Disclaimer: The characters of the Stephanie Plum series belong to Janet Evanovich and are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Challenge: Rosa’s Week V Challenge: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Young Carlos And The Surprise Party
By TT
He freely admitted he’d had his doubts as to whether or not they should be doing this, but Celia was so excited by the idea that she overruled him and all of their siblings and cousins.
His parents were going to pick up his grandparents at the airport. All the other adults had gone with them as well, leaving the children in the care of the older cousins.
Carlos’ mother had called a few minutes ago saying the plane would be delayed. Now they had an additional two hours to wait for Abuelo and Abuela to arrive and Celia had talked them into preparing a surprise party.
Right now she and the other older female cousins were making a cake – the one item Carlos’ parents hadn’t prepared.
His younger cousins were drawing pictures and the older male cousins were climbing furniture under the direction of some of his female cousins. He and his two other cousins about the same age had been put in charge of painting the welcome sign.
The painting hadn’t been going too badly until his youngest cousin, who was just learning to walk, toddled over to where they were painting. Somehow she had gotten hold of one of the jars of poster paint and had flung it all over the living room where, against Carlos’ recommendation, they had been painting.
When the paint was gone, she had thrown the small container at one of his older cousins who protested and blamed one of the others painting.
Knowing what was coming next, Carlos had slowly backed away to a safe corner where he could observe.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to join in, he did, but he knew his parents well enough to know that they would not appreciate the paint all over their new, white, living room rug or the freshly painted walls.
As he watched the streamers that had been hung begin to fall from their position on the ceiling and the furniture get moved, bumped and knocked over, his nose began to twitch.
Sneezing once, he looked around for the source of irritation. His eyes widened in horror as he saw a wisp of smoke curl out from under the door to the kitchen.
His curiosity overcoming his trepidation, he moved to the door and pushed it open, only to start choking as smoke overwhelmed him.
“Get it out!” he heard his sister scream.
“It’s too hot!” one of his cousins replied.
“Is it on fire?” another of his cousins asked.
Carlos could just make out the shape of the fire extinguisher in her hands.
Deciding he had heard enough, he let the door closed and slowly began making his way to the front of the house.
He managed to slip, unnoticed, past the chaos in the living room, trying very hard not to see the little ones sticking their hands in pools of paint and pressing them on the walls his parents finished painting last weekend.
Reaching the front door, he slipped outside and sat on the top step to wait.
A few minutes later his parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents pulled into the driveway and got out of their vehicles.
Standing, he smiled at his grandparents, ran down the stairs and too the driveway to greet them.
“It is wonderful to see you,” his Abuela was saying in Spanish just before kissing him on the forehead.
“Where is everyone else?” Carlos’ father asked.
Suddenly finding the ground interesting, Carlos discovered he couldn’t answer. When he saw his mother start for the house, he followed along, knowing he would be in trouble with the rest.
He stood next to his mother as she opened the door. His eyes widened in horror as he saw how much worse things had gotten since he’d gone outside.
The poster paint was no just on the carpet and floor anymore. It had made its way onto the furniture and the children.
Celia and his older female cousins came out of the kitchen, releasing a cloud of smoke to the rest of the house as they did so. What shocked him, though, were the small globs of white foam in their hair, on their faces and on their clothes.
“What is going on here?” Carlos’ mother demanded in her best ‘Mom’ voice.
Everything stopped instantly and all the children looked at her.
The absolute silence reigned for several second before Celia offered a forced smile and replied, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Present
Opening the door to their 7th floor apartment for Stephanie who had finally been cleared to come home after spending a week in the hospital recovering, Ranger stopped dead in his tracks at the sight that met him.
When he had left, his apartment had been pristine – except for a few bits of Stephanie’s things here and there. Now… Now he had no words to describe what he was seeing.
He counted eight different Rangemen, Lula, Connie, Grandma Mazur and Bob the dog.
Lula was fighting with Bob, trying to get something away from him. A far too spry looking Grandma was chasing after a flour covered Ram. Every surface in the kitchen area seemed to be coated in a fine, white layer of, he assumed, flour. The timer on the oven was beeping while Connie’s appeared in the kitchen for a moment before slipping and, obviously falling. Two of his men were holding onto the counter and trying not to slip while the three others were in a tangled heap on the floor, one was trying to mop up paint that had spilled on the floor and the other two were standing on chairs, holding something near the ceiling.
“What is going on here?” he bellowed in his best command voice.
All activity stopped instantly. He felt Stephanie move up beside him and absently put his arm around her to help support her.
When no one seemed to want to answer, he added, “I’m waiting.”
Lester, who was one of the men standing on a chair simply replied, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
End