Fletch looked at the advertisements I’d made.

“Don’t you like them?” I asked with a wicked smile.

His eyes flicked over the page. “Well, it’s an ad for babysitting. But it looks like it’s not a teenage girl looking to earn some extra cash, but an alien from outer space trying to study humans with appalling spelling.”

“Yup.”

“Need someone to wantch your younglings with great interst? Look no futer than Sarah Delta. She will protect your baby. Low fees. Will wantch your baby in the safety of ur own home. Accepts cash. Saves younglings from choking, wallowing in poison, and cooking with the stove. Call now for FREEze estimate. I, Sarah Delta, will come to u.” Fletch swallowed a laugh. “And we’re going to staple these to power poles?”

“Yup!”

“The alien watermark in the background really sells it, and all these rippable number tags on the bottom. Whose phone number is this anyway?”

“It’s a rejection hotline number,” I explained.

“It’s what?”

I smiled. “It’s a fake number me and my lady friends give out to men when a man will not stop hounding us for our number. He takes the fake number and shoves off, much to our relief, and then later he calls it and hears a very nice recording about how the woman who gave him that number does not want to see him.”

“There is such a thing?”

“Of course there is, honey,” I said condescendingly as I pinched his cheek. “You’re just such a nice guy that you’ve never been given that number… or one like it.” I let go of him. “I could have given the poster a different number. There's one where the recording tells you that you have bad breath and another one that says you have something stuck in your teeth over and over.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“But you picked the rejection line?” Fletch asked, trailing after me on the sidewalk.

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“To spread the news that such a hotline exists. Anyone who calls it will never forget it. I’m not one to say that only chicks need numbers like this. If a man needs one and he’s curious enough to call our phone number, he’ll learn all about it.” I shook my hair merrily. “It’s my way of making the world a bit brighter with a double whammy. First, whoever reads the ad will certainly be entertained and then if they call the number, they’ll get smarter too. They can even rip off the number and keep it with them in their bag, giving it away immediately to any creep who won’t stop hounding them for their digits.”

Fletch followed me with the staple gun and I let him staple the ads to the poles while I looked at what else was posted. The first few poles were boring, but the fourth one had an ad that caught my attention.

I read it. “Does your dog or cat exhibit any of the following symptoms? Barking or meowing? Ruining furniture? Peeing on your bed or in other unwanted areas? Your pet is sexually frustrated! Call Carver Criche, an expert at jerking pets off.”

I gasped. What had Natalie done? I whipped out my phone and did a reverse lookup on the number she’d provided for him. When the screen loaded, it showed that it was an unlisted number. It was not a prank number like the one I was using for my ad. It had to be his real phone number. There was even a picture of him in black and white on the ad. I loaded in Facebook and found the picture she’d stolen off his company’s Facebook page.

Fletcher finished stapling and came over to see what I was looking at. “Carver Criche?” he said incredulously. “Think your friend, Natalie, did this?”

“Of course. This is the kind of thing we liked doing together. I mean, I didn’t know she would do up a flyer herself, but this is the sort of thing she and I used to share on Pinterest when we were still friends.” I stared at the paper in horror.

“It’s not a good joke,” Fletch said, tearing it clean off the pole.

I sighed in mild relief. “Even if we pull down the ones we find, we still probably won’t get them all.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but we got this one.”

Fletch put his arm around me, I slipped my arm around him, and together we walked to the next pole, where there was another ad that had to be torn down.