“Are you guys ready for this?” Palmer asked, clapping her hands together. She was standing next to the statue of Winthrop Stanwich in the fading sunlight, and she was practically bouncing up and down.
It was the last week in July, which meant it was finally the night I’d been looking forward to all summer—the night of the scavenger hunt. We were all there—me, Clark, Tom, Palmer, Bri, Toby, and Wyatt. Toby was sitting next to me, while Bri sat on the nearest picnic table, and the boys seemed to be trying to figure out who could get injured the fastest, as they swung, standing up, on the playground swings.
Palmer grinned and pulled out three sheets of paper, which she fanned out and held up. “Three teams of two,” she said. “Same items on all of them. You guys have two hours.”
“What do we win?” Toby asked, looking only mildly interested. Ever since the Wyatt rejection, she’d been a little more quiet and sad, like she was a dimmer version of her usual self. I watched her look over at him as the boys jumped off their swings and came to join us, but then immediately look away again. In contrast to the rest of the summer, she’d been avoiding being alone with Wyatt whenever possible.
“You win eternal glory,” Palmer said excitedly. She pulled out a battered trophy on a pedestal, shaped like a cup. “And this trophy.” When none of us responded, she smiled. “Okay, and here’s a sweetener. Winner gets to choose the terms of their prize. Within reason.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What do you want?” Palmer countered. “Like for example, if Toby wins, and she wants it as her prize, I drop our emoji bet and she can go back to texting for real again.”
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.