It’s stuffed with cash. I feel light-headed holding it, wondering if my parents have ever even touched that much money before. I gawk at Moby, then the cash, then back at Moby. He still looks confused.
“So, wait. You won?” I say.
“Not really. I came in second.”
“But how did you have money to play?”
He looks around again. “I didn’t. The lady who let me in told some guy that I was there. He gave me a bunch of chips to play with, but he didn’t make me pay. When I left, he took the chips back and gave me this.”
I run through it in my head. It doesn’t make any sense. Who would just give some kid a bunch of money to play . . . of course! It’s as plain as the ’stache on his face. Moby was lured into the same trap the Arch was. He accepted the chips thinking they were free, only to find out he owed money for them later. The difference is Moby won, so he didn’t have to pay anything back.
“That’s why the Arch is in trouble,” I explain. “Mace lends him money, then cheats to win it back. Then Archer ends up owing Mace the original money he borrowed.”
Moby shakes his head like a disappointed parent. “That does sound like something Mace would do.”
“Wait, you met Mace?”
“Yeah, he was the guy who gave me the chips. He won first place. He’s really good at cards.”
Moby has no clue how close he came to getting himself in real trouble.
Then I have another thought. “Hold on. How the heck did you win second place? You’ve never even played before!”
“I mean, we watched all those videos. It’s not that complicated. It took me a few hands to figure out who was trying to trick me into betting all my chips when they had better cards than me. But once you figure that out, it’s not that hard.”
I’m stunned. I’ve always been the brains of this show, or at least I thought I was. Now I know I underestimated the Arch, and I’ve done the same thing to Moby.
I tell Moby what the Arch told me in the lobby. When I get to the part about the regional tournament, something clicks.
“Did anyone say anything about a regional finals?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah.” He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. “Mace gave me this, too. I can play again tomorrow night if I want.”
I smooth out the wad of yellow paper and turn it to catch the light from the parking lot. It’s an invitation to play in the regional finals. There’s more than enough cash in the envelope to cover the entry fee. The cadre has everything we need to play in the tournament against the Arch.
I secure the envelope in the pocket of my sweatshirt before someone sees us standing around a parking lot with a huge wad of cash. Then a plan starts to take shape in my mind. No great archenemy showdown ever got settled by blackmail. Nobody goes to a movie where the good guy and the bad guy sit down and reason things out in the end. The only way for this kind of thing to be resolved is for one of us to defeat the other in a winner-takes-all confrontation. I have no choice but to use my secret weapon to outmaneuver him once and for all. If my secret weapon is willing to do it, that is.
“So—do you think you could do it again?”
“Do what?”
“You know. Play again, and win?”
“I dunno, it’s pretty boring. It’s like being in math class with a bunch of adults.” Moby starts to walk and I follow.
I consider going through the list of reasons why he needs to say yes. How this is our chance to knock the Arch off his pedestal once and for all. How we finally have the perfect opportunity to make up for all the plots that haven’t worked in the past. A million reasons whip around in my head, but in the end I go with the one that really matters. “Could you do it for the cadre?”
He stops and looks at me. “Okay, I’m in.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Good. Because I think you’re the key to taking the Arch down once and for all.”
He takes a deep breath and puffs his chest out with pride. Then his shoulders sink. “I might have TD with the Colonel tomorrow, though.” He starts walking again.
I stand there for a minute, then jog to catch up. “Moby, if you pull this off, I will happily do TD for the next year.”
“Okay!”
It’s too late to tell him I was only joking.
We cross the parking lot toward Madison Street, and Moby slaps the button for a walk signal. He starts hopping from foot to foot. I’d recognize his dookie dance anywhere.
“Gotta go?”
He nods, biting his lip.
“It’s not one of your usual times. Are you sure it isn’t just gas?”
“I think I was more nervous in there than I thought. Plus, we had curried quinoa for dinner,” he says, doubling over.
I have no idea what either of those words means, but I have a brief vision of the Colonel carving a steak as the rest of the family slurps bowls of green slop. “Wanna run back into Thunder Alley?”
“The Clairemont has nice, high toilets and two-ply. I can make it.” He winces.
Years of reading his face tell me he has three minutes, tops, before his Dockers become ground zero. It’s at least ten minutes to get to the theater.
As the walk signal appears, I nudge him back to the bowling alley.
I understand now why they call it Thunder Alley. There’s some sort of bowling league going on, and the crash of bowling balls against pins is deafening. The lights are off on the lanes, replaced by glowing neon stars and a weak, strobing laser that’s supposed to make it look like you’re bowling in outer space or something. The curry-versus-cheese death match in the men’s room will take a while, so I dig into my jeans pockets for the quarters I didn’t use earlier and head over to the claw machine to finish what I started.
I pluck at the stuffed kangaroo with the metal claw a few times but only get it to shift a little bit. The tail is now at just the right angle for me to snag it with the claw and make it mine. My hand goes into my pocket, and I mutter a silent prayer for one more quarter.
My prayers are answered. I pull out the coin of destiny and pop it in the slot. The machine comes to life one more time, and I carefully maneuver the claw into position above the prize. This is my last chance to get this right. I check the angles, and I’m just making a few fine-tuning tweaks . . .
“Kangaroo, huh? I was a Kangaroo,” says a voice, shattering my nerves.
My thumb flinches on the grab button, and the claw drops, missing the toy by a hair. The guy owes me a quarter, but when I turn around, I don’t know what to say.
Standing there in all his pimply-faced glory is the one and only Mace.
CHAPTER 21
Mace and I study each other. He’s much shorter than I imagined he’d be from the pictures on the blog.
He looks around to make sure no one is watching, then says, “Here, let me show you the trick.”
I step back as he moves toward the machine. He looks around again and then with lightning speed rams his knee into the side of the game, the same way he’ll probably do to Archer if he doesn’t pay up.
I swallow hard.
The machine comes back to life and the claw resets to its ready position. With a flourish Mace offers me the controls again, but I hesitate and take a step back. I don’t want to accept anything he offers.
“Suit yourself,” he says, his voice squeaking. “I used to own this thing back in the day!”
He steps up to the joystick and gives it a whirl. I have no idea when “the day” was, but his skills have not dulled since then. With the smoothest technique I’ve ever seen, he guides the claw to the kangaroo, then faces me and says, “Hey, look at me.”
I look him in the eye. He winks at me as he pushes the button. He doesn’t turn around to watch as the claw lifts the toy out of the pile and drops it in the retrieval slot.
“You go to Alanmoore?” he says.
I nod.
“What? Are you doing the never-talk-to-strangers thing?”
He’
s much younger than I thought. I suddenly feel bold. “I know who you are, Mace.”
He does a double take. “Right, right. I was kind of a legend at Alanmoore. Go, Roos!” he says sarcastically.
“Were you on the track team?”
“You couldn’t pay me enough to be on the track team.” He laughs. “Besides, do I look like an athlete to you?”
“No, you don’t,” I say. “So then, what made you such a legend?”
His sunken chest puffs out. “I did all kinds of cool stuff. You ever hear about the time a kid pulled down the principal’s pants in front of the whole school and got away with it?”
I run a hand over my scalp. “That’s just a school legend.”
“Every legend starts somewhere.”
I rack my brain for what else I’ve heard about him. I’ve got it! “That kid’s name was the Fink, not Mace.”
“Mason Finklebein.” He extends a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I don’t offer my hand in return. Am I really face-to-face with the legendary Fink? And if it is him, what the heck happened to him since he left Alanmoore?
“If you’re such a legend, why’d you change your name?”
He pulls a cigarette from behind his ear and puts it in his mouth but doesn’t light it. “I just turned eighteen, I run a different racket now. I have a poker league. Nobody’s gonna worry about owing money to the Fink, but owing money to a guy named Mace . . .” He smashes a fist into his cupped hand, and I jump. “Plus, I’ve got this leather jacket, so things are going good.”
“Well,” I correct him automatically.
He gives me an odd look. “Well, what?”
“Never mind.” I can see why the Arch wants this loser out of his life. I try to think of an excuse to leave. Just then Moby emerges from the men’s room sweating like he just did hot yoga. He spots me and hustles over.
When he sees who I’m talking to, he stops in his tracks.
Mace slaps him on the shoulder. “Hey! Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Am I right?”
“It was curried quinoa, actually.” Moby takes a step away from him. “I thought you guys didn’t know each other.”
“We just met,” Mace says. “So, you bringing that wad of cash to the regional tomorrow?”
Moby starts to speak, but I jump in before he can give away any of our strategy. “We’ll be there.”
“Good.” Mace nods like a judge considering evidence. “You played good tonight. But we’ll see how you do against some real competition.”
Moby looks at me, amazed that I’m not correcting Mace’s adverb use.
“Yes, we’ll see,” I say.
Mace claps his hands together. “Well, looks like you and Mustache Man have this all figured out. I will see you boys tomorrow.” He turns to walk away. “Good luck getting in,” he calls in a taunting voice.
My blood freezes. Of course . . . the fake ID. Mace got one for Archer. He knows we’ll need one too. He waves to us over his shoulder. I don’t want to ask him for anything, but at this point I don’t see a way to get in without his help.
“Fink!” I call.
He stops, shakes his head, then walks back. “Nobody’s called me that in five years,” he says.
I can’t let him intimidate me when I’m this close to finally taking the Arch down. “Can you get us in?”
He tents his fingers and fixes me with a stare. “I do have one ID left, but it’ll cost you.”
“We need two,” I say.
He laughs. “Sorry, shorty, I only have one. Besides, you ain’t gonna fool anyone. You want in, you’ll have to sneak in.”
I pull the envelope of cash out of my pocket and count out enough to pay the entry fee at the regional tournament, plus a few extra bucks, and put it in my pocket. I’ll use whatever money is left over in the envelope to buy us a buffet of snacks if we actually get to see League of Honor this summer. I want to go into business with this jerk about as much as I want a rash on my butt, but I have to do what I have to do. “How much for the ID?”
Mace takes the envelope with the rest of Moby’s winnings in it. There goes our buffet. “This should cover it,” he says with a wink, and the money disappears into his jacket pocket. From another pocket he pulls out a cell phone and tells Moby to stand against a wall so he can snap pictures for the fake ID.
It’s getting late and we need to get to the Clairemont so Jarek can drive us home. Mace flips through the pictures of Moby on his phone. “These are good. I’ll meet you in the coatroom by the lobby of the hotel before the tournament at six twenty.”
I don’t trust him, but he’s our only option. “We’ll be there.” I push Moby toward the door.
“Hey, kid. You forgot your kangaroo,” he calls, holding up the toy from the claw machine.
“Keep it. It means more to you than it does to me.”
Thankfully, Jarek lets me use his phone to call the cadre and set up a meeting at the school tomorrow. My dad’s car is in the driveway when Jarek drops me off at home.
“Thanks for helping us tonight,” I say to Jarek as I hop out.
“No problemo, Mr. Potato Head.” He chuckles as he peels away from the curb. He’s just messing with me, but the reality of spending the summer thousands of miles away from the nearest decent movie theater opens a pit in my stomach. I close the pit by reminding myself how close I am to finally defeating the Arch.
When I walk in, the front room of the house is empty and all the lights are off. I expect my dad to be in his chair reading the paper. Something is not right. When my eyes adjust, I spot the only sign of life in the house—an odd blue glow coming from the kitchen. I creep through the living room, ready to make a break for it if my parents have been turned into pod people or something, which seems reasonable, since I’ve never made it this many steps into the house before without being told to do something.
When I get to the kitchen, I stop at the doorway. My parents are speaking Polish, which means they’re talking about either money or me.
A board squeaks under my foot, and my father says, “He’s here.”
My mother calls, “Maciek?”
It’s too late to turn back now. Whatever fresh hell (as Stosh would say) they have waiting for me in the kitchen can’t be avoided. I put on my fake smile and step into the room. What I see drains all the blood from my head, and the floor falls away beneath my feet. There on the desk in the corner of the kitchen is something I never thought my parents could afford: a beautiful new computer.
Okay, so maybe “beautiful” and “new” are not words I should use to describe the yellowing antique. Two things are obvious—it’s gigantic and it comes from a different century. But those are just details. There is an actual computer in my house!
My father sits stooped in front of it. He pokes the keyboard as though he’s trying to figure out if it’s dead or not. I stand there in shock, staring, wanting to believe one of my dreams has sort of come true.
“It’s for homework.” My mother smiles at me.
“For business,” my father adds. After a few more frustrated jabs at the keyboard, he turns to me. “Do you know how to work it?”
I wait for him to stand, then I sit in front of the beast. “What do you want it to do?”
“Go on the Internet and check your grades,” he says.
I roll my eyes, knowing they can’t see. “Oooookay.” I open the web browser. “Did we get Wi-Fi, too?”
Dad’s answer is a stern no.
My mom points a finger up and whispers, “Drones.”
My father looks up at the ceiling. “They can listen through walls.”
“Riiiight.”
My father shows me where the beast is plugged into the wall with a cord. I’ve always wondered what those little square plugs are for. Apparently, that’s where people got their Internet before electricity. For a minute or so the computer makes squealing noises like a bunch of robot cats being stomped to death. When it finally goes silent, the web browser comes up.
“Almost bedtime,” my mom says, going to the sink to clean up their dinner dishes.
“I have to go see a man about a horse,” my father says, which he thinks is a polite way of telling us he has to take a dump. “When I come back, show me your grades.” Leave it to my dad to take all the fun out of the Internet. He stomps out of the kitchen, tucking the newspaper under his arm, which means I have about ten minutes to check Mace’s blog and find any updates on the League of Honor premiere before he comes back to look at my report card.
I open tabs for Mace’s blog and the school’s website. They load super slowly, so I minimize them and open a new tab for the official League of Honor page. Nothing has changed since I checked it on Mrs. Belfry’s computer a few days ago. I decide to see if Jarek was telling the truth about how long it takes to get movies in Poland. I search “League of Honor” and “Poland,” and all I find is an application for a Polish kids’ baseball league tryout—not an encouraging sign.
With less than three minutes left I close the other tabs and open Mace’s blog. It takes even longer to load than the others. The top banner has barely appeared when the toilet flushes upstairs.
I beg the compusaurus to hurry. “C’mon!” A little more of the page appears, and I can tell the main picture has been changed since last time I looked. Inch by agonizing inch the photo fills in. My blood drops a few degrees as I realize the picture is a full-face shot of tonight’s second-place finisher.
Moby’s forced smile is barely visible behind the ’stache, but if you look for more than a second, you’ll know exactly who it is.
“Is that your school website?” my dad’s voice booms, shaking me out of my state of shock.
I punch the escape key like a jackhammer. The stupid old machine won’t respond.
I slap the side of the computer. “It’s spam!”
“Poker?” my father says.
My heart almost stops. If he recognizes Moby, I’m getting deported.
“They try to sell you all kinds of weird stuff on the Internet,” I say, hoping he won’t look too closely.
I reach for the cord and he puts a hand on my shoulder.
I Am Fartacus Page 15