J.J., not noticing any of this, sprinted to his base and threw the Anderson General Life Insurance flag to the ground, then raised his arms in victory. “Take that!” he yelled, spinning around in triumph, then frowning when he saw everyone else had stopped running. “What’s going on?”
“You okay, babe?” Danny asked, jogging over to her. He reached out a hand, but Brooke pushed herself up to standing. She looked down and seemed to see what had happened at the same time the rest of us did—there was a huge dirt and grass stain all down the side of her cream-colored dress.
“No, I’m not okay!” she snapped, her voice breaking. I couldn’t tell, going by just the outdoor lights and moonlight—but I was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes. “I didn’t even want to play this stupid game. Why did you make me?”
“I didn’t make you,” Danny said, sounding taken aback. “I thought it would be fun.”
“Fun for you!” Brooke yelled, her voice going high and a little hysterical. “Did you think about if it would be fun for me? Of course you didn’t. You haven’t thought about how I would feel all day, so why should you start now?”
“That’s not true,” Danny said, taking a step closer to her, keeping his voice low.
“Why am I even here?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest—which, I couldn’t help but notice, just seemed to add more dirt to the dress. “Why did you even ask me to come if you don’t want me to be here?”
“Babe,” Danny said, glancing from Brooke to the rest of us. “Let’s not do this now.”
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, her voice breaking. She stared at Danny for a moment longer, like she was waiting for him to say something, but then turned on her heel and stalked across the lawn and into the house. A second later, I heard the door slam—but thankfully, the alarm stayed off.
“Um,” Linnie said, looking from Danny and back to the house again. “Should we . . . ?” She left the sentence dangling, a question at the end of it.
Danny looked in the direction Brooke had gone, his jaw set. And after a moment, he shook his head. “Let’s keep playing.”
“Really?” Rodney asked. I saw him exchange a glance with Linnie. “Because it’s no problem. We can stop. . . .”
“Nah,” Danny said, and it seemed like he was trying, with a great deal of effort, to sound cheerful again. He walked over to where J.J. had dropped the Anderson’s flag. “But that last one doesn’t count at all, J.J. I think we should start over.”
“Hey!” J.J. yelped, running after him.
I looked back to the house. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop playing the game—and Brooke had clearly seemed disgusted with all of us—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe someone should have followed her.
“Chuck!” Danny called, jogging back to our base, the Anderson’s flag over his shoulder. “You playing?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. Then I turned away from the house and ran to catch up with my brother.
* * *
An hour later, we all trooped inside the kitchen, most of us slightly worse for wear. We’d ended up playing best two out of three, which had led to the game getting dirtier and dirtier as it went on—both figuratively and literally. Linnie had held her arms out to Rodney for a hug, only to tag him when he got close; Danny had faked a twisted ankle to tag out J.J.; and Rodney had refused to grant a single jailhouse pardon, which we’d all agreed was a record. Once we’d restarted, we’d won the first round (Linnie and J.J. complaining that we had an unfair advantage, since they were down a player.) They won the second, but we managed to pull out a win for the third round, with Rodney running faster than I’d ever seen him to bring the Grant flag back to our base while Linnie, stuck in our jail, let out a very impressive stream of curses as she watched. After he’d made it back to base safely, Danny had whirled me around in the air as Rodney had thrown down the Grant flag in victory. “You don’t mess with Anderson General Life Insurance!” he’d yelled, doing a victory dance. “You don’t mess with us!”
Now, standing in the bright lights of the kitchen, I could see that none of us had escaped unscathed—I had grass stains all over my sweatpants, Linnie had a dirt smudge that ran the length of her forehead, and Danny’s sweatshirt hood had been half ripped off, though both Linnie and J.J. were trying to blame the other for it. Linnie got us all waters, and while I watched everyone argue about the fairness of a particular jailbreak and whether J.J.’s first capture should have been counted, maybe just by half, I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Because this was why I’d wanted to play the game. This was what I’d been missing for so long. And it felt like, finally, things were getting back to how they should be.
“We wouldn’t have lost if Mike had been here,” J.J. grumbled. “I need a wartime consigliere out on the field, and he’s great at strategy.”
“Yeah,” Linnie said, her smile fading a little as she looked around. “Mike really should be here too.”
I was about to argue with this, but the truth was, for all the times he’d hung back and refused to go along with us, Mike had never done it with capture the flag. He really was great at coming up with plans, and he did a sportscaster-type play-by-play on the field that always cracked Rodney up to the point where he often had to stop running. “Yeah,” I agreed, but so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone else heard me.
The rest of the recap didn’t last too long—Linnie and Rodney peeled off first, and J.J. started yawning and headed upstairs, with Danny following, ruffling my hair on the way out of the kitchen. I waited a little bit longer—I stayed sitting on the kitchen counter, phone in hand, waiting to see if Jesse would reach out again, even though I had a feeling he probably had his hands full with Mike.
After a few minutes, I finally decided to pack it in, and headed up to the third floor, yawning. I had just reached J.J.’s room and was about to turn the doorknob when I heard voices coming from inside. J.J. and also—I leaned a little bit closer, and my eyes went wide—Jenny W. They were talking low, but I could hear Jenny’s laughter, and I backed away from the door quickly, getting the sense that they would not have appreciated me showing up just then. J.J. had clearly forgotten once again that I was supposed to be staying with him. As I headed downstairs, resigning myself to the couch, I wondered why I was even surprised. I tiptoed downstairs as quietly as possible—and practically tripped over Waffles as I made it to the front hall. He was sitting dead center in front of the bottom step, just staring at me. “Um. Hi,” I said as I headed into the kitchen to make sure the door was locked, feeling like of all the rescue dogs we could have gotten this weekend, we’d ended up with the weirdest.
I heard a click-clacking behind me, and I turned around to see Waffles standing in the kitchen, looking at me intently. “You okay?” I asked, even though I was all too aware that he wouldn’t be able to answer me. But the dog just kept looking at me steadily, until I started to get a little uncomfortable.
I looked around, like there was someone who could help me translate. How did people who owned dogs do this? You were basically inviting an animal you couldn’t communicate with to move into your house with you for years of confusion. “What?” I asked, but Waffles just tilted his head to the side a little, his eyes not leaving mine. He let out a soft whimper, looked over at the door, then back at me, and much too late, I understood what was happening. “Oh,” I said, feeling like I should have gotten this much sooner. “Um . . . sorry about that. I’ll take you for a walk.”
His leash was hanging up on one of the hooks by the door, and as soon as he saw me take it, he started running around in small circles and doing these little howly yips, like there was a real howl coming and he was just warming up.
“Shh,” I said, trying to calm him down. Even when I got his leash snapped on, the yips just seemed to be getting louder. “If you don’t stop, I won’t take you on a walk,” I said, then wondered why I thought the dog, who didn’t speak English, would suddenly understand blackmail.