Page 30

I sprinted after him.
And a brick, uh, craphouse of a teenager stepped in front of me.
“Excuse me, sir.You have to check in at the desk.”
Ryan had already disappeared down the corridor to the laser tag arena.
“Okay, fine,” I said, patting myself down for my wallet.“How much is it?”
“Oh, you have to have one of our guest cards from the front desk,” he said.“You pay them, and they give you a card, and then you bring the card here—”
“Can’t I pay you?”I asked, leaning to look past him.“Cut out the middleman?”
“No, sir.See, you have to have a card, and then that card is yours, and you pay—”
“Yes, yeah, I get it.Look, I don’t even want toplay, I just need to talk—”
I tried to sneak around him.
It didn’t work well.
“Sir,” the gargantuan teenager said, “you need to go to the front desk and—”
“Hey Randall,” Keme said.He held out a plastic card with the Pirate’s Cove logo on it.“For both of us.”And then, to me, in the unmistakable tone of someone who suspects he’s going to be cheated: “You’re paying me back.”
“Oh, hey, Keme,” the giant—apparently Randall—said.“Cool.”
He scanned the card.And then he waved us through.
We ran down the corridor.It forked, so Keme went right, and I went left.When the corridor turned again, it opened into the waiting area, where the blasters (AKA the guns) and the vests and the headbands were racked and charging.I didn’t bother to put on a vest or a headband—those are the dumb parts of the game, because that’s where you get shot.
I did, however, help myself to a blaster.
Did I need it?
No.
Was it the best use of my time?
No.
But listen: it was freaking laser tag.
Armed, I ran through another opening and into the arena itself.I glimpsed a pimply girl in a Pirate’s Cove polo who was waving her arms and calling, “Mister!Mister!”
I kept running.
The arena was a maze; it was designed to be that way.It was also pure chaos.Teens and preteens sprinted around me, screaming and blasting.Sound effects blared overhead.Each room was different from the next—one designed to look like an urban wasteland, another that might have been a factory or a warehouse, and then a futuristic one that could have come from some really bad 1970s sci-fi.The lights were dim, and everywhere, black lights lit up white and neon and fluorescent strips.It smelled powerfully like an overworked fog machine—and like overheated children.One little girl, who couldn’t have been more than seven, had me in her sights and was shrieking as she unloaded shot after shot into me.
I shot her back, and she screamed with excitement as her vest flashed.
Like I said, it’s laser tag.No mercy.
I was struggling against a current of flushed and sweaty tweens, working my way through what was someone’s idea of a medieval castle, when I glimpsed Ryan.He was trying to open a door hidden in one of the walls, glancing frantically from side to side.I cleared a cloud of boys who clearly hadn’t been giving it their all in eighth-grade PE, and a path opened up for me.
Ryan must have caught my movement out of the corner of his eye, though, because he spun around, a gun in one hand.
It wasnota laser tag blaster.