The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life Read Online Free PDF

points minus 10 for each wrong guess. (Clues available if you’re willing to stick your neck out.)
•    Balloon animals—15 per
•    A doormat that reads “Welcome to Our Home”—50
•    Picture of your team with a giraffe, a gorilla, and an elephant—25 per
•    A pumpkin—30
•    A plastic plant—20
•    Rearrange the hay in Oyster Point Park—60
•    A complete set of Harry Potter books—minus 40 for being such geeks
•    An ant trap—10
•    An ant—75
•    A famous poem laid out in magnetic words on a fridge—75
•    An orchid—20
•    A leaf in an autumnal color—40
•    An empty bottle of shampoo—5
•    A three-hole punch binder—5
•    Challenge the Yeti to a game of hangman—1
•    A receipt from Ben’s for exactly $4.89—40
•    A scratch ’n’ sniff that smells like piña colada—35
•    A piña colada (for comparison, of course)—35
•    A B EWARE OF D OG sign—10
•    A love letter to or from someone who is not on your team—50
•    A bag of sand—25
•    We like gazebos. A lot. Show us your own gazebo love—10 per
•    Sheet music to a movie theme song of your choice—20
•    A divided dinner plate—10
•    A Ouija board—45
•    A toy made in the U.S. of A.—35
•    A children’s book—20
•    A self-portrait drawn with pastels—25
•    Play “Twinkle, Twinkle” on a toy piano and e-mail us the video—75
•    A sheet of white letter paper—25, but deductions for any wrinkles, crinkles, folds, or tears
•    Minty Frikkin’ Mullet Lip Balm—75
•    An unopened cable bill—50
•    The Yeti has caught a chill. Can you help him out?—50
•    A Hello Kitty cat—30
•    Sit by the dock of a bay. Or lake. We are not picky about this one—30
•    A recipe for chocolate chip banana bread—5
•    Homemade chocolate chip banana bread—55
•    A goldfish (alive)—65
•    Put your name in lights—150
•    A stretched penny—50
•    A stone-cold lady near the lake in the sky will amaze you with a clue—1
•    A Pictionary card and paper so that you can draw for the judges for points—35
•    A twelve-pack of the quicker picker upper—10
•    Shuck a Mary on the half shell—100
•    A watercolor painting that includes both a flower and a bird and is not painted by anyone on your team (yes, we need proof)—100
•    A postcard from New Orleans—75

3
     
    “A BRICK. A DUSTPAN. A TWO-BY-FOUR. A B EWARE OF D OG sign.” From his tone it was clear Dez thought we were all idiots to not have thought of Home Depot right away, too, and maybe we were, though I’d barely registered anything on the list yet because my head was in a tizzy over points and clues and Barbone and Grace and everything.
    He said, “Right there, that’s like sixty-five points or something. And my dad’s working today. He can help us get in and out fast.”
    I wasn’t sure it was the best plan—it certainly wasn’t the most
exciting
or
extreme
plan—but Home Depot, where Dez’s dad had been a manager ever since his hardware store had gone out of business, was pretty close and we could use the drive time to get to know the list and then to figure out our next move. We needed to figure out how to get to 1250 the fastest way possible. “Okay,” I said. “Home Depot it is.”
    Patrick changed lanes and said, “Affirmative.”
    Dez said, “I’ll make a list of everything we can get,” and started to scribble on the back of one of his pages as the car drifted down Amboy Road, a winding mix of old brick houses and small strip malls, and then past the ShopRiteshopping center, where my family had done our food shopping for as long as I could remember, all the way back to when I was riding in the cart being pushed by my