He gave me a flat look.
“I just thought shopping, and then, you know. Back to my bedroom. But,” I added hastily, “there’s tons of stuff to do here.” I looked around at the endless stream of shoppers walking past.
“Or we could go back.” Taylor sounded like he couldn’t care less, dipping a piece of sushi into soy sauce.
“I don’t want to do it in the daylight,” I said, then felt my cheeks go warm. “I just mean — ahem.” I chugged my soft drink. “I have you here now. I might as well take advantage of your company.”
He gave me an odd look.
Maybe I should wind him up some more. “I’m sure there’s some cute activities we could do…” I perked up. “I know. Let’s go to an arcade.”
There was an arcade on the basement floor of the shopping centre, which was so loud with game sound effects and shouts that we heard it from a hundred metres away. The place had no overhead lighting, since the neon lights attached to the machines was more than enough to see. I converted a twenty dollar bill into tokens, and passed ten to Taylor.
The place had a system where each machine spat out tickets depending on how well you played, and those tickets could be converted to prizes, which were displayed in glass cabinets at the back of the arcade, manned by bored-looking teenage staff members. Prizes included a lolly pop (65 tickets), a stuffed animal (300 tickets), a plastic superhero figurine (875 tickets) and even the latest Playstation (60,000 tickets).
“Whoever gets the most tickets wins,” I said.
“Sure,” Taylor said, expression nonchalant enough, but I didn’t miss the way he tightened his grip on his tokens.
He suggested playing a basketball game first. The more balls in the hoop, the more points. There was a reason soccer was mysport of choice, and I wasn’t surprised when Taylor won by a landslide. Annoyed, but not surprised.
The aim of the next game was to shoot zombies, and after that, we raced against each other while sitting in cracked leather seats and steering plastic wheels. We played fighting games, moving the joystick around and jabbing a plastic button to kick or punch. My fingers hurt after that one. There was also a boxing machine where you had to punch a bag as hard as possible, and we played that a few too many times, trying to break the tie.
By the time our tokens ran out, our arms were full with a long line of paper tickets. We fed them into a machine that counted them and produced a receipt with the total we’d earned. Taylor got 230. I’d gotten 232. I did the mature thing and didn’t rub it in his face.
We walked up to the counter, and a teenager with broccoli hair told me we could choose our prizes.
“Can we combine them?” I asked after looking at our options: a pad of sticky notes (what the hell); a bouncy ball (that was even more useless); and a packet of gum that looked like it had been there forever.
“Sure,” the guy said, checking his phone.
In the end, I chose a fluffy red bear key-chain that was about the size of my palm and probably worth eighty cents, rather than twenty dollars worth of tokens and more than an hour of hard labour playing arcade games.
“Thank you for consulting me —” Taylor began as we walked away.
“It’s for you.” I shoved it into his chest.
He almost dropped it. “Me?”
I certainly didn’t want it. The bear was kind of scary looking, with its big plastic eyes and sewn on smile. “It’s a gift.”
I thought Taylor might tell me to piss off and say he didn’t want the freaky, fluffy thing. Instead he just looked at it with thissmall, confused frown. “Thanks.” He met my eyes and cocked his head slightly, and I forced myself to maintain a neutral expression. “C’mon,” he said, hand on my back, pushing me forward.
We arrived at a selection of claw machines by one wall. There were mostly parents and kids here. Taylor started feeding gold coins into one of the machines, which was full of stuffed soccer balls, volleyballs and basketballs.
“Haven’t we given this place enough money already?” I asked.
He ignored me, moving the joystick with precision. I watched as he hit the button and the claw came down, picking up a soccer ball. It slid out of grasp the next second.
“That’s so totally rigged,” I said.
He tried again, picking it up a second time.
“How are you good at everything?” I asked.
“I do this a lot with Hazel.” The ball dropped out of the claws again, and he cursed under his breath.
Hazel? I mentally went through everyone who went to our high school, searching for a Hazel. Who was she? One of Taylor’s girlfriends? No, I would’ve remembered. Not that Taylor really had girlfriends, now that I thought about it. Girls liked him and they’d always talk to him and he’d usually be in a shadowy corner with someone at a party, but I never remembered him being in an actual relationship. I definitely would’ve remembered.
