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After the last treasure hunt, it was promised that they would never fall for it, again. What was the point? It had only ended in trouble.
But, somehow, Karen had thought it would be fun to team up with Athena to create the ultimate scavenger hunt for the family barbeque to celebrate their new house.
They opted for teams on this hunt, so Bobby is quick to say, “Let’s team up,” to Buck since Athena as creator could not be his partner.
“Awesome! We’re going to kick everyone’s asses!”
“Hell yeah, we are!”
There’s a lot cheering as everyone gets with their partner and smack talks each other along the way until everyone’s in place at the ‘starting line’, which is really just some chairs in the backyard.
“Alright, you have thirty minutes to find all ten items on the list OR at least the most of everyone else before you come back to the starting line with said items,” Athena shouts.
“And it only counts if one of you is back here on the starting line with the items when the horn sounds,” Karen yells. “And nothing’s off-limits, if you wanna tackle each other to stop another team you can.”
Athena’s laughing as she says, “But if you break anything in my house then you’re cleaning it up.”
“Everyone understand?”
There are murmurs of agreement amongst the crowd as they pass out the lists.
“What do you say we split up – you tackle five items, I tackle five?” Buck suggests. “We could tag team if one of us gets stuck.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Bobby agrees. “You take the bottom five, I’ll take the top.”
Buck could barely nod before Karen blows the horn and everyone takes off running.
***
Buck is smarter than people give him credit for.
So, he knows that even something mundane like a silver spoon is not going to be in the kitchen, it’s going to be somewhere unexpected – like the bathroom.
He finds them in the guest bathroom and runs out quickly as he stuffs it in his pocket, so no one else would know and moves onto the next item on his list.
As he runs passed the kitchen with some very confused people, he spies Bobby in the living room looking for a DVD case and skids to a stop, whispering (so no one else will know), “Hey, think outside the box. I found a spoon in the bathroom.”
Bobby gives him an impressed look and nods, getting up and running off to where a DVD might be hidden.
Now, they’re at least one step ahead of everyone else.
***
Bobby’s impressed with Buck’s tip.
He should’ve realized that Athena would make things more difficult by moving things around to rooms they shouldn’t be in – for example all of his ties have been removed from his closet and drawers and placed in the kitchen cabinet.
He can tell as he runs passed some of the others that they haven’t gotten the idea that Athena would deliberately mess with the locations to make the game harder until he hears Hen and May yell to each other – “Messed up locations!” and go running in opposite directions.
Well, at least they’re largely ahead of most of the teams, Bobby thinks as he runs passed Buck, who yells, “Four,” and Bobby’s quick to yell, “Three,” back at him.
They’re so close…
***
Buck’s got all of his pieces of the hunt, and rushes to find Bobby. “What’s left?”
“Athena’s black shoes,” Bobby retorts.
“Athena has that many black shoes?” Buck questions before shaking his head and hearing “FIVE MINUTE WARNING” from outside.
“Yes, if we can’t find it by the two-minute warning, we’ll head back to the start line, deal?”
“Deal.”
Buck doesn’t intend to lose though. He wants to win more than anything.
He will find that shoe.
***
“TWO-MINUTE WARNING,” Athena yells, and Bobby quickly finds Buck.
“Let’s go – we don’t want to lose just because we didn’t make it back in time!” Bobby yells, but Buck just shoves his items at him.
“Just go, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Bobby would be upset if it weren’t for the fact that he knows Buck and he knows what choosing him as a partner would do.
So, he runs to the start line with nine of the ten items they needed. Several of the other pairs are already there, though he could tell that they hadn’t found all of the items.
There’s only one pair still out there – Hen is at the line with nine of the ten items, while he can see May and Buck racing out of the house each with a shoe in hand.
Bobby and Hen are cheering them on, and with Buck’s longer legs, he should easily win this race.
“Come on, Kid!” Bobby yells as Hen shouts, “TACKLE HIM.”
It’s clear that May hears her before Buck does because he doesn’t zag away from her, and instead, gets tackled.
They both hit the ground hard, Buck is clearly a bit dazed as Athena’s yelling, “THAT’S MY GIRL!”
“COME ON, KID, POWER THROUGH!”
They’re both fighting and crawling because neither of them could get to their feet, before Buck throws the shoe to Bobby, one step ahead as Karen blows the horn.
“That’s cheating!” Hen says.
“No, no, there were no rules, and she tackled me!” Buck complains, even as he helps an annoyed May to her feet.
There’s a chaotic argument before Athena and Karen confer and say, “Technically, we said the items had to be back here with one of you. So, throwing the shoe – it counts.”
“YES!” Bobby and Buck both cheer. “We win!”
May huffs. “I thought of tackling over throwing… so close.”
“Don’t worry, you still get second place prize,” Athena offers.
“What do we win for first place?” Buck teasingly asks.
“You win the right to cook us dinner.”
“That’s not a prize, that’s a chore,” Buck huffs, but Bobby puts an arm around his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, I happen to know that there’s a nice bottle of sparkling cider and the biggest chocolate bar you’ve ever seen to share.”
Buck grins. “I do like chocolate.”
“Good, then, let’s go claim our prize.”
“Gladly.”