Riley stood with Ben, Abby, and a short, fashion obsessed thirteen year old.
"The last time we were here, we were looking through 200 year old 3-D glasses after have stolen and performed chemical tests on one of the most important historical document, the declaration of independence…" Riley remembered fondly.
"Except her," Abby rolled her eyes. At least it was a vacation.
"Do you think they have Wi-Fi?" Riley ended his "fond" memories. Being shot at and car chases were brought to mind, and that was not something he was very "fond" of.
"Riley, we are at a historic monument!" Abigail jeered.
"And I repeat, do you think they have Wi-Fi?" Riley pursued.
Anna licked her finger, and rose in the air, as if she was testing wind direction; something which never worked for her, as all her finger felt was cold, wet, and gross.
"Its high speed, but password protected," She answered. Honestly, she had peeked over at a woman who worked there setting up her net connection.
To normal people, a password protection turned them off of trying to make the connection. But for the group's techies, it was like adding 184+18,734 (which in Anna world is easy, and which equaled 18,918.)
Abby rolled her eyes again. This vacation was much more intriguing when they were chased by Ian and were holding artifacts.
"Yes!" Riley cheered out of nowhere.
"You got past the password?" Ben asked.
"No, I finished the html on our new website. It has a chat room for people to report serious treasure that they want to have looked into. Cool or what?!" Riley was overjoyed.
Anna grabbed two other laptops from her silver backpack.
"Do you really carry three laptops around all the time?" Abby asked, surprised.
"If I said yes, would you yell, again?" Anna pushed.
"I will only yell if you don't give me one," Abby quipped back.
Ben was unusually quiet today. He really didn't like using computers. That was Riley's job. He just liked jumping off buildings. They had simple "total system failures" while the computers just had a lot of meaningless, or worse—meaningful—letters and numbers. Buildings just fell down, burned up, or exploded. Computers did a lot more.
"Register already!" Riley shot, and they all filled out the blank templates for accounts.
NTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNTNT
"Are you kidding me?!" Anna shoved a tall glass into the walnut cabinet. "I has been almost a week since the crash and you're already sending me away to live with some relative I don't want to know. I'm not done mourning!" She pulled her brown side bangs aside carefully and made puppy dog eyes and a pouty frown. She traced the path of an invisible tear down her face and sniffled a bit.
"Ha," the tall muscular social service worker smiled, "You're a tough little kid."
"I'm thirteen!" She hissed back rolling her intense blue eyes and pushing her perfectly manicured thin pale fingertip into her temple.
"Look, he's your uncle! Not that distant, kid," He stated in a monotone voice.
"I haven't seen him since I was three!" She threw back, kicking her feet against the glossy hard wood of the kitchen floor.
"He's pretty cool, actually…" He added a forced trace of excitement, "He discovered the temple of Templar and the Golden City of Cibola."
"You're kidding," a tumble of almost happy butterflies fluttered in her stomach.
He scanned his watch, and tapped it with his wide fingers, "He should be here in a moment."
"Does he have a family?" Anna was curious now. But the thought of ugly evil step cousin-sisters, a freaky aunt and a cool uncle, (who would leave her alone to search for treasure) was unbearable. Cinder-Anna couldn't be. She simply wouldn't tolerate it.
A hot pepper red Ferrari pulled into the drive way.
Wow.
That was the only word that came to mind.
Her new guardian and adventure uncle was a black-sunglass, red-Ferrari-loaded guardian.
It was all that she could hope for considering that last week her parents were driving home to pick her up and take her to back to school shopping. There was an unclear car crash, faulted by the other party of course. Anna had recovered to-soon-to-be possible, and in fact was yet to shed a public tear. They were buried at a funeral that she refused to attend. She would still go to the same exclusive private school, home to her best friends and superficial teen HQ, even living with this new guardian.
Anna flipped her glossy brown hair over her shoulder and checked her compact. Her glitter was still on lightly, not a single hair was out of place and her lips were over glossed with her favorite pink that matched her manicure. Her dark wash designer jeans and perfect fitting layered tops made her look perfect. She had light freckles which were seldom seen below the layers of concealing make-up, and every part of her read "rich, exclusive, and beautiful."
She held a Microsoft note book with four core processor, built in webcam, the basics. She refused Mac/Apple with the exception of the iPhone and iPod. She was a windows girl.
She loves technology and when she's alone, she is a glasses wearer. Every other time she wears month long wear contacts because she likes to have them in. Sight is a major deal in her school and in everything she did. She would never let any of her friends know that she loved puzzle solving and has deciphered diary locks and alarm codes to sneak into homes, read diaries, and come back to school with the dirt on who likes who, who's having parties (namely who is and isn't invited), and any fashion rules broken.
And she looked at the car and thought to herself about her future, and more importantly what her first words to him would be.
Hi. No, too stereotypical.
Hola! No, too foreign.
What if I just look up? No, I'm supposed to be perfect, not shy.
He'll say hi, I have to respond with something!
But before Anna could finish the sentence, he walked out towards the glistening mansion.
He looked OK. Brand name tee, light wash jeans, and fresh navy converse, similar to Anna's shoe wear, in fact every week she got a new pair of brown converse so the color never washed out.
The social worker walked out to greet him.
"Hello, Riley," The worker used the most pleasant tone.
"Why do you want me here?" Riley would not have known this man except for his attendance at the funeral. His older sister he barely knew (she was 20 years older than him, and had moved out two years before he was born) and he hadn't seen in, well, what must have been, like, ten or eleven years. She died with her husband he met once, and in honesty, they had neglected to invite him to the wedding. The thought of his rich sister's baby hadn't occurred to him until he did math in his head and guessed that the teenager in front of him must have been her. What was her name again? Mary or Jane or something too practical for this day and age.
"Anna's Godfather died three years ago, and the godmother, is gone too…" He spoke a little too slowly.
"So…" Riley had a book signing in an hour; he wanted to get on with things.
"Unless you want her in a group home, she's living with you until we find a more suitable family…" He dragged on.
"You mean I foster her until you find something better?" Riley forced.
"Well, Mr. Poole, that is the idea, I'm afraid…" The social worker looked disapprovingly at Riley. His car, his clothes, his hair, none of it seemed very fatherly.
Riley let his mouth drop.
He walked twards the girl who had lost her thoughts and had forgotten anything to say and focused on not saying, "Aren't you too young to be my dad?"
He extended his hand and Anna took it, gently shaking.
"Ohayou gozaimasu. Me llamo Anna."
Crud. That was, well, idiotic. Nice going. Good morning in Japanese and my name is Anna in Spanish. What's he going to think of you now? Nerd. Talking to him in anything other than English is stupid! Anna wondered if she had underlying self-sabotage issues.
"Ohayou gozaimasu. Me llamo Riley. Es un placer," He smiled.
I think I'm going to like this girl. Two languages in one sentence. Riley smiled at the insanity of it all.
"Oh well, sorry, when I am flustered, I have a tendency to say Japanese mixed with Spanish. Not one or the other, but both together in a very strange sentence or two," She twirled her hair with her pointer finger, embarrassed.
Well there that goes. Nice job Anna, really.
"I do that when I'm confused or dazed, too. And you have a lot to be dazed about…" He seemed tired.
"I packed up my stuff, do you want me to go get the movers?" Anna tried to change the topic.
"How much stuff do you have?" Riled looked at the mansion. He need to find another treasure to buy a house big enough to fit all of the stuff.
The kid got the house. That was good to remember. He would have movers (or Ben) put everything into big boxes and stuff it in the basement. When Riley need the space or got a family, he would use that. For now, she would take Ben's room in the apartment for now, (it was on reserve for when Abby kicked him out, but he can sleep on the couch, that works.)
Anna went inside with five movers to take her bedroom to the apartment. Riley had though—no, hoped—it was a duffel bag she was getting. Two truckloads did not count as a duffel bag.
He pulled out his cell and speed dialed "1" which was Ben's cell.
"Hey Riley, what's up?" Ben responded quickly.
"I've got a big problem…" Riley sounded dumbfounded.
"How big?" Ben questioned.
"I'd say four foot, eleven inches," Riley moaned.
"What?!" Ben responded, clueless, into the phone.
"She's a short thirteen year old niece that until two and a half minutes ago I didn't remember her first name," Riley shuddered.
"And…" Ben pried.
"And, my sister died and her husband, you remember, over-aging loud talker, passed away with her…" Riley stalled, getting out the full story, or at least what he understood.
"Just the way she wanted to go…" Ben continued prompting.
"Yeah, yeah, well, her godparents are with them," Riley was now freaking out.
"So who has to take the girl?" Ben coached.
"That's the thing…" Riley gulped loudly. "They want me to do that."
"Riley, this is not funny," Ben looked at the phone.
It had been a prank call.
Ha.
"Ben…" Riley dragged his name out the way he does when Ben says something bewildering (such as announcing the theft of the Declaration of Independence; "We are going to steal the Declaration of Independence").
"Are you intoxicated by anything, drugs, alcohol, sniffing sharpies, anything," Ben searched for a way to pin this off of seriousness.
"No. I'm coming right over with it." Riley used his tone that made it clear that he disliked or felt uncomfortable about the word carrying emphasis.
"Ok," Ben stated uncomfortably.
This couldn't be happening.
Ben remembered being Riley's wind man once, listening to Riley's BORING family reunion.
He remembered Riley's overly cold and gossip-loving older sister, Megan, who always wanted to talk about the "indecency of the wear" of every other family member and of all of the loud little children. Ben had been dozing off against the side of the van as Megan talked about Aunt Suzy's gross green dress and how it didn't fit, when her husband, Harold, walked up.
"HELLO!" Harold had yelled straight into Riley's ear, and into Ben's headset (no blue tooth back then).
"Hello, Harold…" Riley really hated this guy. Rich, snobby, and loud in everyone's business; he was too similar to his wife, with whom Riley was sure he was nothing alike. Or rather, hoped he was nothing alike.
"RILEY, MY OLD BUDDY!" Riley grimaced. He was 17 years old at the time, and 25 years younger than Harold. Ben had found that funny, as he had always called Riley "kid."
"Is this the first time we've met?" Riley had snarled.
"I THINK SO… SORRY ABOUT THE WEDDING INVITE. YOU SLIPPED THE LIST. I THINK IT WAS YOUR ATTIRE, JO-KING! WE NEED TO GET MORE ORGANIZED, OLD MAN," He called back. Ben had remembered being positively embarrassed considering not getting invited to a sister's wedding.
"I'm glad I didn't go. My garb might not have been up to par," Riley hissed. "Sorry to burst your bubble, Kiddo."
Ben remembered wanting to laugh so hard he cried. By the time he was back to sanity, Riley had walked away from the man who would soon be remembered as the "over-aging loud talker." There was nothing else Riley or Ben really knew (or cared to know) about these people whose daughter they were about to take in. Except their favorite word: attire and their description: rich snobs.