Eve of The Flight of the Ones.
Food vendors making an easy buck, children playing games, adults drinking their favorite alcohol; potted plants adding splashes of green, statues and paintings by artists looking to reveal their names to the world decorating the grounds, butterflies made from wood or papier-mâché or tin foil or old car parts clinging to the stall posts and trees and restroom walls; actors dressed up in elaborate costumes spinning fires and walking tightropes, five-man bands singing songs of lost days that won't hold them back, magicians making pocket watches disappear down their sleeves and reappear inside a fish. And above it all were three turquoise arches mimicking the Ternion Baldrics, though, of course, nothing could replace the real thing.
That was the holiday tonight's festival was celebrating. As for the Day of the Flight of the Ones, we'll get to that event tomorrow night. Last tease of the story. Promise.
The girls entered the park, and Mireh thought it was amazing how different it looked. It was as though an abandoned lot had been turned into a city in the course of two days. And by this time the day after tomorrow, it was all going back to normal.
“Where do you guys want to go first?” Retta asked after Oooing and Ahhing everything for a solid minute.
“What do they have?”
“A little bit of everything, it seems,” Mireh said, looking at a map she swiped from the entrance. “They've got arcade games over here...there's an open mic poetry reading over here starting at 6:00...they've even got a military plane you can go in...Ooo! There's a tent playing EDM and trance!”
“Where's the poetry reading?” Temera asked, dying to know where it was on the map, because what else was she going to be interested in? The tattooed guy swallowing serrated swords three aisles over?
“Oh. My. GOD!”
“What are you freaking out about?” Mireh asked Retta, who was frozen in place, sights locked on a stall, specifically one of its prizes.
“That.” She pointed. “I must have it.”
Mireh followed her finger to a baby blue plushie of a creature with eight legs, two very large eyes, and a pair of puffy lips perfect for giving infants nightmares.
“Is that a caterpillar?”
“It's a tardigrade,” Mireh said.
“Isn't it the cutest?!” Retta had clearly never seen the real thing: microscopic hellspawns with daggers for feet and whose faces looked like they were sucking themselves in. Best known for their ability of being impossible to kill. “How much to play, good sir?” she asked the vendor in charge of the shooting game.
“It's three menos for three shots or six for five,” the vendor said as he chewed a wad of gum.
“One shot's all I'll need.”
“We only sell them in packs of three.”
“Then I'll take three.” Retta forked over her money, and the vendor handed her three foam balls for ammunition and the polished wooden rifle that was going to earn her that demon staring into Mireh's soul. “You ladies should consider yourselves lucky. You've got frontrow seats to a historical undertaking.”
“I bet you miss.”
“You wanna put money down on that?”
“Yeah, ten menos.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen.”
“I don't have ones on me.”
“Twenty it is.”
“I don't agree to these terms and conditions.”
“Too bad.” Retta loaded her rifle with the one and only shot she was going to need, raised the barrel so that it was eye level, and waved the iron sights around until she found the perfect location to aim at. It was this sweet spot that, when struck, would cause the bottle to give away, sending the pyramid tumbling down onto the table. That puckering parasite was as good as hers.
She set her finger on the trigger.
[Insert moment of suspense here.]
She fired.
Blam!
Dink!
“!”
“!”
“!”
The ammunition bounced away, and the bottles shook and shook and—oh, they're done already.
“...”
“...”
“...”
Maybe it's a good time to mention that Retta had never played with a toy gun before, let alone pick up a real one.
“You owe me twenty menos.”
“......No!” Retta turned to Mireh, this fire in her eyes. “The bet was that I would miss. As you saw, with Temera as my witness, I did not miss the bottles. Isn't that right, Temera?”
“Um, I suppose so, but you didn't knock them do—”
“Hear that? Temera would never tell a lie, would she?”
“Don't try and worm your way out of this,” Mireh said. “You and I both know that miss meant you wouldn't—”
“Shhhh!” Retta said, putting a finger to Mireh's lips. “Say no more. It's up to you now to succeed where I have failed.” She surrendered the rifle to her. “Make me pride, my successor...”
Mireh took the weapon with more than a bit of snit. But it was whateves, because, “When I knock these bottles down in one shot, you're giving my twenty menos.”
“'Think not of what your actions give you, but what you give your actions.'”
“That's right, keep ignoring me.”
“I like that. I wonder how that'd fit into a haiku, though...”
Shut up, you. You're ruining my moment of glory. Mireh sought the best spot to fire at. She was no math whiz, but she was 98.9% positive she had seen a scenario like this in one of her math problems. You know what we're talking about here: those math problems where Alice and Bob own an orchid and they need to figure out how much fertilizer they need per tree per acre using string theory, because Bob blew this month's rent on hydraulics for his wood paneling station wagon, and Alice needs to make sure these trees grow enough apples that they can sell them and come up with this month's rent before their landlord threatens to kick them out again, dammit. If there were ever a time for one of those problems to come in handy, now was it.
If I hit it at the bottleneck...at this angle, it'll tip that way...that bottle will fall into that bottle...and... Mireh didn't know what she was talking about, but it sounded good. Her math teacher would give her a B for effort.
Her finger curled around the trigger.
Blam!
Dink!
“!”
“!!”
“!!!”
Those bottles were wobbling, all right, and they were wobbling real good. Looked like they were going t—nope, nevermind, they stopped.
“...”
“.....”
“........”
There were no words to describe that moment.
The silence.
The awkwardness.
The sudden desire from Mireh to find a nice dry ditch to lie down in so she could have herself a peaceful death isolated from this moment and from all society.
Pop! went the vendor's bubble. He said nothing, which Mireh couldn't decide was better or worse than saying something.
“Is it all right if I try?”
“Sure.” Mireh handed over the rifle that she had shamed. Might as well have all of us embarrass ourselves... she thought and then slumped over to Retta. “We're both failures.”
“Yes. We are.” She sighed. “We are indeed...”
Temera loaded the toy gun and aimed it. For a girl who mumbled instead of talked, she didn't seem intimidated by the rifle at a—
Oh.
She just knocked down the bottles.
All six of 'em.
“............”
“............”
“Ha! Too easy!” Temera's face said.
“Congratulations, miss,” the vendor said, about as enthusiastic as a slug visiting the salt factory. “Pick your prize.”
“Um...” she said as she browsed the selection of plushies.
“...Mireh....?”
“...Yes, Retta...?”
“Do...Do you think Temera's secretly a sniper in the army...?”
“...Don't be silly. You can't join the army until you're eighteen...”
“Yeah, but...the way she aimed and fired that thing...it was like, if we came rushing at her with a knife, she'd know exactly how to throw us over her shoulder...”
“...Yeah...it was like that...wasn't it...?”
“...It was...”
“...”
“...”
Temera walked up to Retta, the daemon woken from its slumber in her arms. “Here.”
Retta looked up from her languishing. “Why are you giving him to me?”
“You really wanted him, didn't you?”
“I did, but...you earned him. He's yours now,” she said, pushing it away.
“But—”
“Shhh!” Retta said, putting a finger to Temera's lips. “Taking him now would be like graduating when you did all of my homework for me. Besides, I was going to give him to Mireh, anyway, so I wasn't planning on keeping him.”
“Then...” Temera started handing her soul-sucking familiar over to Mireh, but she held up her hands and took a step back.
“No, no, that's all right. I'm not a big fan of bugs, anyway. But thank you.” (Disclaimer: tardigrades are not bugs.)
“Oh. I guess you're stuck with me,” she said to the fiend no seal could contain.
“What're you gonna name him?” Retta asked as though she were holding a lottery ticket and waiting for the winning number to be hers.
“Well...”
“If you're having trouble thinking of a name, I have a suggestion.”
“I have a name picked. But thank you.”
“Yeah? And what'd you pick?”
“Well, I don't think this is appropriate, but I think I'll name him Schildkröte.”
“...Uh, Shidquitter?”
“Schildkröte. It's German,” she said. “I wanted to name my pet turtle that if I ever got one, but I still think it's a good name for him.”
I think a better name would be Beelzebub.
“...Oh...I was going to name him Nathan...but that's a good name, too. I suppose...” Retta said as though every number on her winning lottery ticket was wrong.
“Isn't that the boys' name you picked out for if you had a son?” Mireh asked Retta as the girls started walking in no particular direction.
“So what if it is?”
“Nothing. It just seems kind of, I don't know, redundant? Having a plushie named Nathan and then later having a son named Nathan.”
“And what if you marry a man named Nathan?”
“Good thing I really like the name.”
“Maybe you should have yours legally changed to Nathan,” Mireh suggested.
“Nah, that's just weird. I mean, a girl named Nathan?”
“It's not any weirder than a girl named Retta.”
“I'll have you know that Retta is a beautiful name given only to a select few individuals,” she said. “What would you rather my parents have named me? Mary? Talk about boring, Mireh.”
“Yeah, you're right. I can't imagine you being a Mary.”
Apologies to Marys everywhere.
“Know what else I can't imagine?” Retta asked, turning toward Ms. One Shot One Kill. “Temera taking out all those bottles in one shot. You've played that game a lot, haven't you?”
We must've weakened them for her, Mireh wanted to believe.
“Only once or twice,” she said.
““...What?”” Retta and Mireh said at the same time.
“I have family who owns a farm, and me and my parents visit them every now and again, and we always shoot targets in their backyard.”
“Temera—”
“—with a gun?”
Retta and Mireh looked at one another.
“I'm the best shot in my family. Not to brag or anything.” She was totally bragging. Just look at that smile.
Note to self: stay on Temera's good side for the rest of her life.
“Oh yeah? I bet you can't beat me at that game!” Retta said, pointing at one of those horse racing games you won by shooting a target with water longer than everyone else. No skills were required, so Retta was a shoo-in for this game.
One Hour Later...
Not only did Retta lose to Temera, she lost to the five- and six-year-olds who played as well. And not only did she lose to Temera and children ages 5-6 on this game, but she lost to Temera and children ages 5-11 on the next fifteen games they played.
When she was done embarrassing herself and asking Mireh to buy her a mask so that nobody would recognize her as the high school junior on a losing streak to prepubescent children, she decided that the next best course of action for them was to grab dinner. Nothing made Retta hungrier than getting showed up by a bunch of miniature human beings who thought the Baldrics were made by their great-grandparents so that they could see at night.
On the menu tonight were chicken tenders and french fries for Retta, a hot dog topped with enough ingredients that Mireh wasn't going to be able to taste the actual hot dog beneath them all, and funnel cake for Temera, who believed that eating her dessert before her dinner was a basic human right.
Mireh, who was halfway through her hot dog and knew it wasn't going to fill the void in her stomach, was eyeballing Retta's chicken. It was golden and tender and so gorgeous to look at, and she needed it in her life and in her stomach. Problem was, Retta shared her food about as well as a hyena that hadn't eaten in three months. Trust Mireh when she says she found that out the hard way waaay back when in elementary school. But it was all right. She had a plan.
Mireh started looking past Retta as though something odd had caught her eye. “Hey, Retta, isn't that a bazooka?”
“What? Really?!”
There was no bazooka, but there was a basket of chicken tenders for the taking. Mireh helped herself.
“Where do you see a bazooka?”
Mireh looked again. “Mah faul. At giant pencal look like a bazooka for a sec,” she said with a mouthful of chicken.
“Way to tease me.” She took another tender from her basket. None the wiser.
“That reminds me. What time did you say the open mic poetry reading starts?” Temera asked.
“6:00, I think,” Mireh said.
“What time is it—It's starting now!” She ran off with her phone in one hand and her funnel cake in the other. “Sorry, but I really want to see it!” And then she was gone.
“Way to ditch us,” Retta said, a tad upset.
I'm glad she didn't drag us along.
“You wanna join her?”
“Not really,” Mireh admitted.
“Then whaddaya wanna do?”
Mireh pulled out the park map with the list of going ons. “As hilarious as it would be to see a bunch of five-year-olds whip your ass again, I'd like to check out the EDM tent. You?”
Retta was looking at the map. “You think I can redeem myself at the arcade?”
“How much do you want me to laugh at you?”
“You're supposed to encourage me, Mireh, not kick me when I'm down. Some friend you are.”
“I'm not kicking you when you're down, I'm just laughing at you.”
“I bet you were rooting for those kids, too.”
“Not at first, no.”
“'At first...'” Retta looked for something where there was no way she could embarrass herself unless she went out of her way to do so. “Ooo! Oooooo! They have a Swivelers act going on! Come on, we're checking it out pronto!” and then she dragged Mireh along by her arm.
“I guess we'll go to the EDM tent afterwards?”584Please respect copyright.PENANAA7Fbz3uiOX