Con Quest!

“Are you even still getting signal in here?” Fi looked quizzically at Cat’s phone.

“I better keep getting signal,” Cat replied, hurrying to catch up with their parents and Julie. “The Quest updates all day, and we have to stay on top of it.”

“The Quest?” Fi asked, rushing behind her.

Cat looked back with that look Fi hated, the one where Cat obviously thought that she was the smartest person in the whole world. “The Quest, Fi. The Quest. We’ve talked about it for weeks? Do you ever pay attention to me when I talk?”

Okay, so maybe Fi didn’t always pay attention when Cat talked.

Their gang had to turn around and annoy everyone in the hallway behind them by quickly flipping directions—Julie had just realized they’d been walking the wrong way. Cat sighed. “The Quest. The biggest scavenger hunt in the world? Run by Paranormal’s Corwin Blake?”

Fi blinked in a way that she hoped conveyed just how little she knew or cared about any of this. It did not, unfortunately, deter her younger sister, who threw her arms in the air in frustration.

“Corwin Blake?! Hottest actor in maybe the entire world? Plays a deeply troubled and lovingly rumpled ghost on Paranormal? The show about the ghost-hunting brothers? Which has been running for eleven seasons? And the one brother is probably in love with the ghost even though they’ll never say it?”

Fi shrugged. “What does this have to do with your scavenging?”

“Agh!” Cat was really laying it on thick now. “Corwin Blake runs the world’s biggest scavenger hunt every year at this con. Without GeekiCon’s permission, but still. All the items on the Quest list are posted online right before the convention, you can only compete in teams of up to four people, and you upload pictures and videos of all your completed items to the Quest app.” Cat waved her phone in Fi’s face.

Fi batted it away. “But why, though?”

“Because.” Cat sighed. “The people who complete the most items and win the Quest get to hang with Corwin and his Paranormal costars for a week doing charity work, building houses for families in need.”

“And,” Alex interjected, surprising his sisters, “there are potential mentorships on the line with the TV show’s crew. Your career … or your art, for example,” he added, conspicuously casually, “could get a real boost.”

“And that.” Cat nodded aggressively. “And also it really can’t be stressed enough that we really absolutely must win it at all costs this year or else what is even the point of anything ever anymore—”

“Okay, whoa,” Fi interrupted her younger sister. “Got it. So this little game is, like, your whole thing this weekend?”

“It’s our whole thing today,” said Alex as they all finally came to a stop in front of what Fi assumed must be their parents’ panel room. “It’s one day only. And you can do whatever you want.”

“Right,” Fi said under her breath as they all filed into the room, grabbing a few of the reserved seats near the front as their parents rushed onto the stage. “I wish.”

4

Cat

Cat’s foot bobbed up and down against the concrete floor. Her parents’ panel had started late, and as predicted, it was absolutely, positively going to go over the allotted time. Her parents had spent the last hour dodging questions about the reboot they were obviously (but secretly) working on, and now the Q and A had turned into people pretending they were going to ask a question but really talking about themselves. The worst.

“This is never going to end,” Cat groaned to Alex. He was seated next to her, just a few rows from the front of the room. The folding chairs were hard and uncomfortable, as usual. Cat just wanted to get on with the Quest and their next list item, and they were stuck here. It was so frustrating!

Alex just shrugged. “Why don’t you look over the Quest list again? We can never be too prepared. Do you have the Hall M passes?”

“Yes, Alex, again, yes.” Cat jiggled her knee harder. “Okay. Yeah. Good idea.”

She pulled out her phone—signal still strong. Thank the glorious goddess of GeekiCon. She opened the Quest app and waited for the list to load up. And there it was.

Corwin Blake was known for being kind of an eclectic oddball—a super-handsome dark-eyed scruffy-haired eclectic oddball with a wide, goofy smile and flawless deep brown skin and just the right amount of beardy stubble in the same deep shade as his messy curls and with a following in the millions, but still. He’d helped so many people by doing the Quest—each participant paid a small entry fee that went to charity, and winning the grand prize meant hanging with Corwin and his friends for a week building houses for underprivileged families.

Cat shoved daydreams of home building with Corwin to the back of her mind and refocused on the list in front of her, leg still bouncing.

Cat closed the app with a sigh—it seemed like so much. Every item looked so simple at first glance, and yet the more she thought each of them through, the more they seemed to grow horns and tails and swing at the twins with the ferocity of a monster on a particularly bad night. How did Team Dangermaker manage to win three years in a row? How did they always manage to complete every item?

To win, you had to complete as many items as possible to get the highest score. Plus, certain people who impressed Corwin and the judges the most even qualified to be considered for special mentorships—Alex cared way more about those. Not only did you have to complete as many items as possible to receive points—awarded by a super-secret Quest judging committee—but you were also awarded extra points for style. Taking a photo with your biggest fan was fine, but taking a photo with a ceiling fan the size of a football field somehow would definitely net a team the full eighteen points. There was a lot of creativity and on-the-spot thinking involved. It definitely wasn’t easy. And the team with the most points won.

And the Q and A was somehow still going, with yet another “this is more of a comment than a question, but…” from the crowd. In desperation, Cat threw her hand up in the air. Her mom, spotting it immediately, laughed and waved for Cat to stand up. “Everyone, my daughter, Catalina,” she said in her characteristic accent.

“Um, hi, everybody