“Alright, your time is –”
Cassie cut Ben off quickly, looking up from the slip of paper in her hand. “Gimme a second!” He sighed, amused but resigned. She glanced back at the paper, wrinkled her nose and crumpled it, dropping into the other bowl on the table. “Okay.” She nodded once decisively, turning to the whiteboard and picking up a marker. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Ben raised the hand holding the timer and brought down the other one sharply even as he pressed the button. “Go!”
Immediately, Cassie began to draw what looked like a few wide Ms together. Behind her, Mags furrowed her eyebrows. “Are those – birds?” Cassie turned, eyes widened and she pointed at Mags. “Bird!” Mags leaned forward in her seat, excitement playing on her features. “Birds, birds – birds of a feather?” Cassie shook her head even as she turned back to the whiteboard. On the other side of the so-called birds, she drew one singular wide M. “Bird?” Mags now sounded confused. Cassie nodded even as she continued, drawing a mess of lines below the lone M.
“Sticks and stones,” Drew intoned from where he sat, shaking his head with a laugh as Mags – without looking – threw a pillow in his direction. “That’s just a bunch of lines, Cass. There ain’t no way –”
But neither of the women were paying him much attention. Neither was Ben, focused instead on his timer. Leighton and Nora and Kev were holding back their laughter at the faces he continued to make as Cassie pointed first at her birds, than the single bird and drew a circle around the latter. “Bird,” Mags repeated. Cassie drew another circle almost insistently. “One bird.” Cassie whirled her head around to stare at Mags. “One bird? One –” Cassie pointed at the mess of lines at the bottom and Mags stood up suddenly and shouted: “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest!”
“YES!” Cassie exclaimed, dropping the marker with a clatter onto the table. She laughed, relieved and excited as Mags squealed and reached out to pull her into a hug.
At the side, Drew sputtered. “How the fuck did you get that from a buncha lines?”
Again, neither women were paying him much attention, too busy laughing and squealing at having gotten the answer before running out of time. Ben, hand with the timer now down, patted Drew on the shoulder in commiseration. “We really need to stop letting those two be on the same team.”
an excerpt from a story i'm not writing
