Zoey XXIV (Patreon)

Zoey balanced a parsley sprig on top of the mound of wild rice risotto on Nana’s plate. The grains steamed slightly, looking beautiful beside the neatly stacked asparagus and crispy, oven-baked chicken, and Zoey smiled proudly as she placed it in front of her grandma. Ajax had already gotten his own plate, so Zoey grabbed her own, and sat down across from her cousin.

Nana shook her head. “I’ll sure miss your cooking when I leave, Zoey.”

Zoey grinned and actually dared tease her grandma a little. “You don’t want to go back to spaghetti squash?”

The old woman wrinkled her nose. “I don’t make that at home. I just read about it in Better Homes and Gardens. Lord have mercy, don’t those people know that just because it has spaghetti in the name, that doesn’t make it pasta?”

Ajax and Zoey exchanged glances, but somehow neither of them laughed as they applied themselves to their plates. The food was good, though Zoey was pretty sure she’d overcooked the risotto slightly, and no one spoke as they ate. Just as Nana set her fork down beside her plate with a satisfied sigh, a chime filled the room.

All three of them reached into their pockets and pulled out their screens, though Nana immediately pushed hers back in, looking flustered. Glancing between her grandchildren, she said, “Didn’t your parents teach you that phones are supposed to be off during meals?”

Ajax flicked his screen off, and deliberately laid it down beside his plate. “It’s a screen, Nana.”

She snorted. “Phones are screens, TVs are screens, monitors are screens… How do you all know which one you’re talking about? There are different words for those things for a reason.”

Rolling his eyes, Ajax said, “They all do the same thing now, Nana. Don’t be so mid.”

Zoey tuned the bickering out as her eyes scanned the message on her screen.

@BFAndrews: I think I figured out this puzzle box, but I need your help. Are you available?

Pushing her chair back, Zoey said, “I really need to check something. May I be excused?”

One of Nana’s wispy white eyebrows lifted, and she said, “Meal’s over, and Ajax is doing clean-up. I reckon I could even help, just this once.”

Ajax looked wary, but Zoey just nodded. She stuffed her phone in her pocket, picked up her plate and silverware, and put them in the sink before darting out the kitchen door.

The box! How had she forgotten the box? But she had. Completely and utterly. Obviously, Bridget hadn’t, however, and her new step-sister had figured it out before Zoey had even looked at hers. Which, duh, Bridget was the genius in the family, but why did she need Zoey’s help?

As soon as Zoey closed her bedroom door behind her, she pulled out her screen again and touched Bridget’s message. When the option menu popped open, Zoey tapped the ‘call’ icon, and a faint ringing noise came from the device as Zoey turned on the video.

Bridget answered, face flushed and eyes bright as she looked out of the small screen. “Do you have your box?” she said.

Zoey nodded, holding up the filigreed item, which she’d taken from the snack box under her bed. She’d thought she’d be getting into it constantly, but once Nana let her do the cooking, there’d been no need, and Zoey had forgotten the whole thing.

Bridget grinned. “Perfect! I think Mom and Marcus set this whole thing up so we’d have to do this together. I helped design your box, so I know how to solve it, and I’m pretty sure you know how to open mine, too.” She held up a box that looked more like a child’s lunchbox than the delicate jewelry box Zoey held.

“Okay, now, find Khor on yours,” Bridget said, and Zoey turned the object over in her hands until she found the war-goat, his twisting horns a dead giveaway that the stylized animal was meant to be him. When she held him up, Bridget nodded. “Carefully turn him so he’s facing Sumi.”

Zoey pushed and twisted the goat, but he wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, she pulled at him with her fingernails, and his whole body lifted away from the surface of the box with a quiet click. She gently grasped his chest, and he spun easily, his nose rotating until it was pointing toward a beautifully enameled black, pink, and blue spider.

“Got it!” she said.

Bridget walked her through the complex series of steps that followed, until Khor, Sumi, Silus, Aspen, Sarave, Juniper, Nuisance, and both unicorns were all raised and looking at each other. “Good,” Bridget said. “Now find you.”

Zoey blinked. She’d examined every side of the little chest by now, and she hadn’t seen anything that looked like Rouge. As she turned it over and over in her hands, however, she realized that the raised sections weren’t just oddly shaped because they were stylized. No, they were puzzle pieces. Gingerly, she wiggled Silus, who was standing, with her wings folded behind her. Looking with new eyes, she saw that the little bat was shaped like a heart.

Each of the pieces could move. Some just a little, but others as if they were on an invisible track, pulling closer to surround Silus. As Khor, whose twisted horns formed Rouge’s Mambele, clicked into place, the lock released, and the lid of the box jumped. Zoey reached to open it, but stopped as Bridget said, “Wait! Please?”

Looking over, Zoey felt her cheeks heat. That’s right. Bridget had asked for Zoey’s help, and then given her own freely, without conditions. It wouldn’t be fair for Zoey to open the box without helping the other woman first.

“Sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “I was excited. But how can I help you? I don’t think I ever would have figured this one out on my own, so if yours is anywhere near as hard, I’m probably not going to be much use.”

Bridget’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, I think you’re the only person who can help me.” She lifted the pseudo-lunchbox again. “I remember you using a lunchbox that looked kind of like this, and I found some characters from Kimi ni Todoke on here.” She pointed to the heads of a boy and girl who looked like the main characters from one of Zoey’s favorite anime series. Then she turned the box, revealing more and more anime-style characters covering its surface. Bridget pushed on Sawako’s head, and a very faint click could be heard.

“When I push on the girls, they click. I’m pretty sure it’s a combination lock, but I can’t figure out what order they should be in. I’ve tried all kinds of patterns; release date, the date the manga they were based on was released, alphabetical order by title, kana chart order by title, alphabetical order by main character’s name, kana chart by name…” Bridget trailed off, sighing. “I even tried making sentences out of the words or kanji, but I’ve gotten nowhere. There are twenty of them, which means there are over a million possible combinations, if we assume I have to use them all, which isn’t a given.”

Shaking her head, Bridget admitted, “I was about to give up when Hank asked me how you were doing on your box, and I realized what our parents are doing.”

“Making us work together,” Zoey said, rolling her eyes. “That’s so them. Which means your box is probably something very specific to me, or me and my dad. Can I see it again?”

Bridget held her lunchbox-box up to the camera again, and Zoey leaned in, squinting. She really needed to get a bigger screen. This one was fine when she was younger, and it fit in her pocket, but so would one of the snazzy roll-up models, and it would be larger, too.

She sat back, shaking her head. “Do you have a list of the anime? I recognize all of those, but I’ve seen so many, they kind of blur together.”

Bridget leaned over, reaching for something out of sight. Zoey’s screen chirped. She tapped the notification, and a chart popped up. Twenty lines of data; an image, followed by a title in English, presumably the same title in kanji, then a name, the name in kanji, then date of publication, the title of the manga on which the anime was based… Altogether, the list was twenty-three columns wide. How much time had Bridget spent trying to figure this out? As Zoey scanned the list, she realized that not only had she seen all of the anime on it, she had seen this exact list before, just not in this order.

When she was twelve, she’d asked for ‘anime stuff’ for her birthday. When her dad pressed her for something more specific, she’d given him a list of her favorite anime. She’d been deep in an anime binge at the time, and the list had been long. In fact, it contained exactly twenty series. Of course, that had been four years ago, and she’d hardly watched any anime since she started playing Veritas Online, so her memory of the list and the anime on it was vague at best.

She still had it though. Her dad had thought it was hilarious to make a sort of birthday advent calendar. For twenty days, he’d given her one cheesy knick-knack after another, starting from the bottom of the list and working his way up. She had no idea how much time and money he’d spent finding and importing some of the things from Japan, but she had dutifully oooed and ahhed over them all until she reached the real prize; a vintage Kuronuma Sawako figure, still in the original box. That figure now sat on the shelf above Zoey’s bed, and the list was tucked under the flap of the box.

Jumping up, Zoey crossed the small room and scrambled onto the bed, snagging the list from its hiding place. Unfolding it, she stared at the scrawled list of titles. She didn’t even remember some of these.

She returned to her seat at her desk and waved the paper triumphantly. “Okay. Should we start at one and work our way down, or twenty and go up?”

Bridget shrugged. “What do you think?”

Zoey grinned. “Bottom up, for sure. Dad always likes to save the best for last. Find Hayame Sora from They Said No One Could Eat A Dungeon…”

Nineteen anime later, Bridget’s box popped open, and both of them whooped in triumph. Exchanging grins, they set their hands on the lids of their respective boxes, nodded at each other, and lifted them. Sharp cracks filled the air as the miniature firecrackers inside exploded, and confetti rained down around their ears.

Zoey looked up, meeting Bridget’s eyes, which almost exactly matched the blue of the delicate rice paper baby rattles that had come to rest on her shoulders. “A brother,” Zoey breathed. “The first boy. Oh, is he going to be spoiled or what?”

“So spoiled,” Bridget agreed, a broad smile splitting her face. “I wonder if he’ll look like your dad. Though everybody else in your family is tiny, and Mom’s not exactly big, so maybe he’ll be shorter, like your Uncle Milo?”

“Your uncle now, too,” Zoey corrected.

Bridget looked down. “Oh, I don’t-” She bit her lip. “I’m grown up. I don’t think your family will just-”

Zoey stared at her. “Of course you’re part of our family now! It doesn’t matter how old you are. My dad is your step-dad, so you get the whole collection of aunt, uncle, cousin, Nana… That’s how it works. There’s no escaping now.” She started to laugh maniacally when she saw the tear hovering on Bridget’s lashes, and stopped, feeling panic rise up in her chest.

Reaching toward the screen, she quickly said, “I mean, if you want to acknowledge us. If not, we can just be the crazy family you pretend not to know in public. No one will hold it against you.”

Bridget looked up, a watery smile transforming her pretty face into a beautiful one. “I’ve never had a real family before. Besides Mom, I mean. Her parents died when I was too little to remember, and I never met my dad, or his dad. They didn’t want us, and we didn’t need them.” A stubborn look Zoey had seen on Aspen and Bree’s faces more than once chased the smile away. It returned a moment later, however.

“I’d be proud to be part of your family, Zoey,” Bridget said. “For real, not just on paper. If that’s okay.”

Zoey lifted her hands and did something she would deny to the end of time. Touching her fingertips together, she curved them into the shape of a heart, letting her thumbs form the bottom point. Tilting this to the side, she gave a goofy smile and batted her lashes at Bridget. “We love you!”

Bridget burst out laughing, but returned the ridiculous gesture. “I love you, too. And our new little brother.”

“Oh, yeah,” Zoey grinned. “He’s going to be a lucky kid.”

“Yeah,” Bridget said. “He really is.”