Playing By the Rules

Chapter Two

I tilt my head back and throw the jellybean up in the air. I catch it in my mouth and the sweet and savory taste of Buttered Popcorn explodes in my mouth.  Ethan is driving and I'm in the passenger seat. We had just gotten out of Target and were on the way back to my house. I reach for the radio and turn the channel to my favorite station, Alternative. Ethan visibly groans, but I know that he secretly likes my music, so I leave it.

"Ethan, what did you want to talk to me about." I ask him, happy now that I had my jellybeans. 

He turned to look at me, and pursed his lips. I stared at him expectantly, and waited for him to say something. 

"Ethan, what is it?"

He puts one hand up to his mouth and makes the zipped lips motion. I sigh and reach into my bag of jellybeans for more. I don't live that far away from the school, but I do live about 15 minutes away from Target. 

As we are pulling into my neighborhood, Ethan stops near the entrance. 

"Why are we stopped." I ask him, as I sadly put the last jellybean in my mouth.

"I'm texting to make sure their ready." He says, pulling out his phone and not saying anything more. I lean back and try to figure out what he means. 

"Ready? Ready for what?" I ask, curious as to what he could be talking about. He smirks at me, and looks back down at his phone, where I see Stephanie has said ready. He grins and pulls back onto the street, ready to head towards my house. 

I start to get nervous, wondering what this could be and coming up with no answers. I soon get the answer as my house comes into sight.

Ethan stops at the corner and motions for me to get out of the car. I get out of the car slowly, pulling my backpack with me. He puts to the sidewalk, still not saying a word to me. I look down and see arrows pointing for me to walk forward. I walk forward slightly. following the arrows. When I get to the end of them, I see that they lead into my house.

I walk into the house and see where the arrows were pointing. There is Steph, waiting with a slip of paper in hand. She silently held it out to me, and I reached out and took it from her. Unfolding the paper, I'm nervous as what it holds. The paper holds three things: a couple sentences and two clues. 

This is a scavenger hunt, put on by a mystery person. There are two clues on each paper, one pertaining to where the next paper clue will be and the other clue is to who I am. Good luck!

#1-The next slip of paper will be where you all first met Noah.

#1-I haven't seen you in a very long time

That was it. There was nothing else on the paper. I looked at Steph and she shrugged and grinned at me. 

"So I guess we take a visit to the Seven Eleven" 

Ethan pulls into the Seven Eleven parking lot, this time hauling Stephanie too.  I interrogated them for answers the whole way here, yet no one would say anything to me. It was like they enjoyed tormenting me. 

We all got out of the car and headed inside. I remembered very vividly when we had all first met Noah. We had walked here after school because it was right behind the school, and we were getting slushies. Noah tripped and spilled his all over Stephanie, and Steph did not keep her anger to herself. She went off on him, and he looked so scared of her. He scurried out of that Seven Eleven faster than I had ever seen anyone run. Ethan ran after him while Brooke and I forced her to go and apologize to him. She can get mean when she's mad. 

She calmed down enough that she could have a real conversation with him. He was actually really funny and we discovered that it was his first day here and he had no idea where he was. He had went down the street to check out the school and somehow ended up here. It turned he lived right next door to Steph, and only three doors down from me. We helped him get back to his house, and then Ethan invited him to one of his pool parties and the rest was history.  

I immediately go for the slushie isle, thinking it would be there. I look around the cups, the lids, and the straws, and find nothing. I look to my friends for help, but Stephanie just gives me a small smile and Ethan gives me a shrug. I sigh and keep looking. I finally find it when I look behind the slushie machine. I give a shout of joy and quickly open it. 

Clue #2- The next one will be where Ethan once punched a boy for you.

Clue #2-You used to say I had the blondest hair you had ever seen. 

Barely two clues in and I already had a guess at who it was. All I had to do was follow the clues to figure out if I was right.

"Alright kids, onto the next one."

"Childhood memories, right here." Stephanie says as we pull into the parking lot to Grandview elementary. 

I laugh and get out of the car quickly, ready to race over for the clue. This time, I knew exactly where it would be. Either on the monkey bars or right next to them. Where Ethan punched the school yard bully because he pushed me down and said I had cooties. 

As I get closer to the bars, I start to see someone standing next to them:Noah. He's holding a piece of paper and grinning at me. He meets me halfway and hands me the paper, then wraps his arms around Stephanie. I open the paper, read the clue, and we are on our way. 

An hour and half later and my friends have just informed me this is the last clue, clue #8. I'm pretty sure I know who is doing this, but why he never told me he was back in town, I wouldn't know. I'm in town square, ready to find the next clue, but my friends have stopped me.

"Alright Katie. The person who has put this on is waiting with the next clue. Now do you have a guess? We won't tell you if your right or wrong, but you can guess." Brooke says, looking at me expectantly.

"Evan." I say. Brooke smiles and points.

And there he is. Evan Davidson.

I know it's a short chapter but I'm tired and all I want to do is nap.