Love at First Fight by Sandhya Menon

Author:Sandhya Menon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2020-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Pinky & Samir

Pinky and Samir puttered, just poking around their area of the room, not really saying much except to argue about ridiculous things (for example, do otters really hold hands while asleep, or is that a myth?) for about ten minutes while the other teams seemed to race ahead. If Pinky had to guess, Samir was just as annoyed/uncomfortable at having to be on a team with her as she was with him.

Samir rattled the padlock on the treasure chest. “Wow. It’s deceptively heavy. I thought it was going to be one of those cheesy Halloween things.” He frowned at it. “Looks weird, though.”

“So, I guess we begin by trying to unlock it?” Pinky tapped her foot, then put her hair up in a bun using the hair tie on her wrist before undoing it again.

Her level of discomfort at this whole situation was making her sweat. It wasn’t like Samir was a creep or anything. Actually, it was the opposite. He was so chivalrous and gentlemanly, she wanted to vomit. Or run away. Pinky wasn’t sure what to do with a chivalrous boy. Her boyfriends were always rough around the edges, like twenty-year-old cars that backfired and made strange grating noises when you shifted gears. Whereas Samir was more like a reliable, solid, shiny Volvo.

Not that he was her boyfriend. Or that she was even thinking of him as a potential boyfriend. God, could you imagine what a disaster that would be? Ha.

Samir chose that moment to look up at her, oblivious to her internal turmoil. He frowned. “What?”

“Nothing. Why? What do you mean, ‘What?’ ” Pinky heard the defensive lilt in her voice.

“You’re staring at me.”

“No, I’m not. I’m staring… over you.” She looked desperately at the blank wall beyond him. “At the patterns in that wall. Pretty sure I saw a face—a creepy one.”

Samir raised one thick eyebrow. “Okay…” He stood and brushed down his dark jeans. “I don’t see a way to unlock the chest. So maybe we should be looking for clues.”

“Right. Clues.” Pinky studied the setup around the chest. It sat on a small platform, on which were piled several layers of velveteen fabric in various jewel tones. All around the platform were LED candles, flickering moodily and throwing shadows everywhere. Behind the chest, against the wall, was a set of three bookshelves, which contained a few dusty volumes of books, small potted fake plants, more LED candles, and random trinkets of decor like her mom had at home, although these were all nautical-themed. “There’s not a whole lot to go on.” Pinky walked toward the bookshelves and studied a ship in a bottle. Her dad had gone through a phase where he’d made, like, thirty of these in a month, given half of them away to friends and relatives (the other half Pinky’s mom had banished to his study), and then never made one again. “These shelves all have red stickers on them, though. Amy said not to touch anything with a red sticker on it.

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