Dear Amanda,
Sometimes it seemed like you were hiding
things from me too. Like you didn’t tell me
everything anymore …
“Ethan’s boxers, holiday themed?” I said. “That’s not a fair item.”
“Everything’s fair,” said Amanda. “I didn’t make the list—Henry did.”
Henry loved creating scavenger hunts for us to do on the weekends. Bishop Heights is a small town, so creative minds tend to run our lives, and Henry was definitely our most adventurous and inventive friend.
“How does Henry even know that Ethan has holiday-themed boxers?” asked Renee.
“He does,” said Amanda. “I can vouch.” She was sitting on the army-green shag carpet in Henry’s basement, fingering the edges of her favorite sparkly blue ballet flats. Amanda was good at being coy.
“So are you guys officially dating?” Renee leaned forward and stared at Amanda intensely, and I was glad she was asking pointblank. I’d asked the week before, but Amanda just confessed to a kiss in the parking lot—she wouldn’t use the word boyfriend. Yet.
“Maybe,” said Amanda, her grin growing.
“So why isn’t Ethan here?” I asked.
“I invited him, but his grandparents are in town.” Amanda stuck out her lips in a pout. “His mom insisted on a family night.”
“Good,” said Aaron. “One more would have thrown off team numbers.”
The teams were me and Aaron versus Renee and Amanda—mainly because Aaron and Renee both had early fall birthdays and already had their licenses—with Henry acting as Director of Scavenge and Official Point Tallier. The list looked like this:
EASY (1 point):
1 tip cup from Ben & Jerry’s, minus the tips
1 bag of orange candy circus peanuts—extra points
for eating them upon reconvening
1 official traffic cone
MEDIUM (2 points):
1 buoy from Dilby Lake
1 size-6 vintage shoe (ladies)
1 pair of Ethan’s boxers (holiday themed)
HARD (3 points):
1 signed note from Henry’s mom saying she’ll allow him to stay out all night for prom
1 family portrait from Principal Sullivan’s house
1 (used) hairnet from a Wendy’s employee (with signature on a napkin attesting to its authenticity)
No team could get everything on the list in our two-hour time frame, obviously, but the idea was to get at least one Hard-level thing, because they were worth the most points. If you went for all Easy stuff, you’d never be able to win.
“I think we should beat Amanda to Ethan,” I said as soon as Aaron and I got in his car. He has a speedy little Jeep that he always drives for scavenger hunts because it has an obnoxious horn honk—it plays “La Cucaracha”—and he likes to tease the other team with it.
“It would definitely make her mad … ,” said Aaron, smirking. “Let’s do it!” Then he peeled out of Henry’s gravel driveway, spraying some rocks for effect. He hit the horn, too, a signal that the hunt was on.
We sped to Ethan’s house. Amanda’s car was nowhere in sight—she and Renee must have gone after something else.
“I’ll go.” I bolted from the passenger seat and ran up to Ethan’s front door.
I knocked three times. I was already laughing in anticipation when Ethan opened the door. He smiled this huge smile.
“Clem!” he said. “I thought you guys were—”
His gaze went to Aaron’s car behind me.
“Uh-oh … I’m not on the scavenger hunt list, am I?”
“Nope,” I said. “But your boxers are! Holiday themed, specifically.”
“Ethan, who’s at the—?” Ethan’s mom appeared behind him. “Well, is this Amanda? She’s even prettier than you said!”
I turned red instantly. Please let her not have heard me say boxers.
“No, this is Clem,” said Ethan. “She’s a friend of Amanda’s. I mean, she’s my friend too. She’s … Clem.”
He looked so cute as he got flustered in front of his mom.
“Hi, Mrs. Garrison,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was an innocent-and-winning way.
“Won’t you come in, Clem … Clementine, is it?” she asked. “Such a lovely name.”
“Um, yeah, thanks,” I said, glancing back at Aaron, who was gesturing wildly, urging me to come back to the car, to abandon the mission. We were losing time and had to keep going, but I wasn’t going to give up on this one. I gave him a palm that meant “Wait,” and I headed into Ethan’s house.
Once inside, Ethan disappeared while I met his dad, his grandparents, and a visiting uncle. It was like a family reunion.
Just as Grandpa Garrison was launching into a round of “Oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’ …” and I was thinking I was going to face an epic fail on the underwear quest, Ethan saved me.
“Clem needs to pick up this stuff for history class,” he said, thrusting a thick red three-ring binder into my hands. “She has a big project due, so she has to get going, but I’m sure you’ll meet her again another time.”
He looked over at me and smiled. “She’s one of my best friends at school.”
I felt my heart pitter-patter then, and in a burst of energy I stood on my tiptoes and hugged him quickly before I headed for the front door, calling “Good night, everyone!” as Grandpa Garrison kept humming my namesake song.
When I got back to the car I was holding the binder to my chest. I jumped in and held it up to show Aaron, who was shouting that I’d taken forever.
“Score!” I said, opening up the binder. Inside was a pair of red boxers with candy canes all over them, and a Post-it from Ethan.
That silenced the shouting.
“Nice!” said Aaron.
He pulled out of the driveway and headed for Ben & Jerry’s as I looked at the note.
“C, I certify that these are mine,” I read out loud. “Please return them soon. Heart, E.”
“Heart?” asked Aaron. “He wrote H-E-A-R-T on there?”
“No, he drew a heart,” I said.
“I think you read that as love,” he said. “Because obviously he loves you.”
“Totally.” I knew Aaron was joking, but I still felt excited about that heart. I stuffed the note in my pocket.
When we returned to Henry’s house at the end of the night, we’d managed to get six of the nine items on the scavenger hunt list. We presented each thing one by one as Henry diligently tallied the score on his official scavenger hunt clipboard.
“It’s looking good for Team Clemaron!” shouted my partner.
Then Amanda started taking the orange circus peanuts they’d bought out of the bag. As she chewed each one slowly and deliberately with her rosebud mouth, I tried to do the math in my head.
“Wait a minute,” I said after she’d already swallowed almost the entire bag (math takes me a while), “even if you eat all of those you’re still a point under us.”
“Ha!” said Renee. “Not with these.”
She opened up Amanda’s tote and pulled out a pair of boxers. They had little snowmen on them. I wondered briefly if they were decoys, or if all Ethan’s underwear was patterned in this cutesy way, or if he had some serious briefs tucked in his drawer somewhere and these were just the for-show versions we were seeing.
“You went over there too,” Aaron said.
“Did Grandpa Garrison sing to you?” I asked.
“I didn’t go over there said Amanda. “I just had these at my house.”
I looked at her with a question in my eyes, and she smiled back at me. Then, when everyone else looked away she mouthed, “I’ll tell you later.” I could see her eyes shining with excitement as she popped the last orange circus peanut in her mouth, winning the scavenger hunt. And I felt a pang in my chest. Ethan had been at her house. He left his boxers there. Maybe they had been naked together.
And she hadn’t told me.