Gabby ignored him. “I don’t even know how you’re still playing,” she whispered. “Do you not remember the doctor telling you getting hit again could be an actual catastrophe? Like, she literally used the word catastrophe. Did you forget that part?”
“Can you leave it?” Ryan blew a breath out, irritated both at her and at himself for not keeping his mouth shut. “I don’t exactly have a choice.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
Ryan shrugged. He hadn’t said anything to Gabby about the conversation he’d had with his mom the day before in the kitchen. Best friends or not, there were limits to what he could tell her. Money had always been easy for her family; she and her sisters and Shay were all heading off to private colleges to study things like English literature that had no practical application in the world, and everything would work out just peachy for them. Meanwhile, if Ryan couldn’t swing this fucking scholarship, he’d be lucky if he wound up working at Walter’s for the rest of his life, still selling the last of the vegan hot dogs when he was old and gray.
“Huh?” Gabby was still looking at him. “Ryan. What does that mean, you don’t have a choice?”
This time the woman turned around and actually shushed them, an exaggerated shhh like a librarian in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Ryan almost laughed, but Gabby looked mortified, whipping around to face forward blankly, her cheeks going a bright screaming pink.
Ryan sat there for another moment, sulking. He was tired; it had been a mistake to tag along to this thing, obviously. Maybe he was exactly the kind of dumb, uncultured person Shay and Gabby thought he was. Maybe it was useless to try to be anything else.
“I’m going to go,” he whispered finally, touching Gabby on the shoulder to get her attention since she was still staring straight ahead like a kindergartner who’d been scolded by her teacher. “You can get a ride home, right?”
“Seriously?” Gabby made a face. “You’re leaving?”
He looked at her ominously. “My head hurts, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.” He got up to go as the crowd applauded; to his surprise, Gabby followed him right up the aisle.
“Did you get another concussion?” she asked once they were outside on the huge, sagging wraparound porch; the front yard was soggy-looking, speckled with patches of dirty snow. “Have you been walking around since this afternoon with another concussion and you just, like, didn’t mention it?”
In fact he was fairly sure that was exactly what had happened, but he didn’t want to tell that to Gabby. He didn’t actually intend to tell anyone. “I didn’t know I had to give you a report on my health every time I saw you,” he said instead.
Gabby scowled. “I’m not a brain doctor, Ryan, but I kind of think three concussions in three years is a big deal. Don’t you know all that stuff about professional football players, like, losing their minds and—”
“I’m not a professional football player, Gabby, Jesus. Can you stop?”
“You stop!” Gabby frowned. The two of them faced off for a moment, unyielding; finally, Gabby sighed. “I need to go back in there,” she said. “I don’t want to miss Shay. Will you text me when you’re home safe, at least? So I know you didn’t die?”
Ryan rolled his eyes, unable to stop himself. “Why are you so interested in me all of a sudden?”
“Because you’re my best friend, you idiot,” Gabby said. “What kind of question is that? And what do you mean, all of a sudden?”
Ryan shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. He wasn’t thinking straight; he sounded whiny and stupid and jealous, like the ridiculous person she and Shay thought he was. There was nothing to be won here. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ryan felt better almost as soon as he got away from that claustrophobic Victorian. He climbed into the Pampered Paws van, instantly recognizable in the sea of dark Volvos and Mercedes SUVs parked up and down the street. It was probably a miracle he hadn’t been towed. He rolled all the windows down even though it was freezing, his head clearing as he took deep sips of the cold, clean December air. Who wanted to spend a perfectly good Thursday night listening to amateur cello music, anyway? Maybe he’d text Remy and some of those guys, see if anybody was doing anything. He was grabbing his phone out of the cup holder when he realized that his route home was going to take him directly past Arcade World.
Arcade World, where Chelsea Rosen worked.
Ryan put his phone back down.
Arcade World was a massive windowless building off the side of Route 9 that housed batting cages and an abbreviated nine-hole mini-golf course, plus a dark, dank laser tag setup that was, as far as Ryan understood it, mostly just a place for people to fool around. It been a really popular venue for birthday parties in third grade but also had kind of a seamy quality, like it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that you might get stabbed halfway through a game of Iron Man pinball. Inside, it was cold and smelled like feet.
Still, Ryan felt himself cheer up by two massive clicks as he walked through the entrance, the blinking lights of the ancient Donkey Kong and the rattle of the Skee-Ball machines, the arrhythmic thud of a little kid playing Whack-a-Mole. His step quickened as he headed toward the back, past the virtual horse races and the glassed-off room of pool tables, the line of driving games.
Sure enough, there was Chelsea, standing behind the prize counter, where you could trade your tickets in for dumb plastic knickknacks. She was wearing a bright blue polo shirt with the Arcade World logo on it, her dark curly hair up in that same giant bun as last night. She had a big pair of glasses that made her look a little bit like a teen-movie nerd girl due for a makeover montage, except for the part where Ryan didn’t actually think she needed a makeover at all.
She was handing a suction-cup basketball hoop off to a middle-schooler when she saw him; she looked surprised for a moment, then smiled a slow, easy smile. She didn’t say hello or call out or anything, just stood there with perfect calmness and waited for him to approach, hands on the glass-topped counter in front of her. Ryan liked that about Chelsea, how it already felt like she was onto him somehow.
“So okay, can I ask you something?” he said, leaning across the glass counter a little farther than was strictly necessary and nodding up at the ten-speed mounted on the wall behind her. “Does anybody ever win the bike?’
Chelsea thought about that for a moment. “I can’t say with any authority that nobody has ever won a bike,” she told him. “But I can say that’s definitely the same one that’s been up there since I started working here.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same one that’s been up there since I was eight.”
“Could be,” she agreed. “Do you come here a lot?”
“I mean, I did when I was eight,” Ryan said.
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “And now?”
“Now? No,” Ryan admitted. “I, uh, heard you worked here.”
“So you decided to come bother me at my place of business?” she asked.
That took him by surprise. “Am I bothering you?” he asked.
Chelsea looked at him for a moment. “No,” she said finally, and smiled. “You’re really not.”