The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life

by Tara Altebrando

  There were maybe only ten or twelve teams, and only a handful that I thought mattered.

  Carson’s team mattered. Because Carson was on it. But also because they were pretty good competitors. Arguably a little more daring than my own team, a fact that made me sort of sad, but what could you do.

  Tom Reilly’s team—the skateboarder/slackers who still managed to get decent grades—mattered because they weren’t quite assholes, but weren’t good kids either. So, more daring than Carson’s team. Way less afraid of getting in trouble than me and my team.

  It was possible The Matts—our senior class prez and VP—and their team mattered because they were jokester types and clever if not book smart.

  Kerri Conlon’s car of towering girls from the basketball team mattered, though it was unlikely they’d do anything to jeopardize their scholarships to places like Seton Hall and Villanova and B.U.

  Anyway, I couldn’t worry about any of them just yet. At least not until after the first round, when I could see who was left for the second list. So the only team to worry about right out of the gate was Barbone’s. Not that there was much we could do. They’d either get 1250 to qualify or they wouldn’t. But I still wanted to be sure to not lose any opportunity to know how they were doing, maybe even to foil them, though I had no idea how.

  The real problem was this: I was pretty sure they would do anything to take home the Yeti.

  Anything.

  And they were the kind of kids who never got caught. Or if they did, the charges mysteriously seemed to go away. So they cruised through life acting like they had nothing to lose, an assumption I took issue with. From where I stood, they had plenty to lose. Cars, credit cards, iPhones, varsity letters. The real problem was that there was no one around who had the courage to take any of it away. And if none of those people—no parents or principals or coaches—had ever been able to take anything away from Barbone, how did I stand a chance?

  Leticia Farrice said, “When I throw the lists in the air, the countdown starts. If you don’t make it back here by six o’clock with twelve-hundred-and-fifty points, you’re eliminated. You’ll have until one a.m. for the second list and the first list stays in play, then we’ll tally points and declare a winner. Read the rules again so you don’t do something dumb.”

  I raised eyebrows at my team as if to say, “See?”

  Patrick smiled and shook his head.

  Leticia brought the whistle to her mouth again, blew it once fast, and then threw a stack of bright orange papers into the air. Most fell right to the ground without fanfare but a bunch more fluttered down lightly, the breeze in the air catching on the staple and opening pages up to form wings.

  A sudden glimpse of my sister, off to the right of Leticia Farrice, leaning on a pine tree with a beer can in her hand, made me freeze. “My sister is here,” I said, and Patrick said, “Why?” then said, “I got this,” and took off to get the list.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Grace: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

  I looked across the parking lot as people ran for the list—snatching orange paper birds from the air—and for their cars and saw Grace pull her phone out of her pocket, then look up and around. Not finding me, she looked down again and typed. Grace had recently been “acting out,” as my parents put it, and they were always talking about how to “handle her.” Most recently, my mother—whom I’d started to view as some kind of mostly benevolent but slightly maniacal dictator with whom all of my interactions would be good practice for my career in diplomacy—had followed Grace and her friends down to the river, to a party she’d been forbidden to go to, and had dragged her home then grounded her for a week.

  My phone buzzed.

  JUST HANGING OUT.

  I shot back: THIS IS FOR SENIORS

  Grace shot back: REPEAT: JUST HANGING OUT. NOT DOING HUNT.

  I shot back: AND DRINKING?

  Grace shot back: LIKE YOU DON’T?

  I looked up. Chaos everywhere. My sister had finally spotted me, and she raised her beer can, as if to toast, and then took a hearty swing. She put her beer down on the hood of a car, typed again, and the text came though: AND ANYWAY, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO…TELL MOM?

  She sure told me. Because she knew that if I got caught lying about tonight, caught doing the hunt, my parents would ground me for much longer than a week.

  Patrick was fast, good thing, and skinny, and he seemed to slip right up to the papers fluttering around Leticia and then, superhero-fast, he was running back toward me, multiple copies of the list actually shoved into his suspenders. He was shouting, “Get in! Get in!”

  Winter and Dez and I headed for the car—I called shotgun—and when Patrick got in and started the engine, he said, “And you didn’t like my suspenders!”

  I laughed and grabbed a list from under one of his rainbows and handed copies to Winter and Dez, answering their cries of “Gimme! Gimme!”

  Patrick put the car in gear and tore out of The Pines while all the other teams wasted time doing K-turns and U-turns so we were first out of the lot, first out of the gate. I couldn’t resist the urge to stick my head out my window and shout out, “Suckahs!”

  Patrick rolled his eyes and said, “Focus,” and I held the list up to my face and tried to read what was there, but it was suddenly like my brain couldn’t function at all. All I saw was a blur of black ink on orange, like melting chocolate candy corn, because of a lump of something gooey that was forming in my throat and working its way up.

  It was senior week.

  I was on the Senior Week Scavenger Hunt.

  Everything was ending.

  Everything was beginning.

  An open, mostly drank beer can flew through my window then and landed in my lap.

  “What the…?” I said as Barbone’s car blew past us, tires screeching. Chrissie Arrington’s moon-white ass cheeks hung out the window.

  “You’re going down!” Dez yelled to them from the backseat.

  But as I wiped beer off my shorts and felt the cold liquid seep through to skin, I suddenly wasn’t so sure. Picking my phone up off my lap, I sent a quick text to Grace that said, JUST BE CAREFUL, OKAY?

  “Guys,” Patrick said firmly, “you need to tell me where to go.”

  “Home Depot!” Dez shouted, and Winter and I both looked at him and said, “What? Why?”

  “AFTERNOON DELIGHT”

  • A snow globe—20

  • A slice of pizza in a Ray’s Pizza box—10

  • A beer coaster from the Slaughtered Pig—5

  • Silly Bandz—1 per

  • A Burger King crown—30

  • Photo of your team with an alien—30

  • Take your high-tops to the skytop—50

  • Origami sheep—10 per

  • A two-by-four—5 per every 6 inches

  • A cardboard witch Halloween decoration—15

  • Any sort of music box but double points for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”—40/80

  • A dustpan—10

  • A cupcake—5 per

  • A Dixie-cup icosahedron—65

  • A brick—5

  • A toilet seat—10

  • A paper coffee cup (extra points if there is coffee in it and it is hot)—2

  • A stapler—2

  • A silver bangle—10

  • Jar of fireflies—3 per

  • A flag—25

  • A small plastic toy ambulance that goes squee when you poke it right—50

  • A maple-leaf-shaped bottle of syrup—75

  • An ice-cream scoop—10

  • A French spatula—10

  • Any likeness of Tigger—20

  • A loon—75

  • An ice-tea spoon—10

  • An M&M’s wrapper/bag—5

  • A #1 foam finger—35

  • A grass skirt—30

  • A Boba Fett action figure—35

  • A fettling knife—10

  • Bottle of Vick’s VapoRub�
��10

  • A remote—10

  • What is the Yeti’s favorite band?—100 points minus 10 for each wrong guess. (Clues available if you’re willing to stick your neck out.)

  • Balloon animals—15 per

  • A doormat that reads “Welcome to Our Home”—50

  • Picture of your team with a giraffe, a gorilla, and an elephant—25 per

  • A pumpkin—30

  • A plastic plant—20

  • Rearrange the hay in Oyster Point Park—60

  • A complete set of Harry Potter books—minus 40 for being such geeks

  • An ant trap—10

  • An ant—75

  • A famous poem laid out in magnetic words on a fridge—75

  • An orchid—20

  • A leaf in an autumnal color—40

  • An empty bottle of shampoo—5

  • A three-hole punch binder—5

  • Challenge the Yeti to a game of hangman—1

  • A receipt from Ben’s for exactly $4.89—40

  • A scratch ’n’ sniff that smells like piña colada—35

  • A piña colada (for comparison, of course)—35

  • A BEWARE OF DOG sign—10

  • A love letter to or from someone who is not on your team—50

  • A bag of sand—25

  • We like gazebos. A lot. Show us your own gazebo love—10 per

  • Sheet music to a movie theme song of your choice—20

  • A divided dinner plate—10

  • A Ouija board—45

  • A toy made in the U.S. of A.—35

  • A children’s book—20

  • A self-portrait drawn with pastels—25

  • Play “Twinkle, Twinkle” on a toy piano and e-mail us the video—75

  • A sheet of white letter paper—25, but deductions for any wrinkles, crinkles, folds, or tears

  • Minty Frikkin’ Mullet Lip Balm—75

  • An unopened cable bill—50

  • The Yeti has caught a chill. Can you help him out?—50

  • A Hello Kitty cat—30

  • Sit by the dock of a bay. Or lake. We are not picky about this one—30

  • A recipe for chocolate chip banana bread—5

  • Homemade chocolate chip banana bread—55

  • A goldfish (alive)—65

  • Put your name in lights—150

  • A stretched penny—50

  • A stone-cold lady near the lake in the sky will amaze you with a clue—1

  • A Pictionary card and paper so that you can draw for the judges for points—35

  • A twelve-pack of the quicker picker upper—10

  • Shuck a Mary on the half shell—100

  • A watercolor painting that includes both a flower and a bird and is not painted by anyone on your team (yes, we need proof)—100

  • A postcard from New Orleans—75

  3

  “A BRICK. A DUSTPAN. A TWO-BY-FOUR. A BEWARE OF DOG sign.” From his tone it was clear Dez thought we were all idiots to not have thought of Home Depot right away, too, and maybe we were, though I’d barely registered anything on the list yet because my head was in a tizzy over points and clues and Barbone and Grace and everything.

  He said, “Right there, that’s like sixty-five points or something. And my dad’s working today. He can help us get in and out fast.”

  I wasn’t sure it was the best plan—it certainly wasn’t the most exciting or extreme plan—but Home Depot, where Dez’s dad had been a manager ever since his hardware store had gone out of business, was pretty close and we could use the drive time to get to know the list and then to figure out our next move. We needed to figure out how to get to 1250 the fastest way possible. “Okay,” I said. “Home Depot it is.”

  Patrick changed lanes and said, “Affirmative.”

  Dez said, “I’ll make a list of everything we can get,” and started to scribble on the back of one of his pages as the car drifted down Amboy Road, a winding mix of old brick houses and small strip malls, and then past the ShopRite shopping center, where my family had done our food shopping for as long as I could remember, all the way back to when I was riding in the cart being pushed by my mother.

  “What else, guys?” Dez asked, and I commanded my eyes to focus on the list. “An orchid,” I said.

  “A toilet seat,” Winter said.

  “A plastic plant?” I asked.

  “That’s a maybe,” Dez said.

  “An ant trap,” Winter said, and Dez wrote again. Then he said, “Mary, you start thinking about what’s next after the Deep,” and I said, “Excellent. On it.”

  “I’ll help,” Patrick said, stopping too short at a yellow light that I would have blown through if I’d been driving.

  “Help by not driving like an old lady,” I said.

  “No seriously,” he said, ignoring the jab.

  “Okay.” I skimmed the list. “Where could we get a pumpkin at this time of year? It’s thirty points.”

  “No idea,” he said. “Next.”

  “Put your name in lights,” I said. “One hundred and fifty points.”

  “What does that mean?” Patrick asked.

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” I said.

  “Oh,” Patrick said, and he laughed.

  I laughed, too, and thought, Good, because it suddenly seemed possible that the hunt and the fun of it all might be enough to get me to stop feeling weird about things.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The marquee at the old movie theater?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I guess. Sounds hard.” I scanned the list again. “Photos of your team with a giraffe, a gorilla, and an elephant. Twenty-five each.” As soon as I said it, I knew. “Guys,” I said. “Jungle Mini-Golf.”

  “Too far in the other direction,” Dez said. “Maybe later.”

  “Wait,” I said, flipping back to the first page. “There’s also, ‘Photo of your team with an alien’.”

  At which point we all said, “Flying Saucers!”

  Flying Saucers was the local outer space–themed greasy spoon we’d all been going to together for years.

  “We should do that next,” I said. “It’s close, and there’s that sporting goods store and party store across the street. We can get the number one foam finger and a bunch of other stuff. Like a grass skirt and a likeness of Tigger, maybe the Halloween witch.”

  Then my eyes fell on this: A stone-cold lady near the lake in the sky will amaze you with a clue.

  I read it aloud and said, “What does that mean?”

  “No idea,” Patrick said.

  “None here, either,” Dez said.

  “Beats me,” Winter said, then added, “What’s a Dixie-cup icosahedron?”

  “An icosahedron,” Patrick said, correcting her pronunciation, “is a regular polyhedron with twenty identical equilateral triangular faces, thirty edges, and twelve vertices.”

  “That helps,” Winter said with a snort.

  “You’d know one if you saw one,” Patrick said, giving Winter more credit than she deserved. Winter had never once paid attention in math, opting instead to pass notes to me.

  “And you can make one out of Dixie cups?” Winter asked.

  “I guess so,” Patrick said with a shrug. “I’m game to try.”

  “There is no way anyone on Barbone’s team even knows what that is or how to even think about making one,” I said happily.

  “They could look it up,” Patrick said.

  “They won’t bother,” I said, feeling confident. “How many points is it?” I flipped through my list.

  “Sixty-five,” Dez said.

  “Awesome,” I said.

  Patrick looked over and smiled. “Awesome indeed.”

  “‘The Yeti has caught a chill,’” Dez read from the list. “What size clothes do you think the Yeti wears?”

  “Look at you,” I said. “Already all you want to do is shop.”

  Dez smirked and s
aid, “I know what I bring to this team, honey, and it ain’t muscle.”

  “I’d put it at a five T,” Winter said. “Bigger than my sister. Smaller than my nephew.”

  I jotted down 5T in the margins of my list and said, “Best. Team. Ever.”

  “We should have a team name,” Dez said.

  “Lame,” Winter said, and Dez reached over and pinched her leg.

  He shrugged and said, “We could’ve gotten cute T-shirts made.”

  Winter rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah. Size XXL, for extra, extra lame.”

  “I know!” Patrick said. “The Sabres!” He looked at me. “You know, because we’re driving a LeSabre.”

  Winter groaned this time, but she was smiling.

  “How about The Scavengers,” Dez said, and Patrick said, “Unoriginal at best.”

  “How about the Lame-Ohs,” Winter said, and Dez said, “That is lame-oh.”

  “The Mighty Underdogs?” Patrick asked, and I said, “That’s pretty good,” but then I had a thought about the four of us and why we were all here together in the first place.

  “I have it,” I said, and felt a pang of sadness and a rush of adrenaline, too, when I thought again about our years together—the unrequited crushes, the waiting lists, the lost elections, the terrorizing, more.

  I looked around the car and paused dramatically then said, “The Also-Rans.”

  “Also lame,” Winter said, after a beat, and I knew there was maybe a part of her that wondered why she hadn’t risen higher on the high school food chain. She was pretty, smart—even perky when she wanted to be—and yet she opted to hang around with us instead of going out for cheer or soccer and taking advantage of the social status that would afford her. Sometimes I felt like we bogged her down, and like she felt it, too.

  “I’m not an also-ran,” Patrick said, baffled, as Dez said, “The Also-Rans,” trying it on for size. And as the car took the bump into the Home Depot parking lot, Dez looked at me and said, “It’s perfect, Mary.” He reached forward and squeezed my shoulder and said, “The Also-Rans for the win!”

  “Hit me,” Mr. Mahady said when we ran through the doors of the Deep, and Dez started to show his dad his shopping list; and his dad started giving him aisle numbers, which Dez jotted down superfast. I watched with a sort of envy as Mr. Mahady took off his hat and scratched his balding head, then put his cap back on and blurted out another aisle number. There was a connection between Dez and his dad—this semiplump, balding, and pasty old dude—that almost made me want to cry; and I suddenly imagined them as teammates on some game show, like $25,000 Pyramid or Win It in a Minute, capturing the hearts of Americans far and wide.