Charlie greets me at the door with a kiss.
“Mmm,” I say. “My night has already improved by a thousand percent.”
She grins and leads me to their living room. Miles is sitting on a side chair, Reese is on the couch, and in front of the couch sits a pad of big art paper on an easel that Reese borrowed from her work, based on the “Property of Cipher Springs Middle School Library” sticker on its side.
“Great! We’ve got our fourth!” Miles says as he stands, and Charlie and I take a seat on the couch. “Okay, here’s how this works. Reese and I are on one team, and Charlie and Owen are on the other. When it’s your team’s turn, the person guessing will come up to the easel.”
Wait. The person guessing?
“The person drawing will pull a card from the box and show the other team. Then they’ll tape a piece of paper to the back of the guesser’s shirt, and they’ll draw that object on the guesser’s back. The guesser has to draw whatever they think was just drawn on their back on the big paper. So they are trying to figure out what the card said based on their own drawing. Oh, and you’ve got two minutes to guess right.”
Oh, okay. Now I get why it’s called Back Pictionary.
“Remember to keep your drawingsimple,” Reese says. “Or don’t. Actually, you two can go full-on Picasso. Miles and I are here to win.”
“We’re also here to not lose our dignity,” Miles says, already peeling himself out of his hoodie like a man preparing for battle. “But mostly to win.”
“We’ll go first.” Reese grabs a marker and a sheet of paper and then turns to Miles. “Guess or draw?”
“I’ll guess.”
She tapes the paper to his back with enthusiasm. Then she draws a card, flashes it to Charlie and me—Roller Coaster—and starts the timer.
Reese begins drawing what could generously be described as a roller coaster track. There’s a steep incline, a sudden drop, and then an unhinged curve that looks more like an EKG reading.
Miles mirrors the chaos on the easel. “Snake?” he guesses.
Reese ignores him and adds four rectangles at the top of the track, connected like a train.
Miles squints at his paper and draws boxes. “Centipede?”
Charlie and I exchange a look. I raise an eyebrow. She bites her lip, trying not to laugh.
Reese draws a stick figure with its arms in the air in the front box. Miles draws something similar, but he didn’t guess correctly on where to put it, so his little guy ends up floating in front of the roller coaster like he’s leading a conga line.
“Caterpillar?”
I guess it kind of looks like it might be feelers on a bug. Or a nose and whiskers on a cat.
“Nope,” Reese says, now rapidly sketching three more people in the remaining boxes.
Miles hesitates. “Parade?”
Reese lets out an exaggerated sigh and begins furiously retracing the roller coaster track over and over again as the timer counts down, the marker squeaking in protest.
Miles watches, squints, tilts his head… then suddenly straightens. “Oh! Roller coaster!”
Reese throws her arms in the air like she just rode one. “Thank you. I was one step away from adding vomit for accuracy.” They give each other high-fives.
Charlie gives a tiny golf clap. I lean over and whisper, “Fingers crossed we get a category with fewer individual parts.”
We decide I’ll guess first, which feels like a mistake the second Charlie tapes the paper to my back with a grin that says she’s either about to crush this or completely ruin my confidence in my object recognition skills.
I grab a marker and face the easel, taking a deep breath to prepare myself.
She draws a card, flashes it to Miles and Reese, and starts the timer. Then she begins drawing. Her line starts low, curves outward, then circlesaround and curves inward close to where it started. I’m pretty sure she drew a line that connected the two bottom lines, so I do the same. Then she draws two lines coming down from the sides, and a box under that.
“Oh! A light bulb!”
