A couple of the people in the arcade looked over at the girl who was exchanging conversation with her dog as if it were perfectly normal, and Agnes raised a hand and shrugged at them.
Sherlock left not too long after, heading back to the bar, where the old man was waving him on, a fresh basket of stringed meat in his hand.
“Ugh, now he’s giving Sherlock chicken tenders,” Maria moaned.
Gelbus turned away from the greasy, fried aroma despite being quite hungry. He wanted that milkshake, whatever it was. It sounded delicious.
“Let’s do this!” he shouted, catching both Frieda and Maria by surprise.
“Calm down, my little friend,” Maria said. She put her coins in, and the ray gun shot a bolt of lightning.
The clashing sounds of monsters growling, aliens babbling, and dinosaurs roaring filled the arcade’s atmosphere. It was wonderful. The game was so much fun. It took a few minutes for Gelbus to get the hang of it, but once he did, he couldn’t stop. The ball bounced back and forth off of the rubber mushroom-looking things, and the numbers on the screen climbed. Green, yellow, and orange light bathed the Gnome’s face. He didn’t blink over the course of the entire game. When the final ball rolled past the paddles and the dinosaur roared ‘Game over,’ Gelbus realized his eyes were burning beyond belief, dried out from staring.
He also realized that Maria, Frieda, and Agnes, among others he didn’t recognize, stood behind him with their mouths open.
“What?” he asked, his voice muffled by the hoodie. He was sweating beneath the fabric and wanted nothing more than to unzip it, but he knew that would risk a panic from those who’d never seen a real live Gnome before, so, he suffered instead.
“Holy shit,” Maria said, quietly.
None of the onlookers had blinked; none dared to. Gelbus was starting to feel a bit worried that he had done something wrong. Maybe the people in the fun center were onto him.
Oh, no, what does that mean?
You know what that means, Gelbus, he answered himself. It means Trevilsom Prison, where you’ll rot and come out crazier than you already are.
Suddenly, lights danced around the room—red, blue, green, yellow, silver—and an alarm went off that sounded both scary and pleasant. Gelbus jumped at the sound of it, nearly falling off the chair he stood on.
Then, surprisingly, the onlookers started clapping. Now Gelbus really didn’t know what the hell was going on.
Maria smiled at him with her thumbs up in the air, Frieda looked just as confused as Gelbus felt, and Agnes shook her head in disbelief.
The crowd parted as the old man who’d been feeding Sherlock food came up the middle of the room toward Gelbus. In his hands, he no longer held stringy potatoes or strips of fried meat that smelled of grease and deliciousness (not to mention clogged arteries…even a Gnome from Oriceran knew what those were), but a small black box with a glass disc on the end.
“Damn, young man, I never thought I’d see the day!” Gary said. “That high score has been there for nearly twenty years. Your old grandpappy owned it,” he said, leaning toward Maria.
“Oh, wait until he hears about this, Gelbus! He’s going to be so happy,” Maria said. “And probably mad…but mostly happy. I hope.” She grabbed the crystal around her neck, and it instantly lit up at her touch. Agnes saw this and stayed Maria’s hand, shaking her head.
“All right, young man. Go ahead and enter your name into the game, and we’ll get your picture by it. As a newly anointed high score possessor, you get everything free until someone breaks your score. ‘Course there’s some stipulations to that one; like you can’t come every day, because I ain’t made of money, and as winter approaches and the youngins like you go back to school, my profit sorta shrinks—but still, a few times a week beats having to pay, don’t it?” Gary said.
Gelbus didn’t know what to say or do. He was frozen on the chair while everyone looked at him. People in the crowd were asking one another how old he was, why he covered his face, if he was all right because he looked terrified, and so on and so on.
“Here,” Maria said, pushing through the wall of people. She took hold of the buttons, nudging Gelbus out of the way. “Since you technically don’t know English,” she whispered with a smile and wink.
Gelbus was thankful; she was about to save him again.
“There, GTG.” Maria leaned over to him and whispered, “GTG. Gelbus the Gnome.”
“Well, GTG,” Gary said, “take off that hoodie, and we’ll get your picture by the high score. You can have a copy and everything. All your friends at school will be so jealous!” He raised the black box with the disc on the end of it. Gelbus thought this was called a ‘camera’—another item he’d learned from his studies—but he wasn’t one hundred percent certain.
Maria put an arm on Gary’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. How he could hear over the clamoring of the people packed into the arcade, Gelbus didn’t know, but Gary’s smile deflated, and he nodded with sympathy and understanding.
“Okay, friend,” Gary said solemnly.
“Look at the lens,” Agnes urged.
Gelbus did, and a flash of lighting exploded, nearly blinding him. He wobbled, and before he knew it, the chair went out from under him, and he was falling, falling, falling—
He landed with a thump on a padded but firm surface. Dazed and nearly having a heart attack, Gelbus looked down to see Sherlock looking up at him with his teeth bared in that canine smile that looked more like a growl. His eyes said, ‘I got your back,
