The Unexpected Everything

“Palmer,” I said by way of explanation, and my dad nodded. “And we have to win.”

“We really do,” Toby said, the gleam back in her eye. “It’s essential.”

“And Clark stole my keys, so I might need to borrow your car.”

“He did?” my dad asked, starting to smile. I frowned at him, and his expression grew more serious. “I mean, of course he shouldn’t have done that to you. But I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“We need to move!” Toby said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s go!”

“Okay,” I said, leaning over to look at the list, which my dad was still holding. “We need to see what we can get here before we go elsewhere,” I said, eyes scanning down it. “Cotton balls,” I said, and I pointed upstairs. “My bathroom.”

“On it!” Toby yelled as she ran for the staircase.

“I can get you a bow tie or cummerbund so you can get your article of formal wear,” my dad said, reading off the paper, and I looked at him, surprised. “If you want me to help, that is.”

“Yeah,” I said, after only the tiniest of pauses. It wasn’t that I didn’t—I just hadn’t imagined that he’d want to help, or be a part of this at all. “That would be great.”

“That might be all we have here,” my dad said, pulling out a mechanical pencil from his pocket and starting to make notes on the list, using the hall table as a desk. “I can look at my change and see if I have any from before 1980.” He looked up at me and tapped his pencil twice on the paper. “Do you think that includes 1980?”

“Probably better not to assume,” I said. My dad nodded and started making more notes. I looked down at the paper and shook my head. “I don’t think I have a burnt sienna crayon,” I said. “But I can grab a book and a hat that’s not a baseball cap from my room.”

“Andie!” Toby yelled from upstairs.

My dad looked at his watch. “Let’s reconnoiter in five,” he said, and I nodded, then bolted up the stairs.

“What?” I asked as I walked through my room to the bathroom. After this many years, I knew she would have no compunction going through my things, so I wasn’t sure what she needed. “Did you get the cotton balls?”

“Got them,” she said, pointing to the bag on the counter. “But . . . what’s this?” She opened up my bathroom cabinet, which was stacked high with pretty much every feminine product you could imagine—tampons, pads, Midol, and lots of all of them. “What, is there like a shortage or something?” she asked, laughing. Then her expression grew more serious. “Wait, is there actually a shortage? Do I need to stockpile too?”

“No,” I said, resisting the opportunity to mess with her. “My mom bought them for me when . . . when she found out she was sick.”

“Oh,” Toby said, her expression changing immediately. She looked at me without speaking, searching my face, and I knew she was trying to see if I wanted her to talk about it, or to drop it. She’d do either one in a heartbeat. I knew that from experience.

And normally I would have left it at that. But I’d never told anyone this—maybe not surprisingly, it had never come up before. “Yeah,” I said, my throat feeling a little tighter than usual. “She was worried I wouldn’t have any when I needed it. And she didn’t want me to feel embarrassed about asking my dad to buy them for me.” I looked at all the stacked boxes, most of which I hadn’t touched in years, once I was able to start shopping for myself. But I’d never even thought about throwing them away. My mother had bought them for me. She’d gone to CVS and picked them out so that she could help me even when she wouldn’t be here.

“That’s really nice,” Toby said quietly, giving me a smile, and I nodded.

“Girls!” my dad yelled from downstairs. “It’s been five minutes!”

Toby paled. “It has?” She grabbed the cotton balls and bolted for the door. Then she stopped and turned back to me. “Unless you want to talk,” she said, voice rising in a question.

I shook my head and pointed to the door. “Scavenger hunt!”

Five minutes later we were in the car—all of us, with my dad behind the wheel. “Seat belts?” he asked as he backed out of the garage.

“Check,” Toby said, from where she was sitting in the middle of the backseat, leaning forward.

I hadn’t anticipated that we were formally adding a member to our team, but we’d been all set to go—having dropped all the items we were able to grab from the house into a big canvas bag—when my dad had handed me the keys to his sedan and then frowned. “Do you know how to drive a stick shift?”

I did not, and I was pretty sure learning to drive stick took more than five minutes. And since we still wanted to have a fighting shot at winning this, my dad had offered to drive us. We’d decided on the first stop, and I was trying to figure out our plan for the rest. “I think we should get the pizza toward the end,” I said, making a note with my dad’s pencil as he pulled out onto the road, going a little faster than normal. “We can get the napkins, the ice, and the soda at the pizza place too.” I thought of something and looked up. “Do you think this is just Palmer’s way of getting us to pick up dinner?”