Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Then to Claudia, where he got the same treatment. Finally, his arms loaded with orange bags stuffed with candy, we hit the empty room Miss Martha was in. She took Nicky in with a broad smile and said, “Pikachu! You didn’t tell me Pikachu was going to be here! I can’t believe Nicky’s missing it!”
Nicky giggled again, the sound catching in his throat and ending in a cough, then rolling back into a giggle.
Savannah nudged him in the back. “Pikachu, what do you need to say?”
“Oh! Trick-or-treat!” Nicky said, his voice weird. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to pretend he was Pikachu or if it was messed up from all the coughing.
Miss Martha handed Nicky his bag. “You have one more surprise,” she said, handing over the map I’d made. My drawing was really unimpressive. Good thing Nicky was six.
“What’s this?” Nicky asked, studying it.
Both women looked at me. I cleared my throat. “It’s a scavenger hunt. Downstairs. See?” I leaned down and pointed to the beginning of the dotted line on the map. “You start here. Can you guess where that is?”
“The bottom of the steps?”
“Exactly,” I said. “You start at the bottom of the steps, then you go to the first spot there.” I pointed to the location of the first clue. “Follow the clues and see if you can find the prize at the end.”
“What’s the prize?” Nicky asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Well,” I drawled, dragging out the word. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Nicky took off with a screech of glee. Miss Martha followed us out. “I’m going to help Kitty get set up for the dinner service so you two can watch Nicky do the scavenger hunt.”
I started to protest, but she shook her head. “You spent so much time putting this together. You should get to watch.”
I won’t say I didn’t appreciate it. I definitely wanted to see Nicky’s face when he found the prize at the end of the scavenger hunt. I wasn’t entirely sure he would think it was as cool as I did, but based on his costume, I had a feeling it would be a hit.
We caught up to Nicky at the top of the stairs, and I tugged him back in the direction we’d come from. “You want to take the elevator?”
“Yes! Yes!”
Generally, the kids in the house were forbidden to use the elevator, for a million excellent reasons. This one was an upgrade from the one we’d had when I was a kid. Much safer, but kids still weren’t allowed to touch it.
Nicky followed us in and squeezed between us. The mask definitely made it hard for him to see. “Can I do the buttons?” he asked, his hand hovering at his side, ready to press.
“You can do the buttons,” I agreed. “But first, do you want to take that mask off? You’re going to need your eyes for the scavenger hunt.”
A hard shake of his head. “It’s not a mask. I’m Pikachu!”
Savannah bit her lip to stop a laugh, her gray eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Yeah, got it. You just remind me of Nicky, so I forgot,” I said, not bothering to hide my smile. Seeing Halloween through Nicky’s eyes was something new. It was impossible to be jaded in the face of his pure and honest excitement. For the first time since I’d been a kid myself, Halloween felt new. Thrilling. Maybe this was why people had kids.
Nicky pressed the button for the lower level, going stiff as the elevator lurched into motion. When I pushed the door open, he headed for the base of the stairs with another shout of glee and studied the map, surreptitiously tugging his mask into the right alignment so he could see what he was looking at.
Fortunately, he headed off in the right direction toward the pantry April had been in the night I’d ruined the soup. I didn’t keep much in there these days. Not like Mrs. Bailey had. It was mostly overflow—extra bags of flour, sugar, rice, canned goods. Staples I didn’t need on a daily basis.
Nicky hunted around, finally locating the green army man on the second shelf, along with a small card that had a hint for the next location on the map. I’d drawn the map in a vague approximation of the lower level, but there were far more doors in real life than there were on the map. Without the clues, Nicky couldn’t tell which doors he needed to open. But, considering he was six and also in kindergarten, I’d made the clues pretty straightforward.
Nicky stared at the map, thinking out loud. “I don’t . . . Cuz there’s no medicine down here, Mom. But, I don’t know, because medicine isn’t balls anyway, but—”
Resisting the urge to give him a hint, I bit my tongue, liking that I could follow his reasoning, especially considering the confusion on Savannah’s face. The answer clicked in Nicky’s head, and he took off like a shot, headed straight for the gym and the neat stack of medicine balls that had been in the corner as long as I could remember. Tucked behind them, he found the yo-yo.