Vanilla

Chapter Eight

Dedicated to ishine4youu, because the comment she left on the last chapter was one of the nicest comments I've ever received. Even reading it back just now made me smile. Thank you so much.

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"You've got to be joking."

I groaned as there came a noisy clattering from Daniel's machine for the twentieth time that afternoon. It had since become the warning sign that he was inching closer and closer to victory, leaving me lagging shamefully behind. In hindsight, agreeing to a competition against someone who'd lived in Walden their entire life had to be one of the worst decisions I'd made in a while. When he'd claimed that living by the sea had made him good at arcade games, he hadn't been kidding. It was hard to face, but the truth stood that unless I was blessed by some sort of miracle in the next five minutes, I was pretty much guaranteed a dip in the water.

"Seriously, how are you doing that?" I asked, as my own coin fell lazily through the machine, failing to even push anything off the top platform.

The rules, which he'd decided, were simple: we'd each been allocated a pound's worth of two pence coins, and the first one to knock one of the prizes off the end and down the bottom chute was the winner. Strictly no cheating.

Except there had to be some sort of foul play here, because there was surely no way Daniel could be having so much more success than me, just because he was, in his words, 'a pro'.

It just wasn't happening.

"Like I said, it's pure talent," he said, grinning as yet another pile of coins came cascading down his chute. Scooping the lot into his plastic tub - which was now teeming with copper - he waved it in front of my face. "Jealous?"

"Nope," I said stubbornly, pushing his hand away. "I'm doing fine."

"Really?" Looking down at my own tub, which held significantly less in comparison, he raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't really look like it. I hope you're in the mood for a swim, Flo."

Scowling, I turned my attention back to the machine. Daniel was right, of course. I was lagging miles behind, with no chance whatsoever of catching up, but it didn't mean I was ready to give up. If the consequence was a dip in the sea, I wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"It's all in the wrist," he told me, pushing another coin through the slot.

I shot him a sideways smirk. "Oh, I bet it is."

It took a moment for him to realise exactly what he'd said; when he did, he began to laugh. "And here I was, thinking you were innocent," he said, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "Didn't realise you were almost as bad as Jay."

I was about to defend myself, but got robbed of the chance; I was instead cut off by the noise of yet another waterfall of coins clattering to the bottom of Daniel's machine. With a somewhat childish cry of excitement, he bent down to retrieve something that sat on top of them all.

Something that made my heart sink.

"Well, well, well," he drawled, "look what we have here."

It was a key ring: a cheap plastic heart, embellished with a toothy smile. Twirling it tauntingly around his finger, he looked over at me. "A prize," he said, as if it wasn't obvious. "I have a feeling this means I won."

I rolled my eyes.

"Aw, come on, Flo." He patted the top of my head, though the few inches between our heights were hardly of significance. "The water won't be that cold."