Gotcha

by Shelley Hrdlitschka

  “Sorry, no walkie-talkies.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “And Katie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m so glad you’re not mad at me.”

  I smile and hang up the phone.

  Eight

  “Where should we go?” Joel asks, backing his mom’s Subaru out of our driveway.

  It’s like there never was any misunderstanding between us. Joel arrived, all smiles, helped me into the car, and the anguish of the week is already melting away. I sit back and sigh. “I dunno. Anywhere. It just feels so good to get out of the house. It’s been days.”

  “Aha! You wanted to get out after all, and yet you still made me beg.”

  I feel myself blush. “It’s the bead-hunting I’m not so crazy about. Getting out is all good.”

  Joel smiles and turns down our street, heading toward the town center. I don’t bother mentioning that I actually was out earlier today, with my dad, because that doesn’t count. I wasn’t feeling good about that outing.

  We spend the first half hour of our bead-hunting adventure just driving around aimlessly. The car doors are locked and the windows are rolled up, for safety. Nothing would surprise me right now, not even someone running over to the car at a stoplight and hopping in to tag one of us.

  The town is busy with people shopping and parents driving kids to their activities, but I don’t spot any other grads. It is nice to be out, but driving without a destination eventually grows dull.

  “How ’bout we get a coffee?” I suggest.

  “We could,” Joel says, glancing at me, “but I don’t want to run into a coffee shop alone, and it might be a little awkward trying to carry coffee, linked, and with you on crutches.”

  Clearly I’m not thinking like a good bead-hunter. “Then how about a drive-through place? Do you know one that makes good lattes?”

  Joel checks his rearview mirror and pulls into the right lane. “I do, actually.”

  A few minutes later we’re sitting in the parking lot of a strip mall, sipping hot drinks out of paper cups.

  “So what Gotcha excitement have I missed this week?”

  “Oh man,” Joel says. “Where to start?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Well, let’s see. Did you hear about Sam?”

  “No, what?”

  Joel shakes his head. “He’s really blown it.” Sam is another classmate who we’ve gone to school with since first grade.

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, you know how he and Mike are—or were—like, really close?”

  “Yeah. Like pretty much inseparable.”

  “Exactly. And you know how Mike was totally into Gotcha?”

  “Totally? Like worse than everyone else? Even Tyson?”

  “Yeah, if you can believe it.”

  “That’s hard to believe, but okay.”

  “So Sam phones him up and suggests they hit a bucket of balls or something. They’re always doing stuff like that together.”

  I turn in my seat to face Joel, wondering where he’s going with this.

  “Sam arrives at Mike’s in his car to pick him up, and Mike jumps into the front seat. What Mike doesn’t know is that Joanie is ducking down in the backseat. As soon as he pulls the door shut, she sits up, reaches over the seat and tags him.”

  “Sam set him up?” I can’t believe it! Sam and Mike have been friends forever.

  “Sam set him up. And Mike is pissed.”

  “How did Sam justify it?”

  “He said it’s a game. No big deal. Everyone’s in it for themselves.”

  “Hmm.”

  “But now Mike is helping Carl, who has Sam’s name, and Mike’s seriously out for revenge.”

  I nod. It’s one thing to tag your friend if you have their name, but to set them up? I don’t think I’d do that to Paige, even though our friendship has been pretty sketchy lately.

  “And then there was the TJ and Jamie episode.”

  “What happened with them?”

  Joel takes the last sip of his latte and squashes the paper cup. “Jamie has TJ’s name. He knows TJ usually gets off work at the restaurant around nine, so he’s crouching in some bushes right by TJ’s car, waiting to tag him. Only trouble is, TJ doesn’t end up getting off work until eleven. Jamie’s still squatting in the bushes, freezing his butt off, when TJ comes out of the restaurant. He tries to leap up and tag TJ, but his muscles have all seized up from squatting so long.”

  I laugh, picturing it.

  Joel is smiling too. “TJ sees this guy stumbling out of the bushes toward him, so he throws off his backpack and sprints away. With his stiff muscles, Jamie hasn’t got a hope of catching up, but he does grab the backpack. Turns out TJ’s paycheck is in there. Two hundred dollars worth of paycheck.”

  “Whoa! Nice.”

  “Yeah. So Jamie phones up TJ the next day and tells him if he wants his money, he has to come and get the backpack.”

  “Kinda like ransom.”

  “Kinda like.” Joel nods. “But TJ’s no dummy. He knows if he collects the backpack he’ll get tagged and give up all hope of winning the two-thousand-plus Gotcha prize. So he forfeits the paycheck, figuring he’ll still be a couple of thousand dollars richer if he wins the game.”

  “Omigod.” I sink back in my seat. “This is crazy.”

  “I know.”

  I think about these stories for a minute. “Has Tyson still got his beads?” I ask.

  “I think so. Why?”

  “I figure he’s got my name. That’s why he tried to get me to unlink from you at the party.”

  “Or maybe he has my name.”

  “Yeah. Could be.”

  “One strategy people are using to get beads is to tell their victim, in a Gotcha-free zone like school, that they know who has their name. After the person begs and pleads to be told who it is, the bead snatcher pretends to give in and then tells them any random name, just to throw them off-track. That way, the person is not cautious around the real bead snatcher, and they become easier targets.”

  “Has that worked for anyone?”

  “Oh yeah. Quite a few beads were lost that way at the start, but now everyone’s becoming too bead savvy.”

  “Bead savvy?”

  “Yeah.” He smiles. “There’s a whole new lingo springing up too.”

  “I’ve noticed. Bead hunting, bead savvy, bead season.”

  “Gotcha-free zone.”

  “Bead crazy. Bead snatcher.”

  “Unlink. And then there’s the bead cheaters.”

  “Bead cheaters?” I smile. “How do they get away with cheating?”

  “There’s a few ways. One is for two people to work together. They start telling someone else conflicting stories about who has that person’s name. Because that person is confused, any one of a number of people could tag them, and they wouldn’t know that their name had actually changed hands a few times.”

  “How does that work? Only one person wins.”

  “I’m not really sure, but I guess they have a plan to split the prize money or something. I wouldn’t trust anyone at this point.”

  “Even me?”

  He looks at me and grins. My stomach flip-flops. “I think I could trust you, but only because you’ve been cooped up too long and don’t know the ins and outs of the game very well.”

  I punch his arm. “Are you calling me bead un-savvy?”

  “Maybe just a little bead naïve.”

  I have to laugh, and it feels good. “So,” I say, looking around the parking lot, “there doesn’t seem to be a lot of bead action happening here.”

  “Ahh. Bead action. Another new term coined. Maybe we could compile a manual.”

  “Yeah.” I consider it. “We could sell it to next year’s grads, to give them a bead-up on the game, so to speak.”

  Joel’s eyes shine. “We could list rules and strategies, and write out urban legends from Gotcha games in ye
ars gone by.”

  “Hmm. Maybe not, Joel,” I say, thinking of something Warren mentioned in our telephone conversation. “I think part of the mystique of the game is that nothing is written down. The rules and stories have been handed down by word of mouth forever.”

  Joel gives me a curious look.

  “Okay, maybe not forever, but for many years, anyway. Who knows, it may go on to become generations.”

  “Oh my God,” Joel says.

  “You’re right. Who’d wish this on their kids?”

  The parking lot has been quiet, but now a car pulls in to the stall right next to ours. The booming of its stereo makes the windows of Joel’s car vibrate.

  “Speak of the devil,” Joel says, leaning over to link arms with me.

  I peer into the tinted windows of the next car and see Tyson in the driver’s seat. Troy is in the passenger seat, and I can see three bodies in the back, though I can’t tell who they are. My stomach knots at the sight of Tyson. The vision of his crazy dance with my crutch at the party is still fresh in my mind.

  Tyson rolls down his window and motions for me to do the same thing.

  I glance at Joel. “Go for it,” he says, giving my arm a squeeze.

  “So look who’s back in action,” Tyson says once my window is down. He grins at me. The guy looks possessed. He really does. His eyes gleam in an unnatural way, and he holds up his wrist so I can see the four beads dangling from his bracelet. “Bead-hunting tonight?” he asks, looking past me to Joel.

  Joel shrugs. “Just hanging.”

  Tyson laughs. “Yeah, right.”

  Troy leans over Tyson from the passenger seat and holds up his arm for us to see the three beads strung on his wristband. “Just got my third one,” he yells over the music.

  “Yeah, and was it ever sweet,” Tyson says. He and Troy slap hands and then Troy slaps hands with each of the three guys in the backseat.

  “What happened?” Joel asks.

  Tyson begins to tell us but then realizes we can’t hear a thing over his music. He hits the power button on his stereo and turns to say something to the guys in the rear. They all pile out through the back door and lumber off toward the coffee shop, safely linked. Tyson and Troy have also emerged through the front door, and they lean against Tyson’s car, trying to look relaxed. I’m tempted to whip open my door and pin Tyson to his car with it, but somehow I restrain myself.

  “So, we were just cruising around,” Troy tells us, eyes shining, “when we see Rebecca in her car, and she’s got Josie and Merle with her.”

  “Troy had Josie’s name,” Tyson says.

  “Yeah, and we knew Merle had Justin’s name,” Troy adds, naming one of the guys who has just gone off for coffee.

  “So we followed them around for a while, but it got boring,” Tyson says. “We knew they weren’t going to take any chances, and neither were we.”

  “That’s when I got this brilliant idea,” Troy says. “I got Justin to switch his ballcap and jacket with me. We also traded seats in the car when we knew they couldn’t see us.”

  Tyson takes over the storytelling. “So I pulled in to a parking stall by a gas station with a convenience store. We wait for the girls to pull up near us because we want them to see us get out of the car. We link up and go into the store.”

  “Justin and I keep our heads down so they don’t realize the switch we’ve made,” Troy adds.

  “The girls just hover around outside the door of the store,” Tyson says, “spying on us. That’s when Troy makes his move. He unlinks from me, supposedly just long enough to pull out his wallet to pay for his Slurpee. Merle thinks he’s Justin, so she unlinks from Josie and books it into the store to tag him, but Justin turns out to be Troy.”

  “You should have seen Merle’s face when she realized she’d been had,” Troy says, laughing. “What a joke!”

  “Troy then sees that Josie is standing alone,” Tyson continues. “Rebecca, being the flake she is, has moved a few feet away and is distracted by some guy at one of the gas pumps. He’s talking to her, and she’s probably admiring his muscles or something, so she doesn’t see what’s going down. Before Josie can get hooked up with her again, Troy runs out of the store, toward Josie. She screams, and races down the street, but Troy is too fast.”

  Troy holds up his arm to admire his beads. “And isn’t it lovely.”

  “Did Merle ever get Justin’s bead?” I ask.

  “Nope. He’s still in.”

  Too bad, I think.

  “So whose name do you have now?” Joel asks Troy, all innocence.

  “Like I’m going to tell you, Keister!” Troy laughs. “Nice try.”

  The three stooges have returned with paper cups. They slide into the backseat of Tyson’s car.

  “Rumor has it you might be giving your bead away,” Tyson says to me.

  I shrug and feign interest in a seagull that’s rummaging through some dumped garbage. I’m certainly not sharing anything with him.

  “Well then,” he says, “I guess we’ll be seeing you around. Glad you’ve found the balls to leave your house again,” he adds, smirking.

  Now I wish I had slammed him with my car door.

  Troy gets into Tyson’s car through the driver’s door and slides across to the passenger seat. Tyson follows, somehow managing to remain linked the whole time, which makes me think that he suspects one of us of having his name. He puts the keys in the ignition, hits the power on the stereo and they squeal away.

  “This game exposes a person’s true colors, doesn’t it?” Joel comments, unraveling his arm from mine. I’m glad to see Tyson leave, but disappointed to lose the physical connection with Joel.

  “Yeah.”

  We resume driving around, without direction, but the carefree mood of the afternoon has evaporated. Tyson has really gotten to me. Did he actually believe I stayed home all week because I was scared? Jerk. And something else is gnawing at the back of my mind too. There’s something about the Gotcha stories that bothers me. It takes me a moment to put my finger on it, but eventually it dawns on me.

  “Have more girls than boys lost their beads?” I ask Joel.

  He tilts his head, considering it. “I don’t know. We’d have to check Facebook. But it does seem like it, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  I’m now realizing that all this driving is pointless, and I’m wondering why Joel even suggested it in the first place.

  “So what were the binoculars for?” I ask.

  “For spying on your victim.”

  “And the black clothes?” The answer is obvious, but I figure I’ll ask anyway.

  “For the same reason cat burglars and prowlers wear black. To blend in with the night.”

  I shake my head. “You’re a nutbar.”

  He smiles. “Might as well make it fun. It’s supposed to be a game.”

  His answer startles me. At what point did I forget that? Come to think of it, did I ever know it was supposed to be fun?

  “But it’s not even dark,” I tell him.

  “It will be, later.”

  “You think I’m still going to be driving around here with you later?”

  “If I don’t take you home you will be.”

  “So we’re doing this to have fun.” I’m still trying to get my head around that.

  He glances at me, puzzled. “Why else would we be doing it?”

  He’s right. Why else? “For the money, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s another good reason.”

  “You realize that this isn’t the most intelligent way of stalking your victim, don’t you?”

  “No?” he asks, teasing. “So how would you go about it?”

  “I’d do research on them. Find out what their habits are. Where they’re likely to be at any given time.”

  Joel glances at me. “And have you done that?”

  The question surprises me. I haven’t. I’ve hardly given any thought to how I’m going to capt
ure my first bead. “No.”

  Joel laughs. “So your strategy isn’t working any better than mine.”

  I slap his arm, but I laugh too. “I guess if we want to get in the game, we better start doing some research.”

  “How about we discuss it over dinner?” he suggests.

  “Good call,” I say, pretending that having dinner with a guy is something I do all the time.

  We decide to take the bridge across the river to the next town, hoping to find a place to eat without the constant fear of being tagged. After forty-five minutes of negotiating winding back roads, we find a diner that looks like a place no one but locals would hang out at. The décor is early seventies, with Arborite tabletops and an ancient jukebox squatting in a corner. The vinyl booth benches are slashed, and the stuffing is sprouting out in tufts. The only other people in the place are an old couple who are sitting in a booth by the window. The waitress motions for us to take the one across from them. I hobble over and slide onto the bench. Joel takes my crutches and lays them on the floor beside the table.

  After studying the grimy plastic menu, Joel decides on a hamburger, and I order fish and chips.

  “So,” Joel says, running his fingers along the side of his water glass, wiping the condensation off, “in order to do research on our victims, I guess we’re going to have to tell each other who we’re stalking.”

  I study his face, sizing him up. “I don’t know about that.”

  “How else will we be able to help each other?”

  “You said yourself that we can’t trust anyone.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me!” Joel tries to look insulted, but, as usual, his eyes give him away. I realize that he really is having fun with this game.

  Maybe it’s nerves, or maybe it’s exasperation, but something inside me snaps. I suddenly feel crazily defiant. “I’ve just decided something,” I tell Joel.

  “And what is that?”

  “That I absolutely have to win this stupid game.” The conviction of my words surges through me as I say them out loud. I sit up straighter. “I need the money, and it would be the perfect way to get back at Tyson.” It would be! I like what I’m hearing myself say. “And besides, it bugs me that the guys seem to be getting all the beads. It has to be a girl that wins.”

  Where did that come from? I just opened my mouth and the words came rushing out.