Return of the Stinker
“So,” Carrie was saying to Linnea Thursday night, “guess who’s coming home tomorrow?”
“I already know,” Linnea said. “The stinker.”
Yes, Rose had returned from Florida early Friday morning. Mom, Collette, Carrie-Bri, and Puck went to pick her up from the Tecumseh’s. As she opened the back hatch of the mini-van to load in her bags, Puck saw her for the first time.
“Squeal!” he gasped in amazed delight, louder than Collette had ever heard him do so.
His arms and legs flailed everywhere in excitement.
“Hi, buddy!” Rose greeted him as she got into the car.
“Ah!” Carrie cried at her.
“What?”
“You look terrible!”
“What?”
“Your hair…”
“Oh,” Rose laughed, pressing down the bush that was the back of her head. “Well, I haven’t taken a shower in, like, three days.”
“Well, tell us everything, Rose,” Mom said. “You had fun?”
“Oh, yeah. It rained all Wednesday, and we shopped. But then we were on the beach. And we went to the Hurricane Oyster Bar. I bought a shirt – it was amazing.”
Back at home, she shuffled through her pictures, many of which included the deadly Man of War, which had washed up, dead, on the shore.
“They put a flag up when there’s too many jellyfish in the water,” she said. “I wish I was still in Florida. No offense.”