18
“Seriously?”
Leo knew why everyone was staring at him like he’d sprouted a goat’s head. Clearly, they all thought he was nuts, or too high for his own good. But he’d been there for all their plans. Evan wanted to go to High Point. Leo was in. Sarabeth thought the ship had a central, self-destructive chewy center. Leo bought in, more or less. Teena wanted to fuck up bad guys with perfume. Leo thought, Why the fuck not?
So now, they could go along with him. His idea was their best shot at getting past that perimeter without being taken prisoner. He knew it.
He strode ahead, feeling kind of excited. Make that really excited.
He was trying. He was putting in effort. He might put his turd sandwich days behind him.
That is, if everyone else kept up with him.
He turned and looked at them, jogging back to pluck the baseball bat from Evan’s hands. “Hey, remember we said we weren’t going to fight with each other? Last people on Earth and all that? I think I’m going to be at least a little pissed at you guys if you can’t trust me for a minute.”
Casually, like he was flipping some pizza dough, he twirled the bat once, twice, and then he gave one quick swing, hitting the center of one of the automatic doors, sending a shower of glass skidding across the tiled floor. Using the bat, he cleared the doorframe of extra shards of glass and stepped through into the darkened store, the smell of new plastic toys more apparent than usual thanks to the lack of customers.
He looked at his friends—he’d decided he could call them that, unless they all fucked him over right now—and tapped on the sign above his head that showed Geoffrey the Giraffe surrounded by smiling toys. “Come on, guys, think young.”
Even though it was only March, the main toy displays were stocked with toys befitting CWWT—Chicago Winter Wishful Thinking. Frisbees. Kites. And water toys by the dozen. Squirt guns, from little pistols to massive Super Soakers. Kiddie pools. Water balloons.
Turning to face the gang, Leo could see the lightbulbs go off in everyone’s heads like he’d flicked a switch. One by one, his friends grinned. Leo grinned back. “So, I can tell I needn’t explain Operation: Beauty Bomb.”
He strode over to a G.I. Joe truck, the kind big enough for two kids to sit in, with battery-powered pedals you pushed to make the car go. He climbed in. The thing was plenty roomy, probably because they had to make toys big enough for fat kids these days. “Evan, come on.”
Evan looked intrigued. He loped over and took the seat next to Leo. Leo steered over to a pink Barbie Corvette parked near a display of princess crowns. He nudged the front end of the Corvette and looked at the girls.
“Get in,” he said in a voice much different from the who-gives-a-crap tone he usually used. Urgency, an emotion foreign to someone who spent his time actively not caring about anything, had crept in. “Remember those shopping sprees Toys“R”Us used to give away when we were kids? Anything you could grab in ten minutes? No one ever won. Or if someone did, it sure wasn’t me. So today, we win. And we spree. Grab anything you want. If it’s battle-worthy, great. If it’s just something you always wanted, even fucking better.”
Teena and Sarabeth faced each other over the top of the pink car, as much as two girls could face each other with an eight-inch height difference between them.
“You should drive,” Sarabeth said to Teena, seeing how desperate she was to helm the chunk of pink plastic. Teena plopped into the seat, satisfied. Sarabeth lowered herself into the passenger side and with a grin said, “My legs are too long anyway.”
Leo bristled, and he could see Evan gnash his teeth. Things were going so well, they didn’t want a fresh girl fight. A weird thought, since Leo had once left work to watch a girl fight at the mall. Forever 21 had that effect on women.
But Teena just swatted Sarabeth playfully, with maybe a hint of bitch, and said, “I’m a better driver anyway.”
Evan pointed to his watch. “Okay, so should we give ourselves ten minutes?” He turned to Leo. “Guys versus girls, right?”
“Yup,” Leo said, pressing down on the gas pedal so the car leaped forward and knocked over a display of Nerf guns. “But we’re all winners.”
“Whatever,” Teena said, looking around the store to pick what direction to go in. “Ready, set, go!” And before Leo could even turn around, Teena had gunned it and the girls zipped past them, giggling maniacally. Good, Leo thought. This might calm down some of the cattiness.
Leo watched Teena and Sarabeth grab an assortment of water balloons, Super Soakers, and a water-balloon slingshot, and before leaving the front of the store, each took several oversize shopping bags from hooks near the entrance. Dumping their water toys in the bags, they took off in the direction of the girls’ toys.
Evan raised his eyebrows at Leo. “That’s smart,” he said, reaching out of the G.I. Joe truck and pulling an entire shopping cart that had been left in the middle of the aisle. He held it with one hand next to the truck. “This is smarter.”
“Nice work, Evan,” Leo said, meaning it. Ribbons of giddiness shimmied in his stomach, and if that made him seem like a little girl, so be it. If death awaited, at least his bucket list was one item lighter.
Leo pushed the pedal to the plastic and—despite their collected weight—the truck shot off speedily down an aisle loaded with superhero toys. They plucked Captain America shields and Spider-Man web shooters and Hulk fists from the shelves, rounding the corner and spinning down an aisle filled with kids’ sports equipment. Evan pulled Wiffle bats and catcher’s mitts from the shelves. On his side, Leo scrambled to toss padded mixed martial arts training gear and joust sticks into the cart. They raided an aisle of remote-control vehicles, grabbing cars and helicopters and even a shark that you inflated and flew with a remote control. They added plenty more utterly useless stuff to their makeshift side-cart—a billion-piece LEGO set to build Hogwarts, creepy zombie-skull balls with eyeballs that popped out, and not one but two replicas of the Millennium Falcon. They’d covered half the store and hadn’t even seen the girls yet. They were probably doing quite a job on Barbie’s Headquarters. He smiled as he imagined Sarabeth selecting an Easy-Bake Oven.
Spinning out into the birthday-party section, Leo saw an item on a high shelf and got an idea. It was perfect.
“It’s 9:01. Time’s up.”