She placed the ghost story back on the shelf. “Where to next?”
“The art room,” I answered. We needed a picture of one of us with an easel showing a pumpkin drawn on it. “Let’s go.”
The art room was empty and dim just like everything else around. There was one light pointing at the art easel in the middle of the room. The easel held a large pad of paper, but the pages were blank.
“I guess we need to draw our own,” I said, looking around for crayons or markers. There were none in sight. The last team had probably hidden them. Ha. Good idea.
Cora dug around in her purse just as I saw a fifth shadow appear on the floor in front of us. Someone was standing behind us! I whipped my head around quickly. There was no one there.
I tried to shake it off as Cora pulled a pen out of her purse. She drew a pumpkin in about ten seconds. She was so self-sufficient.
“Nice!” I commented. I held up my hand for a high-five. She slapped it with zest.
I loved being part of a team. It was that kind of adrenaline that had led me to a career in live TV. Having her there with me, on my team, was such a turn on. I didn’t care about a treasure chest that was probably filled with cheap candy like Smarties and Dum Dums. But I loved it that we had a common goal and a common enemy. The four of us, I had a feeling we could go places. I mean, metaphorically. We could be something.
“A picture of a team member on stage,” she read off the sheet. “The auditorium.”
We jogged down the dark halls toward the auditorium. It was on the opposite end of the school from the gym where we’d started. We were making our way down the hall when I heard a loud bang, like someone was banging on the door of one of the classrooms.
“What is that?” Lucie asked.
“Nothing. Just keep moving,” Cora told her.
A few doors down we heard another bang. Someone was inside the classrooms banging on the doors. Wow. Someone had really gone above and beyond to make this scavenger hunt scary. I wished haunted houses and hayrides put in this much effort.
We walked into the doors of the auditorium and walked past the rows of seats to get to the stage. I lifted Olive up, set her on the stage, and Cora snapped a picture.
We all turned around at once to go. The girls screamed.
There was a person sitting in one of the seats of the auditorium. He or she was wearing black clothes and the Ghostface mask from the movie Scream. The person didn’t move. I would have thought it was a prop if not for the fact that it was not there a minute ago when we came in.
“Just run,” I mumbled to the girls, taking their hands. These people were starting to piss me off. We had six-year-olds with us. They could be seriously scarred by these pranks.
We held hands and ran up the aisle, past Ghostface, and out the doors.
“To the playground,” I ordered as we ran down the hall.
I was sure someone was just trying to trip us up. It wasn’t like there was a serial killer in the auditorium. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sit around and chit chat with the weirdo either. We had a treasure chest to win.
The playground was also pretty dark and empty. I was starting to wonder if we had been given a different list than everyone else. Or maybe every team had a different list.
We took pictures of the girls on the swing set and slide. When we turned to head back toward to school, Pumpkinhead, Ghostface, and a girl with long blonde hair who had on a mask from the movie, The Strangers, were all standing in front of the school. They each stood still with their hands clasped in front of them.
The girls screamed again.
“It’s just a joke,” I said to them quietly as we walked past them. “We have one more picture to get, and then we can go home.”
The last thing on the list was a picture of a team member with a scarecrow.
“There was a scarecrow outside the front door where we first walked in,” Cora whispered.
“Good thing my girls are all so observant,” I said, without thinking first.
She raised her eyebrows.
I could have taken it back. But the truth was I didn’t want to. I liked this foursome we had. I liked thinking of them, both of them, as my girls.
I smiled and hoped she got all that.
We ran around to the front of the school to find the scarecrow dressed in overalls and tied around a pillar. With a quick snap, we got our picture. Then we ran back into the gym.
“Are we going to win this, Daddy?” Olive asked as we ran.
I knew my train of thinking would probably have my man card suspended indefinitely, but I didn’t care if we won this game or not. I already felt like a winner. The most beautiful girls in this place were all on my team. I couldn’t lose.
“We might,” I told her.
We were not the first team to arrive back. We received our treasure map just moments after Vanessa’s team. At this point it was anyone’s game.
We unfolded the map the principal handed to us, and our four heads leaned in to look at it together. The hand-drawn, photocopied map showed the school’s layout. The X was near the front of the school, but it didn’t say which floor. It was either in the welcome office, or upstairs in the auditorium. When I saw Vanessa’s team running towards the office, we had no choice but to face the auditorium again to see if our treasure was there. Nobody argued with me as we ran up the staircase. We wanted to win this thing.
The plastic treasure chest was on the stage — right behind the three tormenters of ours who stood guarding it. Instead of hands clasped, they had arms crossed. It was pretty intimidating. Until one of them started laughing. It was an evil feminine laugh. I recognized it as a sound I heard nearly every time I dropped Olive off at school in the morning. The Mean Moms.
They all three started laughing and removed their masks to reveal their constipated faces. It was Shauna, Tabitha, and Melissa. I felt like I was in a real-life episode of Scooby Doo.
“It’s not as scary if you laugh,” I told them.
“I bet you guys were nearly shitting your pants,” Shauna said, her arms crossed against her chest again.
“Potty mouth!” Olive accused, pointing her finger at them.
There was about to be a standoff. I held up my arms in resignation.
“Thanks for the theatrics, ladies,” I told them. “You really added a nice haunting element to our scavenger hunt.”
“No. Thank you,” Shauna said. “Your pity-date gave us more entertainment than all of the games downstairs. It was so kind of you to take her out tonight.”
“The only people I pity around here are the three of you,” I said.
I heard the pounding of footsteps making their way up the stairs, and I knew we needed to get to the prize before Vanessa’s team arrived. It might turn into a bouquet-toss kind of brawl otherwise.
“I mean the four of you,” I said, gesturing behind me. “Now get out of our way.”
“It’s just a bunch of dollar store candy,” Melissa said with a roll of her eyes. “Have at it.”
I took a girl’s hand in each of mine and we approached the stage.
The Mean Moms scowled in the most exaggerated ways as they scooted over to let us by. I hoped their faces would get stuck that way. Or maybe they already were.
“Does this mean we won?” Lucie asked.
I shrugged. “I guess so,” I said. “Go on,” I told the girls. “Open it up.”
They opened it to find, as I expected, a bunch of candy. They also pulled out some things I wasn’t expecting: a restaurant gift card and a movie theatre gift card. When Olive handed me the cards, I stuck them in my back pocket.