Once Upon a Time in New Orleans
In the middle of our ghost tour, we were given a “bar break” at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, home of the Voodoo Daiquiri. But since we are all teetotaling dorks these days, we went to a nearby coffee shop instead.
Sophie was the only person who got anything. I bought her a special cookies-and-cream brownie, and we all sat around laughing and chatting while she ate. I sat across from Sophie at a little table. She ate . . . and then she said, “I think I will save this and have it later at the hotel.”
“Don’t you like it?” I said. “Why don’t you just eat it now?”
“I’ll share it with you,” she said sweetly. Then her tone abruptly changed: “So you won’t have to sit there and go like this!” And she went into one of her withering impressions of me, twiddling her thumbs and making the dorkiest, geekiest face. She always makes me look like the biggest nerd with the longest teeth.
“Okay,” Mom said, snickering, “I think we better go before the tour leaves us.”
When we got out on the sidewalk, we could see our leader, Eugenia, telling ghost stories again, without us.
Sophie sassed Bunny: “You made us miss it because you had to get coffee!”
(As you’ll recall, no coffee was purchased.)
“Coffee?” Kris said. “You’re the one with brownie all over your face!”
We rushed to rejoin the group, and Sophie was sassing us all the way. She was so busy sassing us that she accidentally fell into an open sewer hole. She could have really been hurt, but luckily she wasn’t hurt at all, so we teased her—because she is so fastidious that falling in a sewer has got to be her worst nightmare.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I kept asking for the rest of the night in my most annoying faux-solicitous way. “That was so terrible when you fell in the sewer. . . .”
“Would you stop talking about it?!” Sophie cried.
