The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,19
life by being a crybaby.
At the rate she was going, she’d wear herself out in no time, and then I could put her to bed early.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, scooping up some of her favorite toys near my feet. “You can play in the hallway in front of my room, and I’ll come out after my call with my friend, and then we can play Noah’s Ark.” She had a hand-me-down Fisher-Price toy ark and dozens of pairs of animals that she loved more than anything else in the world. Some belonged to the original set. Other animals she’d added on her own, like her pairs of My Little Ponies and Pokémon. Lucy’s face lit up, and she dragged her giant stuffed panda up the stairs. “Coco comes too, to watch me play,” she said firmly.
Minor crisis averted, for now. I followed Coco and Lucy up the stairs and dumped the toys I’d collected on the hall floor. “I’ll come out and play soon. Knock on the door if it’s an emergency.”
“Okeydokey!”
For ten years I’d been an only child, and then surprise! Instant little sister. My world changed after that. My parents had less time for me, and I was always tasked with being the babysitter. They constantly scrambled to make ends meet, thanks to having another mouth to feed. Thanks to having more birthday and Christmas presents to buy. Thanks to full-day preschool costs. None of this was my sister’s fault of course, I knew that, but there were plenty of times like now when it sure would have been nice to have the house to myself. So I could take a call with Kate without worrying about Lucy.
I hopped back on my bed and was greeted with Kate’s smiling face. She stayed on! “Sorry about that. Minor kindergartner meltdown. Where were we again?”
She laughed. “You were gone a while. I was worried! We were just exchanging boring pleasantries, to be honest.”
Right. Don’t say “hey” again. “Well, YOU wanted to talk to ME, right?” I smirked. “So, what’s up?”
She scrunched her nose. “I need your help. It’s something I’ve been researching that sounds like fun. I think.”
“That’s not quite a ringing endorsement,” I joked. “And I never commit to promises before I hear what the favor is. It’s too risky.” Honestly, though, for Kate, maybe I would.
Kate smiled, one dimple appeared near her mouth. “It’s not like I’m asking you to do some kind of Ocean’s Eleven–level Bitcoin heist.” She took a deep breath. “I want to move to New York one day. To do that, I need money. There’s this local contest sponsored by Zeneration, and I need a partner to enter. Remember the flyer at work? It’s a weekend zombie survivalist competition, and it starts in a few weeks. The first twenty-five teams to sign up are automatically entered. For everyone else it’s lottery. There’s an entry fee of one hundred dollars, but the grand prize is fifty thousand dollars if you’re the first team to finish. We get zombie-themed swag too.” She sat up straight and then leaned toward the camera. “Would you be my teammate? Pleeeeease? I can’t think of any team of people who knows more about zombies than you and me.”
One hundred dollars was a shit ton of money, but there was also a chance to win a much bigger shit ton of money. And bonus: I’d get to throat-punch zombies, and maybe she’d share a tent with me. Not that anything would happen between us, but even if something did, or didn’t, hell fucking yeah I’d do it! Calm the fuck down, Nate. Be cool. “Um, sure, count me in, I guess.”
“Really? Nate, you’re seriously the best! I’ll send you an email with all the details. The registration opens tomorrow afternoon, and I want to get one of those first spots.”
My sister burst through the door, no knocking, crying, of course. “Nate! My boat broke! All the animals died! They hit an iceberg!”
Oh my God, not now, Lucy! But I had to give her credit for the A-plus dramatic Noah’s Ark meets Titanic story line. “Lucy Goosey, I’ll come out really soon, and we can save all the animals in a special rescue boat.” I pushed