Chapter 02 - Setback

“She figured it out, didn’t she?” Emily’s roommate Anna asks, shifting on the couch to rest her head on her fist.

 Outside, the barren trees shiver in the chilly December wind. I’m home for a few weeks for Christmas and New Years 2012, and I’ve already hit a snag.

“Yeah,” I tell her, slumping lower in my chair. “She figured it out. One lousy hint was all it took.”

Let’s recap -and perhaps rewind- here.

Approximately one month ago, I began plotting a preliminary surprise for Emily. A test run, if you will. The plan seemed simple to me - come up with a suitably nice experience for Emily’s Christmas present, and lead her on a merry chase to discern its identity. Clever, right? Take her to a place we’ve never been? Throw in lots of creative trappings to confound and entrance her, right?

Wrong.

“Give me a hint,” Emily had said.

It was over the phone, but I could tell that pouty tone in her voice. In person, she’d be giving me The Eyes. I was powerless against The Eyes, because they invariably came accompanied by a puppy dog pout and that subtle inward slouch of the shoulders implying “certainly you’d tell little old me?”.

“No,” I’d told her, throwing the last of my willpower onto my mental campfire like wet tinder. “If I give you a hint, you’ll figure it out.”

“Pleeeeeeeeeaaase,” she’d pleaded. “Just a little hint. You’re so creative with these things. I just want to know a little bit.”

“N-no,” I attempted, but my resolve had cracked. That devious Emily! She knew how to get through my armor, undermining it by playing to my desire for praise.

“I promise I won’t tell you if I figure it out.”

“Aaaargh,” I said, through one layer of clenched teeth and another of my hand over my mouth.

“ONE hint. One really obscure one.” I thought for a while on this one - it had to be tricky and it had to be obscure enough to have multiple possibilities. A solution struck me, a convoluted answer that would no doubt frustrate her.

I had it. “We are going to a place we have been before, but never in person.”

Ha! That would do it. See, metaphorically, we had been to the Harry Potter universe, because we would read it to each other before bedtime each night. (Or, more accurately, I would read it to her, in radio-melodrama fashion, doing all the voices, while she fell asleep.) But, of course, we had never been to the theme park in Orlando, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

It was the perfect riddle.

The Sphinx herself would choke on this one, I thought.

“I know where we’re going,” came her reply, smirking straight through the phone. Her tone told me everything - it was over. She’d figured it out.

*****

Fast forward to the present. I’m sitting on the couch, glumly sifting through Anna’s collection of trading cards, registering little of each one.

“This, Anna, is why I cannot be trusted as the sole orchestrator of this thing,” I tell her.

“Yeah, that was a pretty bad move you pulled there,” Anna says. Ever sympathetic, that one.

“Which is why I need your help, Anna. I’ve got a plan and I know you’re a lot better than I am at keeping Em in the dark. I am the world’s worst liar.”

Anna nods, grinning. “Yeah, you kind of are.”

“Then we need to get to work,” I tell her. “You’ll be my first accomplice.”

I pause, mostly for effect.

“We’ve got about ten months.”