Hot Dog Girl

by Jennifer Dugan

I grit my teeth. “Just hear me out, okay?”

  “I’m listening,” Jessa says, and it sounds like she means it. Which, okay, great, but I didn’t even ask her to come, Nick just assumed she was invited and brought her. Effing perfect.

  “So, I was going through Mr. Prendergast’s financials and stuff—”

  “Oh my god, Elouise.” Seeley sighs, crossing her arms, but I ignore her.

  “Anyway, he’s been making some super big withdrawals lately, and his accounts are getting low. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I bet it’s a factor in his decision to close. Further complicating things is that he appears to already have an offer on the land from somebody who wants to tear down the park and put a factory on it. From the notes in the file, it looks like he wants my dad to crunch some numbers and see if it’s a fair offer. I was thinking, if we could raise enough money, maybe Mr. P wouldn’t have to sell it to the developer.”

  Nick leans forward. “You want to buy Magic Castle Playland?”

  “No, I want to donate enough money that Mr. P doesn’t have to sell it at all.”

  “What’s the offer?” Jessa asks.

  I slam the file shut. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s the offer?” Seeley drops her hands onto the file, pinning it before I can pull it away.

  I swallow hard and stare down at the table. “One point eight million dollars.”

  “Wow, Elouise.” Nick shakes his head. “We can’t compete with that.”

  “I set up a GoFundMe account. It even has one donation already. We just have to spread the word, and host some fund-raisers, and—”

  Seeley looks me straight in the eye. “Did you seriously donate to your own GoFundMe account?”

  I wince and look down at that file. “That’s irrelevant.”

  Nick laughs and I kind of want to disappear.

  “Wait,” Jessa says, looking at Nick. “Hear her out. I don’t really want to see an ugly factory sitting on the place where we met, do you?”

  Nick blushes. “Guess not, no.”

  Ugh, gross. I’m scowling so hard my face hurts.

  Jessa lifts her chin. “I say we help.”

  He turns toward me and shrugs. “What’s the plan, then, Elouise?”

  I flick a smile back on my lips and tap my fingers on the table. “That’s the thing,” I say. “I haven’t quite worked that out yet. I set up the fund-raising site, and we can plaster it all over social media, but we need to do more than that. We need to be out in the community, spreading the word. Obviously, I don’t think we can raise two million dollars all in one summer. But maybe if we raised some of that, like enough to replace what he’s been withdrawing, it would give him enough breathing room that we could convince him not to take the offer.”

  “You know Mr. P, he loves that place as much as we do,” Seeley says. “I don’t think it’s about the money, I really don’t.”

  Nick slumps back against the booth. “Maybe he’s sick of dealing with kids crying and rides breaking down all day.”

  “Then why all the sudden withdrawals from his bank account?” I ask. “I mean, something has to be going on there, right? Face it, he needs us.”

  “Maybe he’s doing home renovations or paying back taxes. Or, I don’t know, a thousand other things,” Seeley says.

  “Oh, shoot.” Jessa checks the time on her phone. “I have to go. I promised my mom I’d be back by seven thirty. She flips if I’m even a minute late.”

  Nick starts to slide out of the booth after her, but then Seeley stands up and drops a few dollars on the table.

  “I can give you a ride home,” Seeley says. “I have to get going anyway.” She looks at me when she says that, and I can’t tell if she’s mad again or not.

  “Oh no, that’s okay.” Jessa smiles.

  “But if I give you a ride, Nick can stay and get all the details from Elouise,” Seeley says, and I kind of want to hug her. “He can tell you all about it later.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’d be perfect!”

  “You did want us to help out,” Nick says with a little smile. He’s still kind of half in and half out of the booth, caught in the middle of this awkward exchange right along with us.

  Jessa narrows her eyes a little, looking from him to me, and I drop my gaze down to the notebook in front of me. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she says, but it comes out all slow and stuff, like she doesn’t quite mean it. “Just don’t let my mom see you, Seeley. She’s weird about me riding with people she doesn’t know.”

  “Deal,” Seeley says, twirling her keys around her finger.

  “Text me later?” I ask, testing the waters to see how annoyed she still is.

  “Obviously.” She makes a goofy face at me, and I feel a million times better.

  And then it’s just me and Nick sitting here, and he’s looking at me all expectantly and it’s making me kind of nervous, a little panicky, a little I-can’t-breathe-with-him-looking-at-me-like-this.

  I shove my notebook in front of him as I head to the ladies’ room. “I’ll be right back. If you think of any ideas, write them down or whatever.”

  I flick the lock the second the door shuts, leaning against the cold tile wall. Okay, I have to think this through. I have to break it down: Nick is sitting out there waiting for me and we need to come up with a plan to save the park. This is a good thing. This is the best thing actually. This is—

  —taking way too long to figure out.

  Because Nick is sitting out there, alone, waiting for me, and all he knows is that I’m in the bathroom. Oh my god, it’s been like minutes. What if he thinks I’m still going to the bathroom in here or something? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Why did I even come in here? I groan and thunk my head against the wall a few times.

  “Okay, Elle,” I whisper to myself. “You got this. You may not have any idea what this is, but you have got it.” I nod again, like nodding will somehow make that statement true, and I push the door open . . . straight into Nick, who has his hand raised in front of him.

  “Oh sorry,” I yelp, barely sidestepping him in time. “Wait. Were you about to knock on the ladies’ room door?”

  He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You’ve been in there a long time.”

  “That’s a weird thing to do, Nick.”

  “Okaaaay,” he says, drawing the word out. “I was just trying to be nice.”

  “How is it nice to knock on the bathroom door when you already know someone’s in there?”

  “What if you were sick or something?”

  And oh god, that makes everything so much more awkward. We both slide back into our respective seats, and he pushes the notebook back in front of me. I notice the word “bake sale” scribbled across the page in barbed wire chicken scratch.

  “Bake sale?”

  He snatches the pen off the table and scratches it out. “It’s a bad idea.”

  Wait, is his lisp back a little? Cute.

  I grab the pen from him and write BAKE SALE down again, this time in all caps. “No, it’s a good idea.” I mean, it’s not and we both know it, but it was his idea, and he seems so self-conscious and adorable about it that I kind of want to find a way to make it work now.

  “They did it a lot at my old school whenever they needed to raise money. It’s all I could think of. It’s stupid.”

  “No, a bake sale sounds great,” I say, hoping I sound even somewhat convincing, because in my head I’m still sort of half screaming at the ridiculousness of it. Great idea, Nick, one two-million-dollar bake sale, coming up.

  “You don’t have to.” His cheeks turn pink as he fiddles with the pen in front of him. “I don’t really, people don’t really come to me for ideas about things.”

  I reach out to still his hand. He lifts his head a little, looking at me through his eyelashes, and I smil
e. “I like it. We should definitely do it. We can use it to spread the word about the GoFundMe too, like we’ll hand out a flyer with every cupcake or something asking people to donate more. It’s the best idea ever.” But I must sound a little too excited because he pulls a face and chuckles.

  “Glad you think so.” His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and he tilts his head. “Hey, is everything cool with you and Seeley?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She seemed kind of annoyed, especially about the park stuff. When Jessa gets like that, it’s usually because she’s really mad at me for something else. Let me know if you want me to try to check in with her or anything.”

  I take a sip of water and look up at him. “She’s just mad I took the files from my dad.”

  “If you say so.” He leans back in the booth, tucking his hands behind his head. “I know Seeley really loves you, if that helps any. You guys are lucky.”

  I snort, I can’t help it, and go back to doodling in the notebook.

  “I’m not kidding, Elle. Whenever we talk about you, it’s obvious. I know she’s stressing about her grandma and stuff, but you guys’ll figure it out. Don’t let Seeley push you away just because she’s overwhelmed by everything else. Jessa did that with me last year and it sucked.”

  Wait, who is this boy giving me high-quality relationship advice, this boy whose first idea for a fund-raiser wasn’t a bikini car wash but a bake sale? Also, what could Princess Jessa possibly have to be stressed about? And did he just call me Elle?

  Nick swipes at his hair and looks down at his hands. “Ignore me, I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He flips his phone around in his hand a few times. “Are we all set? I gotta go meet the guys soon.”

  “Yeah, we’re all set.” I nod as he hops up and heads for the door.

  I stare down at my notebook, flipping to a blank page to scribble some more notes, smiling at the idea that Nick is maybe even sweeter than he seems.

  CHAPTER 21

  “How did it go with you and Nick?”

  Seeley and I are sitting at the way-back breakroom table, trying to inhale our lunches before break is over. I shrug. “He wants to have a bake sale.”

  “A bake sale? A bake sale to raise two million dollars?”

  “Hey, don’t make fun of him.” I feel a little protective now, like I saw a side of him most people don’t, a peek behind the curtain or whatever. It’s kind of making me feel a little weird about this whole scheme now, to be honest.

  Seeley frowns and takes another bite of her fries. I got the salad today, I don’t know why, I really wanted pizza. I stab a bit of lettuce with my fork and swirl it around in the dressing until it’s smothered.

  “Noted.” She sighs. “I won’t tease your little lover boy anymore.”

  “He’s not.” I blush hard when the word “lover” sends my thoughts spinning in fuzzy directions.

  “Not yet anyway,” she says, like it’s a forgone conclusion. I appreciate the vote of confidence.

  “He said you guys talk about me.” I take another bite, studying her face.

  “I have to sell it,” she says. “You want it to seem legit, right? Believable?”

  “What do you say?”

  “I dunno.” She scratches the back of her neck and looks back at me. “Just stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “I don’t know.” She widens her eyes, craning her neck the way she does whenever someone really gets on her nerves. “We just talk about school and stuff, and sometimes you come up.”

  “He thinks you really love me.”

  Seeley laughs. “You’re basically my sister, Lou—of course I love you.”

  “Right, obviously,” I say, and I don’t know why I feel a little disappointed, but I do. It’s not that I want her to love-me-love-me or anything, that would be weird, but it’s more like the idea of someone as incredible as Seeley being in love with me is kind of nice or whatever. I don’t know.

  “If you’re upset that I talk to Nick about you, I’ll stop. We never really talked about boundaries or anything, so I’ve been winging it.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I say, leaning into her so our shoulders bump. “How was your ride with his other half?”

  “It was—”

  Angie chooses that exact second to come walking up, standing in front of our table with her hand on her hip. “Is it true?”

  Seeley looks at me like she wants to disappear, and I raise my shoulders a little and shake my head. “Hi, Angie. What’s up?” I say, right as Seeley kicks me under the table.

  “What’s up?” She seethes. “What’s up? How about what’s up with you setting me up on a date with the girl you’re seeing?”

  Oh shit. “I didn’t, we weren’t—”

  “This is really new,” Seeley says, jumping in. “I was going to tell you, I swear. I was trying to figure out the best way.”

  “The best way? The best way would have been to be honest.” Angie turns to look at her, her face furious. “You used your sick grandmother as an excuse all week, when really you were blowing me off because you already had a girlfriend. That’s disgusting.” She narrows her eyes. “And I had to hear it from Jessa of all people. Do you know how stupid I felt? I’m sitting there gushing about you, and she’s confused because apparently you’re now dating the very same person that you swore to me was just a friend.”

  “Angie,” Seeley says. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’re—”

  “Don’t,” she says, whipping around to stomp out the door. “Lose my number, both of you.”

  Everything goes quiet then, and the whole breakroom is kind of staring at us waiting to see what we’ll do next. Seeley drops her head to the table, leaving me to fend off the stares. I sit up a little straighter and stab another piece of lettuce.

  “This is a disaster,” Seeley grumbles. At least I think that’s what she grumbles. It’s hard to hear when she’s got a face full of folding table.

  I notice Jessa near the door, arms crossed with a little smirk on her face. Okay, what’s that about? Only I don’t have time to worry about that now, because Seeley is on the verge of melting down beside me. “It’s not a total disaster,” I say, squeezing her arm, but she just grunts.

  She pulls her food back in front of her, sitting up in her seat. “Yeah, Lou, it actually is.”

  “It’s more like a tiny disaster, really, in the grand scheme of disasters. You weren’t going out with her again anyway, right?”

  “I’m a horrible person,” Seeley groans.

  “You are not.” I stab my cherry tomato with a fork and drop it onto her plate. She loves those things, and it’s the closest thing to a French fry apology I’ve got. “Come on, try not to dwell on it. It wasn’t going to work out anyway, right? And we have a bake sale to run.”

  Seeley pops the cherry tomato into her mouth and nods. She looks like she’s just humoring me, but I’ll take it.

  “Okay, planning session, my place, seven o’clock.” I smirk. “Mr. P won’t know what hit him.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “I was thinking about the bake sale.” It’s 7:01 p.m. and Seeley is already flopped across my bed, her notebook and scented purple marker spread out in front of her. “There’re a few problems we need to figure out. One, where do we have it? Two, where do we get stuff for it? And three, how do we to explain to Mr. P why we’re trying to raise money that we aren’t even sure he wants? On the flip side, a bake sale is super easy, people do like to eat, and I can make a mean cupcake. We can use it to spread the word about the GoFundMe account—which I looked at, by the way. Ten dollars, Lou? How very generous of you. But I was thinking we could also combine it with your idea for starting a petition to keep the place open. As much as I think this is a ridiculous idea, I’m sure you’re not the only one who feels like
this. Probably not, anyway.”

  “Okay.” I nod, trying to get my brain to catch up because she’s barely been here two minutes and she’s already getting down to business. “Nick and I didn’t get into the details much, but it’s his idea, so I know he’ll be down to help. We can definitely bake everything ourselves here. And maybe we could have the bake sale at Magic Castle, or in front of it, or like in the parking lot or something? Someplace where there will be lots of people.”

  “Oooh, the parking lot is a great idea. People are always leaving to go eat lunch out of the backs of their cars and stuff. I bet we’d make a killing. I’d definitely pitch in for a few boxes of cake mix or brownies or whatever you want. I’m sure other people would too.”

  “Okay, so parking lot.”

  I watch her write it down next to the word Where? I notice she’s drawn a little doodle of our carousel in the corner of the page. “Do you think he’ll let us?” she asks, not even looking up from the page.

  “He doesn’t have to know.”

  “How are we going to have a ‘Save the Park’ bake sale in his parking lot without him finding out?”

  “I didn’t get that far yet,” I say. “Maybe we can just say it’s for a local family in need and leave it at that?”

  “That’s lying, Lou. You gotta quit that. Plus, people will get really pissed when they find out, which they will almost immediately, because you want to hand out flyers about the fund-raiser.”

  “It’s not a total lie.” I pout. “I mean he is a local family, sort of? He lives in town. But I see your point, I guess. What if we just labeled it ‘for a good cause’ and left it at that?”

  “Would you donate money to a ‘good cause’ with no information on what that good cause actually was?” Seeley laughs, pushing herself upright and setting the notebook on her crisscrossed legs.

  “If it came with a cupcake, I probably would.” I twirl around in my chair. “Do you really think most people will even notice?”

  Seeley raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think you’re going to make two million dollars in one summer without anyone noticing.”