Hard Times

XIV

"So what do you kids wanna do today?" Asked Alex. They sat outside the hotel, around the pool as they contemplated what their last activity, or activities would be together.

They all hummed to themselves as they thought up another activity, "maybe we could go to an arcade". Kenji suggests, he shares glances with his fellow campers,  "Is that cool?"

"Or laser tag would be nice," he adds.

"Yes, I'm awesome at laser tag!" Darius brags.

"Maybe against a group kindergarteners." Brooklyn teased.

"Bet I can beat you," he folds his arms, "after all your pink hair will be visible from miles away."

"Okay so laser tag it is, and winner gets fifteen dollars." Crystal states, looking up a place.

Darius and Brooklyn continued going back and forth arguing about who's better at Laser Tag. Everyone couldn't help but laugh, noticing how they both made points that had absolutely nothing to do with Laser Tag. Eventually they fell onto the topic of parkour.

"You hardly know any parkour, I bet you couldn't make a jump from one crate to the next." Brooklyn points out, "and besides parkour is highly dangerous anyway, it's so stupid to risk it all by climbing four hundred feet in the air." She states, confident in her opinion.

"Maybe, but at least it looks cool." Darius says, shrugging from his spot on the floor.

She rolled her eyes, "like trying to fall off a skyscraper is cool."

"I mean, if they fall it's their own fault." Yaz says, adding in her two cents.

"Yeah." Sammy agrees, kicking her feet back and forth as she lounged upside down on one of the beach chairs.

"Okay.." Brooklyn thinks silently. "Completely off topic, but what are your guy's opinions on Anime?"

They looked at her puzzled by her very much out of the blue question.

"I like it, not all but a lot of them." Yaz replies, head leaning on her head on her moms shoulder.

Her attention turned to Ben as he spoke, "I've never watched any."

"I like anime." Kenji adds

"Me too" Darius also states.

"It's awesome." Sammy replies trying not to go overboard, she knew if she said anything else she'd completely ramble about all her favorite anime's and her anime crushes, but that's a topic for another day.

Brooklyn nods, happy they all share interest in a lot of things.

After more talking and waiting around they finally got ready for laser Tag, they all piled into Alex's mini van, it fit all the kids and one extra adult, everyone else hopped into Sylene's car and they drove to the laser tag place.

During the ride they couldn't stop talking, the day would come to an end soon, meaning they'd have to all separate which was a good and bad thing, bad because they've been through hell and back together, and now they're splitting. Good because they finally get to lead a somewhat normal life.

As normal as it can be next to all the nightmares, late night hallucinations, PTSD, and fear of large objects. Everyone's dealing with the same thing, just at different severity levels, in Yaz's case, she has to hide the fact that she's on the brink of losing her mind.

Even though they're not on the island anymore, she's still reliving those memories of almost getting eaten, being left behind, Tiff and Mitch, Dr. Wu kidnapping her, Kash almost successfully feeding her to the Spinosaurus.