Piper immediately ran ahead toward the Crocodile Café. The girl was a fiend for slushies.
“Piper,” Gael yelled. “You have to wait!”
Sammy broke into a run, grabbed her, and dragged her back to Gael. He instantly felt bad for her—Sammy should not be having to deal with this on her day off. Meanwhile, Cara, who had basically created this awkward mess, gazed at the map like she didn’t have a care in the world. He felt a tinge of annoyance, and it surprised him. Cara couldn’t have known that her friend was his little sister’s babysitter. It was just one of those things. One of those . . . super-strange coincidence things.
Gael turned to Sammy. “You don’t have to take care of her. I mean, she’s my responsibility today.”
“I’m my own responsibility.” Piper crossed her arms. “Mom said.”
Gael cursed his mom for always indulging his little sister’s view of the world, and a flash of frustration passed across Sammy’s eyes. Still, in that way Sammy had of always putting his sister first, she didn’t let Piper see it. Instead, Sammy smiled at her. “Of course you are,” Sammy said. “But you still have to stick with the group.”
“Fine,” Piper said hesitantly. “But I have something fun to show you, so can we hurry up please?”
Piper grabbed Gael’s and Sammy’s hands, dragging them toward the café, while Gael turned to Sammy and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Once they’d gotten Piper her bright red slushy and grabbed a container of sweet potato fries to share, they headed to a table.
Piper immediately pulled two sheets of paper out of her backpack and spread them out proudly on the table.
Gael glanced at the paper. “What’s this, Pipes?” he asked.
She beamed. “It’s a video scavenger hunt. We divide into teams. I found it on the Internet. Can we do it, please please please?” It all came out in one long Piper breath.
“Uhh, I don’t really think—” Cara started.
But Sammy wasn’t having it. “You put this whole thing together for us?” she asked Piper.
Piper nodded. “I mean, I just printed it, but I looked on every website until I found a good one.” (Thanks to my nudging, of course.)
Sammy read off the sheet. “Waddle like a duck for sixty seconds,” she said. “A good one, indeed. Should we do it?” Sammy eyed Gael and Cara in a way that showed it was hardly a question.
“Sure,” Gael said.
Cara nodded reluctantly.
Gael was with Cara on this one—a video scavenger hunt sounded next-level lame—and yet he couldn’t help but appreciate that Sammy took Piper so seriously. He knew Piper loved that.
Piper folded her hands all official-like. “So we split into teams and do all the challenges and videotape the whole thing. And I’m going to be with Cara. We’ll be Team Para, like Piper plus Cara, or like paratroopers. See?” She held up one of the sheets. “I already put our name down.”
(If you’re wondering why Piper didn’t want to be with Sammy, allow me to explain. Of course, Piper adored Sammy. But her teacher had given a lesson on the importance of making new friends on Friday—thanks, in large part, to my urgings—and Piper liked to excel at anything her teacher suggested.)
“Are you sure?” Cara asked.
Piper cocked her head to the side. “You don’t want to be with me?”
It felt like the world froze. Like the kids in the background temporarily stopped eating their corn dogs, like the middle schooler working the slushy machine was paralyzed. Gael imagined even the giraffes in the distance ceasing to munch on leaves. Like everything stopped as he saw the deep look of hurt on Piper’s face.
Piper was an eight-year-old dealing with her parents’ divorce and an older brother who hadn’t exactly been there for her. She didn’t deserve to be hurt further.
Before Gael could try to smooth things over, Sammy swept in. “Don’t you want to be with me, Piper?”
A robust man in an Indiana Jones hat scooted past Sammy, and Gael wanted to jump out of his seat, push the guy out of the way, and give Sammy a hug. Here she was on an outing with a friend, and she was willing to sacrifice her whole afternoon just so Piper’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt.
“Yeah, why don’t you do that?” Cara offered. The breeze from the open-air café messed with her ponytail. She pushed it forcefully back in place. Gael had to stop himself from glaring.
Piper’s bottom lip puffed out. “So you really don’t want to be on my team?” she asked Cara. “I know a lot about animals, and I’m really good at using the camera on the iPhone.”
Cara shrugged.
Gael couldn’t take it. “Of course she does.” It was one thing for him to tell his little sister to leave him alone, but for an outsider to do that made him, frankly, more than a little annoyed. As much as he’d wanted to spend the day with Cara, it wasn’t cool to do so at the expense of his sister’s feelings.
“Right,” Cara said forcefully. “Yeah. Of course I do.”
“So what should our team name be?” Sammy asked, trying to change the subject.