??? ????? ?? ???? ????? - tsotb + tdg

“Hey.”

Kemi peered curiously over Gus’ shoulder and eyed what he was furiously writing. “You haven’t added the stuff about Mike’s holiday yet,” she stated, “Why not?”

Gus turned to glare at her, scowling fiercely. “I don’t want to!” he said harshly, “Everything will go wrong with him gone.”

With a small hum of acknowledgement, Kemi nodded her head and turned back to her book. She was rereading her small paperback copy of the Jurassic Park novel once again, most likely for the 20th time. How she never got bored, what with knowing exactly what would happen next, nobody knew. With her free hand, she held tightly to her pink Triceratops plush: Tonto. When she started muttering out some of the dialogue from her favourite character, Alan Grant, Gus grumbled and snapped at her to keep quiet.

“I told you my metal detector wasn’t a waste of money!” cried Johnny, stomping into the room from the garden.

With him, Frank and a suspiciously filthy and obnoxiously large metal box entered. Johnny dropped the metal box onto the dining room table with a loud thud, causing Kemi to wince and tighten her grip on Tonto. Gus, ever the observant, noticed, but he had more important things to focus on like his notebook. A suspicious look crossed one of the older boy’s — Rick’s — face as he stared at it.

“Why? What have you found?” Rick asked.

“We don’t know. We couldn’t open it,” Frank said. He stepped closer to the table to put down the metal detector.

Some of the other Elmtree (better known as the Dumping Ground) residents gathered by the table to eye the strange new artifact that had been discovered. Kemi frowned at it; though intrigued, she felt a slight irritation as they’d for one, placed it on the dining table when she had no idea where it came from (how unhygienic!) and for two, placed it right by her seat! Now Kemi would have to clean her spot twice to make sure all those unheard of germs stayed away.

“It’s not clean,” Kemi said, hopping down from her stool beside Gus and walking to join the herd. She placed her face inches away from the filthy container, saying, “Look at all that dirt!”

“Well we didn’t get it from a luxury hotel. It was dug up!” Frank said, shaking his head.

“Well I’m off!”

Everyone looked over to the other side of the kitchen where Mike began dancing, a huge grin plastered across his face. Kemi glanced between him and Gus. After Jody asked to come with Mike, everyone broke into a thunderous chorus of ‘I want to come’ and ‘Don’t bring them!’ The noise made Kemi’s head hurl like a rowing boat in an untamed storm. She shut her book and covered her ears, quickly returning to her stool.

“Read them and weep,” Mike declared, showing off his singular ticket to the Caribbeans. “Now, no loud music, no kitchen experiments, no snail funfairs…” at that last note, he stared pointedly at Kemi.

Kemi slowly uncovered her ears and crossed her arms. Behind her, Johnny and Carmen sniggered. It was one time! When the rain gets so horrible that the news channel says the entire neighbourhood might flood, all she could do was bring as many snails inside to keep them safe. The funfair was just to make sure they were actually having fun because there weren’t many snail-ey things to do inside the Dumping Ground.

“...And most importantly, don’t wind up the relief care-worker. Please?”

“As if we would do something like that,” Carmen innocently smiled.

With a shrug, Mike placed a woven fedora hat on his lacking-hair head and began to sing Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean. He danced a little jig and began walking out the kitchen before pausing, having realised none of the kids were paying him any mind. Kemi and Gus were busy with their books and separate tasks, meanwhile the others were trying to open the metal box Frank and Johnny had found. To that, Mike feigned sadness.