Either way, I was pretty sure Jeff was pissed at me. Which wasn’t unusual. He had a rough time at home, watching his sister while his parents worked around the clock, so sometimes his frustration boiled up and I happened to be in the line of fire. I wasn’t mad. He’d apologize on Monday and we’d be cool again, back to talking about football.
Now I was waiting in my car for Becca to come outside, preferably with something for me to eat from her mom’s bakery. When she finally walked out a minute later, a brown paper bag in hand, I wasn’t disappointed. She was smiling when she opened the door, and I realized that this—the two of us hanging out—could be a new kind of normal.
“Afternoon,” she said, waving the bag in front of me. “I brought you a surprise.”
I was already feeling better.
“Cupcakes?” I asked, sniffing.
“No. It’s better than that.” I reached for the bag and she pulled it away, stuffing it into the side of the door before I could reach it. “It’s for later,” she explained. “If I like what we do today, you can eat it.”
“And if you don’t like it?”
She smiled. Maybe the biggest one yet. “Then you can watch me eat it.”
I started driving through town with purpose then. The good thing about living in Crestmont, a town with under ten thousand people, was that it’s so small you could drive through the entire thing in less than ten minutes. We had one high school, one church, one gym, one theater—pretty much one of everything. There were a few run-down hotels and diners lining the interstate for travelers stopping for the night. And it was always one night. People passed through Crestmont like a revolving door. No one wanted to stay. Unless you were born here and had no other choice.
I planned on leaving after high school. Getting a football scholarship in another city with hundreds of thousands of people, where there were more streets than you could count on one hand. Coach said scouts would start coming to our football games now, to scope out the talent. And I wanted the talent to be me. I needed a one-way ticket out of here. More important, I wanted my dad to be at my games and witness it—witness me living out his dream like he intended.
Like she could sense my thoughts, Becca said, “Have you heard from your dad yet?”
I liked the way she asked that. There was no judgment. Unlike Jeff.
“Not yet,” I said, turning off Main Street and onto a side road. The ground was gravel and we were bumping along. Becca opened her window and the humidity crept in, making my T-shirt stick to my skin. She didn’t say anything else about the situation, which was for the best. I was over thinking about it.
I made a sharp left and pulled into a parking lot. There was a pharmacy, a convenience store, a post office, and—
“The old arcade?” Becca asked, leaning forward to look out the windshield. The sun was right above the building and we were both squinting.
“The old arcade,” I said. A few of the neon letters had burned out, so the sign read ARC. From the outside, it looked run-down. There was no open sign or cars in the parking lot. Someone driving through town would think this place was a dive, that it had closed a decade ago. But they’d be wrong. And that was the cool thing about Crestmont. That it had all this secret charm that was known only to the people who grew up here. Like if you scraped off enough of the dirt, there’d be a shiny diamond waiting underneath.
“I haven’t been here since I was a kid,” Becca was saying to herself while we walked to the door. The town was so quiet today—there was no wind, no cars driving by. All I could hear was the crunch of gravel beneath our feet and the rustle of the paper bag Becca had gripped between her fingers.
I held the door open, we stepped inside, and the air-conditioning blasted us. It was one of the greatest feelings. We both stood there for a second, cooling down. Then I grabbed Becca’s hand and pulled her through the second set of automatic doors and into the arcade. I didn’t grab her hand for show either. There was no one here to lie to. I was starting to do it out of habit.
The arcade was exactly like I remembered it. Dimly lit, with rows and rows of games. There was the counter to our left, with a wall of prizes to trade tickets for. There were stuffed animals and plastic jewelry on display, and the air smelled like grease, popcorn, and a little like pot. I heard Becca gasp. Her eyes were wide open.
“I thought this place closed down years ago,” she said, scanning the room. “I had my birthday party here when I was seven. I hit the jackpot on that Wheel of Fortune game.”
Samson stood up from behind the counter then, eyes half-closed and red. Well, that explained the smell. “Wells?” he called, staring at the two of us.
“Hey, Sam.” I walked to the counter and shook his hand. He looked older than he had last time I was here, more gray hair and wrinkles around his eyes. He was diagnosed with cancer a few years back and the arcade had closed while he was undergoing treatment. It reopened last summer when he was cancer free. I’d come in from time to time to check on it while he was in the hospital, make sure no kids were breaking in and playing without paying. I stopped coming by since the reopening. Until today.
“Feels like I ’aven’t seen ya in years,” he said, thick accent replacing all the h’s. Then his attention shifted over to Becca. “And ’o’s this?”
She held out her hand. “Becca. It’s nice to see you again. I had no idea this place was still open.”
Samson nodded, pulling out two bags of tokens from under the counter and handing one to each of us. “It would ’ave closed if it weren’t for this man right ’ere,” he said, smiling at me. “You two ’ave the entire place to ya’selves. Enjoy.” I paid for the tokens, thanked him, and followed Becca.
“What did he mean that this place would have closed without you?” Becca whispered when we were out of earshot. I briefly explained Samson’s illness, but didn’t really want to get into how I watched the place. Becca gave me this confused look, like she was trying to decipher a code or something, then walked right up to the racing game. There were two seats, red and blue, with matching steering wheels. She was eyeing the blue one.
“Let’s play,” I said, taking a seat on the red one. She sat down on the blue, slowly. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know how to drive.”
I immediately started to laugh until I was doubled over, resting my head on the steering wheel. When I saw that she was being completely serious, glaring at me, I cleared my throat and straightened up.
“Oh. You’re being serious?” She nodded. “This isn’t like real driving, Becca. You’ll be fine. Look.” I grabbed her hands and placed them at ten and two on the wheel. “Spin it like this to turn right, then left. Yeah, just like that. The brake is the big one. Got it?”
She was concentrating so seriously. It was kind of cute.
“Brake is the big one,” she repeated. “Got it. Put some tokens in. And Brett?”
I dropped in two tokens and hit the start button. “Yeah?”
“Don’t let me win,” she said, pointing a finger at my chest. “I mean it. Don’t be all chivalrous. It’s rude.”
I tried to make sense of that. “You’re saying being respectful is rude?”