Chapter Text
Once nice thing about visiting the Ordin Shopping Center is that Fiona can visit Fernald on his lunchbreak. The Ordin Shopping Center, located in Downtown Ordin, while design to be a tourist hub —having clothing boutiques, electronic stores, numerous juice bars and restaurants, and a wonderful colorful sculpture fountain perfect for taking photographs— also attracts the attention of regular citizens who just want to wander around and enjoy the fun in their city.
Because of how it’s design, there are many hotels nearby. Some are brands hotels, while some are independent. The hotel Fernald works as a day-shift doorman — the Jove — is the latter, and is the second-best hotel in the Land of Districts (first best now being the Hotel Preludio).
Fiona sits beside Fernald on the edges of the forementioned wonderful colorful sculpture fountain, and watches the ever-shrinking crowd of people losing more of its number. A half-hour before, a stand was being set up for a raffle, with the grand prize being free movie tickets for a movie adaptation of a young adult book Fiona never heard of before.
“This has been going on for the last several days,” says Fernald, carefully holding his bottle of lime soda in his hooks. “I saw people walking with high hopes, and trudging away with grand disappointment. I bet the damn thing is rig. I mean, free movie tickets? It’s too good to be true.”
As soon as those words left his mouth, another dejected raffle player trudges by, their face long and their mood so gloomy, Fiona looks down on the pavement to see a growing flower weed sulking down, though of course that could a total coincidence given said flower weed is dying.
“Did you try your luck on the raffle?” asks Fiona.
“Nah. I’m not enough of a sucker to risk my hand, er, hook, playing a damn raffle.” Fernald takes a small sip of his lime soda, and gives out a refreshing sigh. “But you want to be a sucker and try your luck, be my guess. The first entry is free, and then after that you pay five dollars for three more. It’s a rip-off if you want my opinion.”
Fiona knows Fernald is trying to discourage from risking losing her money. But if the first entry is free, there’s no harm in trying it once. Fiona gives her brother a thumb up, and stands up. She stretches her arms, and then walks towards the stand and the shrinking crowd, which by now only has five people left, excluding herself and the middle age man with an anchor goatee.
The raffle itself looks simple enough. On the stand is solid metal brass raffle cage with a hand crank on its side. Alongside the raffle cage is a brass bell using for ringing, like for a Gustav Sebald movie. Fiona watches the man with the anchor goatee move the crank towards him, fast and strong. The man soon stops after a minute. The skinny man running the raffle then slides open a small door on the bottom of the cage, and a small blue ball drop down.
“Ah, will you look at that! I’m so sorry, sir! It looks like you win another box of complimentary soap!” The skinny man gives smile, and hands the man with the anchor goatee a box of complimentary soap tied in in a thin, blue ribbon. “Do you want another try, sir?”
“And lose another ten? Forget it! I’m outta here!” The man with the anchor goatee soon stomps off, pushing away a few other people with little care, carrying his free soapbox in his right hand.
The skinny man continues smiling as he ways goodbye the man as formalities. He then turns towards Fiona. “What about you, little lady? Honest John’s the name, and do you want to try your luck on Honest John’s Raffle Game? The first entry is free of charge!”
“Sure.” Fiona stands in front of the raffle cage, and grabs the hand crack. She slowly starts to move it towards her, before doing a complete turnabout and moves the hand crack backwards.
Fiona spins the crack as hard as she can, and as fast as she could. After a minute, she lets go of the crank, and watch the raffle cage continue spinning by itself. It spins and spins until it slows down into a complete stop. The skinny man —John— slides open the small door, and a small yellow ball drops down.
“Oh my God.” John grabs the brass bell, and rings it three times in a row. “We have a winner!”
---
“Duncan? Isadora? Quigley?” Fiona takes off her sneakers, and casually throws them onto the living room floor. “I’m back from visiting Fernald! I got great news!”
Fiona briefly looks back at her sneakers, before shrugging her shoulders. She can put them back in their proper place later, before Hector returns from his shift at the Omni Anything Agency. Fernald and Stepfather aren’t much for tidiness —Stepfather in particular— but Hector certainly is. He likes a proper house presentation.
“We’re in the family room,” calls out Isadora.
Fiona walks to the living room with a grin on her face, and pulls out the four tickets from her jacket pocket. When she arrives, she sees Duncan sitting upside down on the sofa, Isadora lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling, and Quigley sitting against the back family room wall, writing something in his commonplace book.
“You wouldn’t believe the afternoon I had,” says Fiona. She raises her hand up in the air, allowing the tickets to be bath in the family room light. “I was visiting Fernald, and there was a raffle going on at the Ordin Shopping Center! The prize for winning the raffle is movie tickets, and I tried my luck and I won! And it was my first try!”
Duncan nods his head in approval, while Isadora gives her two thumbs up. Quigley stops writing, and sets his pencil down. He closes his commonplace book and soon looks up with a smile on his face.
“Congratulations, Fiona,” says Quigley. “So, what are you going with them?”
“Well, given today is a Friday night, and these tickets have to be use by today, I figure we can go to the movies! Isn’t that a great start to a weekend?”
Duncan soon falls off the sofa in a half-summersault with a soft ‘thump’. Isadora gives a small screech as she rolls towards Quigley. Quigley’s eyes widen as he quickly grabs his pencil and stands up from his position, and jumps over Isadora’s rolling.
“Come on! Does it have to be this weekend in particular?” asks Duncan.
“Um…yes,” replies Fiona, her smile now turning into a frown. “Why? Is something the matter?”
“The matter is that Hector grounded us,” says Quigley, stuffing the pencil and commonplace book into his sweater pocket. “He found out about our little argument with Karen Tiff from Vice Principal Hardass. Pardon, Hardling. The email Hardling sent had pictures of the end result.”
Isadora briefly laughs at Quigley’s little slipup as she stands up. “Giving that his first name Richard can be shorten to Rick, it’s no surprise the man is such a dick. But yeah, Quigley is right. Hardass emailed Hector, and we got the lecture of the century.”
Duncan soon positions himself into a sitting position, with his legs cross. “Even though Hector understood we were only defending ourselves from Tiff’s cruel remarks, he thought keying her car was totally over the line. That’s why we’re grounded.”
“All four of us, by the way,” added Isadora. “Hector was very disappointed to learn you were the one to come up with the keying idea. So now we’re not allow to go out without permission.”
Fiona purses her lips, and soon fiddles with her triangle glasses. “What does my stepfather have to say about this? Where is he anyway? I know today is his day off. Is he out on a walk?”
“Your stepfather is in the kitchen attempting to make us some pizzas for dinner,” answers Quigley. “He came back from his afternoon stroll after Hector gave us the lecture, so he got the run down before Hector went off to work.”
“Ah. Thank you for that, Quigley. If you excuse me, I need to speak to him.” Fiona soon makes her way to the kitchen, with a plan formulating in her mind. So, they’re grounded and what they needed was permission? That should be easy to get around, in theory at least.
Fiona quietly enters the kitchen, and observes her surroundings. On the kitchen counter are two pans of rolled out pizza dough cover in tomato sauce and cheese. There are small containers of diced onion, cut bell peppers, slice olives, slice mushrooms —Fiona couldn’t help but steal a few and plop them in her mouth for a little snack— and cooked chicken in cubes.
In front of the oven is Stepfather. He’s squatting, feet completely flat down on the floor. Fiona quietly joins him in his squatting, though unlike Stepfather, she can only squat on the balls of her feet. If she attempts to do a full squat like him, Fiona will just fall over.
Even though the oven light is on, there’s nothing baking. Fiona turns to her stepfather. “Stepfather, why are you looking at an empty oven?”
“I like looking at the oven when it’s pre-heating,” answers Stepfather. He turns to Fiona, and curls one end of his mustache. “Do you and the Quagmires want something else for dinner?”
“Pizza is fine for dinner, Although…,” Fiona falters a bit, and briefly places a finger near the corner of her mouth. “Stepfather, I would like to know if it’s alright for the Quagmires and I to go to the movies. I won a raffle near Fernald’s work, and well, I know you know about us keying Karen Tiff’s car, and that Hector grounded us for it.”
Stepfather stops curling his mustache. “Aye. Hector showed me the email. Miss Tiff’s car suffered clear coat damage. Minor damages that her family car insurance can cover.”
“Ah.” Fiona briefly pauses. “Are you not giving us permission to go to the movies then?”
“What? Oh no!” Stepfather blinks quickly at Fiona, and shakes his head. “You can go to the movies, Fiona! You and the Quagmires! Aye! Why do you need my permission for it? It is because you’re grounded? If that’s the case, you’re all allow to go to the movies! Aye! Just don’t buy snacks from the movie theater! Their jack-up prices aren’t worth it!”
“Oh! Thank you, Stepfather. We’ll try to get back home before Hector’s return. I don’t think movie is too long.” Fiona pats Stepfather’s shoulder. She then stands back up, and runs out of the kitchen. There, the Quagmires are talking to one another in a huddle.
“Quagmires, get some candy from the pantry and stuff them in your pockets!” cries Fiona, with the smile back on her face. “Stepfather gave us permission to go to the movies!”
---
“You gave them permission to go to the movies?!” Hector drops the pizza pan back into the sink. “Widdershins, they were grounded!”
“Are they not supposed to go out when grounded?” asks Widdershins obliviously.
“Yes! That’s what grounded means!” Hector then groans. “Did you not ground Fernald?”
“Hell no!” Fernald laughs as he sits in a kitchen chair. “One time when I was grounded, I attempted to sneak out under his nose by climbing out the window.”
“Aye. When you got caught, all I asked is that you return by dinnertime.”
Hector groans again. “This is not helping your case.”