“What?” I demanded. “But…but why? This machine’s been here for years! We’ve practically been dancing on this thing since we could walk!”With the exception of the last few years.“You can’t get rid of it!”
He sighed heavily, full of sympathy. “There’s not much I can do about it. This thing’s starting to fall apart. Costs more to repair than it makes.” He tapped at the edge of the screen, where there was a fuzzy black spot in the corner that I hadn’t noticed until now. Then I saw the duct tape slapped across the metal panels on the sides of the machine. The lights in one of Lee’s arrows were out completely and two of mine were flickering. Lee seemed to be noticing all of this, too; he wiggled the metal handlebar behind us. It was a little loose and it creaked. I bet with any amount of force, you could’ve pulled it right off.
But still!
TheDDMmachine had been the staple of the arcade for us for so many summers. The last forty minutes or so with Lee had been pure joy and had wiped my mind of the stress of the future, of college, of the fight with Noah and his attitude toward Levi.
Lee’s face had fallen, too, but there was so much more than simple disappointment in it.
“Sorry, kids,” Harvey told us with a shrug.
I did my best to give him a polite smile and sound upbeat. “That’s okay. Guess we’ll just have to come back to take over that leaderboard before you get rid of it!”
As Harvey walked off, Lee muttered under his breath and kicked at the machine. The screen fizzled out and back on and off again, then started showing the demo video again. Lee stepped off completely, huffing, and hunched over the handlebar.
I knew that look all too well. I’d seen it plenty of times this summer. His eyes shone wet and he clenched his jaw tight. His lip wobbled just a little.
“I don’t believe this,” he bit out. “First the beach house. Then you and Harvard. And now this? Is nothing sacred?”
Melodrama was one of Lee’s strong suits, but I didn’t think he was being melodramatic right now. Not in the slightest.
I put a hand on his back, leaning next to him. “Tell me about it.”
It didn’t matter that we’d forgotten all about the arcade andDance Dance Mania.What mattered was that we’d shown up here to relive a golden hour of our childhood, just to find it was falling to pieces and being scrapped.
Which, honestly, felt like a way-too-accurate metaphor for everything else that was going on. Ithurt.It wasn’t about the machine. There would be otherDDMmachines, other arcades.
It was about us.
It was about the future.
It was about this being a summer of lasts.
Lee sniffled next to me, and I wished there was something I could do. A huge part of the melancholy hanging over us all summer, however distantly, was because of me, because of my decision to not go to Berkeley. I wished I could stop him hurting like this.
I wished—
It hit me like lightning. I stifled a gasp to tell Lee, “Stay here. I’ll be back in a sec,” before running off to find Harvey, who was exchanging a kid’s tokens for a baseball mitt.
Barely a minute later, I was back with Lee, who hadn’t budged from his despairing stance atDance Dance Mania.He eyed me curiously as I grabbed his wallet off the floor and riffled through receipts and dollar bills and—
I held up a condom. “Seriously? You’re so classy.”
“Put that away!” he hissed. “There are kids around!”
I shoved it back into his wallet, only for him to murmur, “It never hurts to be prepared, Shelly. I bet Noah keeps one inhiswallet.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny this.”
I could totally, absolutely confirm this.
I pulled out the sheet of paper I was looking for. We’d been carrying the bucket list about all summer, folding and refolding it a hundred and one times. It hadn’t been in the most pristine condition when we’d found it; by the end of this summer, I got the feeling it’d be falling apart.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, straightening up. I took a seat under the handlebar. Lee sat with me, hitting his head and muttering, “Ouch.”
Lee and Elle’s Epic Summer Bucket List
27.Take a hot air balloon ride—NO PARENTS ALLOWED!
