The Unexpected Everything

“This about the scavenger hunt?” she asked, nodding before I’d had a chance to answer. “They already beat you in here. Clark and . . .” Carly frowned, and there was a long pause—a much longer pause than was normally needed to come up with someone’s name. “Phil?” she finally asked, sounding very unsure of her answer.

I tried to keep my face steady, and resolved not to tell Tom that Carly thought his name was Phil. It would probably just add insult to injury that she knew Clark’s name, even though he’d been going there for six weeks, but not Tom’s, who’d been going there for three years. “Right,” I said, nodding. “Guess they beat us here. But . . . do you think we could have one too?”

“Sorry,” Carly said, snapping a menu shut and adding it to the stack. “I made a promise.”

“But . . .” It wasn’t like the diner, as far as I knew, had a one-menu-per–scavenger hunt policy. If she could give Clark and Tom one, why not one to us?

“Also, they gave me forty bucks not to give you one,” Carly said, raising an eyebrow at me. “So no can do.”

I silently cursed Tom, since I was pretty sure this had been his idea—learned, no doubt, from Palmer’s sister Ivy, who had won numerous Alden family scavenger hunts with only one item, having spent the whole scavenging time shutting down other people’s chances. I took a breath to try and persuade Carly, but she’d just spun her stool so that her back was to me. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her—not unless I could somehow find eighty dollars to bribe her with.

I walked out to the candy machines, where Toby was fuming. “No luck?” She just pointed down, where I could see her purse was half-filled with gum balls—none of them blue.

“I’ve gotten like eight yellows and four reds,” Toby said as she checked the date on her quarter and dropped it in the slot. “Usually all you can get are these stupid blue gum balls!”

“Well, maybe Tom and Clark got to all of them first too,” I said, shaking my head. Toby opened up the little metal flap and pulled out a green gum ball, then frowned at me.

“What do you mean?” she asked, throwing the green one into her purse. “Where’s the menu?”

“The guys gave Carly forty dollars not to give us one.”

“What!” Toby straightened up to face me. “That’s just unfair. Your stupid boyfriend with his stupid dragon money!”

The outside door swung open and my dad stepped in, looking between me and Toby. “You ladies doing okay?” he asked, glancing down at his watch. “Because we should probably get going.”

“Clark’s bribing people not to give us menus,” Toby said, looking at me like this was somehow my fault.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “Let’s not cast aspersions. It could have been Tom. Or, as Carly calls him, Phil.”

“And none of these are blue,” Toby said, picking up her purse, which made a clicking sound. She sighed. “Let’s just move on. They won this round.”

My dad glanced into the diner and frowned. I saw a look in his eye, one I recognized. I knew my dad really did care about helping people and making a difference. But he was also great at campaigning. And this was the look he had when he was behind in a debate, when pundits were calling the election, and not in his favor, when all seemed lost. It was how he looked just before he started to fight back. “Not so fast,” he said as he started to walk into the restaurant.

Toby blinked at my dad, then looked at me. “What does that mean?”

I didn’t answer her, just watched my dad stride up to Carly, his important-person walk still making people in the restaurant look up and take notice. “Hello,” I could hear him saying, his voice carrying across to me easily. He held out his hand for a handshake, and I noticed Carly take it, suddenly sitting up a little straighter. “I’m Representative Alexander Walker. I was hoping to talk to you about a time-sensitive matter.”

I looked back at Toby. “It means we’re getting a menu.”

Five minutes later, we were all running out to the car together, my dad clutching two leather-bound menus with a smile on his face. “How did you do that?” I asked as we ran, the contents of Toby’s bag clinking as she walked.

My dad beeped open the car and we all got in, nobody wasting any time. “I just told her,” he said as he started the car and screeched out of his parking spot, “that I was thinking about hosting a campaign fund-raiser there and wanted to see what kind of options they had available.”

“And she believed you?” I asked.

My dad nodded to the menus he’d dropped on the dashboard. “Enough to give me those,” he said. “I just need to return them tomorrow. Along with a signed picture for their wall.”

“Awesome,” Toby said, leaning forward between our seats as far as her seat belt would allow. “Onward!”



TOM



Did you have success at the diner?



ME



“What’s with the elephant?” I asked, taking my phone back from Toby as we ran up the steps to Captain Pizza. We’d called in our order on the way, and I was just crossing my fingers that, even though it was a Friday night, they would actually have our pizza ready on time. I saw, next door, my dad striding into Paradise Ice Cream, where he was going to try to get the Ice Cream Tasting Spoon, despite the fact that they weren’t disposable at Paradise but actual spoons that you dropped into a mason jar to be washed and reused. We were getting tight on time, but with luck, we’d be leaving the pizza parlor with three items checked off the list—Pizza With Three Toppings, Bottle of Soda, and Napkins.