1
PORTLAND, OREGON
SAGE
I focus on the target, cocking my arm back, assessing the trajectory: right into the middle of that clown’s face. Release the breath slowly with an underhand snap of the wrist, and—
Bull’s-eye.
I can’t hold in my laugh. “That’s for ‘mouthy little hoyden with more ink than talent.’”
Beside me, Priya hands over another hefty wooden ball. “Get it out of your system, girlfriend.” Her tone is half motherly soothing, half impatience.
I toss it up and catch it—weighing the mass, balancing, integrating it as part of my arm—then launch another straight into the high-score ring.
Bam!
“Andthat’sfor ‘pint-sized poppet with more assets in theseat of her trousers than in her helmet.’” Lights flash and bells chuckle. Another string of tickets spits out of the game, just below the start button.
Priya leans to tear it off before draping them around my neck with the piles of others. “I know this is therapeutic, but how much longer? I’m starving.”
“Go get some of that stale popcorn.” Eyes locked on the Skee-Ball game, I jab a finger at the coin slot. “Gimme more. I’m not quitting ’til I beat the high score.” I nod toward the clown face. “Looks a little like him, doesn’t it?”
My PA and lifelong best friend drops nickels into the slot, sighing, then tips her head and gives the target a glance. Her glossy, dark hair slips around her shoulder. “Maybe the bow tie? Alexander Laskaris seems like the kind of guy who’d own one.”
I grab three balls from the return gutter and launch them into the air, juggling. “I’d like to make himeat it, the misogynist dickbag.”
“Um, language?” Priya scolds. “This place is full of kids.”
Behind me I hear a child’s giggle. I carefully turn, keeping the paint-chipped balls in motion. A little girl with hair pulled into a ponytail on top of her head is watching me.
In a grand finale move, I toss the balls high and do a 360 spin before dropping to one knee and catching them. “Ta-daaaaaa!” I sing out.
“You’re a good juggler,” she tells me.
“Aww, thanks. Wanna take over my lane? I just put in new coins, but my whiny friend here says it’s time to go.”
The girl takes the balls from me, eyeing one of the curlsthat’s escaped from my seventies trucker cap. “Why’s your hair blue?”
“Grew that way.” I stand and brush off the knees of my jeans, which are dusted with popcorn shards from the dirty floor. “My mother’s a mermaid, and my dad—”
“Don’t lie to children!” Priya hisses.
Lifting the prize tickets from my shoulders, I drape them around the girl’s neck. “Here—get something big. Don’t go for the lava lamp, though. I got that once and it was a piece of—”
“Sage!” Priya snaps.
“I was gonna say ‘junk’! Chill out, babes.” Waving goodbye to the little girl, I hook an arm through my best friend’s and drag her away from the Skee-Ball lanes.
Just before the exit doors leading out to a rainy Oregon afternoon, I stop at a bank of candy dispensers. I love how everything in this arcade is a time warp from my childhood. This place—the whole funky, artsy Southeast Portland neighborhood, really—has barely changed since I was a kid.
My parents’ house, a mile from here, is the same one I grew up in. We could’ve afforded fancier—my dad made a fortune in the late-nineties dot-com boom—but my parents have always preferred experiences to “stuff.” We went on tons of family vacations: Mom, Dad, my brother Julian, and me. And my karting was a major investment, along with Julian’s mountaineering.
The only thing Jules has to show for his efforts is a missing toe from frostbite when he climbed K2 and a string of brokenhearted women around the globe. Sounds mean of me to say,but… we’re not the best of pals. As for me, all the money and time my parents shelled out set me on the road leading to this year’s dream drive: second seat on the Emerald F1 team, the sole woman driver in the sport.
“You shouldn’t eat that junk,” Priya scolds as I feed a quarter into a machine full of ancient-looking Good & Plentys. “Dagna will strangle you.”
“That’s why I’m having itnow. All season she’ll be giving me the stink eye if I touch a cocktail or a candy bar.”
