It was a different version of the song from the one I was used to. It was more electronic and furiously fast.
And it was over too soon.
My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath. I definitely had a stitch now. I collapsed back against the metal bar, and Lee flopped right down on the floor of the machine, hand on his stomach and panting.
The screen racked up our score: 54%, it declared. NOT BAD!
“Not bad?” I wheezed. For Pete’s sake, when did I get so out of shape that I couldn’t keep up with a kids’ dancing game? I’d spent months on the track team! And Lee was a footballer. “Not bad?”
“Shelly,” Lee gasped, hand clutching my ankle. “I don’t think we were good.”
“We used to hold every spot on the leadership board of this game. Come on, get your ass up. We’ve got two more songs before those quarters run out. Not bad! Ha! We’re. Gonna. Kill this.”
“It’s gonna kill me first,” Lee muttered, but he hauled himself up, shaking it off. “I don’t remember it being this much exercise, Shelly.”
“I guess this explains why we used to eat, like, three hot dogs a day.”
Twelve dollars and nine songs saw us both drenched in sweat, but finally, finally, back on the leaderboard.
Even the game screen was proud of us: 92%! WOW!
A celebration video rolled across the screen, and I let myself sit down at last.
“That song…” Lee puffed. He shook his head, bending over his knees while he caught his breath. He tried again: “That song is going to be stuck in my head for weeks.”
“Hey, it can join your one other brain cell, keep it company for the summer.”
Lee groaned, swiping blindly at me. “Don’t make me laugh. I don’t have the energy to laugh right now. Oh man. How did we do this all day long as kids?”
“Get it together, old man.” I picked my phone up from where I’d left it on the floor next to Lee’s wallet and cap and my sunglasses and took a picture of our score and spot on the leaderboard.
It had taken the second round of songs for us to get back in the groove. The muscle memory for DDM must have been in there somewhere because Lee and I had found our rhythm again. We even pulled a couple of tricks as we got more and more into the game. Nothing as great as we used to do, of course, but nothing too shabby either.
Ninety-two percent expert.
I’d take that.
“I know you kids,” a voice said. We both turned to see an old guy standing nearby wearing a red cap and a red polo shirt with the arcade’s name in swirly writing on the pocket. “Don’t I know you?”
We both looked at him for a minute before Lee said, “Wait…Harvey? Oh man! We almost didn’t recognize you! It’s us—Elle and Lee. We used to be here all the time.”
He squinted back at us. “Didn’t you get your arm stuck in the claw machine?”
Lee blushed, but he was grinning. I climbed to my feet as he proudly confirmed, “Yup! That was me!”
“Back for one last round on this thing, huh?” Harvey fondly patted the side of Dance Dance Mania.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Lee laughed, saying exactly what I was thinking. “We’ll probably be back here all summer, taking over that leaderboard again.”
Harvey’s wrinkled face pulled into an apologetic smile. “Well, good luck with that. This old gal’s going out to pasture in a couple of weeks. Retirement date’s set for sixth of July.”
The words punched the air out of my lungs in a way that none of the dancing had.
“What?” I demanded. “But…but why? This machine’s been here for years! We’ve practically been dancing on this thing since we could walk!” With the exception of the last few years. “You can’t get rid of it!”
He sighed heavily, full of sympathy. “There’s not much I can do about it. This thing’s starting to fall apart. Costs more to repair than it makes.” He tapped at the edge of the screen, where there was a fuzzy black spot in the corner that I hadn’t noticed until now. Then I saw the duct tape slapped across the metal panels on the sides of the machine. The lights in one of Lee’s arrows were out completely and two of mine were flickering. Lee seemed to be noticing all of this, too; he wiggled the metal handlebar behind us. It was a little loose and it creaked. I bet with any amount of force, you could’ve pulled it right off.
But still!
The DDM machine had been the staple of the arcade for us for so many summers. The last forty minutes or so with Lee had been pure joy and had wiped my mind of the stress of the future, of college, of the fight with Noah and his attitude toward Levi.
Lee’s face had fallen, too, but there was so much more than simple disappointment in it.
“Sorry, kids,” Harvey told us with a shrug.
I did my best to give him a polite smile and sound upbeat. “That’s okay. Guess we’ll just have to come back to take over that leaderboard before you get rid of it!”
As Harvey walked off, Lee muttered under his breath and kicked at the machine. The screen fizzled out and back on and off again, then started showing the demo video again. Lee stepped off completely, huffing, and hunched over the handlebar.
I knew that look all too well. I’d seen it plenty of times this summer. His eyes shone wet and he clenched his jaw tight. His lip wobbled just a little.
“I don’t believe this,” he bit out. “First the beach house. Then you and Harvard. And now this? Is nothing sacred?”
Melodrama was one of Lee’s strong suits, but I didn’t think he was being melodramatic right now. Not in the slightest.
I put a hand on his back, leaning next to him. “Tell me about it.”
It didn’t matter that we’d forgotten all about the arcade and Dance Dance Mania. What mattered was that we’d shown up here to relive a golden hour of our childhood, just to find it was falling to pieces and being scrapped.
Which, honestly, felt like a way-too-accurate metaphor for everything else that was going on. It hurt. It wasn’t about the machine. There would be other DDM machines, other arcades.
It was about us.
It was about the future.
It was about this being a summer of lasts.
Lee sniffled next to me, and I wished there was something I could do. A huge part of the melancholy hanging over us all summer, however distantly, was because of me, because of my decision to not go to Berkeley. I wished I could stop him hurting like this.