by Belle Aurora
How could I argue with that? To tell you the truth, I didn’t care if she bobbed for an apple. I just wanted her to take off her clothes.
“Eh, you’re right. Let’s move on,” I said, and we headed toward the Pin the Hat on the Witch booth.
“Yoo-hoo.”
I recognized that voice. It was a sound that made me grind my teeth. By the look of annoyance on Cora’s usually-sweet face, I knew she felt the same way.
Shauna.
“Yoo-hoo, you two.” Who said yoo-hoo? Really? “We’re about ready to start the first grade treasure hunt. You guys are going to enter, right?”
A treasure hunt? Why was I just now hearing about this?
My competitive blood started to boil immediately. They thought they were competitive. Ha.
It. Was. On.
***
8:00 P.M.
I wish I’d known about this sooner. I would have made us team t-shirts and water bottles.
“Each team will get an envelope,” Mrs. Lewis, one of the first grade teachers explained to all of us. “Inside you will find a list of ten items for you to take pictures of this evening. All pictures must be on the same phone or camera, and each picture must include at least one of your team members. When your team arrives back here with all ten photos, you will receive a map to help you find the treasure chest. Everyone understand?”
We all nodded and Miss Mater, another first grade teacher, started handing out envelopes.
“On the count of one, you may all open your envelopes. Five…”
There were about fifty of us standing in the corner of the gymnasium and we all started shouting the numbers out loud.
“Four, three, two, one!”
“Good luck!” the teachers yelled as the teams tore into our envelopes like animals.
I was glad to see that Cora and Lucie had the same competitive fervor as Olive and me.
I read the list quietly to our team and everyone started shouting out at once.
“The library!”
“The playground!”
“The science lab!”
I put my hand up to silence them. “Wait. We need a plan. We need organization.”
While the other teams scrambled off in chaos, I sat the four of us down at one of the lunch tables and mapped out a plan. We needed to hit many areas of the school, but we were going to do them in geographical order, instead of going back and forth six times. I went to this elementary school. I knew my way around.
“All right, team,” I said, when I was done mapping out our hunt, “we can get some of these done in this room. Like a photo with a skeleton.”
“The science lab upstairs,” Lucie said.
I shook my head and pointed to a skeleton decoration taped to the wall in the gym. “Nope. Right there. Cora, you’ll take the pictures.”
We ran over to the skeleton and took a picture of Lucie standing next to it. We got Olive with a jack-o-lantern near the bowling area, and a picture of both girls wearing witch hats from the pin-the-hat game. I didn’t see any of the other teams in the gym. I had a feeling they were making this harder than it needed to be.
“A book about ghosts,” Cora read over my shoulder. “We need to go to the library.”
The four of us exited the gymnasium doors. I expected to find the other teams scrambling around and tripping over each other out there. There was nothing, no one. We walked from a crowded gym and into a dark and quiet school. Maybe it was the fact that it was Halloween, but it gave me the creeps. I had an eerie feeling as we climbed the marble staircase to get to the library. Where was everyone? There were nine or ten teams in this scavenger hunt. Where were they? And why hadn’t anyone bothered to turn on a light?
We opened the wooden door to the library. It was dark in there, too. The school had moved on from the card catalog system since I’d been there. The monitors of the computer systems glowed in the room. We headed toward them. Cora used the light from her phone to see the keyboard. She typed the word ghosts into the search bar with her free hand.
I was drawn to the way her face was lit by the light of the screen, and I studied her profile. Her little nose, her lips. Then I saw a figure move out of the corner of my eye. We weren’t the only ones in this room.
My skin filled with goose bumps instantly. I knew it was ridiculous for a grown man to be creeped out, but I sort of was. If someone else was here, why were they so quiet? Wouldn’t they be looking for ghost books, too? I shrugged it off and tried to concentrate on Cora’s lips again. I’d seen too many episodes of 48 Hours Mystery. I should start watching more sports.
“Got it,” Cora said quietly. She looked up at me with innocent, non-freaking-out eyes. She hadn’t seen the shadows moving in the stacks. The girls hadn’t either. “This way,” she said, and nodded towards the back of the library.
I held up my phone to use as a flashlight as Cora led us to the aisle of ghost stories. Just then I saw a figure dart from one aisle to another. I turned around quickly to catch the person, but I wasn’t quick enough.
“What’s wrong?” Cora asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She led us down the aisle and swept her fingers across the spines of the books on the eye-level shelf. She found the one she wanted, pulled it off the shelf, and handed it to me. I put it next to my face and gave her a huge, goofy grin as she snapped a pic.
“Oh shoot,” she said, looking down at the phone. “It’s too dark. I need to turn on the flash.”
She pressed a few buttons on the touch-screen and then held it up to try again.
I held the book next to my head and she took another picture, this time with the flash.
Then she gasped.
“What is it?” I asked, even though I kind of knew.
She silently handed me the phone and I looked at the picture on the screen. There was something, or someone, standing behind me in the photo. The figure had a pumpkin on its head. I turned and looked behind me, but the person was gone.
She shook her head in what looked like annoyance. I could tell she didn’t want to show any fear and scare the girls. She was clearly braver than I was. She probably killed spiders in her house all by herself.
She placed the ghost story back on the shelf. “Where to next?”
“The art room,” I answered. We needed a picture of one of us with an easel showing a pumpkin drawn on it. “Let’s go.”
The art room was empty and dim just like everything else around. There was one light pointing at the art easel in the middle of the room. The easel held a large pad of paper, but the pages were blank.
“I guess we need to draw our own,” I said, looking around for crayons or markers. There were none in sight. The last team had probably hidden them. Ha. Good idea.
Cora dug around in her purse just as I saw a fifth shadow appear on the floor in front of us. Someone was standing behind us! I whipped my head around quickly. There was no one there.
I tried to shake it off as Cora pulled a pen out of her purse. She drew a pumpkin in about ten seconds. She was so self-sufficient.
“Nice!” I commented. I held up my hand for a high-five. She slapped it with zest.
I loved being part of a team. It was that kind of adrenaline that had led me to a career in live TV. Having her there with me, on my team, was such a turn on. I didn’t care about a treasure chest that was probably filled with cheap candy like Smarties and Dum Dums. But I loved it that we had a common goal and a common enemy. The four of us, I had a feeling we could go places. I mean, metaphorically. We could be something.
“A picture of a team member on stage,” she read off the sheet. “The auditorium.”
We jogged down the dark halls toward the auditorium. It was on the opposite end of the school from the gym where we’d started. We were making our way down the hall when I heard a loud bang, like someone was banging on the door of one of the classrooms.
“What is that?” Lucie asked.
“Nothing. Just keep movi
ng,” Cora told her.
A few doors down we heard another bang. Someone was inside the classrooms banging on the doors. Wow. Someone had really gone above and beyond to make this scavenger hunt scary. I wished haunted houses and hayrides put in this much effort.
We walked into the doors of the auditorium and walked past the rows of seats to get to the stage. I lifted Olive up, set her on the stage, and Cora snapped a picture.
We all turned around at once to go. The girls screamed.
There was a person sitting in one of the seats of the auditorium. He or she was wearing black clothes and the Ghostface mask from the movie Scream. The person didn’t move. I would have thought it was a prop if not for the fact that it was not there a minute ago when we came in.
“Just run,” I mumbled to the girls, taking their hands. These people were starting to piss me off. We had six-year-olds with us. They could be seriously scarred by these pranks.
We held hands and ran up the aisle, past Ghostface, and out the doors.
“To the playground,” I ordered as we ran down the hall.
I was sure someone was just trying to trip us up. It wasn’t like there was a serial killer in the auditorium. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sit around and chit chat with the weirdo either. We had a treasure chest to win.
The playground was also pretty dark and empty. I was starting to wonder if we had been given a different list than everyone else. Or maybe every team had a different list.
We took pictures of the girls on the swing set and slide. When we turned to head back toward to school, Pumpkinhead, Ghostface, and a girl with long blonde hair who had on a mask from the movie, The Strangers, were all standing in front of the school. They each stood still with their hands clasped in front of them.
The girls screamed again.
“It’s just a joke,” I said to them quietly as we walked past them. “We have one more picture to get, and then we can go home.”
The last thing on the list was a picture of a team member with a scarecrow.
“There was a scarecrow outside the front door where we first walked in,” Cora whispered.
“Good thing my girls are all so observant,” I said, without thinking first.
She raised her eyebrows.
I could have taken it back. But the truth was I didn’t want to. I liked this foursome we had. I liked thinking of them, both of them, as my girls.
I smiled and hoped she got all that.
We ran around to the front of the school to find the scarecrow dressed in overalls and tied around a pillar. With a quick snap, we got our picture. Then we ran back into the gym.
“Are we going to win this, Daddy?” Olive asked as we ran.
I knew my train of thinking would probably have my man card suspended indefinitely, but I didn’t care if we won this game or not. I already felt like a winner. The most beautiful girls in this place were all on my team. I couldn’t lose.
“We might,” I told her.
We were not the first team to arrive back. We received our treasure map just moments after Vanessa’s team. At this point it was anyone’s game.
We unfolded the map the principal handed to us, and our four heads leaned in to look at it together. The hand-drawn, photocopied map showed the school’s layout. The X was near the front of the school, but it didn’t say which floor. It was either in the welcome office, or upstairs in the auditorium. When I saw Vanessa’s team running towards the office, we had no choice but to face the auditorium again to see if our treasure was there. Nobody argued with me as we ran up the staircase. We wanted to win this thing.
The plastic treasure chest was on the stage – right behind the three tormenters of ours who stood guarding it. Instead of hands clasped, they had arms crossed. It was pretty intimidating. Until one of them started laughing. It was an evil feminine laugh. I recognized it as a sound I heard nearly every time I dropped Olive off at school in the morning. The Mean Moms.
They all three started laughing and removed their masks to reveal their constipated faces. It was Shauna, Tabitha, and Melissa. I felt like I was in a real-life episode of Scooby Doo.
“It’s not as scary if you laugh,” I told them.
“I bet you guys were nearly shitting your pants,” Shauna said, her arms crossed against her chest again.
“Potty mouth!” Olive accused, pointing her finger at them.
There was about to be a standoff. I held up my arms in resignation.
“Thanks for the theatrics, ladies,” I told them. “You really added a nice haunting element to our scavenger hunt.”
“No. Thank you,” Shauna said. “Your pity-date gave us more entertainment than all of the games downstairs. It was so kind of you to take her out tonight.”
“The only people I pity around here are the three of you,” I said.
I heard the pounding of footsteps making their way up the stairs, and I knew we needed to get to the prize before Vanessa’s team arrived. It might turn into a bouquet-toss kind of brawl otherwise.
“I mean the four of you,” I said, gesturing behind me. “Now get out of our way.”
“It’s just a bunch of dollar store candy,” Melissa said with a roll of her eyes. “Have at it.”
I took a girl’s hand in each of mine and we approached the stage.
The Mean Moms scowled in the most exaggerated ways as they scooted over to let us by. I hoped their faces would get stuck that way. Or maybe they already were.
“Does this mean we won?” Lucie asked.
I shrugged. “I guess so,” I said. “Go on,” I told the girls. “Open it up.”
They opened it to find, as I expected, a bunch of candy. They also pulled out some things I wasn’t expecting: a restaurant gift card and a movie theatre gift card. When Olive handed me the cards, I stuck them in my back pocket.
“Should we take this to the car?” I asked.
“Yes!” the girls answered.
I carried the treasure chest as the four of us held our heads high and marched our way past the snotty faces of the Mean Moms. Their cat-eyes turned into angry slits.
“Boots with fringe? That’s funny. Didn’t fringe go out of style like two decades ago?”
“Those poor girls. Someone should seriously introduce them to Etsy before they are forced to wear store-bought costumes another year.”
“Nah. I just donated a bunch of my shoes to the Salvation Army last week. I think that’s enough charity for this year.”
“Oh, snap.”
Speaking of things that were out of style, I was pretty sure no one said, “Oh snap,” anymore.
I looked at Cora to see if she’d heard them. I knew by the expression on her face that she had. I would have taken her hand then, or touched her in some way to comfort her, but both hands were carrying the treasure chest. I did the next best thing and hip-checked her.
***
9:06 P.M.
The girls insisted that the treasure chest be strapped into the back seat of the SUV with a seatbelt. Once it was secure, I looked at my watch. It was after nine, late for six-year-olds. We should probably call it a night. But I didn’t want to be away from Cora yet. And wasn’t it okay for kids to stay up a little later on special occasions?
I didn’t want to mention it in front of the kids in case she said no. I pulled out my phone and texted her.
BEN: Pizza?
She checked the phone and nodded. “Sounds great. I’m starving. We forgot to stop by the snack booths inside.”
“Let’s pick up a pizza and then head to my house to eat and divide up our treasure.”
“YAY!” Lucie yelled.
“PIZZA!” I heard from Olive.
“All right girls,” Cora said, “get in and buckle up if you want pizza.”
When I sat down in the passenger seat, I scrolled through the numbers in my phone to find my favorite pizzeria. Yes, I had it saved in my phone. I was a single dad who only knew how to cook about three meals. I had more restaurants than peo
ple in my phone’s contacts.
I leaned my head back on the headrest and turned to face Cora. “I have to ask you an important question.”
“Yes?”
“Do you like pineapple on your pizza?”
“Of course.”
“Does Lucie?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
***
9:45 P.M.
The four of us sat at my dining room table to eat and sort the candy. The pizza disappeared quickly. We’d all been so hungry after our treasure hunt.
We divided all of the candy into two even piles. When we had an odd number, we compromised with no arguing. We took an extra KitKat, but they got an extra Almond Joy. Everyone was happy and full, and probably pretty candied out since we’d been eating some as we sorted.
When the candy was in order, Olive asked Lucie if she wanted to watch Frozen. Of course she did. The two girls went into the living room. My guess was they’d both be asleep in less than ten minutes.
We were alone. Sort of. But Cora couldn’t seem to look at me. She’d been acting really shy since we’d gotten to my house.
“So,” I asked cautiously, “is there a reason you‘re having a hard time looking at me?”
She looked alarmed at first. Then she just laughed. “No reason,” she answered with a slight smirk.
“You sure?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible that I had a dream about your dining room table once.”
Okay. I wasn’t expecting something that good. But I wasn’t going to complain about it. “Did you want to tell me more about this dream?”
She shook her head and pursed her lips together tightly, probably to keep them from blurting anything out. It was probably for the best. If she said anything naughty I was going to want to bend her over the table. Who was I kidding? I already wanted to. Oh shit. Change of subject needed immediately if I ever wanted to be able to stand up from this table.
“Maybe some other time?” I asked, hopefully.
She nodded firmly. “Yes. Definitely.”
I pulled the two gift cards from my back pocket and held them up. “What about these?” I asked.