We all cheered, and the door behind Lee opened.
Noah slipped in, saying, “Sorry, I just— Oh myGod.” He snorted, shaking his head. “I was expecting this, but…I still wasn’t expecting this. You guys look sick.”
“But me especially, right?” Amanda said, jumping forward. She crouched, hooking her arms inward and growling, stomping one foot, then the other, making Noah laugh.
“Good luck out there, Evans,” Levi told me.
“Please,” I scoffed. “I don’t need luck.”
“As if.” Levi put his hands on his hips, head wobbling as he gave a dramatic, movie-villain-esque chuckle. “You’re going down. I’ll destroy you out there.”
“Looking like that, you won’t.” Taking pity on him, I reached up to fix his fake mustache, pressing it into place properly.
He blushed. “Thanks.”
A throat cleared behind me and I turned to see Noah looming behind us. I grinned up at him and gave a twirl. “Cute, huh?”
“I just wanted to come by and say good luck out there. There’s a hell of a crowd.”
“Didn’t you know?” Levi joked, grabbing my shoulders to shake me gently. “Elle doesn’t need luck.”
I didn’t miss the look Noah shot Levi, or the way a muscle jumped in his jaw.
Oh God, I so didn’t want to deal with this right now.
I blew Noah a kiss, knowing I couldn’t give him a proper kiss with this helmet on. “See you in the stands!”
I made my way back to the doors as everyone started to get in line to head outside. I took the first spot, just ahead of Rachel and Lee.
“All right, gang,” I shouted over my shoulder. “Let’s go!”
I wanted to push open the doors in one grand gesture, so they swept forward as they opened on either side of me. It wasn’t as smooth as that, though. The doors were heavy, so I fumbled, Lee laughing behind me, and just held open the one door instead.
The whole thing was far from graceful. Amanda’s and Jon’s costumes both got stuck in the doorway and Jon’s giant spiky turtle shell got caught on the door handle. It took three of us to free him.
But then we were back on track, walking out under the bleachers to a roar of cheering, with the music from the video game playing over the speakers.
The sound was deafening. I drowned in it, exhilarated, having to work hard to keep a serious face. Walking up to my go-kart, I stole a glance at the big screen, where our little slow-motion parade was being shown in HD.
It was surreal.
Right there on the screen, there I was, dressed up to look exactly like Mario, a white sticker with a redMstuck to my red helmet. Rachel was just behind me, wearing green where I wore red, the perfect Luigi. Lee gave a skip and a twirl as Princess Peach, and Ashton jumped into the air, pounding it with a fist to yell “Woohoo!” in a scarily accurate imitation of Yoshi.
Amanda came next, beating her big gorilla chest as Donkey Kong. Levi strode after her, a leaner, less squat version of Wario, Jon ambling behind him as Bowser.
I did a double take as I got to my kart.
Where the hell was Warren?
I looked back at our group and the empty kart, and by the time I was turning back to the screen I saw for myself: Toad was running out of the bleachers, giant head wobbling. But it wasn’t Warren in the costume.
Noah?
I glanced back at Lee, who looked just as confused as I felt. He shrugged.
Maybe he’d had a change of heart after all and realized just what he was missing out on. I hoped Warren wouldn’t be too mad about missing out.
(And I hoped Noah wouldn’t flip over in his kart and break something. He hadn’t signed a form, and the last thing I needed was the water park suing us.)
