Chapter Hunt

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

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Saturday 19th June 1999

 

 

For an unknown length of time, and for reasons I’m not fully aware of, the Sixth Form of our school has had an annual treasure hunt. It’s something that some of the Year 13 students plan out before they finish (just like in Year 11, it’s nothing but exams in June and then no coming back to school), and then the Year 12 students participate. And rather than being a low-key affair with us taking an afternoon out of lessons to trek around school, this event – because that’s pretty much what it is – takes place across the entirety of town, on a Saturday.

 

Whether that was so that we didn’t have to waste school hours better spent on studying, or so that we had a much wider area to explore, I don’t know… I could easily see the first one however many years ago having been one afternoon, confined to school grounds, interrupting classes and bothering members of staff.

 

The treasure hunt was endorsed by the school, but, probably due to the fact it occurred outside of school hours and off of school grounds, it wasn’t overseen or moderated by teachers, and that had brought about an unspoken rule that anything goes. There’s still a sense of honour to uphold, but roping in people from outside Year 12 (or people who don’t even attend the school), or using bikes or cars to get from place to place, was completely fine. Kind of a mutual agreement: “sure, they can get an advantage, it means we do too”.

 

Of course, we were going to be taking part. And of course, Dakota was hell-bent on us winning. That’s why we were up at 6:30am that morning – her, myself, and Kitty, who we were of course bringing with us since we could – getting dressed and hurrying off to our starting point on school grounds while struggling to keep our eyes open. At just shy of 7am on a Saturday morning, rather than being wrapped up snug in bed and sleeping in, I was stood dozily munching a banana outside of the school gate.

 

“Okay…” Dakota began, barely under her breath, pacing briskly back and forth. “It starts at 7am, so if we’re all here in time then we can begin straight away, we hurry from point to point, then it should take a couple of hours at most… seven of us, seven brains, the clues should be easy to figure out, unless we wind up disagreeing, but then we can debate it calmly until we come to a conclusion…”

 

A yawn to my left stole my attention, and I turned to Kitty to find her blinking slowly as though her eyelids were insisting on trying to close.

 

“Sorry about this,” I spoke to her quietly.

 

“You keep apologising…” she pointed out.

 

“Yeah, I’m doing it in small doses so I don’t overload you with how sorry I am,” I smiled half-sheepishly; she crinkled her nose a little, which I took as her stifling a smile.

“Hopefully this won’t take too long and we’ll spend the rest of the day relaxing. And hey, we’re gonna get pizza later!”

 

She nodded a little in response, before something caught her eye.

“They’re here.”

 

Kendal’s car trundled towards us, parking up maybe ten feet away.

 

“Thank goodness!” Dakota was talking to the occupants of the car before they’d so much as unfastened their seatbelts. “It’s 6:58, I was starting to worry that you’d be late-!”

 

“Okay,” Kendal interrupted as she exited her vehicle, “I could make out a bit of that, and calm down, we’re here, we’re good to go-”

 

“I’m exhausted but I’m good-ish to go,” Bao chimed in, the usual tuft of stray hair at the back of his head lost to the extraordinary bedhead he was sporting.

 

Harriet, having gotten out of the other side of the car, hurried over to him and draped herself around him, leaning her weight on him in an attempt to keep upright.

“Yeah…” she burbled.

 

Zahid didn’t say anything, just shaking his head with what came across as deep remorse for having agreed to this. I watched him valiantly staving off a yawn.

 

“Just make sure you’re ready to get those brains working!” Dakota spoke with vigour, clearly under the impression that they needed the encouragement. “You got to eat some breakfast, right?”

 

“If you count one slice of toast as breakfast…” Zahid grumbled, almost more to himself than to her.

 

“There are seven of us,” I turned to Dakota with an amiable smile, “I’m sure we can figure the clues out quickly enough-”

 

“We have to all be thinking clearly or else we’ll just confuse each other and lead each other down weird tangents!”

 

“I hate to say it, but I think she might be right…” Bao claimed before I could try and counter her.

 

“Exactly!” Dakota almost yelled.

 

“Lisa…” I heard Harriet mutter; Dakota turned, and narrowed her eyes in the direction of…

 

Six of our fellow Year 12s, headed up by Lisa, walking over with a notable amount of pep in their step.

 

“Wow, didn’t think anybody else would be here this early,” Lisa smiled, her natural charisma unaffected by her early rise, dark glossy curls bobbing with every step. “Good luck!”

 

“You too,” my girlfriend nodded with the most goodwill she could recover from beneath her competitive fire.

 

“We’re screwed,” I heard Bao mutter amidst all the breezy greetings between groups.

 

A sharp whistle blow pierced the amiable atmosphere – and scared the life out of us – seemingly to announce the beginning of the treasure hunt.

 

“Whoa, sorry,” Year 13 student Kyle couldn’t help but chuckle as he approached us at a trot. “Had to make it official, didn’t even think until I was already blowing it.”

 

“Have we started?” Kendal asked him as he made his way over to the school’s front gate, a laminated sheet of paper in-hand.

 

“7am, so yes,” Dakota observed. I could almost hear her engine revving up.

 

Kyle chuckled again.

“Oooone second…”

With a roll of Sellotape retrieved from his pocket, he proceeded to stick the notice to the gate, tearing off strips of tape with his teeth, even securing it with a second round to be safe.

“And we’re off!”

He stepped back, his work done, at which point Dakota and Lisa swooped in at the same time to read it.

 

By pure chance, Shane (from Lisa’s group) and I happened to share a glance of “oh boy…” sentiment.

 

“Good luck, and have fun!” Kyle beamed at us, almost with an air of mischief, before heading off at the same trotting pace he’d arrived with.

 

“Quickly,” Dakota began as she returned to us hastily, “go read it, carefully, and start thinking-”

 

“We know what to do, relax,” Kendal smiled while heading to read the clue. Dakota flared her nostrils a little; if I didn’t find her competitive streak so intimidating, I might have called it cute.

 

After first Kendal, then Bao, took their turns, I rushed over and tried to take the clue in as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

 

‘For 100 years

‘On 4 legs

‘Not understanding a sound

‘Ears perked in recognition’

 

I read it a second time just to get it in my head, and then turned back to the others. Dakota had led Bao and Kendal further off, the three of them huddled together; Harriet walked past me to reach the gate, while Zahid hung back, and Kitty lingered, seeming a little uneasy.

“Make sure you get to read it,” I advised her, “or else we would’ve dragged you out here for no reason!”

I began walking away, and then I thought over what I’d just said and cursed myself for how it could’ve been taken… I turned back, closing the distance between us again.

“I mean, like, you could’ve had a nice lie-in instead, not ‘don’t be useless’, y’know? Like… be part of the fun!”

 

“I’ll read it, it’s okay,” she assured me. The startled look that had hit her when I’d first turned back to her had dissipated into a look of understanding.

 

I wound up giving her a thumbs-up before finally making it to our discussion huddle at the same time as Harriet.

 

“Did you guys notice the acrostic?” Bao asked her and me immediately.

 

“Wasn’t looking for one,” I replied succinctly. Harriet shook her head beside me.

 

“Fone, with an f,” he told us proudly.

 

“So… Vodafone…?” Harriet proposed.

 

“Doesn’t fit the rest of the clues,” Dakota argued, “and it could just be coincidence.”

 

“But phones! Sound!” Bao urged, fingers wiggling like he was feeling about for the rest of the connection.

 

“100 years, so something Victorian,” I offered up.

 

Zahid and Kitty joined us together, and without missing a beat, Zahid huffed, and said:

“Did anybody have a clue what the fuck that meant?”

 

“We’ve got ‘fone’,” Bao began, eliciting a sneer from an impatient Dakota, “Victorian, and four legs is probably either a table or an animal…”

 

“Ears perking would fit an animal…” Kitty murmured, almost more to herself than aloud.

 

“Good point!” Harriet cooed at that.

 

“Okay, Victorian animals…” Dakota mused, concentration etched all over her face.

 

“Hey, could we listen in on the other group…?” Kendal asked in an impish whisper.

 

“No!” Dakota snapped at her. “It’s not worth winning if we cheat!”

 

“Okay, okay! I was only asking…!”

Kendal’s eyebrows dropped, and I knew the mood was set to start souring from here on out.

 

“If the ears are perking then maybe there really is something to do with phones…” I thought aloud. “When was the telephone invented?”

 

“Eighteeeeen… 1874, sort of?” Bao answered, squinting with uncertainty. “I think a lot of people all worked on phones…”

 

“So an animal in 1899 listening to a phone?” Harriet summarised for us, and Dakota groaned.

 

“We have to be missing something, this doesn’t make any sense…!”

She rubbed her brow with her fingers, eyes shut tight.

 

“Aaaaah!” Bao wailed suddenly. He jumped up and down, grinning widely, enthusiasm oozing from him. “We were-”

 

“Shh! Don’t let them hear!” Dakota growled at him.

 

“- thinking of the wrong type of phone!” he carried on barely above a whisper. “Gramophone! It’s the HMV logo!”

 

“The little dog!” Kendal cooed at the same volume.

 

“It’s based on a painting called His Master’s Voice, that must be from a hundred years ago I guess! Four legs, listening and recognising the voice, but not understanding cos dogs don’t understand English!”

 

“I think it’s more about not understanding how the voice is coming from the gramophone…” I mentioned, but the words had barely left my mouth when Dakota laughed victoriously.

 

“You’re a genius, Bao! An absolute bloody genius!”

And she proceeded to run, at full pelt, off in the direction of town.

 

At running speed, the centre of town is probably five minutes from school at best. Walking, twenty minutes or so.

 

Once we’d caught up to Dakota and convinced her there was no need to run, we’d shaved a few minutes off of our walking time. Add the minute or two walking to HMV, and it was 7:22am when we finally reached the second clue, affixed to the window right next to the entrance. The store wasn’t yet open, and the whole area was almost-eerily empty, like a ghost town. Without Lisa’s group to share space with, we all huddled around the paper to read.

 

‘Wheels stop

‘And growls go quiet

‘Southernly and more southernly

‘Here below red’

 

“We could take this down before anybody else gets here… and by the way I’m joking don’t bite my head off-” Kendal hurried to add, wisely.

 

“Wash is the acrostic this time,” I commented.

 

“Hrm. Wheels and wash, so a car-wash?” Dakota put forward.

 

“Whoever wrote this one doesn’t know how to be cryptic…” Zahid sighed, shaking his head a little. “Any clues on the red bit? Kendal, where do you use?”

 

“The one at the Texaco, it must be that!” she grinned.

 

“Come to think of it…” Harriet began, pausing just briefly to consider her words, “I heard Jamie Dodds saying months ago that he used to think Texaco was a cross between Texas and Mexico…”

 

“Southernly and more southernly…!” Kendal’s grin widened.

 

“Yeah, now you mention it, this does seem like Jamie’s idea of a cryptic clue…” Zahid remarked as Dakota swiftly led us off.

 

I turned to check on Kitty again, and found her yawning a little. When she noticed my stare, she gave me a faint smile, an attempt at reassurance that I didn’t entirely buy.

 

The nearest Texaco station was a little way outside the centre of town, and in the opposite direction to our school. I couldn’t really tell you how long it would typically take to walk there, never mind at the brisk pace we were walking at. But – and I’m sure this hardly surprises you – our simply journey just had to meet a preternatural complication.

 

From my end, it started with Harriet – behind me, chatting with Bao about something I wasn’t really trying to make out – suddenly crying out. When I looked around, she was on the floor, and a gnarly navy-blue hand emerging from the ground had a tight grip on her ankle.

 

“Not today!” Dakota snarled, and I heard the familiar sound of a Lokon weapon being summoned. I followed suit, and like a chain reaction, all six of us Painters (there are six of us now this is so cool) were armed. We blasted on our costumes, and by the time we did, more hands had emerged amongst and all around us. Bao had the tips of his blades together, focusing a yellow beam onto the hand at Harriet’s ankle: after a second or two, it dramatically released her and sunk back into the ground. He brought her back to her feet, checking she was okay.

 

“What do we do?” Kendal asked, aiming this way and that but not yet opening fire.

 

“Leg it!” Dakota ordered.

 

She didn’t have to tell us twice.

 

The rest of our journey to Texaco was very quick, spent weaving around oversized hands as they emerged almost-inexplicably from the ground. It must have only been a couple of minutes before we reached our destination; as we approached, and the strange hands became less and less frequent to the point of disappearing altogether, a realisation hit me.

 

“We should power down before we get there! There’s no saying if the Someone Else’s Problem field will work or not!”

 

“Good call!”

Dakota brought us down from our sprint to a flustered stroll, and together, we dismissed our gear and teleported our weapons away. I checked on Kitty, and saw her taking just a little longer to send her Lokon claw back to the loft, concentrating as she did.

“Okay,” our leader turned to us as we walked under the roof of the open Texaco station, “whose monster is that? Somebody’s got some kind of issue that Harmony’s pulling out-”

 

“It’s you!” Kendal bleated loudly. “You’re so worked up over winning when this is about having fun! So those things are trying to hold us back! Like, literally hold us back!”

 

The taller girl sneered, diverted her gaze, and muttered:

“I just want us to win…”

 

“Okay, let’s not get too worked up…” Harriet spoke soothingly, even stepping almost between the two. I only noticed then that her knees were slightly grazed. “We all want to keep going, so let’s focus on that.”

 

“She’s right…”

I rubbed Dakota’s back in an effort to comfort her; she looked at me with conflicted eyes, her competitive energy swirled with guilt.

“Let’s win at having the most fun possible, yeah?”

 

At once, one of her eyebrows lowered and the other rose up. It was some form of change in expression, so I considered it a victory.

 

“I think the next one is a bridge…” Kitty told the rest of us gently, stood halfway between us and the clue affixed to one of the supporting pillars.

 

We walked over to it, and read the latest clue:

 

‘Rising up

‘Out of metal and stone

‘And making connections

‘Danger avoided’

 

“That checks out, yeah!” Kendal affirmed with a nod. “Great job, Kitty!”

 

I’m fairly certain I heard Kitty murmur a “thanks”.

 

“Anybody got any ideas which bridge…?” Zahid asked, sounding like he didn’t expect a good answer.

 

Bao rubbed his chin in contemplation.

“Probably the big bridge, right?”

 

I’m sure that doesn’t sound very clear to you, but we immediately knew exactly which bridge he was talking about.

 

“It’s worth a shot!” I nodded, while Dakota read the clue again. “Should we-?”

 

“I’m just checking…” she cut me off, attention locked onto the sheet.

 

“Hey, isn’t that Lisa’s group…?”

Harriet was pointing down the road we’d ran along, and some distance away, hard to properly make out, was a group of people that did seem to be Lisa and the others. They were walking towards Texaco.

 

When I turned back to Dakota, she was looking out at Lisa’s group rather than at the clue, contemplating what to do.

“Okay. Big bridge it is.”

 

The seven of us set off quickly, hoping that Lisa’s group wouldn’t get too big of a hint at the clue from the direction we headed off in. We didn’t get too far before, of course, more hands began emerging in our path: this time poking further out of the ground, wrists free, hands almost at knee-height now. They would be harder to avoid this time, and so we summoned our weapons and began mowing them down as we went… which, with them being fairly low to the ground, wasn’t particularly easy. Our trek to the big bridge mostly consisted of us firing or launching ahead of ourselves, clearing the path as quickly as we could to let us continue our hasty pace. Kitty, with less experience than the rest of us, had to kneel and slice, but she was taking up the rear so only had to deal with stragglers.

 

We arrived at the bridge trying to catch our breath.

 

“Well, Kitty,” Bao looked to her, “here we are… the big bridge!”

He threw his arms wide as though she hadn’t already noticed the sizable concrete bridge crossing the… A-road? Motorway? The busy multi-lane road.

“You’re getting a whistle-stop tour of the town today!”

 

“Y-Yeah…” Kitty replied in hushed tones.

 

“Can’t see the clue yet…” I noted, looking at the metal railings running along either side of the bridge. Powering down again, we proceeded to head up the steps, seven pairs of eyes keenly surveying everything around us. Once we’d reached the top and began crossing the main stretch, it didn’t take too long to notice several banners affixed to the length of the railing of the next bridge, a good 50 feet away.

 

“Should’ve brought my binoculars,” Zahid quipped dryly.

 

“I know you’re joking, but I actually have binoculars somewhere, would’ve been cool if I’d brought them,” Bao mentioned.

 

With some focus and some squinting, it wasn’t too hard to make out:

 

‘Looking to the water / At first a challenge / Knack found / Elegantly onwards’

 

It took a moment before anybody felt like speaking up.

 

“Lake water,” Dakota said forcefully, as though the words alone would conjure forth an answer.

 

“Swans?” I suggested. “Like, cygnets learning to swim and then they do it elegantly…?”

 

“What, they’ve stuck a piece of paper to a swan?” Zahid asked, looking at me in agitation.

 

“I’d try it,” Kendal shrugged with alarming nonchalance.

 

“I mean, it could be a double-bluff and… there isn’t a place that sells origami, is there?”

Don’t worry, I did realise as soon as I said it just how stupid that question was.

“Please don’t answer that-”

 

“It’s got to be a waterfowl or a boat…” Harriet reasoned with gentle consideration.

 

“Aah, you’re right, boat!” Kendal smiled brightly. “Just like our first group monster fight, guys!”

 

“Let’s go!” Dakota cheered at once, making a beeline for the other end of the bridge.

 

“Do you even know which way you’re going?” I called after her. No answer.

 

“She must be wild in bed,” Bao decided to comment.

 

“Bao!” Harriet hissed quietly.

 

We rushed after our leader, and as soon as I reached the steps, I could see her in Painter gear with Lokon spear in-hand down below, facing out at the dusty footpath now dotted with large navy arms.

 

“Of course…” Zahid puffed.

 

By the time we reached the bottom of the steps, all of us (barring Harriet, of course) had our Painter costumes on.

 

“We cut them down as we run,” Dakota instructed us. “No stopping.”

 

And she began her charge, swiping out with a great green arc and severing several of the arms. The rest of us barrelled after her, Harriet between us like a baby elephant kept safe by the adults, taking swipes and slashes and doing our best to avoid being hit or grabbed. The arms were still further out of the ground, elbows free, allowing them to move around and, now standing almost as tall as us, to grasp at us if we happened to get too close.

 

You probably think it would be easy to avoid them, but more kept springing up as we ran the several-minute distance from the big bridge to the lake, and the level of reaction time and manoeuvrability needed to keep out of reach of every single arm was beyond us (or at the very least beyond me). I was grabbed four or five times, usually managing to cut myself free by stabbing my sword in and expelling a fiery pulse of blue, being helped by Bao and by Kitty one time each. If anything, those two had the easiest time of it, since their weapons were shorter and more easily used with a movement of the arm. They were almost punching their way through the flurry of arms.

 

It could have only been a handful of minutes, but I felt every second of it, and when we reached the kayak centre place with costumes and weapons once again dispelled, we had to sit ourselves down on the ground to recuperate.

 

Well… all of us bar Kendal the dynamo, and Dakota, who was being powered by fearsome determination and who was already looking around for the next clue.

 

“It has to be here somewhere,” she insisted to herself, “or else we’re in the wrong place and Lisa’s team will get ahead of us…”

 

“Dakota, seriously…”

Kendal pinched the bridge of her nose.

“This isn’t about winning. I just wanna have fun running around town solving weird clues. Isn’t that enough?”

 

“We’re doing that too, but I want us to come out on top!”

 

“Please…” Harriet begged softly, to no avail.

 

“But there’s no top! So we’re the first, so we’re the last, who cares?”

 

“I care!” Dakota shouted.

 

“Why? What the hell is so important about winning, anyway?” Kendal demanded, fists clenched in indignance.

 

For only the second time today, the overwhelming fire in Dakota’s eyes was curbed, this time by a sudden uncertainty.

“I… I just… see red. Or gold, I guess. It’s a thing to accomplish and…”

 

“Stop seeing gold. See us.”

Kendal turned to the centre, and then stopped in her tracks.

“Oh, here it is…”

 

The rest of us heaved ourselves up, and found Kendal staring at the inside face of the centre’s door, with the clue taped up to it.

 

‘Down it falls

‘Resplendent

‘On display

‘Proud like in Rome’

 

“Fountain, easy,” Bao announced coolly.

 

“You got it that quickly…?” I asked, taken aback.

 

“Yeah, drop like water drops, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, water falling down, on display in the park…”

Reeled off like they were on the paper right below the clue.

 

“That’s amazing…” Kitty mumbled in subdued awe.

 

“I dunno, the HMV one was the only one that wasn’t obvious,” he deemed. “I’ll have to join the treasure hunt planning group next year, make them really clever!”

 

“That hunt would take three weeks and wind up in South Africa,” Zahid scoffed.

 

We turned around to set off for the park, only to find a gloomy-looking Dakota lingering nearby.

 

“I’m sorry…” she spoke lowly. “I’ve spoilt all of this for you…”

 

“You haven’t spoilt it…” I assured her, taking her into a hug. “And I understand how much you want to win. But it’s like Kendal said… this isn’t about winning, it’s about us having fun together.”

 

“Mhmm…” she nodded, her chin bopping my shoulder.

 

“Apology accepted,” Kendal replied to her warmly behind me. “And anyway, this was the final clue, right? So if it helps, we are still on-track to win…”

 

On cue, a swarm of ground-arms swelled up nearby, taller than any of us now at full-arm-length.

 

“Harmony, come on, give us a break…” Kendal sighed wryly.

 

I let go of Dakota, gently stroked her hair, and then gave her a smile.

“Let’s go have some fun.”

 

She huffed softly in amusement, and smiled a little.

“You’ve gotta hand it to her, she’s really been trying to wind me up.”

 

“Nice pun!” Bao applauded.

 

From there, dear reader, we spent the time as the Painters and friend, hacking our way through the touchy-feely forest of ground-arms on our way to the park and victory. I span and sliced, releasing blue replicas of the blade of my sword; Dakota danced to-and-fro, letting green darts fly; Bao sprinted about, enlarging his blades to make cuts right through the arms; Kendal fired arrows every which way, even trying to aim for the palms of the big crooked hands; Zahid played it cool, hacking only at arms that sprang up near him, adding red spikes to his axe blade for effect; Kitty stabbed and slashed with relish, darting from one arm to the next. Sometimes, our fights were a challenge, and sometimes they were a slog, but this was almost like an obstacle course that we had to work through as part of the treasure hunt. It became nothing but fun. Even Harriet seemed to find a thrill in being surrounded by all of it, watching us work through the ground-arms with one trick after another.

 

I’ve no idea how long it took us to arrive at the park, but we had to hide in some bushes to power down as Lisa’s group was barely any distance behind us.

 

With springs in our steps, we made our way past dog-walkers and a few kids running around playing football, heading towards the open area where the fountain stood.

 

Dakota couldn’t help but close the final bit of distance with a dash; we watched her search around as we walked the rest of the way.

 

“I think this might be it!” she told us, pointing to a little treasure chest fully submerged in the pool that filled the bottom of the fountain. “So… do we take it?”

 

“What d’you mean…?” Harriet asked with a slight tilt of the head.

 

“Lisa’s group isn’t too far away, and I don’t want to bring things down by making it all about the victory…”

 

“Dakota…” Kendal couldn’t help but titter. “Did you have fun today?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Good! So did I, except for the bits where we got catty. And hey, we still won, didn’t we? Fair and square.”

Kendal’s body language screamed casual confidence. Whether she was meaning to or not, she was coming across more than a little proud.

 

“Plus I don’t think Lisa would want to win that way,” Zahid added. “She’d force the thing into your hands if she had to.”

 

“Okay…”

Dakota wrestled with the victorious smirk aching to spread across her face, and reached into the water to pull out the treasure chest. Crouching down, she placed it on the fountain’s edge, let us all surround her to get a good look, and then, slowly, tantalisingly, opened it up…

 

‘YOU’VE WON!’ read the gold plastic letters inside.

 

“Well, hey, the box knows we’ve won…!” Bao said chipperly.

 

“Congratulations!” a voice spoke up from behind us. Tara from Year 13 was standing there, sunglasses perched on her red hair, a book in one hand with a finger inside to keep her page. Her other arm was raised, eyes on her watch. “Under two hours, too, that’s impressive.”

 

“Thanks!” Kendal chirped, and the rest of us thanked Tara too.

 

“So, do we get to take the letters home with us?” Zahid asked sarcastically.

 

“All that hard work and you still want a reward?” our senior winked. Her free hand reached into her pocket, and brought forth a wad of vouchers.

“Sorry there’s only six, but it should still be a decent reward.”

She held them out for us, and Harriet took them in the politest manner possible.

 

20% off at Pizza Hut.

 

We looked amongst ourselves, and couldn’t help but laugh.

 

We spent the rest of the day relaxing with our feet up, recuperating and debating if the clues were really that simple or if we were just that good at cracking them, and the pizza was great, but the biggest reward was the ridiculous experience we’d shared.

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