Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,80

schnapps in front of my face and apparently I become a dumb sheep.”

Joe snickered. Which annoyed me, because it felt like he was stifling a giant laugh.

“It’s not funny,” I said. I twisted a thread from my sweatshirt around my finger so tight, the skin turned purple.

“Okay, we’re not practicing today,” Joe said. He turned his car away from the park and headed down Central.

“Where are we going?” I said. “I obviously need to practice.”

He ignored me and pressed play on the 8-track. The Doobie Brothers came on.

“Can we please change it to the radio?” I said.

“Nope. You can punish yourself with the Doobie Brothers until we reach our destination.”

“Fair.” I looked out the window, trying to determine where we were headed.

Joe was singing along with the song. I cleared my throat and raised my eyebrows. “What? It gets in your head!” he said.

Five minutes later, he turned into the parking lot for Fun Time Central, a place in Elm Ridge with go-karts and mini golf.

It was a chilly, windy day and the arcade building was the only part of the place with signs of life. Joe and I went inside. “Wait here,” he said, and he jogged off, leaving me in front of the Skee-Ball machines. I watched as a mom pushed out through the glass door of the arcade dragging two screaming children after her. She lit a cigarette and leaned against the building as the kids pelted one another with SweeTarts.

“Okay,” he said, returning and holding out a handful of tokens. He pointed at the machines. “We’re ready.”

“Skee-Ball?” I said.

“Why not? You need a win, and everybody wins at Skee-Ball.”

“Ugh, I hate it when you make sense,” I said.

We skeed our balls in more or less companionable silence. Or silence against a backdrop of arcade machines chiming and kids screaming—what were they feeding these banshee children? But Joe was right. Skee-Ball wasn’t my game, but every so often, my ball sprang past the lower tiers of points and made its way into the 50-point hole, giving me a little surge of pleasure.

Next to me, Joe seemed to be effortlessly hitting the 40s and 50s, but he wasn’t talking himself up with the same bravado he did at our practices. I wondered if it was because of the other night, or because he was really trying to cheer me up so had tempered his bragging.

It took a while for our tokens to run out, and when they did, Joe ripped off his strip of winner tickets and handed them to me with a big grin.

“Prize time,” he said. We walked to the wall of stuffed animals and case of trinkets, where a couple was engaged in some quality groping. The girl held a teddy bear. My stomach tensed, and I sidestepped a little farther away from Joe.

“See, it’s called the Redemption Counter,” Joe said, acting like he didn’t see the couple. He pointed at the sign above the prizes.

I asked the attendant for two packs of Fun Dip, some Blow Pops, and a chunky Tootsie Roll I’d give to Mom. I handed one of the Fun Dips to Joe. “And this was me redeeming myself?”

“You get it. You sure you don’t go to Catholic school?”

We ripped open the Fun Dips and each wet the candy sticks to dip in the sour-sweet powder. We were headed to the car when Joe stopped, his dip stick thoughtfully to one side of his mouth, and said, “I think it’s good you screwed up your first game. Now you know how much you want to play.”

“Yeah, I just wish I had realized that before the schnapps.”

“Well, in your next game, even if you totally fuck up and are a disaster on the field, it won’t be because you decided to get drunk on peach schnapps. If you’re going to get in trouble, put yourself on the line for something good.”

I stuck out my tongue at him, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. After what Mom had said about going for what I want, I worried I’d never know what that was. I’d gone to tryouts because of Bobby, but I couldn’t call that putting myself on the line, since I knew in the back of my mind that Bobby was a fantasy. And if I really wanted a win, why had I so expertly steered myself toward a loss?

We got into the car. As he started it, I realized I didn’t want the day to end. Hanging out with