~~~
The Key to Adventure
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Kate,”
I said to my best friend, frustrated at her inability to keep track of her
belongings. “Please tell me you’re
joking.”
She sorrowfully bit her lower lip
and shook her head no, crossing her arms over her tank top. “I wish I was, Mia,” she replied, glancing
around as though it would make her keys magically reappear.
There was no such luck.
I angrily sighed, doing my best not
to panic. I couldn’t believe it. On the first roadtrip that Kate and I had
been able to take without any parental supervision or unbreakable itineraries,
Kate managed to lose her keys. Not only
did she lose them, but she lost them on the grounds outside of the St. Louis
Arch. They were going to be impossible
to find, and the spare keys were at home, five hours away.
So much for being adult enough to go
on a roadtrip by ourselves.
“What should we do?” I finally
asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “We could sing the Simple Plan ‘How Could
This Happen to Me’ song and cry,” she suggested.
“That’s not going to help.” I stared at the ground, thinking back to all
the places we had walked. “Okay, here’s
the plan,” I decidedly stated. “We
retrace our steps. They’ve got to be
around here somewhere. I don’t think
bandits would steal car keys when they’d have no idea where the car is parked.”
“Smart thinking, Mia,” Kate
complimented, starting to walk back towards the grassy area we had sat to watch
some Civil War re-enactors shoot old guns.
“Maybe they fell out of my pocket when we sat down.”
They hadn’t.
They weren’t near the Civil War
dudes. They weren’t on the steps in
front of the Arch. They weren’t down on
the riverfront. They weren’t near the
smelly and oddly green pond.
We retraced our steps twice, asking
random visitors if they had seen our missing keys. With pitying expressions, they all answered
no. Of course the abundance of employees
that we had seen not twenty minutes before had all but vanished.
“We could try calling the
information desk and see if a kind stranger has turned them in,” Kate
suggested, pulling up the Arch website on her phone. She wiped the continuous flow of sweat off
her forehead with her arm, dialing the number.
I stared at her, hoping for good
news while ignoring the nervous sensation coursing through my stomach. “Well?” I prompted when she stuck her tongue
out at the phone.
“Computers keep redirecting me and
making me listen to weird polka music on hold,” she explained, grabbing my arm
when an actual human answered. “Hi, do
you know if any keys have been turned in?”
Kate paused, taking in the information.
“Mmhmm, yeah, thank you,” she finished, ending the call. Her hazel eyes clouded with disappointment as
she shook her head no at me. “No one has
turned any keys in.”
I shut my eyes tightly, wishing that
I could wake up from this nightmare.
“I don’t want to have to call my mom
and make her drive down here with the spare keeeeeey,” Kate whined.
“This is why you should’ve given me
the key in the first place. I have
deeper pockets than your skanky shorts do.”
“I’m ignoring that comment about my
perfectly acceptable shorts. Can we sing
the ‘How Could This Happen to Me’ song now?” she asked as we sat down on a
bench next to the left side of the Arch.
I nodded my head, defeated. “At this point, I see no reason not to.”
We glumly sang to ourselves, as I
rested my elbows on my knees, cradling my head in my hands.
“Those are the saddest faces I’ve
ever seen while at the Arch,” a distinctively young male voice called,
interrupting our mournful singing.
I looked up to see a strikingly
handsome guy about our age smiling down at us.
He put his hands on his hips, drawing my attention to the uniform he
wore that I had seen on other Arch employees around the grounds.
Kate’s eyes lit up, no doubt
noticing his attractiveness like I was.
She leaped to her feet, landing right in front of him with a hopeful
grin on her face. “Has anyone turned in
a set of car keys?” she hurriedly asked.
Or maybe it was just me admiring his
hotness.
He teasingly grimaced at Kate,
before looking over to me. “Lost your
keys, huh? That sucks.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
“You didn’t answer my question!”
Kate exclaimed, throwing her arms out to her sides.
His grin stretched from ear to ear
as he reached into his dark grey uniform pocket and pulled out our
salvation. “Are these the keys in
question?”
“Stephanie!” Kate called out to the
stingray keychain on her key ring as she yanked them out of the guy’s hand,
hugging them close to her chest.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he
chuckled.
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