The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,117

table.

“Tom drove me,” Palmer said, frowning at the pile of her possessions Toby was currently rifling through. “Looks like you guys will have to figure out something else.” Palmer held up her phone so that we could see the timer counting down. “One hour and fifty minutes, guys. Tick-tock.”

Toby and I looked at each other, and I realized there was just one thing to do. I pulled off my flip-flops and nodded down the road. “My house,” I said, taking a breath. “Ready to run for it?”

• • •

“DAD!” I screamed as I barreled into the house, Toby at my heels. A second later, I realized how that sounded. “Everything is fine!” I yelled a moment later. There was no need to give my father a heart attack.

“No, it’s not!” Toby yelled, though a little less loudly than me. “We need help!”

“What’s going on?” my dad called. A moment later he hustled into the foyer, where we were trying to catch our breath. The run we’d done to get to the house had been enough to remind me that walking large dogs, while nicely toning my biceps, had not actually done much to improve my running ability. He took in the sight of us, and his expression grew more alarmed. “You two okay? Hi there, Toby.”

“Hi, Mr. Walker,” Toby said, still breathing hard, her face pretty much the same color as her hair.

“We’re doing a scavenger hunt,” I said, handing my dad the paper, which had gotten more than a little wrinkled during our dash to my house. “Were you doing something?” I asked, suddenly noticing that my dad’s reading glasses were sticking out of his shirt pocket.

“No, just looking at something for a friend,” my dad said as he glanced down at the paper, absently smoothing it out. His eyebrows raised. “This is a pretty challenging scavenger hunt.”

“Palmer,” I said by way of explanation, and my dad nodded. “And we have to win.”

“We really do,” Toby said, the gleam back in her eye. “It’s essential.”

“And Clark stole my keys, so I might need to borrow your car.”

“He did?” my dad asked, starting to smile. I frowned at him, and his expression grew more serious. “I mean, of course he shouldn’t have done that to you. But I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“We need to move!” Toby said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s go!”

“Okay,” I said, leaning over to look at the list, which my dad was still holding. “We need to see what we can get here before we go elsewhere,” I said, eyes scanning down it. “Cotton balls,” I said, and I pointed upstairs. “My bathroom.”

“On it!” Toby yelled as she ran for the staircase.

“I can get you a bow tie or cummerbund so you can get your article of formal wear,” my dad said, reading off the paper, and I looked at him, surprised. “If you want me to help, that is.”

“Yeah,” I said, after only the tiniest of pauses. It wasn’t that I didn’t—I just hadn’t imagined that he’d want to help, or be a part of this at all. “That would be great.”

“That might be all we have here,” my dad said, pulling out a mechanical pencil from his pocket and starting to make notes on the list, using the hall table as a desk. “I can look at my change and see if I have any from before 1980.” He looked up at me and tapped his pencil twice on the paper. “Do you think that includes 1980?”

“Probably better not to assume,” I said. My dad nodded and started making more notes. I looked down at the paper and shook my head. “I don’t think I have a burnt sienna crayon,” I said. “But I can grab a book and a hat that’s not a baseball cap from my room.”

“Andie!” Toby yelled from upstairs.

My dad looked at his watch. “Let’s reconnoiter in five,” he said, and I nodded, then bolted up the stairs.

“What?” I asked as I walked through my room to the bathroom. After this many years, I knew she would have no compunction going through my things, so I wasn’t sure what she needed. “Did you get the cotton balls?”

“Got them,” she said, pointing to the bag on the counter. “But . . . what’s this?” She opened up my bathroom cabinet, which was stacked high with pretty much every feminine product you could imagine—tampons, pads, Midol, and lots of all of them. “What, is there like a shortage or