Page 52 of Donut Disaster
Cookie barks up a storm, chasing Anika around the stage. His dark, fluffy fur takes on a blue hue under the harsh stage lights.
Anika comes to our end of the stage and I stand and wave in hopes she’ll see me, and sure enough she squints in my direction before giving a wild wave back. She traipses back behind the curtains, and I sit back down.
“That was surprising,” I say. “I’m pretty sure no matter how wealthy I ever become, I won’t feel the need to spin from my teeth while being lowered from the ceiling in an effort to keep me ironically grounded.”
Noah shakes his head. “That’s because having a different perspective in life has grounded you. Anika was raised in a bubble.”
“Sounds like it.”
The next act comes up, a magician who saws a woman in half and an entire plethora of bright blue butterflies flutter up out of her. Once he’s through, the house lights go up, and it looks as if it’s intermission.
A girl waves to us from the far corner of the room. It’s Anika with Cookie bouncing by her side as they make their way over.
“Here they come,” I whisper.
Noah takes up my hand. “We need to get to the nexus of Cassie’s secret.”
“Good thinking.”
Cookie jumps up on me, and his girth nearly knocks me out of my chair. “I brought her right to you, Lottie.”
I give him a quick pat over the head.
“I know you!” Anika chirps as both Noah and I stand to greet her.
Cookie barks. “Ask her if she did it. I’ll bite her ankles to get an answer out of her if I have to.”
I pull her into a warm embrace. “You were fantastic! Who would have thought we’d bump into you here of all places?”
“Are you celebrating something special?”
Noah wraps an arm around me. “We’re getting to know one another again.”
Cookie tips his head thoughtfully to the side. “What happened to the judge?”
I choose to ignore him for now.
“Ooh.” She waggles her brows my way. “There’s nothing more romantic than rekindling a relationship. I hope you make it last forever.”
“I hope so, too.” Noah cleverly excuses himself to use the restroom, and I invite Anika to sit with me.
“How in the world did you end up here?” I ask as gently as possible. Anika is a sweet, young thing—or at least she would be if she knocked off the sexual sideshow.
“It’s just for fun. My father was a gymnast, so naturally I was enrolled in gymnastics at a young age.”
“I didn’t know your father was a gymnast.” I was a huge fan of Jimmy Love when I was in high school. I studied his band as if it were a God-given subject assigned to me by the Honey Hollow Unified School District.
“He and my mother both. They owned a big studio and taught classes. This is my way of honoring them. It was mostly my dad’s deal, but my mother went along with it.”
“That’s so sweet.” I don’t even know how to segue to Cassie from that.
“That’s how I met Cassie.” She nods and I let out a sigh of relief. “We took Sky- robics and Trampo-leanclasses together. That’s how I met Morgan, too. He came to a few classes.”
“So you and Cassie were friends first?”
“More like acquaintances. But I kept running into her in the strangest places.”
“Me, too. I ran into her in Fallbrook the other day. She was my dealer.”