Before the Road Trip

## Characters

* Little Ace
* Owen
* Prince Toast
* IcySky

## Chapter One

When the glorious last-ever bell of the dreaded fourth grade rang out in the tense school hall, a monstrous flood of students stormed all open doorways and shoved their way to the front door. Backpacks were flattened while still on their wearers’ backs. Pencil lead-crusted claws left smudged gray imprints on the tile floor. For the first time in the entire week, everyone could breathe.

Little Ace was almost caught in the fray, but she managed to drag herself away from the commotion and into the empty doorway of the counselor’s room. There she waited for just a number of seconds before her best friend Owen came sprinting into view from the fourth graders’ hall.

“School’s out! School’s out!” they chanted. Side by side with the other fourth grade lizards, Owen raced like a hurricane wave in Little Ace’s direction. The younger hatchling was so busy watching in the school lobby that it took her by surprise when Owen grabbed her by the backpack and practically flung her out the main doors.

“Eek!” Little Ace squeaked while Owen guided himself and his friend — though not without struggle — out of the rip current that was the rest of the students. Since their houses were in close proximity to the elementary school, allowing Little Ace to go there and wait for Owen each day, she and Owen usually walked home and were therefore spared the violence of summer break-fueled younglings exerting their energy on the poor bus drivers.

Owen twirled Little Ace around in the air once the screaming and cheering dwindled down to a mere 140% of their ears’ sound acceptance capacity. “No school!” he cried. Little Ace echoed him and they both began laughing in the grass.

“What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get home, Owen?” asked Little Ace.

Tapping his chin, Owen stood there unnaturally quietly for a moment before shocking Little Ace with a sudden and certain “I’m gonna *EAT!!*”

The grass tickled the bottom of Little Ace’s feet. “I need to pack my new flip flops when I get home,” she said, scratching beneath her claws. “There’s a lot to pack… I almost forgot!”

“Oh, yeah!” Owen said. She fell back into the grass and swiped a swathe of dead golden blades aside with her tail. “You have the big trip tomorrow!”

To a lizard Little Ace’s age, a vacation could be more than just time away from home. The Elsker family’s annual road trip to the shores of Sandy City came with a set of traditions for her, things that she always made sure to do no matter what else changed…

She figured she must have been muttering quietly aloud, because Owen then said slyly, “Remind me what traditions…?”

Little Ace traced a claw over her dark-gray nose. “I have to have my pineapple sunglasses. We got them five years ago when my dads first took me to Sandy City.”

Then, she unslung her modest purple backpack from one shoulder and patted the back of it, which was stuffed to the zipper with pencils and papers and who knew what else. “There are a few notebooks I can’t forget. Every year I’ve left a drawing in there of a bunch of different points near the shore.

“Last but not least…” Little Ace looped the backpack back over her arm. “The *playlist!* A bunch of summery tunes from the oldy-oldy-old times have always been the perfect background noise on the way to the beach.”

Owen’s real flute was at home, but he nimbly pulled his recorder from a pocket on his backpack and played “Hot Cross Buns” to demonstrate.

“Yeah, like that!” giggled Little Ace. Owen laughed too. He helped Little Ace up out of the grass patch and back onto the sidewalk, where pink and blue and green chalk stains slowly melted away into the stone path again as the duo made their way home.

## Chapter Two

Owen left Little Ace at the last traffic light before the road that led into the Little Italy neighborhood. The friends waved goodbye, and then Little Ace set off toward the rising rooftops of the town buildings over the hill.

All the way from the path to her doorstep, Little Ace seemed to glow with excitement. Her adoptive father Prince Toast helped her inside at the fuzzy brown welcome mat. “That was the last day of school for Owen, huh?” he said while she bounced inside.

“Yup!” Little Ace smiled wide. “He gave me some of his old schooly stuff to look at!” She hefted the backpack up onto the rack and unzipped the main pocket with a loud *VRUP!* Its contents, a mess of doodled-on notebooks and colorful pencils studded with bite marks toppled down to the hardwood floor.

Prince Toast chuckled. He helped her collect the pencils and called out into the kitchen, “Honey, she’s home!”

Into the doorway came lumbering IcySky, a rugged but well-built lizard with scales of ice-blue and lavender. His cloudy-blue eyes slept in dark hammocks as though he’d been forced to sit quietly through a 12-hour trial. In his claws he clutched a small supply of oyster crackers, which he chomped on as his shadow grew in the hall. He offered Prince Toast a simple, “I heard,” but picked up the rest of the pencils. “Welcome back.”

“Hi, Papa!” Little Ace cried. She leapt at IcySky for a bear hug; her grin stretched from ear to ear. “It’s summer now!” Even though Little Ace was homeschooled, she still got quite the kick from walking to the school building at the end of each day to talk with Owen before going home.

IcySky smiled down at his adopted daughter. “Mmhm. You remembered to pack all your things for tomorrow, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Little Ace slipped back down to the floor and collected Prince Toast’s clawful of pencils into a separate pouch. “I know what I need to bring. But I haven’t put it into the packing bags yet. Promise I’ll get it done tomorrow morning?”

“You always love making things last minute, don’t you?” Prince Toast chimed in with a laugh.

“Mmhmm! Not going outside, though! It’s only sunny out for so long…”

With that, Little Ace raced out the back door and into the yard, leaving Prince Toast to slam the door behind her and a disgruntled IcySky to organize her new notebooks.

Little Ace was energetic all through the day, even when she went up for bed. She’d almost forgotten to brush her teeth before going to sleep! Both she and her dads thought she might never get some shut-eye that night, but Little Ace was truly more tired than any of them thought.

She bounded into her room with a quick swing of the door. A myriad of notebooks, beads, crayons, and other creative supplies lay embedded in the carpet like seashells in the sand. Just a foot from her bed, Little Ace tripped on a couple such notebooks and clumsily sent them flying under her bed along with a few purple crayons. “Aah!” she yelped, clutching her stubbed toe.

“Everything alright in there?”

“Uh-huh! I just slipped! I’m okay!”

Then, exhaling, Little Ace hopped up into her bed and, without much else to do, began to drift off much sooner than she would have guessed.

## Chapter Three

Birds twittered in the sunrise. An analog clock hanging on the wall ticked lightly to denote the passing of another minute. Filtered light peeked behind the curtains… and Little Ace’s eyes shot open. The energy of her awakening sent the light covers almost a foot in the air.

“It’s *Saturday!*” she squealed, hopping over the notebooks on the ground like they were bananas threatening the path of a go kart. Her claws drummed all the way down the stairs. She swung around the wooden pole at the bottom of the stairwell and landed with a thump on the wood floor, which instantly alerted her fathers that she was awake if her shout somehow didn’t reach the entire neighborhood.

There in the kitchen was Prince Toast, who looked to be in a slight frenzy. He stood in a small, misshapen area in front of the stove. Apparently, the brown-and-tan lizard seemed pushed there by the gray baggage that clustered just a short length from his hind claws. Only a rainbow-striped sticker of identification seemed to tell the cluster apart from a pile of boulders.

“Good, you’re up,” Prince Toast puffed with a nervous expression that would probably have been a smile if his focus wasn’t so split. “I’ve got a couple of pancakes going. I, uh, actually put water in the batter instead of milk, so I hope you don’t mind if…”

“Nope!” Little Ace interrupted him. She climbed easily over the shortest bags, jumped up, and gave her dad a peck on the cheek. “It’s fine! I’ll put the ingredients back!”

IcySky revealed himself with a loud creak as he stood up from the living room’s vintage leather recliner. His eyes remained those of a sailor weathered by unendingly-perilous journeys, but he quickly accepted the end of his short break and returned to his work. “How’s it going over there?” he called to Prince Toast.

“Oh, er, just fine! Only one more round of pancakes and then the batter’s all out. Do you need any help?”

His husband snorted. “You’re funny, Toast.” He lifted a large red duffle bag onto his shoulders with practiced effort and began hauling it out to the car outside.

“Do me a favor, Ace.” Prince Toast, with a few beads of sweat running down the side of his face, turned to face the hatchling. His tail was curled around a spatula, but his claws made a motion like he was trying to flip the pancakes. He awkwardly realized his mistake and lifted the spatula back into his grip, then flipped a pancake with a side that had become very browned. “Could you check off a few things on the packing list for me?”

He signaled with his tail toward a nearby end table. Little Ace grabbed the small notepad and tried to twirl the pen between her claws. “What should I check off?” she asked.

Prince Toast said, “Check off the cooler bag.” Little Ace’s eyes moved down and down the list, looking for the cooler bag to check off, but then her eyes popped wide with realization.

“I forgot to pack my bag!” she yelped. Hurriedly, she dropped the notepad and pen back on the end table and rushed upstairs in a panic.

“Oh, great,” muttered Prince Toast, but his words were lost over the sizzling of the stove and the clattering of the pen as it settled itself on the table.

## Chapter Four

Left on Little Ace’s dresser was another packing checklist. This one listed all the items she needed to pack in her bag. She went carefully — but in good time — down the list, lining up books and her pencil pouch in the chevron tote. At last, one of the last items on the list made her smile.

“Pineapple sunglasses, smiley face, smiley face, smiley face,” Little Ace read aloud. The teal sunglasses, with a plastic pineapple attached in the top corner, were simply classic and a well-loved tradition for her; annually she’d wear them to the beach and all her and IcySky’s fishing trips down at Sandy City.

The lizard ambled back to the dresser to grab the sunglasses, only to see they weren’t there. Confused, she let her eyes sweep over the remaining area of the dresser, and at last she found the plastic pineapple. It lay in all its yellow and green glory in one piece near the edge of the surface. However, it was not attached to the glasses.

Little Ace didn’t know what to do except figure that if the pineapple was there, then the glasses must be somewhere nearby. Surely enough, she leaned down into a notebook bin and saw that the sparkly teal glasses had fallen. A spot of glue was splattered in the corner where the pineapple had once been.

Confused, Little Ace picked up both pieces and ran back down the stairs. “Dad!” she called. “My sunglasses… they’re broken!”

Prince Toast rushed to meet her once she came thumping into the kitchen. The stove was now off and a stack of pancakes sat waiting on the counter, while the high tide of suitcases and bags still dominated the floor of the area.

“What happened?” he asked, giving the glasses a good look-over.

“I don’t know,” Little Ace said. Her lip began to quiver slightly. “I found the sunglasses and the pineapple and they were broken. How do I fix it?”

The door slammed again as IcySky returned from outside and grabbed more luggage to bring to the car. Prince Toast seemed startled by the noise, like he had with all the packing, but he told Little Ace simply: “Let’s take a deep breath and come on over to the counter.”

He lightly pushed aside the plate of pancakes and set down a paper towel square on the quartz countertop. Then he walked to a nearby drawer and pointed to it. “This is where we keep the super glue,” he said. “Do you know where it is inside?”

Little Ace came over and wiped her eye. She peered into the open drawer and saw a blue-and-white bottle of clear liquid somewhere near the center and pointed at it. “There.”

“That’s right! It’ll always be kept in that spot. Now let’s take it over here… and here’s how we do it.”

Prince Toast applied the slightest bit of super glue to the spot where the pineapple was supposed to go on the glasses. Meanwhile, Little Ace looked on in curiosity. She asked, “Can I put the pineapple back on?”

“Of course!” Prince Toast picked it up and dropped it into the hatchling’s claws. She pressed it back on, making sure it didn’t rotate out of place, and then stepped back with satisfaction.

“Like that?”

”*Just* like that! Now we need to let it dry.”

Little Ace had a worried look on her face, but Prince Toast consoled her: “Don’t worry! It should be dry for when we leave…” He paused to glance at the clock. “But if we want to get to our rental on time, we don’t have a bunch of time to spare. What else do you need to pack?”

“Just my notebooks,” Little Ace mumbled. Then she smiled. “You know the ones where I drew the fishing dock and the waterslide?”

Prince Toast patted her head and returned her expression. “Of course! You go on and finish up your packing and I’ll help your papa out with bags, alright?”

In response, the little lizard nodded. “Yup!” And once again, she was haring back up the stairs in no time.

## Chapter Five

“Here? No. Here? No. Here? Hmm…” Little Ace rummaged briefly through her dresser’s bottom drawer, but the notebooks weren’t there. She slammed it shut a bit harder than intended.

Not in the closet, or on any of the shelves, or in the notebook basket, or any level of the dresser… Little Ace was becoming frustrated. This was the last item she needed to fill her bag, and she couldn’t find it!

The teal-covered notebook had been special to her since she was very, very young. Beyond just drawing scenery, the book was filled with Little Ace’s thoughts and songs and other drawings. She couldn’t just *lose* it.

But here she was, and she was running out of time. She searched everywhere again in desperation before finally giving up. Down the stairs slumped the purple-and-gray hatchling with her head hanging low.

Prince Toast saw her again as she came down, walking slowly toward him, and frowned sympathetically. “Not there?” he asked.

“No… It’s gone.”

“C’mon, Little Ace! You know things don’t just disappear.”

He pushed the stack of pancakes closer to her on the counter and pointed at them with his tail. “You eat these,” he told her. “I’ll go looking.”

“But Dad, you have to pack! And it’s not there!”

Her father just smiled and headed up the stairs. “Well, then, I’ll just make *sure* it’s not there so we know to look elsewhere when we come back.”

Guiltily, Little Ace scarfed down her pancakes. She was tempted to join Prince Toast in the search, except doubt — as well as a sense that she should pay him back somehow — held her back.

When she was done, she washed her plate with her favorite lavender dish soap and put it away in the cabinet, then began carrying the smaller totes to the door. IcySky opened the door right as she left a couple cooler bags by his claws and went off to look for more.

At that point, though, Little Ace had already carried to the door what she could. She considered putting one on her back at one point. “Papa wouldn’t want me to have a broken spine,” she reasoned with herself. “Then we couldn’t go fishing.”

So instead, Little Ace came to another realization: the last thing she needed with her was her music. In her little green headphones, she’d always blast her favorite songs on the road while looking out at the lakes and stores and other street scenery.

Her device was waiting on an otherwise-clear table nearby. Little Ace unlocked it and checked just to make sure the music was still there… except for one problem.

She gasped. “*IT’S NOT DOWNLOADED!!*”

It had been downloaded last year… and all the other times she’d used it on her long drives to a beach… So what possibly could have happened?

Little Ace pressed the download button at the top of her screen, only to be shattered by the notification it gave: “**NOT ENOUGH STORAGE. CLICK TO MANAGE STORAGE IN SETTINGS.**”

There was a moment of silence, and then Little Ace squeaked, “Oh boy.”

## Chapter Six

The number of bags remaining in the kitchen was going down like the midnight tide. “Urgh!” Little Ace muttered in frustration. She clicked into the settings app and eyeballed the list of apps while wondering how this sudden storage error had possibly happened.

“No… no… I can’t get rid of this one… still play it… ughhh…”

At the bottom of the list were a few games which Little Ace nearly gasped at seeing. “Aw, I haven’t played this one in a while,” she said. It gave her memories: her first online friends, who encouraged her to draw dragons and keep trying with art, were from there. But she simply hadn’t used it in over a year.

For a homeschooled second grader going into third after summer break, it was a big effort to get rid of something with such sentimental value… but Little Ace clicked “delete” and so the game was gone. She checked the storage gauge, but it was still almost full.

“Grrrr!” she huffed. “Why does everything I use have to be so *storage-y??*”

Little Ace went up and down the list a few more times and ended up getting rid of a few small games, but soon there weren’t any left to clear the remaining space with a small jump. She needed to delete something big.

“Come on, let me find something,” Little Ace growled determinedly to no one in particular. “I can’t have this happen again-”

She inhaled sharply upon scrolling to the very top of the list. It was all coming back to her… she remembered trying to download a popular RPG but lacking storage room, and so absentmindedly she accepted a notification to automatically undownload certain songs.

Footsteps echoed from upstairs. “Little Ace!” Prince Toast called down. “I found the notebook!”

Little Ace almost shot up the stairs, but knew she needed to solve her situation first. “Coming!” she yelled back. The hatchling’s eyes were reddening as she bit her lip. To the screen, she whispered lightly, “Goodbye, Brownie Dash Empire…” and the app was promptly offloaded.

“Little Ace?”

“Yeah! I’m on my way up!”

She placed the device back on the table and clicked the download button, then followed Prince Toast’s voice upstairs to another solved mystery.

## Chapter Seven

By the time she reached the top of the stairs, Little Ace was out of breath. “In my room?” she asked Prince Toast, panting.

“Yup.”

“No way! I looked *everywhere!*”

“Not under the bed.” Prince Toast carefully lifted part of the bed’s quilt to reveal a field of dust. From the looks of it, the dust had been scattered aside by something that had been carelessly put there underneath… or more likely, kicked underneath by accident.

Little Ace’s face went pink. “Ohhhh.”

Her dad handed it to her. “Now that it’s found, go ahead and put it in the tote bag. And then it’s all ready-”

“Toast!” IcySky’s voice echoed from downstairs below the balcony. “All ready except for a couple of bags down here.” He pointed to the chevron bag where Little Ace’s other books and pencils were organized. “This is Little Ace’s, right?”

Little Ace called down, “Yeah! Hold on, there’s just one more thing I need to put in!”

“And I bet your sunglasses are done drying too!” Prince Toast showed a calm smile to Little Ace, the one that tells you everything is just fine even in such a time crunch. “You’re done with the pancakes?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, then. Race you down the stairs!”

“Hey, wait! No fair, you have daddy longlegs!”

The two laughed all the way into the kitchen, where the sunglasses lay. Gently, Little Ace tapped the pineapple, and it was indeed glued back on. She brought down her fist from the air in a silent little *yessss* and slipped them on over her round snout.

Prince Toast put the notebook in the tote and zipped it up for Little Ace while the younger lizard grabbed her device and both of them ran out to the car.

“Why are we in such a hurry anyways?” Little Ace asked IcySky. With the darkness that the shaded glasses threw over her eyes, she liked to think that she looked cool like him.

IcySky, whose shoulder was propped up casually beside the open window, shrugged in the driver’s seat. “You know how I am with schedules. And our check-in is at noon, so we might as well utilize the time from then till the end of the day.”

The car pulled out of the driveway while Little Ace’s playlist was struggling along to the finish line of downloading. Quickly-rolling wheels rolled down the gray stone driveway and halted with a screech at the bottom.

The blue downloading circle was almost full, just inching along as the house’s signal grew weaker and weaker… but at the last moment, just as the car turned to rumble out over the street, the ring filled with an underwhelming visual celebration of a simple blue circle.

“Hooray!” cried Little Ace. She almost slapped on her green headphones, except Prince Toast reached out and tapped her on the arm before she could.

“What was the lesson?” he asked with a smile.

Little Ace groaned. “Prepare ahead and be careful with your stuff, I guess…”

Prince Toast chuckled. “There you go. Alright, you’re all free.”

“Yes!”

And for a little young lizard, the day was saved with just her two dads, a car, a heck ton of baggage, and the best music ever out on the open road.

**THE END**

## Credits

* Written by Teddbeary from 6/14/2022 to 6/18/2022.

## Trivia

* The “Brownie Dash Empire” app on Little Ace’s device is a reference to the real-world app “Cookie Run - Kingdom!”

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