“Okay, so here’s the thing: I didn’t want to just hang out tonight,” I say, shifting in my seat. I texted everyone to meet me at Dylan’s Diner under the guise of taking advantage of the stack of “20 percent off your entrée” coupons my dad got while doing their books—but, unbeknownst to them, this is really a strategy meeting.
“What now,” Seeley groans, which makes Nick raise his eyebrows in confusion and Jessa scrunch hers up.
I pull a few files out of my bag. “I also wanted to talk to you guys about this.”
“Schoolwork?” Nick frowns, but Seeley grabs a file and flips through it.
She looks up at me. “Did you steal these from your dad?”
“Borrowed.” I pull the papers back in front of me. “But that’s not important.”
“Okay, what’s going on?” Jessa crinkles up her nose a little, which reminds me of this little baby rabbit I saw once. It’s disgustingly cute, and she probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
I roll my eyes. “As you guys know, Mr. Prendergast is going to close down Magic Castle Playland.” I pause for effect. “Unless we do something to stop it.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Seeley says.
I grit my teeth. “Just hear me out, okay?”
“I’m listening,” Jessa says, and it sounds like she means it. Which, okay, great, but I didn’t even ask her to come, Nick just assumed she was invited and brought her. Effing perfect.
“So, I was going through Mr. Prendergast’s financials and stuff—”
“Oh my god, Elouise.” Seeley sighs, crossing her arms, but I ignore her.
“Anyway, he’s been making some super big withdrawals lately, and his accounts are getting low. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I bet it’s a factor in his decision to close. Further complicating things is that he appears to already have an offer on the land from somebody who wants to tear down the park and put a factory on it. From the notes in the file, it looks like he wants my dad to crunch some numbers and see if it’s a fair offer. I was thinking, if we could raise enough money, maybe Mr. P wouldn’t have to sell it to the developer.”
Nick leans forward. “You want to buy Magic Castle Playland?”
“No, I want to donate enough money that Mr. P doesn’t have to sell it at all.”
“What’s the offer?” Jessa asks.
I slam the file shut. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s the offer?” Seeley drops her hands onto the file, pinning it before I can pull it away.
I swallow hard and stare down at the table. “One point eight million dollars.”
“Wow, Elouise.” Nick shakes his head. “We can’t compete with that.”
“I set up a GoFundMe account. It even has one donation already. We just have to spread the word, and host some fund-raisers, and—”
Seeley looks me straight in the eye. “Did you seriously donate to your own GoFundMe account?”
I wince and look down at that file. “That’s irrelevant.”
Nick laughs and I kind of want to disappear.
“Wait,” Jessa says, looking at Nick. “Hear her out. I don’t really want to see an ugly factory sitting on the place where we met, do you?”
Nick blushes. “Guess not, no.”
Ugh, gross. I’m scowling so hard my face hurts.
Jessa lifts her chin. “I say we help.”
He turns toward me and shrugs. “What’s the plan, then, Elouise?”
I flick a smile back on my lips and tap my fingers on the table. “That’s the thing,” I say. “I haven’t quite worked that out yet. I set up the fund-raising site, and we can plaster it all over social media, but we need to do more than that. We need to be out in the community, spreading the word. Obviously, I don’t think we can raise two million dollars all in one summer. But maybe if we raised some of that, like enough to replace what he’s been withdrawing, it would give him enough breathing room that we could convince him not to take the offer.”
“You know Mr. P, he loves that place as much as we do,” Seeley says. “I don’t think it’s about the money, I really don’t.”
Nick slumps back against the booth. “Maybe he’s sick of dealing with kids crying and rides breaking down all day.”
“Then why all the sudden withdrawals from his bank account?” I ask. “I mean, something has to be going on there, right? Face it, he needs us.”
“Maybe he’s doing home renovations or paying back taxes. Or, I don’t know, a thousand other things,” Seeley says.
“Oh, shoot.” Jessa checks the time on her phone. “I have to go. I promised my mom I’d be back by seven thirty. She flips if I’m even a minute late.”
Nick starts to slide out of the booth after her, but then Seeley stands up and drops a few dollars on the table.
“I can give you a ride home,” Seeley says. “I have to get going anyway.” She looks at me when she says that, and I can’t tell if she’s mad again or not.
“Oh no, that’s okay.” Jessa smiles.
“But if I give you a ride, Nick can stay and get all the details from Elouise,” Seeley says, and I kind of want to hug her. “He can tell you all about it later.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’d be perfect!”
“You did want us to help out,” Nick says with a little smile. He’s still kind of half in and half out of the booth, caught in the middle of this awkward exchange right along with us.
Jessa narrows her eyes a little, looking from him to me, and I drop my gaze down to the notebook in front of me. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she says, but it comes out all slow and stuff, like she doesn’t quite mean it. “Just don’t let my mom see you, Seeley. She’s weird about me riding with people she doesn’t know.”
“Deal,” Seeley says, twirling her keys around her finger.
“Text me later?” I ask, testing the waters to see how annoyed she still is.
“Obviously.” She makes a goofy face at me, and I feel a million times better.
And then it’s just me and Nick sitting here, and he’s looking at me all expectantly and it’s making me kind of nervous, a little panicky, a little I-can’t-breathe-with-him-looking-at-me-like-this.
I shove my notebook in front of him as I head to the ladies’ room. “I’ll be right back. If you think of any ideas, write them down or whatever.”
I flick the lock the second the door shuts, leaning against the cold tile wall. Okay, I have to think this through. I have to break it down: Nick is sitting out there waiting for me and we need to come up with a plan to save the park. This is a good thing. This is the best thing actually. This is—
—taking way too long to figure out.
Because Nick is sitting out there, alone, waiting for me, and all he knows is that I’m in the bathroom. Oh my god, it’s been like minutes. What if he thinks I’m still going to the bathroom in here or something? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Why did I even come in here? I groan and thunk my head against the wall a few times.
“Okay, Elle,” I whisper to myself. “You got this. You may not have any idea what this is, but you have got it.” I nod again, like nodding will somehow make that statement true, and I push the door open . . . straight into Nick, who has his hand raised in front of him.
“Oh sorry,” I yelp, barely sidestepping him in time. “Wait. Were you about to knock on the ladies’ room door?”
He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You’ve been in there a long time.”
“That’s a weird thing to do, Nick.”
“Okaaaay,” he says, drawing the word out. “I was just trying to be nice.”
“How is it nice to knock on the bathroom door when you already know someone’s in there?”
“What if you were sick or something?”
And oh god, that makes everything so much more awkward. We both slide back into our respective seats, and he pushes the notebook back in front of me. I notice the word “bake sale” scribbled across the page in barbed wire chicken scratch.
“Bake sale?”
He snatches the pen off the table and scratches it out. “It’s a bad idea.”
Wait, is his lisp back a little? Cute.
I grab the pen from him and write BAKE SALE down again, this time in all caps. “No, it’s a good idea.” I mean, it’s not and we both know it, but it was his idea, and he seems so self-conscious and adorable about it that I kind of want to find a way to make it work now.
“They did it a lot at my old school whenever they needed to raise money. It’s all I could think of. It’s stupid.”
“No, a bake sale sounds great,” I say, hoping I sound even somewhat convincing, because in my head I’m still sort of half screaming at the ridiculousness of it. Great idea, Nick, one two-million-dollar bake sale, coming up.
“You don’t have to.” His cheeks turn pink as he fiddles with the pen in front of him. “I don’t really, people don’t really come to me for ideas about things.”
I reach out to still his hand. He lifts his head a little, looking at me through his eyelashes, and I smile. “I like it. We should definitely do it. We can use it to spread the word about the GoFundMe too, like we’ll hand out a flyer with every cupcake or something asking people to donate more. It’s the best idea ever.” But I must sound a little too excited because he pulls a face and chuckles.
“Glad you think so.” His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and he tilts his head. “Hey, is everything cool with you and Seeley?”
“What do you mean?”
“She seemed kind of annoyed, especially about the park stuff. When Jessa gets like that, it’s usually because she’s really mad at me for something else. Let me know if you want me to try to check in with her or anything.”
I take a sip of water and look up at him. “She’s just mad I took the files from my dad.”
“If you say so.” He leans back in the booth, tucking his hands behind his head. “I know Seeley really loves you, if that helps any. You guys are lucky.”
I snort, I can’t help it, and go back to doodling in the notebook.
“I’m not kidding, Elle. Whenever we talk about you, it’s obvious. I know she’s stressing about her grandma and stuff, but you guys’ll figure it out. Don’t let Seeley push you away just because she’s overwhelmed by everything else. Jessa did that with me last year and it sucked.”
Wait, who is this boy giving me high-quality relationship advice, this boy whose first idea for a fund-raiser wasn’t a bikini car wash but a bake sale? Also, what could Princess Jessa possibly have to be stressed about? And did he just call me Elle?
Nick swipes at his hair and looks down at his hands. “Ignore me, I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He flips his phone around in his hand a few times. “Are we all set? I gotta go meet the guys soon.”
“Yeah, we’re all set.” I nod as he hops up and heads for the door.
I stare down at my notebook, flipping to a blank page to scribble some more notes, smiling at the idea that Nick is maybe even sweeter than he seems.