“No,” I said, resisting the opportunity to mess with her. “My mom bought them for me when . . . when she found out she was sick.”
“Oh,” Toby said, her expression changing immediately. She looked at me without speaking, searching my face, and I knew she was trying to see if I wanted her to talk about it, or to drop it. She’d do either one in a heartbeat. I knew that from experience.
And normally I would have left it at that. But I’d never told anyone this—maybe not surprisingly, it had never come up before. “Yeah,” I said, my throat feeling a little tighter than usual. “She was worried I wouldn’t have any when I needed it. And she didn’t want me to feel embarrassed about asking my dad to buy them for me.” I looked at all the stacked boxes, most of which I hadn’t touched in years, once I was able to start shopping for myself. But I’d never even thought about throwing them away. My mother had bought them for me. She’d gone to CVS and picked them out so that she could help me even when she wouldn’t be here.
“That’s really nice,” Toby said quietly, giving me a smile, and I nodded.
“Girls!” my dad yelled from downstairs. “It’s been five minutes!”
Toby paled. “It has?” She grabbed the cotton balls and bolted for the door. Then she stopped and turned back to me. “Unless you want to talk,” she said, voice rising in a question.
I shook my head and pointed to the door. “Scavenger hunt!”
Five minutes later we were in the car—all of us, with my dad behind the wheel. “Seat belts?” he asked as he backed out of the garage.
“Check,” Toby said, from where she was sitting in the middle of the backseat, leaning forward.
I hadn’t anticipated that we were formally adding a member to our team, but we’d been all set to go—having dropped all the items we were able to grab from the house into a big canvas bag—when my dad had handed me the keys to his sedan and then frowned. “Do you know how to drive a stick shift?”
I did not, and I was pretty sure learning to drive stick took more than five minutes. And since we still wanted to have a fighting shot at winning this, my dad had offered to drive us. We’d decided on the first stop, and I was trying to figure out our plan for the rest. “I think we should get the pizza toward the end,” I said, making a note with my dad’s pencil as he pulled out onto the road, going a little faster than normal. “We can get the napkins, the ice, and the soda at the pizza place too.” I thought of something and looked up. “Do you think this is just Palmer’s way of getting us to pick up dinner?”
“We don’t have time for speculation,” Toby snapped, frowning at her phone. “I’m trying to learn the Thriller dance here.”
“I thought we agreed to skip that one because it was time-inefficient.”
“Well, it’s a mute point anyway, because my phone just died,” she said, dropping it into her bag.
“A mute point?” my dad asked, glancing over at me.
“I know,” I said, shaking my head at him. “Believe me, we’ve all tried to tell her.”
“Can I use yours?” Toby asked, leaning forward and holding out her hand.
“Sure,” I said, handing it over while still reading over the list, waiting for a sudden flash of insight that would help me figure out what item we could get that started with Z. The only thing I could seem to think of was “Zamboni,” even as I tried to tell my brain there had to be other words that started with that letter. “Oh, but do me a favor and text Clark? Tell him I’m mad at him about the keys and he’s not going to get away with it.”
“I think he did get away with it,” my dad pointed out, as he slowed for a stop sign, but then immediately gunned the engine again. I had a feeling he was enjoying this. “You’re just going to have to figure out how to get him back.”
“Okay, how’s this?” Toby asked, handing my phone to me.
“What is this?” I asked, turning around to look at her.
“What?” she asked. “I said that we were mad, that we wanted the keys back, and if he didn’t do it, he was dead.”
“But what’s with the sneaker?”
“Toby,” she explained in a patient voice. “Toe-bee. Come on, Andie, think about it.”
“But this is my phone,” I pointed out. “You’re texting as me. I think you could use actual words and still win the bet.”
“Oh,” Toby said, suddenly looking nervous. “I . . . I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why can’t you text with actual words?” my dad asked as he sped through a yellow.
“Palmer’s betting Toby she can’t go the whole summer only using emojis,” I said, shaking my head. “We tried to talk her out of it.”
My dad glanced down at my phone, then threw Toby a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror. “Well, I think that’s very clever,” he said to her, and Toby smiled as she took my phone back from me. “Maybe you should have tried harder,” he said to me in an undertone.
I fought back a smile as I looked down at the list. “Well, if we win this, she’s in the clear again,” I said. I glanced into the backseat. “Tobes, how are we on time?”
“Hour and a half. We’re going to need to move.”
“On it,” my dad said, grinning as he sped up. We screeched to a stop in front of the diner five minutes later, and I turned to Toby.
“Ready?” I asked, and Toby yelled, “Break!” and bolted from the car, not waiting for me to follow.
“Be right back,” I said to my dad as I unbuckled my seat belt.
“I’ll keep the car running.”
I ran full-out toward the diner, taking the steps two at a time. Most of the other items on the list could be acquired at a variety of places—or at least more than one—but for Diner Menu, I was pretty sure Palmer meant one of the actual, fake-leather-bound menus, not the paper ones for to-go orders. We’d also discussed that this might be our best chance to pick up a Blue Gum Ball from the candy machines in the waiting area. As I pulled the door open, I saw Toby was already feeding coins into the candy machine and cranking the knob. “Just check the dates,” I reminded her as I continued in to the restaurant. “Anything before 1980, don’t waste on the gum ball!” Toby gave me a withering I know look, but I noticed that she started checking her coins.
I approached the hostess stand, which was deserted as usual, even though the restaurant was pretty full, mostly of families crammed into the booths. I glanced under the hostess stand, where I’d seen extra stacks of menus in the past. But was I actually going to be able to just steal one? This immediately became a mute point, though, since the podium was empty. I looked around the restaurant, and spotted Carly sitting at the nearly-empty counter, with a stack of menus and a bottle of Windex in front of her.
I headed straight over, grateful that she was working and not one of the waitresses who hated us. I knew we would have had no luck at all with them.
“Hi there!” I said in my friendliest voice, as Carly looked up from where she was cleaning the menus—Windexing and then wiping off with a towel.
“It’s self-seating right now,” she said, giving the appetizer page a wipe-down. “Anything that’s open.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said, taking a breath. I needed to be charming and ingratiating, or we didn’t have a chance. I realized that I hadn’t had to do this in a while, since I hadn’t had to go to any fund-raisers or meet with potential donors. It was like trying to flex a muscle I hadn’t used in a long time. “I was just wondering if possibly we could just borrow one of these menus for an hour or two? We’ll bring it right back. And you can even give me one of the ones you haven’t gotten to yet, and I can clean it for you!” I smiled brightly at Carly, who just looked at me and gave the menu another spray.
“This about the scavenger hunt?” she asked, nodding before I’d had a chance to answer. “They already beat you in here. Clark and . . .” Carly frowned, and there was a long pause—a much longer pause than was normally needed to come up with someone’s name. “Phil?” she finally aske
d, sounding very unsure of her answer.
I tried to keep my face steady, and resolved not to tell Tom that Carly thought his name was Phil. It would probably just add insult to injury that she knew Clark’s name, even though he’d been going there for six weeks, but not Tom’s, who’d been going there for three years. “Right,” I said, nodding. “Guess they beat us here. But . . . do you think we could have one too?”
“Sorry,” Carly said, snapping a menu shut and adding it to the stack. “I made a promise.”
“But . . .” It wasn’t like the diner, as far as I knew, had a one-menu-per–scavenger hunt policy. If she could give Clark and Tom one, why not one to us?
“Also, they gave me forty bucks not to give you one,” Carly said, raising an eyebrow at me. “So no can do.”
I silently cursed Tom, since I was pretty sure this had been his idea—learned, no doubt, from Palmer’s sister Ivy, who had won numerous Alden family scavenger hunts with only one item, having spent the whole scavenging time shutting down other people’s chances. I took a breath to try and persuade Carly, but she’d just spun her stool so that her back was to me. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her—not unless I could somehow find eighty dollars to bribe her with.
I walked out to the candy machines, where Toby was fuming. “No luck?” She just pointed down, where I could see her purse was half-filled with gum balls—none of them blue.
“I’ve gotten like eight yellows and four reds,” Toby said as she checked the date on her quarter and dropped it in the slot. “Usually all you can get are these stupid blue gum balls!”
“Well, maybe Tom and Clark got to all of them first too,” I said, shaking my head. Toby opened up the little metal flap and pulled out a green gum ball, then frowned at me.
“What do you mean?” she asked, throwing the green one into her purse. “Where’s the menu?”
“The guys gave Carly forty dollars not to give us one.”
“What!” Toby straightened up to face me. “That’s just unfair. Your stupid boyfriend with his stupid dragon money!”
The outside door swung open and my dad stepped in, looking between me and Toby. “You ladies doing okay?” he asked, glancing down at his watch. “Because we should probably get going.”
“Clark’s bribing people not to give us menus,” Toby said, looking at me like this was somehow my fault.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Let’s not cast aspersions. It could have been Tom. Or, as Carly calls him, Phil.”
“And none of these are blue,” Toby said, picking up her purse, which made a clicking sound. She sighed. “Let’s just move on. They won this round.”
My dad glanced into the diner and frowned. I saw a look in his eye, one I recognized. I knew my dad really did care about helping people and making a difference. But he was also great at campaigning. And this was the look he had when he was behind in a debate, when pundits were calling the election, and not in his favor, when all seemed lost. It was how he looked just before he started to fight back. “Not so fast,” he said as he started to walk into the restaurant.
Toby blinked at my dad, then looked at me. “What does that mean?”
I didn’t answer her, just watched my dad stride up to Carly, his important-person walk still making people in the restaurant look up and take notice. “Hello,” I could hear him saying, his voice carrying across to me easily. He held out his hand for a handshake, and I noticed Carly take it, suddenly sitting up a little straighter. “I’m Representative Alexander Walker. I was hoping to talk to you about a time-sensitive matter.”
I looked back at Toby. “It means we’re getting a menu.”
Five minutes later, we were all running out to the car together, my dad clutching two leather-bound menus with a smile on his face. “How did you do that?” I asked as we ran, the contents of Toby’s bag clinking as she walked.
My dad beeped open the car and we all got in, nobody wasting any time. “I just told her,” he said as he started the car and screeched out of his parking spot, “that I was thinking about hosting a campaign fund-raiser there and wanted to see what kind of options they had available.”
“And she believed you?” I asked.
My dad nodded to the menus he’d dropped on the dashboard. “Enough to give me those,” he said. “I just need to return them tomorrow. Along with a signed picture for their wall.”
“Awesome,” Toby said, leaning forward between our seats as far as her seat belt would allow. “Onward!”
TOM
Did you have success at the diner?
ME
“What’s with the elephant?” I asked, taking my phone back from Toby as we ran up the steps to Captain Pizza. We’d called in our order on the way, and I was just crossing my fingers that, even though it was a Friday night, they would actually have our pizza ready on time. I saw, next door, my dad striding into Paradise Ice Cream, where he was going to try to get the Ice Cream Tasting Spoon, despite the fact that they weren’t disposable at Paradise but actual spoons that you dropped into a mason jar to be washed and reused. We were getting tight on time, but with luck, we’d be leaving the pizza parlor with three items checked off the list—Pizza With Three Toppings, Bottle of Soda, and Napkins.
“Because elephants never forget,” Toby said, like this was the most obvious answer in the world, as she yanked open the door. “And I’m not going to forget either.”
“We got the menus,” I reminded her as we ran up to the counter. The restaurant was half-filled already, and I hoped it wasn’t going to affect how fast they were getting to-go orders out.
“Even so,” Toby said darkly.
“Hey!” a blond girl in a CAPTAIN PIZZA shirt said as we approached the counter. DAWN, read the lettering in military typeface on her T-shirt. “Can I help you?”
“Picking up for Walker,” I said as I glanced down at the clock on my phone. “Large pie with toppings on three-fourths of it, and one-fourth plain.” I had been the one placing the order, so this had been my attempt to try to get some pizza I could actually eat, since I wasn’t going to touch the sausage-mushroom-onion combo that Toby swore to me was actually really good.
“And we need a bottle of soda,” Toby said, slapping her hand on the counter while I silently tried to tell her to take it down a notch. “And napkins! All the napkins you have!”
“Okay,” Dawn said, looking a little freaked out as she turned to look at the to-go boxes stacked above the oven.
“I’ve got the soda,” a voice behind us said, and a girl with short dark hair came out from where she’d been sitting in a booth. She wasn’t wearing a Captain Pizza uniform, and it took me a moment to recognize her as Emily Hughes.
“Hi,” I said immediately, then hesitated. I knew who she was, and I was pretty sure she knew me, since I’d been in AP Physics with her last year. But I mostly knew her because everyone knew who Emily Hughes was—she was half of the school’s golden couple.
She smiled back at me. “Oh, hi, Andie,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“We’re kind of in a hurry?” Toby said.
Emily just laughed. “Sure,” she said, crossing behind the counter and heading to the refrigerated cases. “What kind of soda?”
“Any kind!” Toby yelled, as I said, “Diet Coke?”
“Pie’s up,” Dawn said. She slid it across the counter to me. I handed her a twenty, and she turned to the register to ring me up. As she did, I noticed the back of her shirt read, CAPTAIN PIZZA . . . YOU BETTER MARSHAL YOUR APPETITE!
I looked at Toby, then nodded at the shirt, and saw her eyes widen. This could easily take care of Business Slogan with a Pun. “Um, so,” I said as I took back my change from Dawn and dropped a dollar in the tip jar, “do you guys sell those shirts here?”
“These?” Dawn asked, glancing down at herself and making a face. “Why would you want this?”
Emily placed the two-liter bottle of Diet Coke in front of me and came to stand next to Dawn, leani
ng her elbows on the counter.
“It’s . . . ,” I started, trying to think of some excuse that would make sense, but finally decided we didn’t have time for me to come up with anything rational and that I should probably just to go with the truth. “We’re doing a scavenger hunt, and we need something that has a business slogan with a pun,” I explained.
“Ah,” Dawn said, turning to Emily. “So you’re trying to check items off a list?” she asked, nudging her. “What’s that like?”
“Ignore my friend,” Emily said to us, rolling her eyes. “She’s inhaled too many pizza fumes today.”
“We don’t sell the shirts,” Dawn said, bending down under the counter. “But we hired his guy who lasted, like, one day and then quit in a huff last week.” She held it up, turning it around so I could see. The name on the front read T.J., and on the back was printed, CAPTAIN PIZZA . . . YOU GET THE GENERAL IDEA! “I could give it to you if you want. I’m pretty sure he’s never coming back.”
“That’s awesome,” I said, and next to me, Toby nodded and grabbed the shirt out of Dawn’s hands. “Thank you so much.”
We were halfway across the parking lot, heading for the car, when I saw my dad walking out of Paradise Ice Cream, a pint in one hand and his car keys in the other, whistling in a way that I’m sure he thought was nonchalant but actually wasn’t. “Got the ice cream,” he called to us in a loud, far-too-cheerful voice, glancing once behind him. He started walking fast down the steps, and I didn’t understand what was happening until the door to Paradise opened and an annoyed-looking girl stepped out.
“Hey!” she called, as my dad started walking even faster. “Sir? You’re not supposed to take the sample spoons!”
I looked at my dad, feeling my jaw fall open as he tossed the keys in my direction. I caught them with one hand, which surprised me so much I almost dropped them again. “Unlock the car,” he said to me, now breaking into a run. “I think we should get out of here.”