by Siera Maley
I felt my heart twist in my chest and tried my best to forget what he’d said as I moved to climb back into my car.
* * *
The entrance to laser tag was off in the corner of the arcade and had small wisps of smoke leaking out of it. I’d done this a few times before. The room was large, maze-like, filled with smoke, and square-shaped, with several winding hallways connecting scattered open areas. The walls that enclosed the hallways were tall and impossible to see over, but the ones in the open areas were waist-high and could serve as barricades or hiding places. The entrance was in one corner of the room, and in each of the other three, there rested a slightly raised, base-like structure where players could hide out and scope for “enemies”.
It was a slow day at the arcade, and so Robbie, Chloe, and I were suited up for a three-way free-for-all match.
“Go easy on me, guys,” Chloe laughed as her vest was activated by a male employee. “I have no clue what I’m doing.”
“We’ll team up against Robbie,” I joked.
“Fine with me,” he said and then darted into the smoky room without further warning, leaving Chloe and I behind.
“You’ll know you’ve been hit when your vest lights up and starts beeping,” the man who’d been helping Chloe explained once she’d been strapped into her vest and handed a gun. “For that time, your gun won’t work and you can’t be shot again. But after fifteen seconds, the lights will turn off and you’ll be back in play. We keep score out here. You guys have twenty minutes starting from when your friend ran inside. Have fun!”
“Sounds easy enough.” She adjusted her vest and then smiled over at me. “See you inside!”
And then she was gone. I waited a moment, turning my laser gun over in my hands, and then, when I was certain I’d given her enough time, rushed into the room.
It was hard to see anything, but I could already hear the sounds of rapid laser-fire. That had to be Robbie. A distant “Dammit!” from Chloe a moment later confirmed it, and I laughed loudly as I ducked around a corner and saw her standing in one of the open areas, her vest flashing and beeping wildly. She spun around, free hand on her hip and poised to chastise me for laughing at her, but I ducked behind the wall again as Robbie fired at me from somewhere in the open space.
“Run, Chloe!” I reminded her.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks!”
Robbie chuckled as her footsteps faded. He sounded close. I peered around the wall again, keeping my torso and vest behind the wall, and squinted through the smoke. A shadow caught my eye near a short wall less than twenty feet away, and I mashed the trigger of my gun several times until Robbie’s vest lit up. He murmured a curse and hurried away.
We continued like that for a while. Our laser tag match essentially became a competitive hunt for Chloe, who basically ran around like a chicken with her head cut off, vest flashing wildly during her fifteen-second cool downs. Occasionally Robbie and I would shoot at each other once Chloe had been hit and had wandered away from us, but that was rare.
I was sure our time would be up soon after my tenth hit on Chloe and third on Robbie, and I was also relatively sure I was in the lead by exactly two shots. The winner got a fifty percent refund on their entry fee, so I was somewhat invested in beating Robbie.
He got a hit on Chloe while I was hiding in one of the corner bases, and I watched her come barreling in my direction, red lights flashing everywhere. I kept an eye out for Robbie behind her, gun poised, but he played it smart, probably guessing that I’d be looking for him to follow Chloe’s beacon of red lights. I tried to mentally count up hits in my head, double-checking the scores. He was one down now, so as long as I kept a low profile and he didn’t hunt down Chloe again, I was pretty sure I had the win.
I was kind of proud of the stunt I pulled next.
Chloe’s lights stopped flashing at last, and I listened to the sound of her footsteps as she came closer, hiding safely in my little base again. And then I heard a second set of footsteps, quieter and smoother, coming from the opposite direction. Robbie’d doubled back around, and she was going to run straight into him any second now.
A voice came over the intercom in the room to announce, “One minute left, guys,” and I used the opportunity to dart out, snatch Chloe by the arm just before she hurried by, and yank her into the corner with me. She stumbled into me, crushing me against the wall, and I winced as I heard her start firing wildly. The feedback from the intercom covered up her first few shots, but I wasn’t totally confident we’d escaped Robbie’s detection.
“Stop it!” I hissed, grabbing her arm and yanking it up into the air. She twisted around so that we were facing each other and, thankfully, listened to me. “Don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you,” I explained.
She looked mildly frustrated with me as she lowered her arm, gun hanging from her hand at her side now. “You choose now of all times to team up? How many times have you shot me?”
“More than Robbie,” I explained proudly. “I think I’m up by one. I’m gonna win.”
She scoffed, and I looked down at our bodies, suddenly aware of how close we were. Her face was so close to mine that I could feel her breath, and I could tell by the hitch in it that she’d just noticed our proximity too. I tried to readjust our positions, but she stopped me.
“Shh. He’ll hear.” She was right, and her smirk told me she knew it. My heart rate picked up as she leaned in close to my ear. Her breath tickled my cheek as she whispered, “I suck at laser tag, but this is a lot of fun. Next time we should lose the boy.”
My heart hammered harder. If Robbie couldn’t hear our whispers, I was sure he’d find us just by listening for the sound of my pulse.
Chloe leaned away and reached up to tug lightly at a strand of my hair, grinning at me. She bit her bottom lip in a way that looked practiced, drawing my eyes to the motion, and then grinned wider as she dropped the strand of my hair and moved to trace her index finger up along my jawline instead. Her touch was softer now. Her thumb skimmed across my cheek and my pulse quickened to a rate I was sure it’d never reached before. My back was pressed against the wall and she was pressed against me, so I wasn’t sure I could leave her, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. My gaze hooded, I glanced back down at her lips again. She moved closer, and our noses brushed. She was going to kiss me. I closed my eyes…
And then I was twelve. I was twelve, and I was at a hospital, watching through a large glass window as the nurse on the other side quickly moved to pull a curtain across. Behind her, a team of doctors and surgeons surrounded a table my mother rested on. She disappeared from view, shielded by the curtain, but I could hear the heart monitor beeping so quickly, at a pace I was sure my own pulse could never reach. I pressed my right hand against the glass and let out a sob as my dad gripped my left…
I opened my eyes and registered a new kind of beeping even as Chloe jerked back away from me, surprise registering on her face. Her vest was beeping and flashing red, and behind her stood Robbie, his gun poised and pointed at her. His face looked almost comically grim as he leaned to the side just slightly, pointed his gun at me, and pulled the trigger several times in succession. My vest lit up just before the voice came over the intercom again. “Alright, guys. Time’s up. Close game; it was a one-point difference in the end. Come on out and check out your scores.”
I looked from Robbie, who clearly knew exactly what he’d just happened upon, to Chloe, who was red-faced, embarrassed, and hadn’t taken her eyes off of me. And then I moved quickly, brushing past the both of them and hurrying out of the maze.
“Harper!” Chloe called after me, but I ignored her. I burst out of the smoke, shrugged off my vest and returned my gun, but didn’t glance at the scores. Instead, I went directly to the bag I’d brought, fished out my car key, and handed it to the very confused employee who’d been watching me the whole time.
“Give this to my friends,” I told him.
And then I ran.
I sprinted all the way
home on foot, over three hours earlier than I’d planned on leaving the arcade. I ran until my legs were sore and straining and until my throat was aching and dried up from panting and until my heart was thudding so hard it felt like it was trying to tear its way out of my chest.
I collapsed on the sidewalk at the entrance to my neighborhood twenty minutes later and pulled my knees up to my chest, struggling to get my breathing even. I buried my head between my knees and resisted the urge to vomit. The earth was spinning, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to make it stop. With them closed, all I could see was the surgeon from four years ago, and his grim expression as he’d told my dad that my mom’s injuries were too extensive. They’d done all they could. He was so sorry.
My ears rang as I blinked rapidly and forced my eyes open again. Then I scrambled to my feet, stumbled to the bushes by the stone sign that bore the name of my neighborhood, and coughed harshly into them, my stomach churning.
At last, I steadied myself, confident I wasn’t going to throw up, and took a few deep breaths. The past week felt like a bad dream. I wished it had been a bad dream. I wished I had a different pair of eyes.
I pressed my palms into my eye sockets and bit back a frustrated scream. “She’ll be fine,” I forced myself to say. “She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.”
It was easier to repeat a lie than to face how stupid it’d been to speak to Chloe in the first place, but I still didn’t believe it for a second.
* * *
I finished my walk home slowly. I wanted to recover before I saw my dad. I wanted to be able to look him in the eyes and tell him that Robbie’d forgotten an errand he needed to run, and that we’d left early so he could get it done this evening. I wanted to be able to say that it’d been a lot of fun and that Chloe was safely home and Robbie was in a hurry and was getting into his car as we spoke. And then I wanted to turn on an old movie with my dad and drown out the sound of Robbie pulling into the driveway with my car and then taking the hint and leaving in his without saying goodbye.
I wanted all of that, and I got none of it.
Robbie and Chloe, as I’d expected, didn’t immediately assume I’d run straight home, and so I beat them back. That was what I’d hoped for, and I was relieved that I could put off talking to either of them about what’d happened back in the arcade. Their absence meant that I could bury my phone in the bottom of my purse and ignore their messages until Monday, in Robbie’s case, and potentially forever, in Chloe’s.
I knew I looked sweaty, but I could attribute that to nearly half an hour of laser tag. So that was okay, too.
What wasn’t okay – or wasn’t expected, at least – was that there was a car I’d never seen before in our driveway. It was parked next to Robbie’s, and it was a red four-door. A car fit for someone closer to my dad’s age than mine. A car I was certain I’d never seen before.
I fumbled for my keys as I walked up to front door, just in case it was unlocked. It wasn’t. I opened it quickly, already trying to double-check my explanation to make sure it was usable in front of a formal guest. Dad worked from home, but he still had coworkers. Maybe a simple conference call wasn’t enough for whatever he was working on at the moment.
“Dad?” I called out as I entered the living room, and my eyes fell to the couch. Dad shifted hastily, detaching himself from the woman sitting with him and running an anxious hand through his hair. But it was too late. I’d seen them, and I was staring now. They’d been kissing.
The woman turned to look at me, eyes wide with surprise. But she recovered quickly and offered me a shy, vaguely embarrassed smile. “Oh, is this Harper? I’ve heard so much about you!”
My dad and I were having a silent conversation of our own as she spoke. I swallowed hard, my whole body tense, and he shot me a pained look, still rubbing at his head. “Harper-”
I turned swiftly and hurried out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time as he called after me. I threw open my bedroom door and then slammed it shut behind me once I was alone inside. I locked it and then turned away, pressing my back up against the door. And before I could even register what I’d felt, seeing the two of them together, tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I couldn’t prevent them from coming.
Eventually, I stopped trying.
Chapter Four
Dad tried several times to come talk to me, but I stayed shut up in my room for the rest of the day, buried beneath the piles of blankets on my bed. I kept my phone on my nightstand, turned on, and spent my evening listening to the buzzes of new text messages, or else to the sound of my ringtone as presumably Robbie or Chloe tried to call me. Dad came by at one point to talk through the door about what had gone wrong today at the arcade rather than what’d happened when I’d gotten home, so it was obvious Robbie’d reported back to him rather than letting me off the hook. I was eager to put off dealing with it, so I didn’t respond to my dad.
I cracked first for Robbie, when he called me shortly after midnight. He sighed with relief when I answered him, a dull “hello” my only greeting.
“I was worried about you,” he told me.
“I’m perfect,” I deadpanned. “You can stop calling.”
There was a long silence. At last, he told me, “Chloe was really upset.”
“I don’t care,” I mumbled. “I hardly know her.”
“Yeah, you do care. You like her.”
“I hardly know her,” I repeated.
“You still like her.” When I didn’t argue, he added, treading carefully, “It’s okay to like her, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re so full of shit. You’re the one who told me to stay away from her in the first place.”
“That was my advice. It doesn’t mean not taking it makes you wrong. I get it, okay? I get it better than anyone. Sometimes your head and your heart don’t say the same thing.”
“Look, it’s not like I’m in love with her. We just met. I can just… tell her I’m not interested. Tell her to leave me alone. I never have to speak to her again, and then when she…” I trailed off, swallowing hard, and couldn’t bring myself to say it. Instead, I let out a shaky breath and admitted, “She was going to kiss me.”
“I know. I saw. I stopped it.” He was silent for a moment. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I set the phone down on my bedspread and put him on speaker, then placed my chin in my hands. “My dad’s seeing someone,” I told him.
“I know. She was here when I pulled up.”
“How can he do that? He didn’t even tell me about her.”
“Well, maybe he was worried that this was how you’d react.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing. “It has been four years since your mom, you know?”
“That shouldn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. People move on, Harper. He loved your mom, but I bet she’d want him to be happy.”
“You don’t know anything about my mom or what she’d want,” I bit out, and he fell silent. I rubbed at my face until I was sure my cheeks were red.
“That’s true,” he said at last, “but that’s the way life works. You like Chloe now, but if you were to date her, you’d want to eventually date again after she was dead, wouldn’t you?”
“Why do you have to be such an insensitive asshole?” I snapped, cheeks flaming, and quickly hung up on him. Then I threw my phone across the room and watched it hit the wall with a satisfying smack, where it broke apart into several pieces.
Breathing hard, I lay back down, pulled my covers over my head, and willed myself to wake up to a different world in the morning. One where Robbie wasn’t so cynical and straightforward and my dad cared about my mom and Chloe didn’t have less than a year to live. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Chloe didn’t know anyone in San Francisco. She had no friends. And she didn’t deserve to die feeling alone in a new city.
I couldn’t fall in love with her, I knew, but tryi
ng to help her was the only real option I had. I couldn’t just ignore her now, and if I couldn’t keep her alive, I could at least be there for her when she died. The last months of her life being happy ones were more important than anything I’d go through while helping make them happy. That was the right thing to do, even if it would be hard.
And besides: maybe, by some miracle, I’d do something to keep her alive in the process.
* * *
I answered Dad’s sixth knock on my door around noon the next day, when I was finally somewhat prepared to hear him out. I was so angry at him – angrier than I’d ever been at anyone before, in fact. He’d given me that big speech at dinner all those nights ago about not regretting one minute of his relationship with Mom, but with the way his date had talked about me last night, it seemed like he’d been seeing her without telling me for a while now.
I understood loving someone and then loving someone else later. But Mom had been everything to me and him before she died. Four years had passed, but it felt too soon. Maybe it always would.
He didn’t bring up last night when I opened my bedroom door. Instead, unable to look me in the eyes, he told me, “You have a visitor at the front door, honey.”
“You sure it isn’t for you?” I bit out as I brushed past him. He stiffened and didn’t respond.
I was so busy trying to rile my dad up that I hadn’t actually considered who my visitor was. Right around the time I reached the front door, I realized it was probably Chloe. I was ready to hear my dad out, but Chloe was a different story.
I paused, my hand on the knob of the front door. There wasn’t really any turning back now. I exhaled heavily and pulled it open.
She looked up sharply and seemed surprised to see me standing there. In her hands was a sealed Tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies, which she offered to me with a small, nervous smile and a proposal of, “Peace offering?”
