Jules perks up at that. “In that case, I call Dibs! I want her on my team if she’s sneaky and mean.”
Atlas folds his muscular arms across his chest. “Luna or Reid, you can’t have them both. Pick.”
Jules shoots me a look to check in and I grin. “Take Luna. I’ve never played on the opposite team from you. It’ll be fun to see if I can take you down.”
His brows shoot up but then he smiles wide. “Game fuckin’ on, bro.”
We pile into Gage’s truck and drive over to Atlas’s house where he jumps out of the truck bed and races across the lawn and starts tossing pebbles at one of the windows on the second floor. It only takes a minute for the window to be shoved open and a shapely leg covered in skintight leggings is thrown over the sill. Luna slides out and hangs by her fingers and then drops straight down to where Atlas catches her. Half the fun of this game has always been the sneaking out at two in the morning and not getting caught. I frown for a moment at that thought, not that my parents would give a damn.
Atlas and Luna race across the lawn back to the truck and Atlas tosses her up into the bed where Mars, Jules and I sit on the chilly metal waiting for them. Her pretty green eyes bounce between us and the back window of the cab where Torrin and Gage ride.
“I can’t believe I finally get to know what the mysterious game is! God, I hope it isn’t lame! Tell me what it is?”
Atlas rubs his knuckles over the top of her head and she bats them away with a cute glare.
“As if we’d play anything lame, Moon. But before we get to the game, we have to give you your weapon and show you how to use it.”
Her eyes go impossibly wide with excitement. “Weapons? We get freaking weapons? Oh, yeah! Gimmee!”
Atlas huffs a laugh and says, “Told you so,” to us as he digs in the bag that has all the game gear and pulls out what she’ll need. She holds it up with a slight frown of disappointment.
“A slingshot? That’s the weapon? Really?”
He holds out his cupped hand. “You’ll need these too for ammo.”
Her nose crinkles up as she takes them and then scoffs an incredulous laugh.
“Is that dog food?”
Atlas replies by shooting her right in the thigh from across the truck bed with one of the rock-hard pellets from his slingshot. She yelps out at the sting of it and then starts laughing.
“Holy cow, that hurts!”
He winks at her with a grin. “The key is to use the cheapest generic brand of large breed dog food. It makes the best ammo. It’s also gonna hurt a lot more than that when we get playing in the field. That little sting I just gave you was barely a half pull. Still think you can handle it?”
She sits up straighter and nods with determination but asks, “So what’s the game, then?”
Mars takes over to explain. “Two teams play capture the flag, in the dark. One member on each team keeps the flag on them secretly and moves around trying not to be found. If you get hit, you’re out and have to sit in place for five minutes and hope like hell no one comes by and hits you again before you can get back in the game. No face or head shots, but anywhere else onthe body is free to take a hit. Find the flag, take it from the flag bearer, and get back to home base without getting hit to win.”
Luna rubs her hands together with a devilish expression. “Not lame at all! Where do we play?”
“Lacomb Park. It’s got trees, hills, pathways, and very little lighting at night, but the full moon will give you away if you’re not careful,” Atlas tells her.
I nod and caution her, “But watch out for the edges of the park. It has this stupid knee-height wire attached to short posts that runs around the perimeter. You won’t be able to see them in the dark and I can tell you from humiliatingly painful experience that it will take you out if you run into it.”
Her shoulders come up and her face scrunches in painful sympathy. “Ugh, thanks for the tip, Reid. That would suck big time.”
Gage pulls into the parking lot and parks in the darkest corner. We all jump out with Atlas helping Luna down and then get the teams sorted. With Luna playing, there’s an odd number of people so we do a coin flip. Red team wins and gets the extra person with Jules, Luna, Mars, and Torrin making the team. Blue team is made up of Atlas, Gage, and me. Home bases are the gazebo and the play structure that are on opposite ends of the park.
Atlas, Gage, and I race to the gazebo and make our strategy. We decide the other team won’t suspect that I’ll be the flag bearer because Atlas and Gage are bigger and faster than me. It’s a good strategy and I stuff the blue flag into the inside pocket of my jacket and zip it up halfway to give the other team another reason to not think I have it on me. Atlas blows our team’s whistle and as soon as we hear the other team blow theirs, we race off in different directions. Jules and I have always been on the same team so I have to avoid my regular hiding places.
I can hear the other players moving around through the area from the perch I’ve found up a tree. For the first half an hour of the game, Luna makes the most noise when she lets out a few painful noises as she gets hit and then giggles when she gets her own hits in on other players. I just settle deeper into the tree and smile. I love the sound of her laugh.
We’re forty-five minutes into the game and I’ve got a leg cramp developing from the uncomfortable spot I’ve wedged myself into between branches when I spot Luna running at breakneck speed past my tree. She shoots a look over her shoulder just as a hand reaches out and snags her, pulling her into the cover of three other closely growing trees. I lose sight of her just as Atlas powers through beneath me and keeps on running. The cramp in my leg starts spasming and I know I’m going to have to get down and stretch it before it turns into a brutal Charlie horse. I give it a few more minutes to let the others clear the area and then start to make my way down.
“Son of a bitch! That fucking hurt!”
I hear Mars’s yell followed closely by Luna’s giggles just as my feet hit the ground. I don’t know who on my team got him but that gives me a five-minute window to get out of this area before he can move again. I stretch out my leg for a couple seconds and then make a dash around the tree, only to slam into someone who is also running. My hands immediately go around the other person and it takes less than a complete thought to know it’s Luna as we head to the ground. I twist as best I can so she lands on top of me instead of the other way around.
