“So, honey,” Aunt Cat says, setting down her suspicious picnic basket with a thunk that suggests it contains something significantly heavier than potato salad—like bullets, “are you ready for some fireworks this week?”
“Only if they take place in the sky, and I have nothing to do with the fact they detonated.”
“Speaking of things that go bang…” Carlotta gives me one of her looks—the kind that makes me want to hide behind Watson and his adorable hat.
“We were just wondering if you had any special projects coming up,” Aunt Cat continues, her voice dropping to what she thinks is a whisper but is actually loud enough to be heard on the lunar surface.
“Something with a real explosive finale!” Carlotta grins. “It’s time to get creative with the fireworks, if you know what I mean.”
Do I ever.
My blood turns to ice water despite the afternoon heat. No. Not today. Not during what was supposed to be a nice, normal festival where my biggest concern was keeping our booth banner from doing a belly flop and my sister from getting arrested for mishandling a sausage.
Aunt Cat “accidentally” drops her purse near my feet, and an all too familiar red envelope with Uncle Jimmy’s distinctive wax seal tumbles out, landing on the grass like a tiny incendiary device designed to explode my peaceful afternoon.
“Oops,” she says, not sounding remotely sorry about her butterfingers or my impending doom. Or, more to the point, the impending doom of others.
Carlotta immediately creates a distraction by pointing at Sunshine’s tie-dyed bus and declaring, “Now that’s what I call a baby-making bus! Looks like Woodstock on wheels! Anyone got a stash they’re willing to part with? Sharing is caring!”
“Good grief,” I mutter. “You’re both determined to get us arrested.”
And me, with an impending felony, no less.
I snag the envelope, trying hard to pretend my hands aren’t doing the jitterbug, and Watson lets out a low, suspicious whine—like he knows Uncle Jimmy’s mail never brings cookies, just chaos.
“Go ahead, hotshot.” Aunt Cat leans in, barely holding it together, like she’s two seconds away from bursting if I don’t see what’s inside already. “Open it. We’re dying to know who’s going to bite the big one in time for the Fourth!”
With all the enthusiasm of volunteering for my own doom, I rip open the envelope. Uncle Jimmy’s neat little handwriting greets me from the cream-colored paper—polite, proper, and absolutely up to no good.
Mayor Harry Nash—make it look patriotic.
Deadline: July 4th.
Bonus if it happens during fireworks.
Extra bonus for creativity.
—J
I stare at the paper, my brain refusing to process what I’m reading while the sounds of the festival carry on around me—children laughing, grills sizzling, someone’s boom box blasting “Born in the U.S.A.” at a volume that guarantees I’ll be hearing it in my sleep.
Mayor Nash. The man I just had a pleasant conversation with about the merits of mustard versus ketchup. Lottie’s father. The guy who’s about to spend the next week judging funnel cakes and making terrible dad jokes about independence and liberty.
And I’m supposed to kill him.
Watson looks up at me with concerned brown eyes, his Uncle Sam hat sitting crooked on his head like a tiny accusation, and I swear he knows—our nice, quiet Fourth of July just took a sharp turn into chaos.
“Well, Watson,” I rasp, crushing the paper in my fist while Mayor Nash demolishes a red, white, and blue monstrosity that looks like a funnel cake and a cupcake made a series of regrettable choices, “looks like our peaceful Fourth of July just burst into flames—and I haven’t even touched a sparkler yet.”
CHAPTER 3
The Taste of America Festival at Honey Lake is in full stars-and-stripes mode, with food trucks forming a semicircle around the pristine water like wagons circling for protection against culinary competitors instead of hostile forces.
The afternoon sun beats down mercilessly, turning the lake into a shimmering mirage that makes the red, white, and blue decorations flutter like desperate flags of surrender. The pine trees surrounding the water release their sharp, clean scent into the air already thick with the competing aromas of grilled onions, kettle corn, and enough deep-fried everything to clog the arteries of a small nation.
I’m still staring at Uncle Jimmy’s assignment as if it might spontaneously combust and solve my problems when Aunt Cat produces a lighter from somewhere in her sequined depths.
“Hand it over, hon,” she says, wiggling her fingers impatiently. “You know the drill.”
