13. Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Dylan
S he wasn’t going to think about it.
Like a scared rabbit, Elise had rushed to her car and closed the doors. She probably locked them too. I’d come on too strong. I was just worried about her chasing after a murderer all on her own. And I really was going to need help in English. It wouldn’t be long before Dad started demanding to see grades from each of my classes and telling me what a disappointment I was, how he had done so much better in school, that dentists needed to have high GPA’s if they wanted to make it into dental school.
Barf. I’d become a circus clown, the one who went around with a shovel cleaning up after the elephants, before I’d be a dentist like him.
Elise pulled onto the street and drove away with Bessey’s head hanging out the window, her tongue lolling to one side. Chuckling, I glanced at where Elise had been sitting. A blue notebook lay face-down on the floor. She must have left it in her hurry to escape.
I grabbed the book, then flicked on the interior light. Was this something that was important to Elise? Hopefully, none of the pages had gotten bent or torn when it fell. Should I open it to check, or just toss it on the seat and hope for the best? Whether it was because of my conscience or just curiosity, I eventually found myself thumbing through the pages. A few were crumpled. After smoothing them flat, I skimmed the words to see if they were important. Wait, was that my name near the middle of the page? The title at the top read, “Saga of the Grans, The Case of the Not-so-Great Doctor.”
This was obviously personal, but I was in it. There wasn’t a single guy on the planet who wouldn’t read a story written by a hot girl that mentioned him.
After checking like a million times to make sure Elise hadn’t silently returned somehow, I began to read…
Saga of the Grans Episode 23
Grandma Lola’s lipstick whip cracked in the gleaming light of dawn. She, together with her trusty lipstick tube device, two fellow Super Grans, her speedy sidekick, Elise, her sidekick’s sidekick, Bessey the brave (although drool ridden), and the cantankerous, rarely useful Snowball the foul- breathed, faced their arch enemy, Doctor Osteoporosis.
I cackled. A nefarious Doctor named Osteoporosis against a bunch of old lady superheroes? That was golden.
According to the story, this Osteoporosis guy had stolen the entire world’s supply of antacids and was threatening to drop the only remaining box of the stuff into the canyon below. How brilliantly evil. I’d seen the way my granny depended on those things. She didn’t go to bed without that chalky drink in hand.
The doc had the Super Grans cornered.
“Not a step closer or I’ll drop them.” Doc Osteoporosis jiggled the package over the chasm. Beneath, the river raced along the canyon, oblivious to the perilous situation above.
Glaring malevolence, Edna stomped one arthritic foot forward.
Bernice caught her arm. “No, we can’t risk it. Think of the cost.”
All three Grans clutched their throats, no doubt imagining the horror they would experience nightly if Osteo’s plan came to fruition.
Oh geez. Elise must know these women well to write like this about them. I hadn’t seen her hanging around many other people our age. Maybe that was because she had these guys for friends and didn’t feel like she needed anyone else.
Edna still looked ready to give the Doc a good trouncing, but she grudgingly agreed to join the rest of the Grans in a huddle to discuss the situation.
While they discussed a plan of action, Doc Osteo hummed a fittingly devilish tune.
“I’m getting impatient,” he called across the chasm. “I have a commitment to terrorize a neighboring metropolis in one hour, then Pilates class at noon. Can we hurry this along?”
Okay, for a long time now, I’d known that Elise was the full package—gorgeous, smart, athletic, hard-working, and nice. Now, I could add writing genius to that list. She truly was the girl of my dreams. And she was totally going to kill me for reading this.
Whether it was caused by the guilt or a sense of doom over what she would do to me, I only skimmed the rest of the story. A blue-haired guy named Dylan—wonder who that could be—busted out a boombox, and Bernice used her Zumba hips to hypnotize the doc. That gave me a good laugh.
Of course she included the typical dance of good versus evil. Just when you thought the heroes had him, the villain busted out some secret weapon and almost escaped. What I didn’t see coming was the grannies’ knockout punch delivered by a mangy black cat named Snowball:
Noxious green breath billowed out of Snowball’s gaping jaws. Doc’s face momentarily registered shock before his eyes rolled back, and he flopped, twitching onto the ground.
Like many before him, he had succumbed to the toxic blend of tuna, wet cat food and toilet water fermenting within the feline’s cursed mouth.
I laughed so hard that it turned into a coughing fit. How had I not known Elise’s mind could work this way? Honestly, I was more attracted to her now than ever before, and I hadn’t even thought that was possible.
Which meant that I was going to need to be super careful about how I gave this notebook back. I didn’t want to lie, but maybe there was a way to avoid telling her that I read it.
Who was I kidding? She was going to skewer me either way.