Next to me, Toby had gone very still. “Really?” she asked, suddenly sounding much more awake than she had for the past week. “You mean it?”
“So like, if we win, we could make the winning team pay for all our meals at the diner for the rest of the summer?” Tom asked.
“Or we could play guitar without anyone complaining?” Wyatt asked, widening his eyes at me.
“Both sound fair,” Palmer said with a grin. “You guys ready to learn your teams?”
“Wait,” Toby said, and I saw she was looking over at Bri. “We don’t get to choose?”
“The cup chooses,” Palmer intoned. She dropped pieces of paper into the cup and swirled it around. “Well, I mean, technically I choose, but you get the idea.” I had just looked at Clark, when Palmer pulled the first two names from the cup. “Clark and Tom,” she pronounced as Bri and Toby said, “Tark!” simultaneously.
“Next,” Pamer said, reaching into the cup. I saw Toby look around at the four of us who were left, her expression growing worried, and I had a feeling the last thing she wanted was to be paired with Wyatt.
“Bri and Wyatt,” Palmer said, and I could practically feel Toby relax next to me, turning her head away when Wyatt walked up to Bri, holding up his hand for a high five, saying something that made Bri laugh. “And that leaves Andie and Toby,” she said, dropping the papers back in the cup.
“We’re going to crush this, right?” I asked, smiling at her, secretly hoping this was what Toby needed to get out of her funk.
“Right,” Toby said, blinking at me. Then a look of fierce determination came over her face, and I had a feeling that the possibility of being able to text for real had raised the stakes for her. “I mean, yes!” She took a step closer to me. “Seriously, Andie,” she said. “My boss doesn’t understand emojis and thinks I’m making fun of him when I text. I need this.”
“So this is like a quest, right?” Clark asked, looking thrilled, while next to him, Tom did a series of limbering-up exercises.
“Kind of,” Tom said as he bent from side to side, then started running in place.
“Can we call it a quest?” Clark asked, his voice getting a little higher, the way it did when he got really excited about something. “I’ve always wanted to go on one of those.”
“Here we go!” Palmer said, placing three papers down on the table in front of her. Then she backed away, turning her palms like a croupier to show us they were empty. “Best of luck to all teams. You have two hours. Your time starts . . . now!”
We all ran for the table, and Toby grabbed our sheet and ran away with it, gesturing for me to go with her. Tom grabbed a sheet and dashed off, and I looked at Clark. “Good luck,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“May the best team win,” Clark said, and then pulled me in close to him, dipping me into a Hollywood-style kiss. I giggled, but my laughter soon faded as I started kissing him back for real.
“Hey!” I broke away and looked over to see Toby standing in front of me, waving the paper in my face. “Come on. We’re wasting time. And you’re fraternizing with the enemy!”
“But the enemy’s so cute,” I said as Clark pulled me back up to my feet and gave me one more quick kiss before running off to join Tom, glancing back once and waving to me.
“That might have been part of their strategy,” Toby said as she snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Get you all distracted and then they get to sweep in and take the win. Well, not on my watch. I’m not losing my chance to start using actual words again.”
“What do we have?” I looked at the list Palmer had typed up.
COTTON BALLS 1 POINT
THIS LIST, NOTARIZED 20 POINTS
BLUE GUM BALL 4 POINTS
ARTICLE OF FORMAL WEAR (MEN’S OR WOMEN’S) 10 POINTS
FIREFLY 12 POINTS
BURNT SIENNA CRAYON 5 POINTS
HAT THAT’S NOT A BASEBALL CAP 7 POINTS
BELL 1 POINT
BOOK 1 POINT
CANDLE 1 POINT
A SQUARE YOU EAT 5 POINTS
SOMETHING IN A JAR 5 POINTS
SOMETHING ALIVE 7 POINTS
SOMETHING WITH A BOAT ON IT 5 POINTS
AN ACTUAL BOAT 10 POINTS
SOMETHING HOT 3 POINTS
SOMETHING COLD 3 POINTS
DICTIONARY 3 POINTS
PICTIONARY 6 POINTS
SOMETHING THAT LIGHTS UP 7 POINTS
ITEM THAT STARTS WITH Z 9 POINTS
COIN FROM BEFORE 1980 5 POINTS
DINER MENU 10 POINTS
BUSINESS SLOGAN WITH A PUN 5 POINTS
PIZZA WITH THREE TOPPINGS 5 POINTS
NAPKINS 2 POINTS
BOTTLE OF SODA 2 POINTS
ICE CREAM SAMPLE SPOON 3 POINTS
THRILLER DANCE, FROM BEGINNING TO END 12 POINTS
I stared down at the items on the list, thinking about the strategy I’d been refining. I wouldn’t make the same mistake I did last time by going for the big-ticket items. This wasn’t about getting everything on the list. This was about getting the most points and winning Toby her texting freedom back—not to mention freeing me up from trying to figure out what three dancing girls, a cat, and a frowny face meant.
“Okay,” I said, reading the list once, then once again. I watched Bri and Wyatt take off toward his truck and Tom and Clark start to run for Clark’s SUV.
“What’s our plan?” Toby asked, running her hands through her hair.
“I think we go with home-court advantage,” I said. Toby just looked at me blankly. “My house is down the street,” I clarified, and she started nodding. “I say we go there, get what we can, and we’re already ahead of the game. . . .” I reached into my pocket for my keys, but it was empty. I frowned, starting to get a bad feeling as I reached into my other pocket. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
I turned in the direction Clark had run, but of course, he and Tom were long gone. “Clark took my keys,” I said, suddenly understanding the dip kiss. I was trying to stay mad at him, but I was actually just impressed with his technique. I hadn’t seen it coming. “We need to take your car.”
“Bri drove me,” Toby said, her eyes getting wide. We both turned to Palmer, who was sitting on top of the picnic table. “Palmer, we need your car,” Toby said, running up to her. She grabbed Palmer’s purse, then started shaking the contents of it out onto the table.
“Tom drove me,” Palmer said, frowning at the pile of her possessions Toby was currently rifling through. “Looks like you guys will have to figure out something else.” Palmer held up her phone so that we could see the timer counting down. “One hour and fifty minutes, guys. Tick-tock.”
Toby and I looked at each other, and I realized there was just one thing to do. I pulled off my flip-flops and nodded down the road. “My house,” I said, taking a breath. “Ready to run for it?”
• • •
“DAD!” I screamed as I barreled into the house, Toby at my heels. A second later, I realized how that sounded. “Everything is fine!” I yelled a moment later. There was no need to give my father a heart attack.
“No, it’s not!” Toby yelled, though a little less loudly than me. “We need help!”
“What’s going on?” my dad called. A moment later he hustled into the foyer, where we were trying to catch our breath. The run we’d done to get to the house had been enough to remind me that walking large dogs, while nicely toning my biceps, had not actually done much to improve my running ability. He took in the sight of us, and his expression grew more alarmed. “You two okay? Hi there, Toby.”