-6-

"Next activity on the agenda!" Martha said. "Ice blocking!"

"Yes!" Faron exclaimed, but most of us had blank faces.

I've been ice blocking before. You're supposed to sit on a block on ice and slide down a hill on it. But when my family went, Anthony would always point his ice in my direction and run into me before I even made it down the hill. And when Anthony took a break to eat, Lily did the same thing. I tried doing it back to her, since I was older, but she slid down so much faster than me for some reason. I probably weighed the ice down too much or something. Overall, I didn't have that much fun.

Now there was not only Anthony and Lily to come after me, but also Stacey, Faron, Jake, Kayla, and several little kids. Hopefully they'd be too busy going after each other to notice me.

"Let's head to the park!" Martha said, and just like that, she stood up and walked away. The rest of us followed, which probably looked a little weird to the neighbors, considering there were over twenty of us.

Somebody poked me in the arm. I looked down to see the triplets walking beside me.

"We have to leave in three days," Utopia informed me sadly.

"Well, we'd better have fun today," I told them.

"Yes!" Evita said. "We'll race each other on the ice!"

"I'm going to stand on it like a surfer!" Xavier exclaimed.

"Um, Xavier," I said. "The ice is only like a foot long, and half a foot wide. It's not likely you'll be able to balance on it."

"The only thing that's impossible is impossibility!"

"I suppose it could be possible.... Just don't get hurt, okay buddy?"

"I got this."

Stacey appeared next to me. "Hi guys!"

"Ew!" Utopia pointed at her. "Why?"

"I could be asking you the same thing," Stacey said. "Why do you hate me?"

"Because Logan hates you."

"Logan doesn't hate me."

"Sure he does!" Evita broke in. "It's why he's always doing mean things! He's probably trying very hard not to run away from you right now, because he's so polite!"

Stacey scoffed. "How about we play together? Maybe we can be friends!"

"Oh, that ship was gone a long time ago!" Utopia crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.

"The friendship?" Stacey asked.

"Yeah, it was gone the moment Logan started tricking you," Xavier sneered.

"I don't understand," Stacey said. "Why do you like Logan so much?"

"Because he also tricked our sister."

I tensed. Everyone had avoided the subject of Carla, but these were little kids. Were they glad Carla was dead? I didn't know what they thought, but it wasn't appropriate to talk about.

"Shh!" Utopia shushed. "Mom said don't talk about Carla ever."

"But she's gone!" Xavier said.

"Guys," I said. "We shouldn't-"

"Carla was always mean to us. She was so bossy," Xavier said.

"C'mon-"

"Don't you miss her?" Stacey burst. Her voice seemed to shake a little, but I wasn't sure.

"Of course I miss her," Xavier said. "We don't have anyone to really play with now, and Mom is never happy.... And she never goes on dates with Daddy anymore because Carla's not there to babysit us, and it's always so quiet because she's not there listening to her music really loud in her room-"

"Stop." Stacey was looking at the ground next to me. "I get it. You hate me because Logan played tricks on me."

I thought the kids' grudge on Stacey was a little funny, but I also felt bad for Stacey. They were treating her very badly just because of what I did for entertainment. Did it really look like I hated her?

"Guys, it's okay," I said. "Stacey's my friend now." I totally choked on the word friend. Stacey smirked at me.

"Are you serious?" Evita's eyes were as big as golfballs.

"Um, yeah. Be nice to her okay? You've got three days left after today. Maybe you could be friends with her too."

"Actually, two days after today," Xavier corrected.

I sighed.

Stacey and I drifted away from the triplets. "Why do you want to hang out with the kids so much?" I asked.

"What do you think?" Her voice was low. "I've got nothing better to do."

I blinked. Why am I so stupid? "I'm sorry."

The park had many hills to slide down on our ice blocks. Martha and her husband started to unpack the ice and distribute them to the people.

I let most everyone go before me, just to avoid being pushed around. By the time I got my ice, there were several people already sliding down the hill.

"Wanna race?" Stacey asked, putting a towel on her block of ice.

"I need to practice first..." I said.

"No. We're going now so we see who's better without a practice round."

"That's so pointless," I complained.

"Too bad." She sat her ice on the edge of the steepest part of the hill. It really was only about fifteen feet tall, but why was it so steep? "Come on," she said.

I rolled my eyes and placed my ice a reasonable distance from Stacey's and said, "On three."

She nodded, her eyes locked dead ahead. I counted slowly, positive she was going to go down before I was done counting.

"One...two..."

I was so sure she'd pull something and take off laughing while I sat there like an idiot. Nope.

"...three."

I pushed off the hill and so did Stacey. Halfway down, my ice began to tilt and I fell off. But my wonderful ice kept sliding, veering into Stacey's. It wasn't enough to knock her over, but it was enough of a distraction that she lost concentration and toppled off.

"Dang it! Logan, control your ice!"

"My ice obeyed my mental command."

"I still won," she declared with a smirk.

Next thing I knew, there was a large amount of children coming at me with ice in their hands. It was the triplets, my siblings Anna and Presley, and Kyle and Patrick.

"We were coming to race you," Evita started, "but then these guys wanted to come too."

"Alright," I said.

The nine of us lined up at the top of the hill. Utopia leaned a little closer to me and whispered, "As long as you beat Stacey, I'll be proud."

"Hey!" Stacey complained from the other side of me. "I'm right here!"

"Guys," I said. "I think we're all too close together." Stacey and I had two feet between us, but the younger kids were all within one foot.

"It's okay!" Anna called from down the line. "Just go straight!"

I opened my mouth to tell her that her advice was pretty much impossible, but then Patrick called, "On my mark! I don't trust anyone else's!"

"What if I don't trust yours?" Stacey muttered so only I could hear, and I snorted.

"Go when I say 'skateboards'," Patrick announced, and then recited his countdown, which was a stream of random, meaningless words. Maybe not meaningless, but just things he likes. "Motorcycles, knives, fire, independence, pandas, kickball, basketball, skateboards!"

I was right. The kids didn't make it five feet before they all collided into a pile, including me. But since Stacey was two feet away at the end, she slid right along without interception.

"No!" Utopia shrieked. "Don't let Crazy Stacey win!"

"Crazy?" I wondered.

"Yeah, nothing else rhymes with Stacey."

Stacey actually made it to the bottom without falling. Kyle and Patrick stood up angrily and left to race by themselves.

Stacey climbed back up the hill, her eyes on something to the right. "Logan," she said. "Look."

I looked in the direction she nodded. At first all I saw was the playground, but then I saw a creepy looking kid holding a camera. I couldn't tell much, but he looked about fifteen.

"Should we go somewhere else?" Stacey asked.

"Let's move farther down," I suggested.

Unfortunately, when we went farther down the grass, we found Anthony. The next fifteen minutes consisted of him running into me and Stacey deciding it looked fun, and wanting to try it for herself. I waited to get them back but they always waited for me to go first. Then they'd come after me at the same time, knocking me off of the ice.

There was one time when I hit a bump in the grass and my ice lifted off the ground only an inch-but in that one second I was off the ground, Stacey bumped my ice with a lot of speed (I don't know how), and I shot into the air and ended up rolling down the hill. I scrambled up to see that Stacey had rolled down the hill too.

"Ugh," she moaned. "There's a bump in the grass.

"No kidding."

Her eyes drifted slightly and she sat right up. "The creepy kid."

I followed her gaze and, indeed, the creepy kid was, like, less than 100 meters away with his camera out.

"I think I've had enough ice blocking for today," I said.

"Do you know that kid?" Anthony's voice made me jump. I'd forgotten he was even there.

"I don't know anyone here, Anthony," I said. That should've been obvious.

Luckily, Martha then called us over. It was time to leave.

»»»»»«««««

An hour later, after we'd eaten dinner, everyone started getting ready for bed. During this time, the house was full of children running around the medium sized house, and people waiting for a turn in the bathroom. I developed a working system: Wait outside until everyone is done, then go inside and have the bathroom all to myself. Genius.

As the sun set, I worked on climbing the tree. It took about thirty minutes, but I figured out a way to get up. Unfortunately, my limbs were dead tired and I couldn't carry through with the plan. Tomorrow I'd have to make sure I could do it.

"Did you fail again?" Stacey came out of nowhere and scared the cheese balls out of me. Was she making a habit of approaching me at nighttime or something?

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Same as you. I'm not stupid enough to wait inside while twenty people try to share two bathrooms."

"So you're saying I'm not stupid?"

"In this situation, no. In others, you can be quite brainless."

"Yeah. All of my clever pranks were brainless."

"Okay, I'll admit, your pranks were cool. Not the ones against me, but...sometimes it was fun to see Carla get tricked."

"Really?" My face probably looked surprised.

"Yeah. She tried so hard to be perfect, so it was nice to get a reminder that she wasn't."

"What?"

"Well, walking around with blue teeth for example. Screaming at the sound of that air horn. Shedding a tear at the picture of the cow on her pillow."

"She cried over the cow picture?"

"She thought you were calling her fat."

Wow. Never reusing that trick.

"I'm sorry." I wasn't really sure why I apologized. "I shouldn't have pranked you guys because I didn't even know how you'd react. I didn't know you."

"I'm going to regret saying this," Stacey said, "but I'm fine if you prank me. I think it's fun."

I gave her my most evil sneer and she laughed.

"You know," I said. "I think now that I'm aware Carla sort of liked me, I can think of times when it was blatantly obvious."

"Did you just say 'blatantly'?" Stacey laughed.

"I couldn't think of another word," I defended myself. "Anyway, I remember one time when Carla was on the couch, she held her phone at an odd angle. My thoughts then were 'what the heck?' but now I'm wondering...?"

"She took pictures of you quite often," Stacey said. "At first it was difficult because she had a camera, but one year she got a phone and it was easier. She told me she'd pinch me if I ever told. She shared the pictures with me, though, we-"

"What?" I said, pretty loudly. "She shared creepy pictures of me with you?"

"Yeah. She printed them and acted like they were money. I got three pictures an hour, eight hours a day, for being quiet."

"Holy.... How many pictures did she take?"

"At least sixty...everyday."

"And I didn't notice a thing?"

"Nope. I took the pictures to keep her happy. At first I said 'no way' but she thought that meant I'd tell you about her little crush. Well, large crush. I drew mustaches on my Logans, and she made a collage. I wonder if her mom knew?"

I felt like I was going to faint. "That's..."

"Creepy. I know. I told her over and over again. But her excuse was that she only saw you once every two years, and she needed something to hold on to. I told her she should talk to you, but she said she needed to play hard to get. You never made a move, I know, but she thought you were with every time you acknowledged her. Every time you nodded your head, or waved from across the room, I got an elbow in my side." She smiled wistfully.

"Can I...ask what...she...saw in me?"

She chuckled a little bit. "Every night, I'd hear it over and over again." Her voice switched to one mocking Carla's. "'Logan's eyes are so extraordinary! They're like light brown and dark brown at the same time! And his hair! Oh my goodness! His hair is the perfect length! It's like not too long, but not short either!' And I'm not kidding when I tell you I fell asleep listening to her fangirl over your dimples."

I just started blankly before saying, "Are you serious?"

"Completely."

With the sun setting behind, Stacey's hair looked more blond than brown. I wondered sometimes if it was just dark blond or light brown. There was no classification for it.

I didn't say anything after that.

"You don't understand how much I only wish you'd realized Carla had feelings for you. It was like a tempting balloon swelling in me and I didn't get to release it, you know?"

"That was a really dumb simile."

"I know. Thanks."

"Do you miss Carla?" I asked.

Stacey let out a heavy breath, like she was trying to let out the rest of that "balloon". "That's the thing," she said. "I do. I don't know why or how she became close to me, but she did. And now little kids are treating me like a used tissue and I just wanna go home. Kind of."

"Kind of?"

Her face changed slightly before she repeated the line. "Kind of."