The arcade was slow at this hour. Preteens, for whom the mall was de facto summer camp, had hopped on their bicycles and were pedaling home for dinner. The slightly older nighttime gamers were due to arrive in another hour or so, after finishing up their morning-into-afternoon shifts at Foot Locker or Ponderosa Steak & Ale.
Sonny Sexton would be there because he was always there, from opening to closing. It didn’t take me long to find him, crouched in front of the coin slot of a game called Double Dragon. He was wearing a checkered flannel shirt to keep warm in the cranked-up AC. I not only reneged on my promise to return the jacket within twenty-four hours—I hadn’t bothered returning it at all. For days afterward, a flowery hint of pomade exuded from the dingy denim. The jacket had become so inextricably linked to Sam that I’d pretty much forgotten why I’d borrowed it in the first place.
I’d kept it way longer than the lavender scent had lingered.
I’d kept it long enough to convince myself I had only imagined the traces of Sam Goody left behind.
“Hey,” I said.
He stood, leaned against the machine.
“Heyyyy.”
I held out the jacket by the sleeves. Without saying anything, Sonny removed his flannel shirt and knotted it around this waist. He slipped one arm in the denim, followed by the other.
“Ahhhhh…” He sighed as if he’d submerged himself in a warm bubble bath.
“I’m sorry for breaking my promise,” I said. “I should have returned it sooner.”
“A good girl like you?” He was smiling. “I knew you’d bring it back to me eventually.”
“I’m not good,” I replied. “It’s recently come to my attention that I’m a selfish asshole.”
“Well,” said a soft, female voice, “too much time around Troy will do that to a person.”
Even after I laid eyes on the tiny girl with the teased hair in the Casino Pier T-shirt, it still took a few seconds to connect the vision to the voice. I’d never heard Helen communicate at any level lower than a full-throated screech. I couldn’t hide my terror.
“I come in peace,” Helen said, showing her palms. “I owe you an apology.”
“You do?” I asked timidly.
“I wasn’t right in the head for a while.”
“Too much time around Troy will do that to a person.”
Helen rewarded me with a soft chuckle I didn’t earn for lazily recycling her joke.
“My court-appointed therapist says I have anger management issues,” Helen explained.
From behind her, Sonny flashed me a warning look: Don’t ask. So as curious as I was about her legal troubles, I kept my questions to myself.
“Anyways,” Helen went on, “after I called her Dr. Douchenozzle and chucked an ashtray at her head, I realized she might have a point.”
Sonny opened his arms as an invitation for her to fold her body against his in a totally unsexual way.
“She’s made a lot of progress already,” he said. “Her parents and I are so proud.”
Until that moment, I hadn’t pictured Helen as someone with parents. In my mythology, she was not a normal human infant birthed on this Earth. No, Helen had emerged as a fully formed monster from the fires of Hades, a malevolent, vengeful hell-beast forged in the underworld’s furnace to make my last summer in Pineville as miserable as possible.
When, in fact, she was just a girl who was hurting inside.
Helen had demons. She wasn’t a demon.
“I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” Sonny said, pulling Helen closer. “I should’ve known something deeply fucked up was going on with you to hook up with Cookie Boy.” He turned to me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I insisted. “There’s something deeply fucked up with me too. Unfortunately, I don’t have an official diagnosis to treat it.”
I was about to leave this loved-up couple alone when Helen lifted her head from Sonny’s chest and gestured toward the Double Dragon machine.
“Wanna play a round?”
“Oh, I’m really, really bad at arcade games,” I said.
“So what?” Helen asked. “Do you always have to be the best at everything all the time?”
I’d spent seventeen years trying to be the best at everything all the time. And I had only succeeded at being the worst in all the ways that truly mattered:
as a daughter,
as a friend,
as a decent human being.
“It’s on me,” Sonny said, squeezing two quarters out of the coin holster around his waist.
“I’m just going to die right away,” I said.
“I swear I won’t let you die right away.” Helen held up two fingers like a Girl Scout. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
She got me on that one.
I clutched the joystick, hoping there was some truth to the word. As it turned out, one hour in arcade time was equivalent to five minutes in the outside world. I would’ve sworn in Mock Court that I’d played that video game with Helen for a fraction of the time I actually did. Double Dragon, as Helen had explained, wasn’t just a beat-’em-up game, it had a compelling story that set it apart.
“It’s a classic tale of family and friendship and love and loyalty and betrayal and brotherhood,” she said. “You know, all the most important shit in life.”
Helen and I were twin martial artists—Billy and Jimmy aka Hammer and Spike—trying to rescue my girlfriend, Marian, who was kidnapped by a rival gang. Locations varied—city slum, factory, forest, secret hideout—but our mission never did. Helen’s expert advice?
“Just kick ass!”
We’d made it through level three and were moving on to the next when Helen grumbled about having to leave the mall to start her shift on the boardwalk.
“It’s almost six o’clock!” The numbers on my watch shocked me. “How did that happen?”
“There are no clocks in the arcade for a reason.”
I told Helen to thank Sonny for the—ahem—fun time.
“You make a great couple,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Helen. “We do.”
And then I found myself hugging the girl who had once tried to assassinate me.