Edgie One: [panting and looking back] It’s okay. They didn’t follow us.
Edgie Two: That was close. I hate those guys.
Edgie One: Don’t worry. I heard the place is getting shut down.
A GLIMMER OF THE TRUTH
I’m not a bad game player. I do best at the driving games, but I do okay on the other stuff, too. And I like pinball. Torchie, Cheater, and Lucky were all pretty good, but Flinch came close to being amazing. I started out playing Road Revenge. Flinch was standing next to me, taking on one of the new fighting games with the really cool graphics. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he was undefeated after I’d already gone through a dollar. That got my attention. In the next hour, I saw him roll up incredibly high scores at almost every game he played. I could barely believe that someone who was so jumpy could play games so well.
“He’s got great reflexes,” Torchie said as we watched Flinch blast his way through level after level on Smash TV. They had a lot of the latest stuff at the arcade, but Flinch seemed to like the old games as much as the new ones. He’d go from something brand-new like Shaolin Annihilator to something ancient like Pole Position, Frogger, or Centipede. I stuck with the old games, since most of them were still just a quarter. I didn’t want to run through Lucky’s money too quickly. I even played a game of Skee Ball for old times’ sake, hitting just enough of a score to win one ticket. My sister and I used to play it when we were little. I usually gave her all the tickets I won so she could save up for good prizes. I shoved the ticket in my pocket, figuring I could send it to her as a joke.
I beat my old high score on Xenon, one of my favorite pinball machines. For a moment, as I stood there, just drinking in the great sounds that washed over me from all the machines, life seemed absolutely fine.
Flinch stepped away from Smash TV and went to one of the all-time pinball classics—Eightball Deluxe.
“Want to play a two-player game?” Torchie asked me, pointing to NBA Jam.
I shook my head. Right then, I just wanted to watch Flinch. There was something odd about the way he used the flippers.
“Guess I’ll play pinball,” Torchie said, stepping up next to Flinch and feeding some change into Excalibur.
I think, if I’d just watched Flinch, I might never have noticed what was going on. But with Flinch and Torchie standing side by side, I began to see the differences in the ways they played.
After a while, I started to understand what Flinch was doing. As the first suspicions grew, a shiver of excitement tingled across my flesh. Beneath the thrill of discovery was a tinge of fear.
Even though I was sure I’d figured out what was happening, I didn’t quite believe it.
A couple minutes before midnight, the lights blinked on and off. “Closing time,” the guy behind the counter shouted.
“We’d better get going,” Torchie said.
It was just as well—I was down to my last three quarters. “Here,” I said, handing them to Lucky.
“Keep ‘em,” he told me.
I felt funny about that. “I don’t need—”
“Keep the quarters, okay?” He glared at me, his hands clenched in fists.
“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” I wasn’t going to get into a fight over it. If he wanted me to have the quarters that badly, I’d keep them.
We headed out. I watched Flinch carefully on the way back to the school. He didn’t do anything unusual, but I decided to keep an eye on him.
We got inside without any trouble. Much to my surprise, climbing up was a lot less scary than climbing down. As Lucky hauled in the ladder and stuck it under his bed, my eyes homed in on the open closet.
“Wow.” I couldn’t help gasping. There was no way the door could close. The closet was crammed with stuff. I stared at stacks of cardboard boxes overflowing with an amazing variety of loot—pens, eyeglasses, tape recorders, hats, wallets, all kinds of small toys. I saw at least a dozen baseballs, most pretty scuffed but one that looked brand-new, a bunch of golf balls, tons of tennis balls, and a jar full of coins.
“Found ‘em,” Lucky said. “I didn’t steal them.”
“All of that?” I walked over to the boxes.
“Yeah, all of that. Especially around home on the weekends.” His voice grew tense. He moved a step closer to me. “I found it all. Finders keepers.”
“Great.” I held my breath, hoping he wasn’t going to get angrier.
Lucky smiled. “Go ahead. Take anything you want.”
I looked at him, unsure what to say.
He nodded. “Really.”
I figured he’d get upset if I refused. I reached toward the top box. It felt funny—almost like I was stealing. But Lucky started to look tense again so I just grabbed the first thing my hand touched. “Thanks. This is great,” I said. I looked down and discovered I was holding one of those big plastic clips girls use in their hair.