The Candy Shop War, Vol. 2: Arcade Catastrophe (7 page)

As the hoop retracted to the three-point distance, Nate kept making shots while it was in motion. He continued to drain one after another for three points each. When the buzzer sounded, he had not missed a single shot. He hadn’t even touched the rim. Chris had scored 92. Roman had earned 109. Nate had 140.

A siren went off as tickets unspooled from all three basketball machines. After the tickets stopped for Chris and Roman, Nate’s kept coming.

“I don’t believe it,” Roman said in awe. “Were you scamming me?”

“How’d you do that?” Chris accused.

“Didn’t seem hard, daddy,” Nate said, suppressing a smile. “The hoop is close. How’d you miss so many?”

Chris scowled.

“I’m not sure ‘daddy’ suits you,” Nate went on. “Maybe granddaddy?”

“What’s your best all-time score?” Chris asked Roman.

“A hundred and seventeen. Yours?”

“One-ten. How’d this joker shoot 140?”

“Maybe grandmommy?” Nate tried.

“I was watching,” the girl said. “He was really fast, and he never missed. Not once.”

“Let me see your hand,” Chris said, stepping close and grabbing Nate by the wrist. He apparently didn’t find what he was looking for, so he checked the other hand. Nate didn’t resist the inspection.

“Anything?” the girl asked.

“Nothing,” Chris replied, peering at Nate intently. “Where are you from, Nate?”

Nate grinned. “My dad owns the company that makes these.”

“Really?” Roman asked.

“No,” Nate said. “I was just in the zone at the right time. I live over in Colson.”

The tickets had stopped unreeling.

Nate glanced down. “How many tickets were supposed to pay out for breaking the record?”

“Three hundred,” Roman said.

“It stopped around 230,” Nate said. He hadn’t been paying direct attention, but his instincts told him he was right. He had learned to trust his instincts while chewing Peak Performance.

“They’ll refill it,” Chris said. “Risa, see if you can find Todd.”

“Yes, master,” the girl replied, rolling her eyes.

“Are you guys going to pay up?” Trevor asked.

Chris looked reluctant, his lips pressed together. “That’s only fair, I guess. You might have been conning us, Nate, but you definitely won.” Chris handed over his token card.

“Bad luck for me,” Roman said. “My tickets are yours. More than a thousand. That was incredible.”

Glancing off to one side, Nate saw Summer and Pigeon approaching. They walked up to Trevor. Pigeon seemed to pay abnormal attention to Chris.

“Hey, guys,” Summer said brightly. “What are you up to?”

“Scamming us out of buckets of tokens,” Chris said. “Tell you what, Nate, how about you give me a chance to win my card back, double or nothing. We use the bigger machines with the full-sized balls. I like those better. If I lose, I’ll give you a card with exactly $100 in tokens on it.”

“What are you, a millionaire?” Nate asked.

“I made some pretty good money recently,” Chris replied. “What do you say?”

“My shooting wasn’t a fluke,” Nate said.

“One-forty can’t be a fluke,” Chris acknowledged. “It’s too high. It’s ridiculous. Still, give me a chance to win my card back on the bigger machines. I want to try.”

Nate knew the Peak Performance gum would last at least another ten minutes. “Sure, why not?”

Risa returned with a man who was presumably Todd. In his thirties, he wore black jeans and a dark T-shirt promoting a band Nate had never heard of. He had a wiry build and smelled faintly of cheese puffs. His green hair was styled into a faux hawk. One forearm sported a tattoo of a dark angel holding a pair of swords rendered in blue, purple, and black. Under his other arm he clutched a large wheel of tickets.

“Whoa!” Todd said. “A hundred and forty? Nobody has put up a score like that since we opened.” He focused on Nate, who still stood in front of the machine. “You did this?”

“I was in the zone,” Nate said simply.

“You should be in the newspaper,” Todd said. “That is just a killer score. You should see if there’s a pro league for these things. Seriously, you’d be a superstar.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nate replied, hoping he wasn’t blushing. He felt a little guilty since his performance was due to magic gum rather than his own skill.

“I hear it didn’t pay out all 300,” Todd said.

“Yeah,” Nate replied. “I think it stopped short.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Todd said, crouching in front of the machine. Using some sort of key, he opened it up. “Yep, empty as my girlfriend’s head.”

“How’s it going, Todd?” Chris asked.

“Good, Chris,” Todd replied. He loaded the wheel of tickets into the machine and closed it. More tickets began streaming out. “Did this guy take you to school?”

“He destroyed us,” Chris said.

“I was wondering when somebody would toast one of you,” Todd said. “Goes to show you, can’t get too cocky. There’s always somebody better.” Placing his hands on his hips, Todd stared at the score. “One-forty. They should pay out a thousand for a score like that. Party on.”

Todd strolled away.

Chris nodded toward the bigger machines.

“We’re just playing for you to get your card back,” Nate clarified. “I keep these tickets.”

“It’s Roman who cares about tickets,” Chris said. “But there’s only two of the big machines. Just you and me, playing for cards.”

“I’ll gather your tickets, Nate,” Trevor offered.

“We’ll help,” Summer said, giving Nate a funny look. He wasn’t sure how to read her expression. Did she think it was wrong for him to scam Chris again using Peak Performance?

Summer, Trevor, and Pigeon had been engaged in a huddled conversation while Todd resupplied the ticket dispenser. Nate wondered what had lured Summer and Pigeon out of hiding. There didn’t seem to be any emergency.

Nate went and stood next to Chris. These bigger machines required two tokens. Nate pushed them in, Chris swiped his card, they hit the start buttons, and Nate started shooting. The balls were bigger, the hoop farther away, but it seemed just as easy as the other game. Working quickly, Nate hit swish after swish, the ball touching nothing but net. Hoping to avoid looking supernatural, he forced himself to miss three shots. When the buzzer sounded, he had beaten Chris by almost fifty points.

“Another new record,” Chris said, glancing from the scoreboard to Nate. He looked stunned and frustrated. “I practice a lot, and I shot fairly well just now. You scored way higher than I’ve ever shot. I guess I owe you another card.”

“It’s okay,” Nate said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, Nate, I can afford it,” Chris said. “I asked for a rematch, and you owned me. How many times did he miss?”

“Three,” Risa said. “He was shooting fast.”

“These pay 500 when you break the record,” Chris said. “You’re well on your way.”

“To what?” Nate asked.

Chris studied him curiously. “You’re an interesting guy.” He bent over and tore off the ribbon of tickets dangling from his machine. “My tickets weren’t part of the deal. I’ll donate them to Roman.” He handed the tickets to his friend. “I’ll be right back.”

Tickets continued to flow from Nate’s basketball game. “How do I manage all of these tickets?” Nate asked Roman.

“You feed them into machines that count them,” Roman said. “They print out a receipt. Or the ticket counters can store them on a card.”

“You really have over forty thousand?” Nate asked.

“Pretty much,” Roman said, avoiding eye contact. “I may have slipped back to just under forty.”

Was he hiding something? “Do any of the prizes cost that much?” Nate wondered.

“Not many,” Roman said. “I mostly earn the tickets for fun.”

“I can’t believe you shot like that twice in a row,” Risa said to Nate. “Can you do it every time?”

“Depends,” Nate said. “On a good day I could probably keep repeating. It’s weird. I’m either really coordinated or pretty average. Not a lot of middle ground.”

“But you were messing with me when we first played,” Roman said. “Setting us up.”

“Maybe a little,” Nate replied.

Chris came back and handed Nate a card. “You earned it. And no offense, but I’m never playing basketball against you again. Roman, we should talk.”

“Later,” Roman said to Nate.

Nate nodded at him, feeling a little bad for taking his tickets.

Chris, Roman, and Risa walked away together.

Summer, Pigeon, and Trevor approached carrying a bunch of tickets. Trevor and Summer had theirs bundled neatly. Pigeon’s were in tangled disarray, with several loose ribbons dragging.

“You just met some very interesting people,” Summer said. “We need to talk.”

Chapter Five

Tickets

Nate, Summer, Trevor, and Pigeon found an empty room clearly used for private parties. A pair of long, orange tables with adjacent benches filled much of the space. A discarded cake box sat on a counter, full of crumpled napkins and plastic cups. Small, colorful shapes flecked the white wallpaper, giving the impression of confetti.

Trevor closed the door, and they gathered at the end of one of the tables, two on each side. They knelt on the benches and hunched over the table so they could keep their heads together and talk low.

“What’s the story?” Nate asked.

“That guy you beat both times at basketball,” Summer began.

“Chris,” Nate supplied.

“He can jump like he’s sucking on Moon Rocks. Same with the girl.”

“Risa,” Trevor offered.

“We saw them arrive,” Pigeon said. “They came into Arcadeland by jumping the fence when they thought nobody was looking. And I mean jumping it. One leap.”

“We came to warn you,” Summer said. “We thought they would be good people to watch.”

“We figure they must be getting magic candy from here,” Pigeon said.

“Chris was acting strange,” Nate said. “Like he had a secret. Or like he suspected I had one. He was tough to read.”

“He and Roman were awesome at basketball,” Trevor said. “They’ve definitely had some practice.”

Nate met eyes with Trevor. “Chris and Risa seemed to be helping Roman. They were wondering how many tickets he had earned.”

“You think they use tickets to buy magic candy?” Trevor asked.

“We know something out of the ordinary is going on here,” Nate said.

“The tickets sound like a good place to start,” Pigeon said.

“Roman has almost forty thousand tickets,” Nate said. “And he’s still working hard to earn more. Should we go see if any prizes are worth that much?”

The others agreed. Nate led the way over to the redemption counter, where Todd was accepting tickets from a couple of young girls in exchange for plastic rings.

“That longboard is 10,000,” Summer reported.

“The little jukebox is 20,000,” Pigeon said, eyes roving the shelves. “I don’t see anything for more than that.”

“Hey, Todd?” Nate asked.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“What prize costs the most tickets?”

Todd winced as if thinking and rubbed the tattoo on his forearm. He eyed the shelves. “Jukebox is one of the highest ticket items. Works fairly well. I’m sort of an audiophile, and it sounds decent.”

“Is it the highest?” Nate pursued.

Leaning one hand on the glass counter that held all the cheaper items, Todd gave Nate a measuring stare. Then he glanced down at the cabinet. “There are some pretty expensive stamps toward the back.”

Nate crouched and examined the contents of the glass counter. Looking past the finger puppets, the suckers, the army men, the spider rings, the tiny bouncy balls, and the other items marked at 50 tickets or less, Nate saw two small signs proclaiming a value of 40,000, and a second pair marked 50,000. Behind the signs were four inkpads—one with a simple image of a submarine stenciled on the cover, one with a racecar, one with a fighter jet, and one with a tank. Beside each inkpad rested a stamp.

“Fifty thousand?” Nate asked.

Todd nodded. “We don’t generally draw attention to them. Most people who notice think they’re mismarked.”

“Inkpads?” Summer asked. “Like for stamps?”

“The pads aren’t for sale,” Todd explained. “Just the stamps. Forty thousand for the sub or the racecar. Fifty thousand for the tank or the jet.”

“For 50,000 tickets I get to stamp a tank on my hand?” Trevor deadpanned.

“More than once,” Todd replied. “It could potentially amount to a lifetime supply. But only four people get to win each stamp.”

“Are all the stamps available?” Nate asked.

Todd shook his head slightly. “Two of the jet slots are gone. One tank slot is gone. No racecar slots are taken yet. One sub slot is gone. I happen to know there are plenty of people currently working to win the empty slots.”

“Why?” Pigeon asked.

“I’m not allowed to fully explain,” Todd said. “Earning the stamp is sort of like getting into a club. The details are only for those who succeed. Are you guys here to redeem any of those tickets?”

Nate realized that they were all holding a lot of tickets. “No, later. We were just weighing our options.”

Todd looked at Nate. “Keep shooting baskets how you were, and you’ll be able to afford anything on display.” He drummed his hands on the counter. “Have fun. I need to check on some things in the back.”