The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,126

bet you they got them all, though,” Tom said despondently as he rolled the empty jar between his palms. “Just someone tell them that we really did have a firefly. Clark, we never should have set it free.”

Bri and Wyatt climbed out of the truck and I watched, expecting them to go around to the back and start unloading the bags of their stuff, come running up to the picnic table full-speed. But they just continued on toward us, walking a few feet apart, both of them empty-handed.

“Hey,” Toby called as they got closer. “Where have you guys been? And where’s all your stuff?”

“Car broke down when we were on the way to the diner,” Wyatt said, pushing his hair back with one hand. “I had to call Triple A and get a jump.”

“Yeah,” Bri said, shaking her head. “They took forever to get there too.”

“Are you okay?” Toby asked Bri, eyes wide. “Were you, like, stranded on the side of the highway? That’s how almost every serial killer movie starts.”

“We’re fine,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “Totally un-murdered.”

“So you weren’t able to get anything?” Palmer said, putting her hands in her back pockets and then taking them out again, a slight hurt tone to her voice that I almost never heard.

“We really wanted to,” Bri said quickly, looking at Palmer and then away again. “But . . .”

Palmer nodded and started cleaning up, putting empty plates and crusts into the pizza box, spending time making sure she got the lid on just right. “So who won?” Bri asked, her voice a little more cheerful than usual, and I wondered if she was picking up on the same thing I was—that Palmer was disappointed, that the fact they hadn’t participated at all was draining some of the joy from the whole thing.

“Tie,” Toby and Tom said in unison.

“Really?” Wyatt asked, as he loped over to the table and started looking at what was there. “Wow, they just gave you these diner menus?”

“Please tell me there’s some pizza left,” Bri said.

“Only if you want weird toppings,” I said, opening up the box that was in front of me, the one that still had a few passed-over slices in it. Wyatt, no doubt drawn by the prospect of food, came to stand next to Bri as I tried to figure out what three toppings Clark and Tom had gone with. “So I think this is . . . pepperoni, jalapeño, and . . . pineapple?” I asked, staring at the slice and feeling myself recoil. “Ugh, why would you guys do that to yourselves?”

I glanced up and saw Wyatt nudging Bri as she tried to take a bite of the terrible-sounding pizza and Bri turning away, taking her pizza, and going to sit next to Toby.

“So,” Wyatt said, sitting down on the bench and taking a slice of his own. “What did we miss? We need details.”

• • •

“So tell me something,” Clark said to me a few hours later. We were lying on a blanket in the back of his SUV, taking a brief kissing break, the back door open and a breeze intermittently blowing through the car.

After we’d brought the items back to our own cars and cleaned up the impromptu pizza party, and Wyatt and Clark had affixed Tom’s bow tie around Winthrop’s neck, everyone had scattered, and Clark and I had headed to his house to “watch a movie.” Even if there were a movie playing, it would simply be in the background, a pretense for fooling around. We’d been doing this for a while now, so even the pretending to need the movie was starting to get old. But Clark had just gotten to the gatehouse when he’d slowed, then put the car in park. We looked at the time, did some quick calculations, and realized that if I was going to make it back for my curfew—which, since my grounding, I did try to stick to the general vicinity of—we were going to lose most of our time getting to his place and then back to mine. So after a brief discussion, Clark had turned the car around and we’d returned, parked to the side of the road near the statue of Winthrop, beneath the section with no streetlights shining in on us.

Clark’s second row of seats was already down from hauling the mountain bikes, and I was glad they weren’t currently there, taking up precious space. Clark had raised the back and we’d stretched out