Cure for the Common Universe (29 page)

“Muh.” She pushed me away, disappointed.

“Sorry,” I said, even though I was thinking,
Weren't you the one who gambled it all away?

I scanned the casino. My head felt heavy. My stomach was in knots. Maybe I was hungry. I saw a big white banner that read
BUFFET $12.99
.

“Stay here,” I said. “I'm gonna try to score us a buffet.”

Gravity rubbed her face. “That's not Starbucks.”

“Well, no . . . but they have bottomless coffee.”

She stuck out her tongue and let her head flop to the side.

“Don't worry,” I said, leaping to my feet. “This is gonna be awesome. I got this.”

I strode down an aisle of slot machines, searching for kind faces. This
was
going to be awesome. This would be a story Gravity and I would tell for years to come. The night we went on our first date, and I dashingly got her a buffet with bottomless coffee.

I approached a woman at a lucky-three slot machine. Her plastic bucket was half-full of coins.

“Excuse me,” I said, clasping my hands together. “Could I possibly borrow a few quarters from you?”

She took a long drag of her cigarette and considered me. Then, exhaling smoke, she shook her head and pulled the slot machine's handle.

Most of my encounters went something like that.

After approaching nearly every person in the casino before
getting eyed by a security guard, I returned to Gravity, whose head had slumped to the side.

I counted my coins. “I didn't get nearly enough.”

“Booooooo,” Gravity said into the armrest.

“Ha-ha.” I sat next to her.

Why was it so hard for me to have fun right then? Where was charming, sexy, hilarious, relaxed, car wash Jaxon? Man, casino chairs were hard and scratchy. My eyes were watering from all the cigarette smoke. I needed to get us out of there so we could go on a real date. But how? This dungeon was too high-level for me.

“We have no gas and no money,” I said. “What are we gonna do?”

“Maybe throw up?”

I helped Gravity outside for some fresh air. She collapsed onto the curb and let her head hang over the gutter. I stepped back, just in case she started puking.

“Seriously,” I said. “How are we supposed to get home?”

“You sound like my parents,” she said, cheek on the pavement. “They're
tight asses
.”

I sat next to her head on the curb and pulled the coins out of my pocket. Four dollars and fifty cents. “This might be enough to get gas back to the city. Where does your aunt live? In the city?”

“She doesn't,” she said.

“No, where does she live?”

No response. I cleared some hair that had found its way into her mouth. Was this how my mom had acted when she'd
been drunk in front of my dad? Had I just taken Gravity away from exactly where she needed to be?

She rolled onto her back, so she was on the edge of the curb. She closed one eye and traced her finger across the starless sky. “I like people when they're meteorites. It's like they're so pretty leaving their shiny dust across the sky. But then they land in front of you, and they're not glowing anymore. They're just
rocks
, and it's, like,
BLUHH
.”

“Are you talking about me?” I asked.

From her horizontal position she grabbed my arm and shook it. “You were so much
fun
at the car wash. What
happened
?”

What had happened? I was on an adventure. A
real
adventure in a casino town, as brightly lit as Midgar, with a beautiful girl and barely any money. Hell, this was as exciting as it got.

And I was hating every second of it.

I jangled the handful of coins. “Maybe this is enough to get us back to V-hab.”

“No!
No!
”

Gravity pushed her feet against the concrete, forcing her head into my side.

“Ow!”

I stood up. She just lay there, eyes fluttering to a close.

I squatted in the gutter. “Come on. Let's get you into the car.”

The second I touched her arm, she lashed out and pushed me away by the face. I fell backward, and sat hard on my ass.

“If you try to take me back there,” she yelled, “I'll tear out your trachea!”

I sat on the asphalt, in shock. She was talking to me like I was . . . like I was Soup or something.

“You'll tear out my
trachea
?” I said. “That's extreme.”

“I am . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and made two tight fists.
“Extreme.”

“Gravity, I'm not leaving a drunk girl at a casino.”

She lifted her head and scowled at me with one eye shut. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Uh . . .” Oh God, what had I just called her? “I just said, ‘Serena, I'm not going to leave—' ”

“Why . . . are you . . . trying . . . to control me?” she screamed, banging her fists and feet on the concrete.

This drew a few looks from a couple entering the casino.

“I—I'm not,”
I whispered.
“You're just really drunk.”

“No!” she screamed. “You think I'm gonna be all perfect . . . and then . . . and then fuck you!”

I deflated. This was not how my first date was supposed to go.

“I'm sorry, Serena,” I said.

“Bleeehhhhggggg.” She made that pukey sound again, and I took another step back. She scrunched her shirt in her fists. “You're giving me a gross feeling in my stomach. That Asian chick was right. You suck. Suck my dick, dude.”

I stood up. I turned in a circle, searching the parking lot. It felt like the end of the world.

No. I could save this. I could still be the hero. Through the casino window I saw a glowing green-and-white sign with a double-tailed mermaid.

“How about Starbucks?” I said.

Serena stuck her fist into the air, triumphant. “Yessssssss!”

“Will you be okay here for a minute?”

She gurgled. “Someone's gonna take advantage of me.”

“Um . . . okay.”

I bent over, threw her arm around my shoulder, and hauled her to her feet. The casino's automatic doors whooshed open in a rush of dings and air-conditioning. I set her in a chair where I could keep an eye on her, then jogged to Starbucks and tried to make sense of their huge menu. I only ever drank energy drinks.

“Um, I'll take a . . . just a coffee, I guess? With milk and sugar?” I looked back at Serena, eyes closed, chin resting on her chest. “Will that make you sick if you're drunk?”

The barista chewed her gum. “Not me.”

“Um, okay, yeah, I'll take that. These waters too.”

“That'll be five fifty-eight.”

“Oh.” I shook my coins, hoping more would magically appear. “Just one water, then.”

I poured the coins into the barista's open hands, grabbed the coffee and the water, turned around . . . and froze. Three cops stood around Serena.

I quickly ducked behind a support pole. Why were they here? Stolen car? Reckless driving? Underage drinking? Were we about to go to jail? I peered around the pole and watched Serena wipe sweaty hair off her forehead and blink at the cops. They took her arms, trying to get her to stand, but she became
a rag doll. They practically had to pick her up and carry her.

I watched the cops lead Serena to the exit. When I'd met her, she had been this beautiful, interesting girl who had actually seemed interested in me. She was still beautiful now, but something had changed. She looked . . .
young
. She looked like a kid. Like me. Where was the girl I'd been dreaming about for four days? Where was the badass at the blackjack table who didn't get ID'd? What had made me care about this girl so intensely so quickly?

When the cops reached the automatic doors, Serena took one glance back toward Starbucks, but only for a moment, like she wanted the cops to take her before I got back.

I winced, waiting for my heart to break.

It didn't.

She didn't want me. She didn't need me. What the hell was I doing?

The coffee steamed in my hand. I tossed it into a trash can, stuck the water bottle into my pocket, and went out a different exit, into the night. The casino lights glimmered on G-man's Acura.

Dammit. Serena had the keys.

Oh well.

I definitely felt that Gravitational pull as I walked out of the parking lot, under the cowgirl's neon boot, and out of the gambling town, down the open road.

I just barely managed to break free.

T
he casino lights faded behind me. Soon starlight reigned. The dunes were black shadows against the universe. Orion chased the Pleiades across the sky.

“You'll never get 'em, dude,” I said.

I walked all night, putting one foot in front of the other down the empty highway. The air was cold. No cars came. All I could hear was wind and crickets and my footsteps. I imagined a beam of light slicing through the sky, shooting out from the horizon where I was pretty sure Video Horizons was nestled. I kept an eye in that direction as I traversed miles of road, passing every sign, curve, and landmark I had memorized in order to
escape
from V-hab.

The walk gave me lots of time to think. To think about triumphantly returning to Video Horizons. To think about swooping in and discovering Soup, half-dead in the sand. To think about giving him mouth-to-mouth in front of all the Fury
Burds, until he spluttered to life. To think about apologizing to Aurora and telling her I realized that Gravity sucked and that she, Aurora,
Jasmine
, was nice and pretty and always seemed to do the right thing. To think about saying,
See? I walked, like, twenty miles back to V-hab just to apologize. And to see you
. To think about her kissing me and fireworks and The End.

I thought about that last part a lot.

The desert didn't stop. The turnoff to Video Horizons was nowhere in sight.

Hours after I had expected to return, the horizon grew chalky, painting the desert in grays. I realized Jasmine probably wouldn't be at Video Horizons when I got back. She had earned a million points and would likely be home by now.

Jasmine was gone.

God, what if I had just waited to try to kiss her? What if I had actually been a nice guy and participated in guild therapy and gotten to know her better and
then
tried to kiss her, so she didn't think I was using her as medicine just to feel better about myself? What if in some alternate ending she had actually wanted to kiss me?

As the sky grew brighter, the dunes grew darker. The horizon became so purple and electric, it could have been right out of
Arcadia
.

Fezzik would still be there, at least. I needed to apologize to him, too. In my opinion that dude was the Emperor of the real world. I had just refused to see it in V-hab because I'd been too focused on myself, and some chick I didn't even know.

It hurt to think of Fezzik returning to
Arcadia
. He had left his cave and ventured to Video Horizons to grow out of himself, or
shrink
out of himself, I guess. As always, the real world was completely unforgiving, and the Silver Lady had rejected him. I needed to get back and tell him that the world was a better place with him out of his cave. The Fury Burds needed our white mage. Er, healer.

Why couldn't I have just said those words to him when he'd brought me his phone to call Mandrake's?

Light broke over the mountains behind me, gilding my path. Maybe it wasn't too late for Jasmine and me. I would try to get her full name from Meeki. I'd contact Jasmine on Facebook and apologize and then ask if maybe she wanted to get together sometime . . . maybe at Mandrake's or something. No pressure.

The morning sky grew white and beaming. The sand twinkled like a golden galaxy. Birds sang, and a speckled lizard scrabbled out of a hole to raise its nose toward the rising sun. Everything was beautiful . . . until it was awful.

The sun rose and roasted me. I sweated through my black shirt and white pants. God, what I wouldn't have given for that stupid Home Depot hat. There was no shade to rest in, so I just kept walking. I took a couple of sips of water, trying to conserve, and then finished the entire bottle. I could have drunk three more. I thought of Soup, who probably hadn't brought any water when he'd run away into the desert.

The sun sizzled the back of my head, and something
dawned on me. Soup probably hadn't planted the iPod Touch in my suitcase. That wouldn't make sense. He'd been with me every possible moment. When would he have had time to sneak it in there? And if he'd wanted me to stay, why would he have tried to give me the points from his side quest? Also, his little butt definitely wasn't big enough to smuggle in an iPod Touch.

Even though he hadn't planted it, he'd still taken credit for the deed so that G-man might give me my points back. Soup had fallen on his sword for me. And I'd called him a little shit for it. Man, I had really screwed that up.

What if he was still lost in the desert somewhere? In this heat, with his size, he could have wasted away to a skeleton by now. I walked a little faster. Someone had finally wanted to be in my life—had begged for my friendship—and I had just pushed him away . . . even by the forehead once. Thanks to Serena, I knew what that felt like now.

I'd been terrible to that kid.

Even though he'd kind of been asking for it sometimes.

Okay, he was asking for it all the time.

Still, I was kind of a dick. Hopefully they'd found him by now.

The sun grew brighter, and the sand and road and rocks and clouds all blended together in a blinding haze. My skin prickled. The asphalt cooked through the soles of my shoes. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my head. I was hoping to show up to Video Horizons looking somewhat triumphant.
Not like Mario's singed and bloated corpse.