The Search for TK

by Bobbi JG Weiss

  She took a bite of croissant followed by a sip of latte and went back to her crossword.

  “Oh, I see,” the computer blared. “Call 403-555-2846.”

  Sally sighed. This was the last straw. Rudy needed help, and she was going to help him. “Will you please allow me to . . . ?”

  Her voice trailed off. Rudy was on the Video Chat Express page apparently trying to call Sarah_77, an attractive young woman wearing a cowboy hat. Sally might have gasped. She wasn’t entirely sure if she did or not.

  Rudy slammed the laptop shut.

  Sally stared down at her newspaper, not sure what to say. She liked Rudy, a lot, and she had been under the impression that Rudy liked her, too. They’d had dinner together, and they got along so nicely.

  So who was Sarah_77?

  A very awkward silence passed before Kit barged into the dining hall.

  Kit was making a beeline for the buffet table when she heard her dad’s voice. “Hey, Kit!” He was sitting at the head table next to Sally, and he had his laptop. “You were going to give me some help with that thing . . . ?”

  Kit’s mind was on TK. Nav was waiting for her outside. She’d just come in to grab snacks before the big adventure started. What was this about a thing?

  “I need to make a call?” Rudy prompted.

  Oh! That call. Yeah, Kit had promised to help him call somebody back in Montana because her dad could never make heads or tails out of his computer, but now was so not the time. “I can’t, Dad,” she said hurriedly. “I have a really urgent study sesh. You know, midterms, am I right?” She started stuffing her bag with muffins and apples and croissants, babbling, “I have to reread Austen and Brontë and Bieber . . .” She aimed that last part at Sally, who adopted her stern teacher face. Kit pointed at her. “Aha! Just making sure you were listening!”

  When her bag was bulging with food, she noticed that Rudy and Sally were exchanging raised eyebrows.

  “I, uh, I get really hungry when I read Dickens,” she said. “‘Please, sir, I want some more!’ More carbs. It helps me concentrate. Anywho . . . bye!”

  Before they could say a word, she rushed out to meet Nav, thinking, TK, here I come!

  Sally observed Kit as the teenager raced out of the room, wondering if she would ever understand the Bridges family. Rudy was enough of a puzzle. Kit, she decided, was in a category all her own.

  Rudy stood up with his laptop. “Enjoy your crossword, Miss Sally,” he said. She thought he sounded out of sorts, but then he said, “By the way, five across is apologetic.”

  Sally had been trying to figure that out for some time. She checked the clue — he was right! “Oh!” she said, then pulled her pencil out of her hair bun and scribbled down the letters in the correct boxes.

  At least one puzzle was solved.

  So far Anya and Josh had managed to collect a few ingredients for their turducken: a small Cornish game hen, a couple of carrots, celery, an onion, and some kind of roundish leafy green vegetable . . . thing . . . that neither of them could identify but, hey, they were sure they could work with it. At this point, the problem wasn’t so much obtaining ingredients as finding a place where they could turn those ingredients into Turducken Delight.

  “The cook says we can’t use the kitchen,” Anya informed Josh as they walked down the corridor of the main building. “Liability reasons or whatever.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Josh asked, toting their bag of foodstuffs. “What does he think we’re going to do?”

  “Burn down the kitchen.”

  “Us? As if we’re ever going to burn down . . . Actually, yeah, he’s got somewhat of a good point there . . .”

  “So what do we do? What’s the next plan? Do we cancel?”

  “No! We just kind of go stealth, you know? Find another place, another stove . . .” Josh trailed off as Rudy and Will approached them. “Ah! Mr. B.!”

  Anya couldn’t figure why Josh would bring their equestrian instructor into the conversation until she heard his next words.

  “Do you think we could use your camping equipment?”

  “The what now?” Rudy asked. “What part?”

  “Oh, just the part that heats up and cooks food.”

  “I’m not lending you a stove unless I know —”

  “What on earth!” said Lady Covington, exiting her office just in time to hear Josh’s request. Elaine was with her.

  Anya quickly explained, “We’d like to cook Kit a Thanksducken . . . turken . . . chickey . . . ?” She looked to Josh for help, but he stayed silent, looking amused by her floundering. “Oh, we just call it a three-bird roast!” Anya finally concluded.

  “Why would you be cooking such a thing for Katherine?” Lady Covington asked.

  Just then, Elaine spoke up. “I was just asking Lady Covington where Kit was. Have you seen her?”

  Uh-oh. Anya gave Josh a don’t answer look and said, “Our room,” just as he said, “The dining hall.” Anya wanted to smack him, but she also wanted to keep control of the situation, so she said firmly, “Music classrooms!” just as Josh said, “Library!”

  Then Josh quickly muttered, “Uh, the music classrooms.”

  Anya was sure Lady Covington would scold them for lying, but the headmistress only drew in a long breath. “I see. Well, if you’ll excuse us?” She began to guide Elaine away.

  Josh asked, “But can we use the cooktop thing?”

  “I’ll leave that to Mr. Bridges’s discretion,” the headmistress answered.

  Rudy told Josh, “Come by and pick it up later.” He and Will resumed their way down the hall, and so did Lady Covington and Elaine — until the headmistress turned to say, “Oh, what time is dinner?”

  Anya paled. “Seven?” she blurted out.

  At least Josh didn’t argue. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a little faint. “Yeah, seven.”

  “Excellent,” Lady Covington said with a smile. “I’ll see you then.” She glanced at Elaine, then back at Anya. “Oh. Have you forgotten? It’s rather rude to discuss a party in front of somebody who’s not invited. Unless, of course —”

  “Yes!” Anya hastened. “Elaine! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’d like to invite you.”

  Elaine appeared uncomfortable, but she managed a small smile. “See you at seven.”

  Josh nodded. “All right!”

  “Excellent,” Lady Covington concluded, and she and Elaine left.

  Once they were gone, Josh turned on Anya. “Anyone else you’d like to invite? First-Formers? People from the village? Your Blurter followers?”

  He seemed annoyed, but Anya could only laugh at him. If he insisted on getting them into these kinds of predicaments, at least he could be cheerful about it. They’d just had a near miss with the headmistress! The last three minutes could have gotten them into loads of trouble, but instead, they were free to use Rudy’s camp stove. And that meant that they had official permission to give this crazy dinner party for Kit . . . and Elaine . . . and Lady Covington herself . . . and they still didn’t really know what they were doing and . . .

  Oh, dear.

  Will followed Rudy into the tack room and sat down at the desk. Rudy opened his laptop and Will began to type.

  “I sure appreciate you helping me out with this,” Rudy told him.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” Will said, continuing to type. “It’s a doddle.” He tapped the final key. “There!” He’d brought the Video Chat Express program back to its log-in screen so that Rudy could start over. Whatever Rudy had done before this had frozen the app. “Just type in your password.”

  Rudy bent over and, with a precision-controlled cowboy index finger, slowly tapped out, “R-U-D-Y 1-2-3-4.” He said each letter and number out loud as he tapped it. “It’s the same one I use for everything.”

  Will didn’t consider himself a computer expert, but he knew that using the same password for everything was not the wisest move. “That’s a little bit concerning,” he told Rudy, and was ready to explain w
hy when he noticed that the program wasn’t opening. “Oh, now you have to press Enter,” Will said. He tapped the Enter key, and the program opened.

  “Hey, I did it!” Rudy crowed happily. “You know, Kit must have showed me how to do that seven times, but I never got it until now!”

  “Maybe you’re just an eighth try kind of guy,” Will replied. He felt good. It was nice to be able to help Rudy — and when it came to computers, Rudy obviously needed all the help he could get.

  Rudy was smiling, still savoring his success. “If you can teach me how to do this, you can do anything,” he said.

  “What, you think I’m an eighth try kind of guy as well?”

  The mood of the conversation seemed to shift as Rudy commented in a softer tone, “Some things in life are worth fighting for, son.”

  Before Will could reply, the laptop booped and a chat window opened to reveal a pretty young woman sitting in what appeared to be a tack room very much like theirs. “Hey, Rudy Bridges!” she said in greeting. “I can’t believe it’s really you!”

  Will gave up the chair so that Rudy could sit down in front of the laptop. “Sarah!” Rudy said. “How are you? It’s been too long.”

  Will wondered what the call was about. This Sarah person sounded like a good friend that Rudy hadn’t seen in a long time. An old classmate, maybe? An old girlfriend? The idea made Will chuckle as he left his teacher to his conversation.

  Finally! Kit thought as she and Nav set off on their adventure. I’m finally going to find TK!

  She and Nav walked at a brisk pace down a side road leading out of the Covington school grounds. Nav had arranged for a car to pick them up there. It was brilliant! Lady Covington wouldn’t see the car, so she would never know they had left. Actually, Nav had chosen a spot so far down the road that nobody was likely to see them. All the better!

  “I am so excited!” Kit said, hopping as she walked. “And you are a miracle! You made such a great plan!”

  When they reached the car, Nav, smooth and suave as usual, opened the passenger door for her, saying, “A Nav Andrada plan always works.”

  “Except when it doesn’t,” Kit would have said if her mouth hadn’t suddenly fallen open. Lady Covington was sitting in the car.

  “Going somewhere?” the headmistress asked them in a cool, crisp voice.

  “How did you —?” Kit began.

  “Students may leave the premises only with written permission and accompanied by a chaperone. Unless you would like me to accompany you to wherever it is you’re going?”

  Kit didn’t know what to say. How had they gotten caught? Someone must have seen them, but who? When? How? Oh, what does it matter? Kit thought angrily. Plan scrapped.

  “A week’s detention,” Lady Covington declared. “I trust that during that time, you will see the error of your ways. Now, straight inside.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kit replied.

  Nav nodded to the headmistress and closed the car door.

  As they started back up the road, Kit saw how dispirited Nav felt. She nudged him. “Meet me in the stables in fifteen minutes. It’s time to try a Kit Bridges plan.”

  Nav grinned.

  Anya was beginning to think that Josh Luders was totally and utterly barmy.

  They’d set up their “kitchen” in a science classroom so that they would have a nice big table to work on. They arranged all their ingredients and cooking utensils on the table, along with Rudy’s camp stove, a timer, and a lamp.

  It made a dismal sight. Anya tried to keep up her spirits, but how in the world were they going to turn this sad little collection into Turducken Delight? “I think we’re up to seven people,” she told Josh. “Is Will coming?”

  “If there’s food and Kit, he’s coming,” Josh replied as he put on a cook’s apron. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. I mean, we have lots of”— he gestured at the table — “parsley.”

  Anya picked up a huge bunch of the herb. It was enough to make into a flower arrangement! “Why do we have so much parsley?” she asked.

  “It was, like, the only thing left in the school garden, along with”— Josh picked up what looked like a hunk of gnarled wood — “whatever this is.”

  Anya groaned. He didn’t even know what it was! How could he cook with it if he didn’t even know what it was?

  He must have felt her panic, because he assured her for the twentieth time, “It’s going to be fine.”

  “Really? Because I’m thinking we might have a slight problem unless we’re only serving starters to a small child.” She picked up one of the carrots. It wobbled sideways, looking long past its prime.

  Josh plucked it from her hand. He was getting nervous, she was sure of it, because his voice was tense as he said, “Trust me.”

  Lonely. What an awful word.

  Elaine would never use that word when referring to herself, even though it was true. Today was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and she couldn’t find a single person to take a ride with her. Everyone was busy doing something with someone else, even Peaches, who claimed she’d promised to help her friend Minnie Minister groom her plush animal collection.

  “She has so many of them!” Peaches had said. “And her Plucky Panda bites, so two people are required for safety reasons.”

  Elaine had cut her off there.

  She had tacked up Thunder and was now out riding by herself. And yes, it was lonely. For a horse, Thunder made a wonderful companion, but she didn’t think of him as a friend, so she was feeling pretty low by the time she took the trail heading back to the school.

  This trail ran behind the stables. As she rode Thunder at a lazy walk, she heard familiar voices in the stable’s rear courtyard. She gently pulled Thunder to a stop and peeked through the fence to see — who else? — the cowgirl. She was straddling a bicycle and holding another one steady while Nav nervously stared at it.

  “Are you sure about this?” she heard Nav ask Kit.

  “Yeah, hop on,” Kit said. “We’ve got places to be.”

  “I’m just, um, I, um . . .”

  Elaine’s interest grew. She’d never seen Navarro Andrada act so awkward before. What was going on?

  “I mean, we shouldn’t leave the property so soon after getting caught,” Nav finally said.

  They’d gotten caught? By whom? And what had they been doing? Elaine gave Thunder a soothing pat, hoping he would stay quiet so she wouldn’t be discovered eavesdropping.

  “Well, I’m going to find TK. Today. If you don’t want to come, just tell me where he is.” Kit had her helmet on and was ready to go. She waited impatiently while Nav fumbled with his helmet and almost let his bike fall over. “Come on — clock’s ticking.”

  Nav straddled his bike and gingerly placed one foot on the pedal. He held his body in a weird stance that put him completely off balance. Elaine had begun to suspect what Kit said out loud: “Wait — do you not know how to ride a bike?”

  Elaine had heard enough. So the cowgirl thought she was going to find her donkey, eh? She wasn’t going anywhere if her guide couldn’t ride. Elaine urged Thunder to resume walking as Kit grumbled, “Well, that makes the Kit Bridges escape plan a little bit tricky.”

  Kit heard the sound of nearby horse hooves. Somebody was riding the trail behind the stables, but she presumed that whoever it was would have no interest in what she and Nav were doing. And what were they doing? “We’re going to have an impromptu bicycle riding lesson!”

  “Oh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Nav protested. “Perhaps we should —”

  “La la la la la, I’m not listening!” Kit sang. “This is TK we’re talking about, remember? I need your help to find him, and that means that you are going to ride that bike. Just think of it as a really skinny horse. With wheels. And pedals.”

  During the next twenty minutes, Kit did her best to remember what it had felt like as a child when her father had taught her to ride her first bike. “You have to keep a certain speed, though,” she instructed
Nav as he wobbled along, his expression one of fierce concentration. “If you go too slow, you’re going to tumble and fizzle off.”

  “Got it,” said Nav. He managed to ride around in a circle, but the circle was too small, and he almost toppled. Kit suggested he make the circle bigger, so he tried again.

  “How do you not know how to ride a bike?” she asked, following along with him in case he lost his balance again.

  “My father would always say that’s why we had drivers,” Nav explained, struggling to keep the handlebars steady. “He would buy me horses, but he drew the line at a bicycle.”

  Nav’s wobbling got worse. “Don’t oversteer,” Kit instructed him. “And don’t overthink. You’ll get it.” She kept up with him as he made yet another circle, and this time he didn’t wobble as much. “There you go! There you go — that’s it!”

  And then he fell over.

  In the classroom kitchen, Anya and Josh peered into the toaster oven. They had intended to use Rudy’s camp stove, but they’d discovered that camp stoves don’t come with a roast setting. So they’d hunted around and located a toaster oven, but although it had a roast setting, their Cornish game hen didn’t seem to be roasting — or even toasting, for that matter — very well.

  “It’s raw!” Anya cried, examining the little bird. “It’s totally raw!”

  Josh rubbed his hands uneasily. “How much time do we have?”

  “A few hours! Josh, I just, I —”

  “Uh-uh!” Josh stopped her. “Don’t be a hater. Okay? Trust in the power of Josh.”

  Will burst into the room. “Have you guys seen Kit? I’ve been looking for her everywhere. I’ve got this idea to make her more comfortable on another horse.”

  “She was studying,” Josh told him.

  “On Saturday? Right.” Will clearly didn’t believe that, so he asked, “Anya?”