The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sunny, Summer, 1986

Bishan was another. She sometimes accompanied them on their dates, but the fifteen-year-old was just as eager to ditch them as they were to ditch her, so she and Sunny arranged to drop her off to see her friends, while she kept up the facade that she was with them when in reality they'd booked a motel room.

Looking back, Sunny wondered at how young Bishan was to be going off on her own with no supervision, and that it had never occurred to him to be worried about her; it had only been five years, after all, since Clifford Olson's reign of terror had ended. How ironic, then, that Bishan's demise came at the hands the man her family trusted most with her safety.

Bishan didn't ditch them today, though. She was just as eager to attend Expo as he was, enthralled by the pavilions from all around the world. She begged to go on the Scream Machine and the Minolta Space Tower rides, and he was reminded of the years they went to the PNE, and he and Tej screamed like kids at being spun around like laundry in a washing machine. They visited the Great Hall of Ramses II and marvelled at the treasures of ancient civilization.

There was no India pavilion for them to visit, but Bishan seemed inordinately interested in the Japan pavilion, not just because of the advanced technology on display (they were winning the automobile wars, to Sunny's amazement,) but for some other reason she didn't divulge. At the pavilion exit, they got their passports stamped. Every pavilion had a unique passport stamp that was highly prized; Japan's had an image of Mount Fuji, but Sunny's favourite was the Yukon pavilion, which sported a single engine bush airplane, "Queen of the Yukon." 

When they found a place to sit and eat, Bishan said, "I wonder where Lauren is right now."

"Lauren?" Sunny said, surprised. "What makes you ask?"

Bishan shrugged. "She was nice to me. She taught me aikido even though Mom forbade it. She was kind of cool. We had fun."

"Well, I think Lauren said she was moving to Burnaby," he said, "but I don't know where."

"Who was Lauren?" Tej asked with furrowed brow. "You never told me about her."

Sunny smiled mischievously, sensing jealousy, which pleased him no end. If she'd peered into his brain a few years ago, she might have had a right to be worried. Now, though, Lauren and Rachel were both very far away, geographically and figuratively. "She was a girl I grew up with back in Queensborough."

"Oh, yeah," Tej said flatly. 

Her tone demanded more explanation. "I grew up with four friends on Lawrence Street... well, first there were three friends, Joe, Al and Rachel, for about seven years, and then Lauren moved from Richmond to our street, and it was like the closing of a circle. The extra girl filled in all the gaps, it seemed; Rachel bloomed in her presence, and we had more adventures in those years than in all the years before. Rachel and Lauren came up with the idea for the Lawrence Street Detective Club--"

"The what?" Tej asked, chuckling.

"It was a business venture where we found things for people for money. It wasn't very successful; at most we had two or three paid jobs."

"That sounds cute," Tej said. "What did you find?"

"A lost dog. One time an older woman paid us to basically landscape her backyard under the premise of having lost something in there."

Tej burst out laughing. "Oh, well, as long as you got paid."

"And one time Rachel worked out a plan with the father of a girl whose dog died... actually, we met Lauren over that dog... to present a lookalike dog to her and make like we found the original dog."

Tej's mouth dropped open in amazement. "And she believed you?"

Sunny shrugged. "To be fair, she was younger than us, and we never heard from her or her father again, so she must have been happy."