“Still no place to hide,” Evil pointed out.
“If he’s staring down at your smartphone, we might not have to hide very well.”
Evil nodded, catching on. “In that case,” he said, pulling something out of his back pocket, “what about this?”
I stared at the thing in his hand. “That’s a condom,” I told him. “And if you think that now is the right time to suggest this to me, your head is flatter than I thought.”
“Yeah.” Evil tore off the wrapper. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing and I couldn’t bear to look at his hands, so I watched the intent expression on his face. He puffed once into the condom, inflating the tip of it like a balloon. “And if I tie a knot in the end, it should float.”
I felt a little stupid. “Thanks.” I checked FindMe one last time, then took the condom and shoved my smartphone in. It went in awkwardly, with lots of tugging, and I couldn’t help but giggle. “This isn’t quite like Health class,” I said.
“Yeah, the banana was closer to the… you know.”
I was glad my face was flushed already. “Shush.”
He took the wrapped smartphone and started blowing into the prophylactic. “Good thing I got a big—”
“Evil!”
“What? Condom, I got a big condom was what I was going to say.” He blew in one last lungful of air and tied the condom off at the end. It held, a dull white latex bubble with a little brick of a smartphone inside.
“Good job,” I said.
“No problem.”
I trotted over to the stream. The flow was wide and calm as it passed the campground, which was perfect. I laid my smartphone into the water in its prophylactic vessel and it quickly bobbed away. Hopefully it could get far enough down the canyon to be around the next bend before Ski Mask showed up.
“Now what?” Evil asked. “Squat down behind the tables and hope?”
“We can do better than that,” I said, and I shrugged out of my poncho. “Find a big patch of dirt where we can lay this down and lie under it.”
“Bucky.” Evil grinned. “You’re so romantic.”
“Shut up and do what I tell you,” I told him. “He’ll be here any minute, and he has all the guns.”
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