Hopeful

After a bit of laundry and personal grooming, the girls turned in.

Lying awake in their room for the night- a different installment than the last place they stayed, at Katie’s request, the sisters thought in circles.

“So here’s what I think.” Frankie started, quiet so as to not wake the other guests in the cheap hotel. “Bozo wants the prize, obviously. But he doesn’t have to earn it alone. He’s sending his stupid lackeys out all around the park to do his bidding, and then they’ll all come back to give him more tokens than he could ever earn on his own.”

“Oh, you’re right… that’s not good.” Katie rolled on her pillow to face her sister.

“No, no, it’s not. How many of those idiots did he have on call again? It was at least thirteen.”

“Maybe we can catch up to them. I mean, if we just work really, really hard… I think we still stand a chance.”

“Positive thinking can’t solve everything, Katie.”

“It’s done well enough so far.”

“I don’t know what to do…” Frankie groaned, starting to lose the very faith Katie was promoting.

“We could always hunt them down ourselves and bet with them. Then we can earn tokens and shorten their supply. Two birds.”

Frankie hid under her covers.

“I’m not showing my face to those people… they’ll kill me!”

“They don’t know your face. They won’t recognize us! You need to calm down, Frankie. It’s gonna be alright.”

“I hope…”

“You say that a lot, “I hope.” Can’t you say, “It will” just for once? I think it works a lot better.

The little sister closed her eyes shut under the darkness of the comforter.

“It will.”

Katie smiled.

“Honestly… today wasn’t as profitable as I’d have hoped. But… it sure was fun.” Katie reminisced.

“I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.” Frankie admitted.

“Not with Cheryl in it, you wouldn’t.”

“Hey!”

Proceeding to tease Frankie all through the night until they fell asleep, the girls finally got some rest for the day.

That morning, they checked the nearest map in the center of town.

“Where to next, miss social engineer?”

“Well… uh…”

Choosing anything on the rainbow of a display was next to impossible even for someone without a shopping mall’s worth of anxiety disorders. With everything standing out so much, nothing did.

“Hm…” Katie examined the board, helping as she could. “A casino area… that sciencey VR place…”

“What’s this thing…?”

Frankie took a note stuck to the map in official-looking Kidneyland stationary, right next to an area called Wildland Expedition. The letter read, in a print font:

I’ve hidden a treasure for you in the great green

Only one guest or group will reach it, so hurry fast

To the locked-up cave below the screen

The keys are hidden within the park’s past

So use your head and remember his dreams

200 Tokens offered to one guest or group only. Standard rules apply. No roughhousing please.

-Kidneyland Staff

“Hey, that wasn’t there yesterday!” Some guy called out behind them, making both the girls jump.

“Sounds fun! Let’s go find it!” His (they presumed) partner cheered, holding his hand and dragging him out of the area to go straight to Kidneyland’s greenest corner- the hybrid zoo/safari nature exhibit Wildland Expedition.

“I think we’ve got our destination, Katie.”