CHAPTER 4

SCAVENGER HUNT FEVER GRIPS CULVERT PREP

CLAUDIA

So, this is Chapter 4.

You might be wondering why there’s no Chapter 2 or 3.

There used to be. And personally, I thought they were fascinating.

But everybody ^{Ed. Note: Sophie, Parvati, Carmen, Mom} who read the first draft said they were incredibly boring.

So I got rid of them. But in case you’re wondering, Chapter 2 was about the speech I gave that got the Student Government to pass a resolution creating the First Annual Culvert Prep Middle School Scavenger Hunt For Charity.

Not to brag, but it was a very effective speech. I quoted both Miranda Fleet AND Gandhi.

Chapter 3 was about all the planning we did to put the hunt together. By “we,” I mostly mean me and Akash Gupta, my co-chair on the Scavenger Hunt Committee. And also Vice Principal Bevan, because she had to approve everything.

Akash is in eighth grade. He’s the older brother of one of my best friends ^{Ed. Note: (Parvati)}, and he’s basically a genius—although tbh, that can make him kind of hard to work with.

AKASH GUPTA, co-chair of Scavenger Hunt Committee

I can’t believe you cut Chapter 3! That was the best chapter!

CLAUDIA

I know, right?! But everybody else thought it was death.

AKASH

People are idiots. It’s the same way with coding. Everybody wants to play Exploding Cows. But nobody cares how it gets made.

And planning that scavenger hunt was seriously complicated! Especially after you quit and I had to do everything myself.

CLAUDIA

I did NOT quit! It’s just that once I decided I wanted to PLAY as well as PLAN the hunt, Mrs. Bevan made me resign as co-chair to avoid any appearance of corruption.

AKASH

Oh, sure. Just keep telling yourself that. Whatever lets you sleep at night, quitter.

CLAUDIA

FYI, this is what I mean when I say Akash can be hard to work with.

Here’s what happened: at first, I was not planning to be in the hunt at all. But one of the things Akash and I had to do was come up with prizes for the winning teams.

And since Mrs. Bevan wouldn’t let us spend any serious money, second and third prize wound up being kind of lame.

AKASH

I’m sorry, but a $20 Starbucks gift card? When there’s four players on a team? It’s ridiculous! You can’t even get everybody grande Frappuccinos for that kind of money.

And third place was even worse. Those Culvert Prep pencil cases are total crap. They’re, like, ten for a dollar.

Mrs. Bevan’s a complete cheapskate.

Wait, don’t print that. ^{Ed. Note: forgot to take this out—sorry, Akash!}

CLAUDIA

I won’t.

But first prize was a whole other story. Allegra Bell has a dad with some kind of big job at Madison Square Garden. And Akash convinced Allegra to get her dad to donate four front-row seats to ANY EVENT at the Garden as a first prize.

Which was completely, insanely, amazingly, incredibly, and in all other ways TOTALLY AWESOME.

Because the list of upcoming events at MSG included not just Knicks games, Rangers games, and some wrestling thing that a bunch of the fifth grade boys were into, but also Fiddy K, Deondra, AND Miranda Fleet concerts.

Which was huge for me. Miranda Fleet is not only the world’s greatest singer-songwriter, she’s also my idol and the one person besides the president whose job I want when I grow up. So the chance to see her live, from the FRONT ROW… was something I absolutely did not want to pass up.

Pretty much everybody at Culvert Prep felt the same way. Once word got out about the front-row seats, interest in the scavenger hunt basically exploded.

SOPHIE KOH, best friend of Claudia

People went NUTS for those tickets. It was all anybody talked about for days.

PARVATI GUPTA, second-best friend of Claudia ^{Ed. Note: (tied with Carmen)}

Can I just say, when I heard I could get front-row seats to Deondra? I practically peed my pants. She is TOTALLY AMAZING.

CARMEN GUTIERREZ, second-best friend of Claudia ^{Ed. Note: (tied with Parvati)}

I had a real moral dilemma. Because I seriously didn’t know whether I wanted to see Miranda Fleet or Deondra more. But either way, I was all, “SQUEEEEE!”

REESE

At first, a lot of my friends were like, “It’s a scavenger hunt—only we can’t kill people and take their stuff? What’s the point?”

But when they found out they could get free tickets to the Knicks, or Fiddy K, they were like, “BA-DA-ZING!” ^{Ed. Note: not actually a word}

WYATT TEMPLEMAN, friend of Reese ^{Ed. Note: (also minor idiot)}

I was totally psyched. I heard if you sit in the front row at a Knicks game, the players will, like, actually sweat on you. That would be SO sweet. ^{Ed. Note: NO IT WOULDN’T (eeeew)}

XANDER BILLINGTON, friend of Reese ^{Ed. Note: (also MAJOR idiot)}

I’s all, “FIDDY K IN DA HIZZZZ-OUSE! I’M’A HAMMER DOWN ON DAT!”

Dem free tix wuz BEAST, yo.

CLAUDIA

FYI, it’s important to know this about Xander Billington: he’s not only a major idiot, he’s also from one of the oldest families in America. Apparently, the Billingtons came over from England with the original Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Whenever I think about this, I feel really bad for the other Pilgrims.

REESE

The tickets were beast and all, but it wasn’t even about that with me. I just wanted to win. Because I’m a really competitive person. Ask anybody on my soccer team—I get fired up just for scrimmages!

And there just aren’t a ton of chances to pwn the whole school in something. ^{Ed. Note: pwn is actually a word (go figure)}

Except for Battle of the Books. Which is seriously unfair. ’Cause the only way you can win that is to, like, y’know…

CLAUDIA

Read books?

REESE

Yeah. So that’s not a good situation for me. But a scavenger hunt? Totally my thing.

CLAUDIA

Scavenger Hunt Fever blew up so huge that it even infected the Fembots.

I should explain about the Fembots.

Actually, no. I shouldn’t. Because as sixth grade president, it’s my job to represent everyone in our grade fairly and equally. Even Fembots.

It would be VERY unpresidential of me to badmouth anybody.

So I’m going to let Sophie do it.

SOPHIE

Okay, so it’s basically like… if Satan and the absolutely worst woman on Violent Housewives had a baby, it’d be a Fembot. They’re this group of girls at Culvert who are either crazy rich and think they’re all that, like Athena Cohen and Ling Chen. Or they’re total wannabes, like Meredith and Clarissa.

CARMEN

I don’t think the Fembots even cared about the tickets. I mean, Athena’s dad can practically BUY Madison Square Garden. I think they just didn’t like the idea that something might happen at Culvert that wasn’t all about them.

Or maybe it was because all the cute seventh grade boys were doing it.

CLAUDIA

Whatever it was, the day after we announced the tickets, Parvati and I were talking in English class about whether I should try to be in the scavenger hunt.

It was a tough call, because I was totally desperate to see Miranda Fleet from the front row—but Akash and I were about to start putting the list of items together. And I knew it’d be totally unfair if I was the person who both made up the list AND searched for the things on it.

I was asking Parvati what she thought I should do, and Athena Cohen overheard us. She turned around in her chair and said in this incredibly snotty voice, “Do you ACTUALLY THINK you have a prayer of winning those tickets? What are you going to do—ride around Manhattan on your little pink scooters?”

PARVATI

That was SO ridiculous. We haven’t ridden those scooters since, like, third grade.

CLAUDIA

But that’s typical Athena. Mentioning them was her way of saying, “You are little peasants who have to ride around on scooters, and I am fabulously wealthy and own my own jet.”

PARVATI

So I was all, “What are you going to do, Athena—have your butler carry you around on his shoulders?”

And she, like, curled her lip and went, “Whatever it takes, Poverty.”

I swear she actually pronounced it that way—like, “Poverty” instead of “Parvati.”

CLAUDIA

I know. I was there. It was beyond vile.

PARVATI

And I turned to you, and I was all, “OMG, Claude—you HAVE to be on our team. Because NOW IT’S PERSONAL.”

CLAUDIA

I could not have agreed more.

So I went to Mrs. Bevan, and she said as long as I resigned from the Scavenger Hunt Committee before we started making up the list, it’d be fine.

So I formally stepped down as co-chair and devoted all my attention to building a team awesome enough to beat the Fembots and win the whole thing.

Which turned out to be kind of a major headache.