Arcade and the Golden Travel Guide

by Rashad Jennings

My head breaks out in a sweat. Abram is my DAD’S NAME!

  This adventure is getting real.

  We wait while the couple take their first shots. Then they walk down the hill on the path, hand-in-hand.

  “Sure, they’re all happy now, but I bet one of their golf balls gets spit out behind a huge barrier.” Zoe smiles.

  “Zoe, their names are Dottie and Abram.”

  Zoe’s smile goes flat. “What?”

  “Yeah, I know. I think they’re OUR PARENTS!”

  “Whaaaaaat?” Zoe stares at me for a second, and then sits down on a bench and drums her fingers on her legs. The family of seven hits a bunch of terrible shots, golf balls flying all over the course so the kids have to chase them. One kid ends up in the creek.

  “This is going to take forever.” Zoe tightens her fists and walks up to the dad of the family. “Excuse me, sir, do you mind if my brother and I go in front of your family? We can skip this hole.”

  The dad wipes sweat from his forehead. “Please do. We could be on this hole for days.”

  “Thank you.” Zoe returns to the bench and grabs her club. “Come on, Arcade.” And she jogs down the hill toward the next hole.

  Right before we get there, Zoe stops me. “If that’s you-know-who, how are we going to keep them from recognizing us?”

  I stop and put a hand up to my chin. “Well, let’s think outside-the-elevator for a minute. If that’s really you-know-who, and they’re just teenagers, then they’ve never seen us because we haven’t been born yet! Man, I don’t get it, but this is dope!”

  Zoe crosses her arms and drums her fingers. “So, Mr. Out-of-the-Elevator, do you think it’s possible that they will sense future-kid vibes from us? I mean, we are that awesome.” Then she points to my ankles. “And both you and Dad are not wearing any socks. That’s DNA if I ever saw it.”

  I watch as Dottie pulls a hair tie out of her purse and pulls her hair into a ponytail, just like Zoe always does! Nerve sweats soak my T-shirt under my arms.

  “Yeah, maybe we should keep a little distance.” I reach down to see if the Triple T Token has returned yet.

  Nope.

  We hang back for a few minutes before we start the hole behind Dottie and Abram. Thankfully, the family behind us is still chasing balls up and down cliffs and into the parking lot. When we finally start our round on hole two, neither Zoe nor I can concentrate at all.

  “I want to make sure it’s them,” Zoe says as she lines her putter up with the ball. “I need to see their eyes up close.” She smacks her ball way too hard and it takes off like a rocket. It lands right on the third hole green where Dottie and Abram are playing!

  “I’ll be right back.” Zoe’s eyes are wide as she takes off down the hill.

  “Watch the vibes!” I shudder.

  Loopy starts to take off after her, but I grab him. “Not this time, boy. Sister’s on her own.” I duck behind a fake bush and watch as Zoe approaches the couple. She says something to them, and then points up the hill with her golf club. Dottie and Abram look up in my direction and wave. I poke my head out and wave back.

  Then Zoe shakes both of their hands, transferring all her future-kid vibes right into them!

  ZOE!!! ARE YOU NUTS????

  Her eyes are all bright as she trots back up the hill, and she smiles bigger than I’ve seen in a while. “That’s THEM! That’s MOM and DAD!” She has to take a deep breath and sit on the bench with her head between her knees. “I think I’m gonna faint.”

  I push her in the shoulder. “Don’t faint! I wouldn’t know what to do about that while we’re, well . . . here.”

  Zoe lifts her head. Her eyes are a little glazed. “Dad looks just like you, Arcade, except he has that outdated hairstyle. And Mom . . . I thought she would recognize me! She asked me my name, and it just came out—Zoe. She grinned and said she LOVED that name.”

  Thunder roars, and the black clouds we spotted earlier have moved overhead and begin to open up on us. I put out my hand to catch some raindrops. “No glitter yet. I guess we get to stay around a little longer.”

  Zoe grabs Loopy and tries to shield him from the rain. “Run for cover!” She takes off toward the game building with all of the other soaked golfers.

  I take off running too, but I slip on the slick ground and almost eat it on the concrete. Then lightning strikes the hill behind the course, and the rumble from the thunder practically knocks me off my feet.

  “Hurry up, Arcade!” Zoe yells.

  I glance up at the big sign in front of the place, and I’m frozen where I stand in the downpour. The sign no longer says Forest Games and Golf.

  The sign says . . . Arcade Adventures!

  CHAPTER 4

  Triple T Transfer

  Zoe! Come HERE!” I wave my arms and jump up and down until she comes back out in the rain.

  “This better be worth my hair getting wet and frizzy.” She grimaces and squeezes her ponytail, wringing the water out of it.

  I point to the sign. Zoe sees it, and her jaw drops.

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “That’s what it says on the back of your token.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Do you suppose—”

  “. . . that this is where my token came from?”

  We both nod and say, “Yes,” at the same time.

  Loopy barks. The poor little pooch is drenched like us.

  “We gotta go find Mom and Dad!” I head for the building.

  Zoe points to Loopy. “But that guy said to keep him outside.”

  I shrug. “In this weather? Come on.”

  The arcade is now more packed than before. Kids run around waving tickets they’ve won at the different games, and the pizza man cranks out slices of what actually looks to be decent pizza. I’m tempted to buy a piece, except that I want to follow my parents around some more. I hope they haven’t dumped their golf equipment and already exited to the parking lot.

  Zoe scans the room, her hand shading her eyes to keep off the glare of the neon lights flashing around. She turns her head left, then right, and then she stops. “I found them. Follow me.”

  We push our way through the crowd until we’re a few feet behind them. They’re standing in front of “The Claw”—that game where you use a handle to direct a huge claw above your favorite stuffed animal. You push the button, the claw opens and drops, and it usually grabs NOTHING, resulting in frustration!

  Zoe and I inch a little closer. I zip Loopy up in the front of my hoodie, partly to dry him off, and partly to keep him out of sight.

  My mom drops a few tokens in the machine. “I think you should try, Abram. I want you to get me that colorful cockatoo right in the middle.” She points to a green and white stuffed bird that looks a lot like my sister’s annoying bird, Milo.

  No! Don’t go for that! You’ll be sorry!

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try it yourself?” Dad lifts mom’s hand and places it on the handle.

  She pulls it away. “Yes, I’m sure. I want you to win something for me.”

  I open my mouth and put a finger in to pretend to gag.

  “Stop it, Arcade.” Zoe puts her hands on her wet cheeks. “They’re so cute I could cry.”

  Dad rubs his hands together, then pulls them apart and blows on them. “Okay, here we goooooo!” He grabs the handle and pulls it left. Then he bumps it right. He pulls it back. Mom puts her hand on his shoulder and bounces up and down on her toes. “You can do it. That little birdie is mine.”

  Dad pushes the button, and the claw opens, then drops. Zoe clenches her fists.

  “Aw, come on, you wouldn’t wish a stuffed cockatoo on them, would you?”

  She gives me the stink-eye.

  We look back toward the claw. It has closed, but not on the cockatoo. Dad’s shoulders droop and he hangs his head. “I’m sorry, Dottie.”

  Mom hugs him. “That’s okay. It means a lot that you tried.”

  And then the cl
aw raises up. It is holding something—a little gold container, shaped like an egg at the top, but with a flat bottom. The claw moves over to the payoff chute and drops it down.

  “Looks like I wasn’t skunked after all.” Dad reaches down and pulls the container out. “I wonder what’s in here?” He holds the container over Mom’s head and pretends to crack it.

  Mom laughs and pulls it from his hands. “Hey, don’t mess my hair up.”

  I shake my head. “She really is you, Zoe.”

  Zoe puts a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh!”

  Mom holds the container for a minute and shakes it a little. “Hmmm. It feels special.” She looks up at Dad and grins. “I’ll treasure whatever it is, because you won it for me.”

  Enough with the love. Open it!

  Mom pops the flat bottom off and gives it to Dad. Then she pours the contents out in her hand.

  Zoe and I inch even closer.

  They don’t notice us because they can’t take their eyes off the prize. Mom hands the other piece of the gold container to Dad, and then she holds the prize up for him to see.

  It’s a golden chain. And at the end of the chain dangles a GOLDEN ARCADE TOKEN!

  Zoe gasps and covers her mouth with both hands.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mom says, raising up on her toes to give Dad a kiss on the cheek. She hands it to him, and he lifts it up to examine it.

  “Triple T, huh? All I’ve ever seen before on these tokens are double Ts.”

  Mom shrugs. “I told you, it must be something special.”

  Dad drapes it around Mom’s neck. “So, do you like it as much as the cockatoo?”

  She smiles. “A hundred times more.”

  And then the whole place breaks loose. Every game pumps up the music and the neon lights flicker brighter than before. Zoe and I wedge ourselves between a pinball machine and a wall across from the claw machine. Mom and Dad look all around and put their hands out as if they are wondering what has just happened. Glitter falls from the ceiling, on top of them.

  Oh, man, I’ve seen this before!

  The dog-hating guy who yelled at me earlier comes running toward Mom and Dad. “Kenwood! I found it! You put it in the claw machine, you rat!” He reaches his hands out toward Mom, and she steps back. Dad jumps in front of her to shield her from the big guy.

  And then they both DISAPPEAR! Well, they could have just ducked through the crowd and slipped away somehow. But Zoe and I know better.

  “THIEF! You little THIEF! That was MINE! GIVE it back!” The big guy is about to bust a vein in his neck.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Zoe grabs my hood and pulls me from the hiding place. We scoot through the crowd, out the side exit, and back out into the rainstorm in the parking lot where we started.

  I feel something heavy and cold drop on my chest, right over my heart. It’s the token! We look up to the sky. The raindrops are now silver and gold glitter. Elevator doors appear, and so does the golden coin slot.

  I pull the chain out from under my shirt and give the token a tug. It comes off the chain easily. I slip it into the slot.

  “Get us outta here!” I yell, and I make an open-door motion with my hands.

  The doors open, and Zoe, Loopy, and I scramble in.

  “UP or DOWN?”

  I hear my voice again over the loudspeaker. And, yes, there is still only one button.

  “Anything but sideways.” Zoe’s eyes are glazed over.

  I know just what to say. I reach over and press the button.

  “Home.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Derek’s in Trouble

  The elevator delivered us back to our new home in New York City. It’s part of a brownstone building, and we have really soft couches in the living room. Zoe and I plopped down on them, exhausted.

  “Welcome back! Triple T! Bawwwwk!”

  That was Milo, the real cockatoo.

  “I wish you were in the claw machine,” I called to him, only half kidding.

  Then I heard whimpering coming from the other couch. Zoe was over there with her hands over her face, shaking.

  I sat up. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt on the ride back?”

  “No, I’m not hurt at all. I’m OVERWHELMED! Arcade, we just saw our mom and dad before they were married! And I think that big guy yelling THIEF was the same guy who wrestled you to the ground after the career expo today!”

  As I was trying to process all that, my phone rang. It was my cousin Derek’s special ring. “Oh, yeah! I forgot about Derek!”

  Derek is my cousin and best friend who lives in Virginia. We’re the same age and practically spent every moment of our lives together until I moved to New York. Derek’s the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, but right before Zoe and I traveled through the elevator doors, I had gotten several texts from Derek saying he was in some kind of trouble. I thought when the doors appeared that I was going to help him.

  I put him on speaker. “Derek! Are you all right?”

  I could hear a basketball bouncing in the background.

  “Arcade! Finally! Things are getting intense around here! I think someone’s after me, and it has something to do with you!”

  “Me? How do you know that?”

  “I was helping somebody and . . . I found somethin’. It was an accident. Oh, man. It’s a long story. You gotta get out here!”

  “Derek, where are you?”

  “At the school gym. I’m afraid to leave. This big silver truck followed me here.”

  Zoe leaned over to talk to me. “Where’s Aunt Weeda?”

  “Hey, Doug, can Aunt Weeda pick you up?”

  “Nah. She’s workin’. She won’t be home till tonight.”

  “How about Celeste? She could knock a few people out for ya.”

  “Arcade!” Zoe is always a little defensive when I talk like that about Derek’s older sister, her best friend, Celeste.

  “What? She’s scary, Zoe, and you know it.”

  “She is NOT.” Zoe grabbed the phone from my hand. “Derek, call Celeste. She’ll know what to do.”

  I took the phone back. “And if she doesn’t, call 9–1–1.”

  “Okay.” Derek bounced the ball harder, faster. “Oh, hey, a couple of my friends just came in. Maybe we can walk out together. Arcade, you need to get out here so we can figure this out!”

  I ran over to check the calendar hanging in the kitchen. May 9th. School would be out in a week. “Derek, you think you can hold out for a few days? I’m gonna see if my parents will fly us out for a couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah, man, I’ll try to keep a low profile until then. I’m so glad you’re comin’.”

  Zoe was now standing next to me, shaking her head. “And how are you going to talk Mom and Dad into that?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re going to help me figure that out, right?”

  She nibbled on her pinkie fingernail. “Sure. No problem at all.”

  “Derek, I’ll see you in a week.”

  “You’re the best, Arcade.” The ball bounced three more times before he hung up.

  CHAPTER 6

  20th Precinct

  That night, after dinner, I lay on the couch, exhausted. It had been one of the craziest days ever . . . even before Zoe and I ended up in the sideways elevator to Virginia. We had just finished up a successful career expo at my school and were walking home, when my mom’s stolen suitcase—I call it Daisy because of the daisies all over it—full of library books rolled out from behind some bushes. I ran for it, and a guy jumped on me, trying to rip the Triple T Token off my neck. Thankfully, I was rescued by my favorite police K-9, Samson, and his partner, Frank, who told Zoe and me to run straight home. Which is exactly what we did, but then those elevator doors—

  The phone rang in our apartment, snapping me out of my daydream.

  “Oh, hello.” It was my mom’s voice talking to someone on the other end. “Yes, we can do that . . . You too. Thank you so much, officer.”

 
Officer? I sat up on the couch. That can only be one person.

  Just then, my mom walked into the living room.

  “Arcade, the officer from the 20th precinct asked me to bring you down to the station tomorrow morning to look at some pictures.” She sat down next to me and put a reassuring arm around my shoulders. “I know it’s been a tough day, but it would really help.”

  Tough? You have no idea, Mom.

  Or did she?

  Thankfully, the rest of the night was uneventful. The Triple T Token kept its cool. It would have been nice for it to transport me out of there the next morning, though, as I was having a tough time at the 20th precinct. It was tricky giving them information, without giving up certain information, if you know what I mean.

  “Arcade, we’d like you to take a look at these photos and tell us which guy tackled you on the sidewalk.”

  Mom paced the room. “I can’t believe this is happening. All over a silly suitcase full of books.”

  I scrolled through the photos on the tablet. It wasn’t hard to pick him out. “This is him.”

  Officer Frank Langdon, the one filing the report, wrote down notes. “Yep, that’s the guy we brought in. Sorry you had to come all the way down here to confirm. I’m glad Samson and I were at your career expo. Things could have turned out much worse.” He turned to my mom and dad. “I’ll just get this finished up, and then you can sign it. I’m sure you want to press charges.”

  “You bet!” Mom said. “No one comes after my kids and gets away with it.”

  We went out for a lunch of traditional New York style thin crust pizza, which was interrupted by a call to Dad. “Okay . . . yes. Thank you, Officer Langdon. We appreciate all that you’ve done.” Then he hung up and gave Mom a funny look.

  She stopped, the pizza slice in her hand halfway to her mouth. “What?”

  “Lenwood Badger.”

  She dropped the pizza on her plate. “Lenwood?”

  “That’s an unusual name,” Zoe said. “Like Arcade. Hey, are you ever going to tell us why you named him that?”