Chapter 4
Pirate’s Cove Laser Tag and Mini Golf looked like it had, in a former life, been a big box store. A Best Buy, maybe. Now, with its windows blacked out and retro-future lettering across the front, it had a different vibe—and my inner thirteen-year-old responded to it.
Deputy Bobby parked, and then he said, “What if I ordered you to stay in the car?”
“I guess I’d stay, but only because you made such a big deal about the rules.”
He drummed his fingers on the wheel.
“Are you ordering me to stay in the car?”
He said a few words you won’t find in a Laffy Taffy joke and got out of the car.
If you’ve ever been inside a laser tag, uh, arena, then you have a general idea what it’s like: a lobby full of screaming children, a counter staffed by dead-eyed burnouts (both guys had long hair, of course), the distant cacophony of electronically generated bells and whistles and, of course, obligatory laser sounds, and the ever-present miasma of sweaty pre-teens.
“Very romantical,” I said to Deputy Bobby. “You should bring West here.”
He must not have heard me because instead of responding to this excellent suggestion, he headed straight for a guy who had to be the manager—lanky, wringing his hands, with an Ashton Kutcher haircut circa Dude, Where’s My Car?
The manager said something before I caught up, and Deputy Bobby continued past him and into the laser tag—coliseum?
(I mean, there had to be a word that made sense.)
I went after him, and when I stepped through the double doors, angry shouts rose above the electronic sounds of the game.
It was hard to see; only a few dim lights glowed, and a glycerin-sweet haze hung in the air—an overworked fog machine, somewhere, was trying to keep up.
I moved in the direction of the shouts, their volume growing louder, and when I came around a corner, I saw Deputy Bobby separating two men.
“It’s not fair,” one of them was saying. He was blond, wiry, and about Deputy Bobby’s height. Although he must have been in his twenties, his patchy facial hair suggested a fourteen-year-old. Even in the dim light, I could see that his cheek was red, as though he’d been hit. “He cheated!”
“I didn’t cheat!” the other man shouted at the same time. He was blond and wiry too, although maybe an inch or two shorter, and his facial hair was in the same sad condition. One ear was puffy, suggesting a recent scuffle. “I didn’t cheat! I didn’t!”
“You did! And I’m telling Mom!”
“I’m telling Dad!”
“Dad won’t care! Dad knows I don’t cheat!”
“He will too care! He’s going to ground you!”
Deputy Bobby finally managed to interpose himself. “Paul, knock it off. Ryan, shout in my ear one more time and see what happens.”
Paul seemed to be the taller one. He ducked his head and looked away. Ryan looked away too, but a moment later, his gaze came back.
“This is why Mom and Dad won’t let you borrow the car!”
“Ryan!” Deputy Bobby barked.
Ryan sank back, his expression sulky.
“Look at you two,” Deputy Bobby said. “Brawling in public. There are children here. Did you think about that? What if one of them had gotten hurt? Not to mention the terrible example you’re setting. What’s your mom going to say when I talk to her?”
The men—they must have been brothers—exchanged a look.
“You don’t have to talk to her,” Paul said in a hopeful voice.
Ryan looked like he was struggling not to start the fight again as he said, “Maybe you don’t have to say anything.”
I was so caught up in the guilty pleasure of watching two grown men act like schoolboys that I almost missed when Deputy Bobby said, “Millie would be ashamed of you two.”
The brothers exchanged another, even more miserable look.
“Hold on,” I said. “Millie?”
Paul looked at me like I was an idiot.
Ryan mimed hitting his forehead and said, in a voice reserved for someone stupid beyond belief, “Our sister.”
Now that he said it, I could see the resemblance: the fair complexions, the hair, the shape of their mouths, even the hint of freckles (although those were hard to make out in the gloom).
“All right,” Deputy Bobby said. “You guys are done here, and I don’t want you coming back for a week.”
“A week?” Paul objected.
“You want to make it a month?”
“This is your fault!” Ryan shouted, stabbing a finger at Paul. “You messed everything up!”
“You can’t run right up to someone and shoot them!” Paul screamed back.
“I’m going to kill you for real!”
“I will rip your teeth out!”
Deputy Bobby caught each brother by the arm, and then he gave me a look like somehow this was all my fault. “That’s it,” he said. “Let’s all take a ride down to the station.”