Eyes of the Wolf

8
Why is it that when your best friend tries to make you look pretty, you kick and scream to no avail, but when you’ve got an almost-date with a guy and his sister, you can’t find a damn nice-looking thing in your whole house that’s not your dad’s tuxedo?

When my frustrations that Sunday morning finally earned me a toe stubbed on my bedside table from pacing, I sat, looked in the mirror, breathed, and rooted through my dresser some more. I finally found an extra-small white tee in one of my drawers (well, jammed behind one, more like) and put it on. Satisfied with the curves it showed without baring much skin, I moved on. Knowing there was no point in looking for pants, I just looked for the ones that were the least worn, and followed them with my sneakers.

My hair was a conundrum. I knew I couldn’t do it as well as Chris had yesterday, but I compromised and put it in a ponytail without the strands to frame my face. I looked in the mirror for a minute or so, looking at it from as many angles as I could manage, before I gave a very Chris-like exhalation through my nose and tugged out the band holding it up, making my hair fan out over my shoulders. I blinked. A shake of my head made it settle a little so it didn’t resemble a dark mane as much…and there it was. Thick but not poofy, without making my face look so stark. Finally satisfied, I stuck a watch on my left hand, applied a bit of eye shadow, applied deodorant, and dropped my phone into one of the deep pockets in my pants.

“Ready?” Dad asked from his newspaper, without looking up. I nodded, but when he turned in his chair to raise his eyebrows at me, a shaky laugh came from my throat and I said, “Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.” He put his paper aside and groaned as he lifted himself out of his recliner. As usual, he made it to the front door first and opened it for me. As we settled in the car, he remarked, “You look very nice.”

I blushed at the unexpected compliment.

It had long faded when we reached the parking lot. After pulling into a space, he rooted through his wallet and pulled out a bill as I got out. As he handed it to me, he took a breath and said, “You do look very nice.” The blush had returned in full, and it was not made any better when he followed it with “If he does anything you don’t like, whether you like him or not, kick him where it hurts.”

And on that pleasant note, he pulled out of the drive.

:o3

“Hey, Maya!” I looked up from stepping onto the sidewalk to see Niko waving at the door, dressed in another black collared shirt, but with dark sweats that barely stopped short of the end of his flip flops. A girl whose black hair fell to her waist stood behind him with her arms crossed, and, next to her, the blond boy from Cold Stone stood staring at a distant something. As I went to them, Niko watched my dad exit the parking lot. Confusion flickered in his face. When his attention turned to me, I shrugged.

“He says we’re in public and he trusts me.”

Still looking bemused, he nodded and turned to the two that seemed to be content in the background. “This is my sister Nikki—”

“Nicole,” she corrected him abrubtly, her expression toward me just short of hostile. Niko visibly struggled to keep the strained smile on his face before nodding. “Nicole. And this is Adam.”

Nicole bristled. “Alph…red made us bring him,” she clarified with the same sharpness as the first time she had spoke. I couldn’t help but notice the hesitation when she said the name. Glancing up under my lashes, I saw Niko shoot his sister a warning look before looking at me again. “Ready?”

I nodded and followed them through the doors, Niko holding one open for me. I was pleased about this until I wondered if it was due to the first scene I had made at Cold Stone. When I walked through the door, though, the thought zoomed right out my ear.

The interior of the place was huge. The walls were painted to look like huge, scaly monsters were crawling over it or peering at the guests, the paint on their eyes making it seem like they glowed. A counter was on my right, benches farther to my right. On my left were games and vending machines. Two ten-year-olds were engaging in a furious game of air hockey at one of the two tables. Farther forward was a hall with glass doors. Directly in front of me, across a stretch of floor with incandescent monster eyes, was a large iron door.

I heard Niko laugh, and I followed the sound to a few feet in front of me.

“You coming?” he teased, walking to the counter.

When I got there, Nicole and Adam had already stepped back, and Niko was conversing with the man behind the counter. He took the highlighter-yellow arrow from the guy, running his thumb over a piece of metal on the triangle part, and grinned. “Your turn.”

I walked to the counter. It was taller than me. I noticed a stool under the ledge of the counter and stood on it.

“Player name?”

Player name? “M-Maya?”

The boy shrugged, typing on his keyboard, then picking up another arrow and setting the metal to a circle in the side of the computer.

“Here you go. Have fun.”

Unsettled, I hesitated again. “Don’t I give you money?”

The boy grinned. “That one says you’re paid for.” He used one of the plastic arrows to point at Niko.

“Okay.” I returned to my small group.

“I’ll pay for you next time, right?”

Niko pretended to be insulted. “Maya, who do you think I am? You’re not paying. My treat.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he held up a finger. “Ah ah ah! The girl doesn’t pay.”

Grudgingly, I let the issue go, only to feel a poke in the ribs from his yellow arrow. “Let’s play air hockey.”

“Aren’t we—”

“We have to wait for that group to finish.” He poked me again. “Let’s play air hockey.”

:o3

We were on match three (I beat him the first two times, but I had a feeling he was letting me win) when a tidal wave of people flooded out the metal door. Wading into the rush of human bodies, I saw an employee taking a bin of plastic arrows—pink that time, though the color still looked like it had been gone over in highlighter—to the employee behind the counter before we were stopped at the door by another. Our group was only admitted into the large, circular room after all the pink-plastic people had gone.

This room was smaller than the one we’d been in, and darker. When they closed the doors after what seemed like twenty more people were allowed to enter, odd things suddenly seemed to glow. The paint that had seemed so bright in the other one was now positively neon. Upon further inspection, I saw that other things were glowing—the whites of people’s eyes, their smiles, and their clothes. A snicker sounded beside me, and I turned. Niko was grinning broadly, his teeth glowing green and his eyes looking almost demonic since they were so pale. Wondering what he was grinning about, I looked down. My shirt glowed green, as did my shoes. I was a beacon of a target. And, from what I could tell from Nicole’s quiet, almost humlike laugh, Nico wasn’t the only one who knew it. At least my eyes didn’t glow.

I had just noticed a sign high up on the wall when an employee seemed to sprout from the crowd like a plant in fast forward. Probably had a stool, like I’d had to use. He began to explain the rules, and I soon realized that they were an embellished version of the ones on the sign I had seen. None of them were very hard—no profanity would be difficult for people like Chris, but I never had trouble with that. No violence was easy, and the rest of the rules were in the same ball park. When commanded, I raised my arrow in my hand like everyone else and swore not to disobey the rules, one by one.

“You ready?” Niko breathed in my ear, making me jump. He didn’t wait for an answer as we went into the next room. Vests were set on racks on the walls, and I was forcibly reminded of the time I had gone to lessons with Chris, and seen all the saddles lined up like this in the tack room. Watching all the other people move in and start grabbing vests, I imitated, and picked up number five. Niko grabbed six. Nicole had thirteen, and Adam had nine. I grumbled in my head when I noticed they all had dark clothes on too. Many of the other players were taking notice of me, as if scouting out easy prey.

The employee who had told us the rules showed us how to put the vests on and activate the guns, which felt big and bulky in my hand. When I put the metal of my arrow to the circle in the gun, a screen on the back showed up.

WELCOME
MAYAN

I snorted at the recognition. What I deserved for stuttering. When Niko spared me an amused glance, I bit my lip as my face heated again.

Finally we were let into what I expected was an arena. We dropped our arrows into a bin proffered by the employee and stepped inside.

Definitely not an arena. The room we were in was covered in black posts that seemed to have been liberally spattered in pink, yellow, blue, and green. The posts themselves were all of varying shapes and sizes. Mirrors and walls were everywhere. It looked like some kind of 21st century haunted forest.

Other people were running to find cover, so I began to look for somewhere. I had stumbled upon a ramp when suddenly my gun made a noise like a starship revving up. No sooner had I resumed moving up the ramp then I was shot, making my vest vibrate and all my lights go off.

LFTSHLDR
NIGHTHUNTER

“Nice, Maya!” came Niko’s voice, but he was gone before I could find him. I ran up the ramp, but heard footsteps above me from around the corner of the ascent. Seeing a mirror on the wall as my vest hummed to life again, I aimed at the mirror and began shooting before hearing a satisfying buzz from someone else’s vest. My thrill was apparently destined to be short-lived, however, ‘cause I had barely seen YOU SHOT NIGHTMARE when my vest’s lights went out and the gun immediately changed by BACK QUILL. I wheeled to see black hair swish out of sight.

Get off the ramp.

I bolted up the ramp and was shot at almost instantly by about five people. I crouched in the corner and began searching for more targets. Coming upon a spot that was covered on two sides and a mirror on either side, I squatted and waited, standing only to shoot at flickers of people and hitting a fair number of them.

Suddenly a thin red beam landed on my knee from behind me, and I hadn’t even moved before RTSHLDER SPARROW preceded my vest’s blackout. When I looked around the edge of my spot, “Sparrow” had disappeared.

I went to find another advantageous vantage.