Treason! Confined to my room for a month. A whole bloody month! No TV, no books, no comics, no computer. It’s a crime! A joke- that was all it did, a piratical joke, and this is what I get? I’m aloud out of my room for bathroom, and meals- not that that’s much better. They don’t talk to me at meals, not a word, they pretend I don’t exist. Grace doesn’t even glance and me for a spiteful sneer like she usually does when I’m getting the doghouse treatment.

What have I don’t that’s so bad? Ok, I did a practical joke which I knew I would get in trouble for, but their reactions were waaaaaaayyyy over the top. They took her the hairdressers the next day, and they got rid of all the evidence of what I’d done, and she got a nice hair cut out of it. I didn’t even get photographic evidence. If I had done something to embarrass her in public, then ok, I’d take what was coming. But this was a private joke, just between us. They shouldn’t have made such a big thing about it.

Mitchells words echoed back at me “couldn’t have picked a better day, could you?” and I wonder what he meant, I couldn’t think of anything special about that day, and I think maybe I’d forgotten something important, but somehow, I doubt it. There was something else, more than the joke that was making them act strange.

I want to tell myself that she deserved it, but the stabs of guilt I felt disagreed.