Knowing You're There

Chapter 11

“What should we do now?” I asked Kurt. 

The door opened and closed on the other side of the movie theater lobby.  A large crowd was approaching, and their excited chatter filled my ears.  Two younger girls were talking about the romantic comedy they just saw, swooning over hot “yummy” the male lead was. 

“Do you have any quarters?” he asked. 

“I’ve probably got a few in the bottom of my purse.” 

“That’s perfect.” 

He let go of me and the smile came back to my face.  “Are we going downstairs?” 

“Indeed,” he said, “we are definitely going downstairs.” 

Quickly, we headed to the elevator and went to the theater’s underground arcade.  While I did love games, the noise of the Game Dungeon was terrible.  I covered my ears when we got off the elevator, trying to block out all the different stimuli.  Extremely loud noises were like kryptonite to my superhuman ears. 

“Lia, it’s okay,” Kurt said. 

Even though I didn’t agree, I pulled my fingers out of my ears anyway.  Immediately, the sounds were worse.  There was the smacking of buttons, vrooming race cars, some type of monsters dying in one of the two-person shooting games.  A little boy on my right whined to his mother to please give him just one more dollar so he could attempt to get the green bear out of the claw machine. 

“Just so you know, I’m not that good at games like these,” I said over the noise. 

“That’s fine.  I’ll help you out,” he said, then grabbed my hand.  “Come on, I know an easy game.”  He brought me up to the machine and placed my hand over the buttons.  I felt four of them and a joystick.  Then he took his place next to me.  “Creature Wars.  Have you ever played before?” 

I turned my head to him and laughed.  Creature Wars, which was just two mythical things beating the living daylights out of each other, was Emmit’s favorite game in the arcade.  We played it all the time when we were younger.  My favorite character was Lenny the Leprechaun, solely because he made the silliest little noises while fighting.    

“Only a million times!” I said.  “I get Lenny.  Can you move the controller over to him for me?” 

Kurt reached over and then hit one of the buttons.  The game narrator’s deep voice said, “Lenny,” and I grinned. 

“I’m Rex!” Kurt said. 

I heard him select Rex the Dragon, and the machine made a few different sounds, which I knew was what happened right before we were taken to the arena.  When the deep voice said, “Battle!” I thought about being Lenny, a tiny little man dressed in an outfit the color of the grass, facing this massive creature.