Ghost

ch 2

“MAYA PENELOPE HART!!!!” Josh yells over the loud background noise of the arcade.

They hadn't been able to find a movie they both wanted to see that also still had tickets available, and neither of them had been particularly hungry yet, so the two had ended up at a bowling alley that had a rather large arcade attached. After a quick game on the lanes (Josh won, but neither had done particularly well), they had handed in their bowling shoes and gone into the arcade. They were currently sitting in plastic car seats next to each other playing a racing game, and Maya had never had problems playing dirty. She had just intentionally put his avatar in the game quite violently into the track wall on the final turn, before winning.

“JOSHUA GABRIEL MATTHEWS!!” Maya returned his shout, jumping out of the seat as he reached over to tickle her in revenge. There was a few moments of Josh chasing her through the semi-crowded arcade before he managed to grab her around the waist and pull her into him, before reaching his free hand up to the back of her neck to take advantage of the one ticklish spot she had.

He was thankful for their mutual propensity for asking random questions of each other whenever they came to mind. After a few seconds of her squealing and squirming, he decided to take mercy and stopped the tickling, instead hugging her and leaning down to say, “I should have known you'd be a vicious player.”

“Me?!?” Maya exclaimed incredulously. “You tripped me playing DDR!”

He let her go and acknowledged the point. “OK, so maybe we're both a bit too competitive.”

Maya’s look plainly said ‘no shit’. Fortunately for the ears off the many young kids around, her mouth said “I'm hungry. “ and she proceeded to grab his hand and go over to the little cafe area between the arcade and alley.

With a slice of pizza each and an order of fries to share, they sat down at one of the raised counters behind the lanes and she took a selfie of the both of them taking their first bite, which she then posted on Instagram and, from there, across the rest of her social media, with the caption “me & @joshie_mcboingboing taking a break from destroying each other at video games #lastdayofschool #winterbreak #wecompetitiveaf “.

That handle change had been the first and last time Josh forgot to lock his phone with her around. But he kept it, because only a couple people would even understand, and it made her giggle.

They were discussing whether they wanted to keep playing games or go back to his dorm to hang out and watch something on his laptop, when they were interrupted by a voice directly behind them. “Excuse me?”

They both turned around to see a girl, maybe 12 or 13, who looked very nervous. The girl continued, “You're Maya, right? Maya Hart?”

Maya, confused, replied, “Uh…. Yeah. And you are?”

The girl visibly steeled herself. “I'm Nikki. You probably don't know who I am, but I follow you on Twitter, and when I saw you were here, I just wanted to meet you. I am here for a friends birthday party.” the girl took a quick, but deep, breath before continuing, “My family just moved to the city a few months ago, and, when we did, dad told us about you, just in case we ever ran into you. So I looked you up online and started following you, just to see what you're like….”

“Oh…. Ok… uh…” Maya clearly had no idea what to say.

Nikki saw that and explained more, “Sorry, I should've been better introducing myself, I was just so excited to run into you… my full name is Nichole Rebecca Hart. We have the same father. You're my sister.”

40 minutes later found Maya and Josh back in his dorm room. Maya had managed to push through her shock enough to trade contact info, and get a few more bits of information from Nikki before Josh saw the beginning stages of panic setting in and excused both of them, citing needing to get Maya home because she had an early shift tomorrow.