into the middle of the table.
I reached for Cassidy’s first. Hers was easy. We’d taken a watercolor class together at the YMCA a couple of summers ago. She was killer smart and I loved her retro eyeglasses. Very John Lennon. Batgirl, I wrote on the front of her name tag, because she loved comic books. I smiled to myself. Cassidy would love that nickname. Then I reached for Matt’s name tag.
I’d never really talked to Matt before, even when he went to Lone Butte. The only thing I knew about him after his introduction was that he had one of the deepest voices ever. And cute lips. So I wrote Barry White Impersonator and hoped he would get the humor.
Next was Jay’s. I peered at him in my periphery and watched him smirk at the name tag in front of him. I hoped it wasn’t mine. I couldn’t help myself. I wrote Hunk and then quickly slipped the name tag upside down to the center of the table and then, reluctantly, reached for Sam’s.
I squeezed my eyes shut and then tried, really and truly tried, to come up with a nickname that wouldn’t be mean. Or hateful. Because I so desperately wanted to write Grumpy. That nickname fit Sam oh, so perfectly. Was there a nicer word for grumpy? If only my phone had internet access. I could check a thesaurus....
Finally I opened my eyes, let loose a relieved exhale and wrote Complicated. There. That was totally Sam Tracy.
Behind us, Mr. Romero yelled, “Okay, folks. Five more minutes till chow time! Let’s wrap it up!”
Everyone on our team stopped writing and pushed the five name tags back into the center of the table. I was dying to read the nicknames on mine.
Since no one else reached for them, I picked up the name tags, clicking them against the table like I was readying a deck of cards. Then I passed each person his tag.
I sank onto the bench. Like an idiot, I’d totally forgotten that I used my pink pen. Everyone else had used their black pens. How could I have missed that? It was all Sam’s fault! He’d gotten me so unnerved with the whole icy, just-call-me-Sam discussion that I completely spaced it out.
Dang it.
Across from me, Sam’s right black eyebrow shot up as he studied his nicknames.
I looked down at the ones written on my name tag.
Smart. Okay, I liked that one.
Bossypants. Huh? Who wrote that one?
Thorough. Humph. That one was completely lame and boring.
But it was the last one that ignited fire through my veins: Pink Girl. I’d bet my new iPad that Sam Tracy wrote that one. He thought it was funny to make fun of my clothes? How nice.
I peered at him through my eyelashes. It was impossible not to glare. The jerk. Naturally, now that I wanted his attention, wanted him to know how much I was beginning to loathe his existence, he turned his back to me the moment I looked at him. He must have realized I’d figured out his clever nickname for me. He didn’t even have Matt to chat up anymore. Matt had grabbed his name tag then jumped up to help Mr. Romero with the intricacies of hot dogs and hot-dog buns. There were two stone barbecues on the other side of the picnic tables and Matt began to line the hot dogs into neat little rows on each metal grill. Sam was watching them from his seat at our picnic table as if grilling meat were the most fascinating thing in the whole world.
Pink Girl came from Sam, I was sure of it.
“Don’t forget to wear your name tags!” Mr. Romero shouted, turning in a half circle so everyone could hear him. “Then step right up and grab a paper plate and a bag of chips. Scavenger hunt starts in thirty minutes.” He glanced up at the sky, at least what little we could see through the tops of the pine trees. He had to yell to be heard over the wind whistling through the branches. “You’ll be pairing up with people on your team. Some teams are larger than others but everyone should have a partner!”
I walked closer to the barbecue grills. The hot dogs had already begun to sizzle. “Mr. Romero, do we pick our partner?” I asked, hoping—praying—that I could pick Jay or Cassidy.
Mr. Romero scratched his head. “We’ll do this one by birthdates. The person or people closest to your birthday will be your partner.”
I turned back to my Green Team and said, “My birthday is March sixth.”
Jay said, “Mine is October twentieth.”
“Mine’s November fifth,” Cassidy said, her eyes brightening behind her glasses as she beamed at Jay. My body slumped with that news.
Sam sighed. “Mine’s February twenty-third.” He looked straight across at me, his jaw stiffening.
I turned to Matt. He was already stuffing his mouth with a hot-dog bun. “When’s your birthday?”
“September first,” Matt said as bits of bread flew out of his mouth.
Ugh. I mentally counted the extra days for leap year, but not even leap year could save me. Sam and I were officially scavenger-hunt partners.
Kill me now.
8
Sam
I had barely started eating my third dog when I heard her voice. It was impossible not to moan.
“Looks like we have to find stuff around the forest,” Riley announced behind me.
I turned midbite and then decided to dump the rest of my hot dog.
Her nose wrinkled as she rattled off the list for the scavenger hunt. Jeez, did she ever relax? “Pinecones, bark, berries and...stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said again, although I hadn’t really studied the list. I mean, how hard could it be to find stuff that littered every foot of the forest?
“Even petroglyphs,” Riley added.
I squinted at her. Okay. That could pose a challenge.
“How do we take a petroglyph from a rock?” She paused from reading her list, which, I noted, was already highlighted pink in places, along with some intricate curlicue doodling and fancy arrows around the margins.
I shrugged. “I suppose we have to figure that out. You got a camera?”
She nodded. “Don’t you?”
I didn’t answer her question. “Then we’ll use your phone to snap a picture. Problem solved.”
From the way that Riley’s anxious expression softened, I’d like to think that she was impressed with my solution. But then she had to be a brat and add, “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
“Absolutely. The sooner the better.”
Behind us, Mr. Romero started barking out more instructions. “Okay, people! Find your partners and spread out. Be back here in ninety minutes! Remember the days are still short. It’ll be dark before you know it, and we’ve got lots more to do before dinner. No messing around out there.”
Like that would be possible.
