The Gamer's Guide to Getting the Girl Read online

  We get a hold of ourselves before returning to the group.

  “That was a good laugh, boys,” George says, wiping his eyes. “After tonight, I needed that.”

  “So, what? We just leave him in there?” I ask. Who’s going to want to go into the washroom if they know there’s a skunk in there?

  “Are you going to go in there?” George challenges. Cooper and I shake our heads. Not a chance, I think. In a tough situation, you’ve got to pick your battles — and fighting a skunk will not be one of mine tonight.

  “Didn’t think so.” He grins. “What makes you think I’m going to either?”

  It’s another forty minutes before Rory and Erwin show up. Their black work boots squawk with the weight of the water they’ve absorbed.

  “Couldn’t find them,” Erwin says. “We looked everywhere. The mall looks clear.”

  “We can’t have these guys roaming the mall. Zach seems to think they were about midway down, which would put them at Spell Jewellers. We have no idea if they’re dangerous or not but if they’re trying to steal things during the storm, they’re not exactly upstanding citizens.” George is right. Those guys were up to no good.

  “They might have run back out,” Erwin says. “The food court entrance is only partially barricaded.”

  “Any way we can firm that up better?” George asks.

  “With what? I think it’s the best we can do.”

  “We’ll have to keep our eyes out and remain vigilant. With any luck we scared them off for now. Maybe they’ve left.”

  “I’m not sure where they went, but the water is ankle-deep downstairs.” Rory lifts one of his feet to show us. “Someone better find a way to get us out of here before they need to bring a boat in to get us.”

  George frowns. “The most recent reports of the storm are bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The winds have picked up. Power lines are down everywhere. Streets are blocked by broken branches. Because we’re relatively safe and secure in this building, they’re asking us to hold tight because there are other people who haven’t been as lucky. Funnel clouds have been spotted just outside of the city, and they’ve been tracking a tornado along the Trans-Canada Highway. I think it’s time we head back downstairs just in case.”

  “But what about the water?” Rory says.

  “Look, staying up here in the event of a tornado is not good either.”

  “But what if the water continues rising?”

  “I get it. I don’t know what we should do.” George closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “If only I knew how long we’d be stuck in here.”

  “The washrooms are almost overflowing up here,” I pipe up. “At least if we’re downstairs we’ll have new washroom facilities.”

  “Yeah, Zach needs a clean place to take a dump,” Cooper says under his breath behind me.

  “Have you been in there?” I shoot back. “How about you go and take one in there?”

  Rory and Erwin laugh. “Well then, if that’s what Zach needs … that decides it!”

  “Yeah, does either of you have to go?” Cooper asks Rory and Erwin. They don’t know about the skunk.

  “There’s an even bigger stink in there than before.” I snicker.

  “Yeah. You should go check it out. My friend Pepe is in there and he hasn’t come out yet,” Cooper says with a straight face.

  Rory and Erwin study us, unsure if we’re being real with them or not. I let out a snicker. I expect George to laugh with us but his face is expressionless. “Stop!” he says suddenly. “This is serious!”

  We’re immediately silent. George is visibly agitated. His face is flushed and sweat is building on his temples to the point of needing a towel to clean himself up.

  “You okay, George?” Erwin asks softly.

  George ignores the question. “Okay, let’s get everyone up. We’re moving to the other side of the mall.”

  TIP #7

  Doing the right thing isn’t always easy

  “Like we’re going to get a real tornado,” Cooper says. I’m pushing Ira’s stroller for Valerie while Ira sleeps in her arms.

  “I don’t know. This storm is a lot worse than anything I can remember,” Erwin says.

  Peter hears us talking. “The deadliest tornado on record happened in 1912,” he tells us. “In Regina.” Regina is about two-and-a-half hours from Saskatoon; it’s the capital city of Saskatchewan.

  “You mean the worst in Saskatchewan?” I ask.

  “No — it was the worst tornado in Canadian history. Twenty-eight people died. My parents were in that storm.”

  I watch Mildred’s eyes grow wide as she takes in her husband’s words.

  “Yeah, and there wouldn’t have been any kind of warning system then, would there have been?” I say.

  “Well, obviously the more time people have to respond, the better,” Cooper says.

  “The thing is,” Peter explains, “scientists can’t actually predict with certainty where or when a tornado will form. Radar can only detect when the conditions known to form tornadoes exist. It’s something called ground truth. Human eyes must witness the tornado in order for it to be confirmed.”

  “By then isn’t it too late to warn people?” Cooper asks.

  “That’s why warnings are often given out sooner than that. But if there are too many false alarms, people can start ignoring the warnings, thinking that the chances are pretty slim.”

  “Well, it’s not like we get F5 tornadoes like the United States,” Erwin says.

  “Actually, we might get them, too,” I tell him. “I remember learning about this at school. The prairies are now the northern tip of Tornado Alley. We probably get a lot more tornadoes than we know about because we have sparse population in a lot of areas and a lot of land. Some might never get spotted.”

  “Then why don’t we have sirens to alert us like some communities do?” Erwin asks.

  I shrug. “Because we rely on weather forecasts, TV, and phone alerts, I guess?”

  “A lot of good that does us now,” Cooper says sharply.

  “Yeah, power outages make things a lot worse, that’s for sure,” Peter says. “How do people get the warnings if there’s no power? People need lead time to get somewhere safe.”

  “Stop talking like that, Peter!” Mildred cries out.

  “Honey, that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re keeping safe.” He wraps his arm around her shoulder and caresses her arm.

  “Too bad we don’t have a battery-powered radio,” I say.

  “Sometimes the radio posts are abandoned in emergencies,” Cooper says. “Don’t you get it? We’re being forced to fend for ourselves. I don’t even think they’re trying to get to us.”

  “George said there were other people worse off than us that they are getting to first. I think it’s like a triage system, when they sort people based on how serious their condition is and how quickly they need medical care. Right, George?” I say. George is walking at full speed, shining his flashlight around us, oblivious to our conversation. “George?”

  George freezes and cocks his head to the side for a moment. We all stay quiet.

  “Rory, Erwin,” he whispers. They rush to his side, at the ready.

  George motions with his chin toward the corridor where Spell Jewellers is. He turns to face us. “I need all of you to stay together. Come and wait over by this wall. Nobody leaves.”

  George nods at Cooper and me. We guide the crowd over to the wall adjacent to the elevators. It’s a large open common space so there’s room for us to spread out. The only seating in the area is a leather loveseat with a garbage bin at one end and a fake silk planter at the other. Immediately I park Ira’s stroller against the wall for Valerie and then guide Peter and Mildred to rest on the loveseat. Cooper and Samara follow.

  Peter smiles at me gratefully as he helps Mildred onto the seat of the couch. They settle in together, and Mildred rests her head on Peter’s shoulder. His large hand
is like a bear paw on his wife’s slight shoulder.

  “We should go and wake Farrah up,” Mildred says. “She doesn’t like storms.”

  Cooper and I look at Peter, stunned. Peter said earlier that they’d lost their daughter, that she’d drowned. If she had drowned, how could they go and wake her now?

  Peter smiles gently at his wife.

  “Farrah is resting peacefully, my love.” His voice is reassuring and patient. “One should never wake a sleeping child.”

  Mildred nods and pats his thigh. “You’re probably right, dear.”

  It dawns on me that Mildred is confused; she thinks that Farrah is still a young girl and that she’s still alive. Cooper and I exchange a knowing glance that Peter catches and returns, confirming our suspicion.

  We give Peter a sympathetic smile. He gives us a compassionate look.

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper says. “That must be really hard.”

  “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman right here,” Peter says. “She’s the best thing to have ever happened to me. When we said our vows sixty-two years ago, it was for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Thankfully she remembers more of the good times.”

  “My grandma had Alzheimer’s,” Cooper says. “It was pretty rough on my mom.”

  I remember that. We were about ten years old. Cooper’s mom was spending a lot of time taking his grandma to doctor’s appointments or rushing over to her house when something was wrong. Cooper was the first kid in our class to get a house key and be allowed to stay home alone after school. We were all jealous because the rest of us had to either go to a friend’s house where there was a parent or stay at the after-school program, which felt doubly sucky when you were the oldest kid there.

  “It’s definitely not easy,” Peter agrees. “My girl is sure a strong one though. She’s a fighter.” He takes her hand and squeezes it. Mildred smiles dreamily and leans into him again.

  The fact that Mildred is forgetting her life and wants to wake up the daughter who passed away decades ago feels like a blow to the gut. It’s the kind of stuff in the world that feels too hard to take in sometimes.

  “Where do you think George, Rory, and Erwin went?” I ask, changing the subject.

  We step away from Peter and Mildred.

  “Maybe they spotted those guys again.”

  We crane our necks to see if we can spot their flashlights, and sure enough, we see the beams bouncing across the walls at the far end of the corridor where I’d first spotted the men.

  “If there are looters, what are security guards really going to do?” Cooper asks. “They don’t get to carry any weapons or anything.”

  “They do have handcuffs,” I say.

  “But what if the other guys have weapons?” Samara says.

  I shrug.

  “We don’t even know if they are looting,” I point out. “Maybe there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for them to be down there.” But I know it’s unlikely. If you were trapped in a flooding mall, wouldn’t you want to be with the majority? Don’t they say there’s strength in numbers?

  “That’s my Zach,” Cooper teases. “Always believing in the best in people. I’m far too cynical.”

  “Me, too,” Samara agrees. Great. Another thing they have in common. “Things never seem to work out that perfectly.”

  “I’m just saying, if it were me, I wouldn’t want to be incriminated so easily.”

  “But that’s easy; that’s because you would never do it.” Cooper’s right. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. Well, except for Jordie Sampson’s Twizzlers on a bus ride to the Batoche National Historic Site. We’d been studying the Métis people and the North-West Resistance of 1885 at school, and our teacher wanted to take us on a field trip to see the settlement along the South Saskatchewan River. It’d been a thirty-degree day, and I’d forgotten my water bottle and my spending money at home. The muffin my mom had packed for me had barely put a dent in my hunger when afternoon snack time rolled around. Jordie had bought about six packs of candy. I jokingly swiped one but Jordie didn’t seem to care all that much so I just kept it and ate it. I shared with Coop, of course.

  “I don’t think anyone knows what they’re truly capable of, especially in difficult times,” Samara says. “We think we’re all great people who are law-abiding and on the straight and narrow, but I think we all have a darker side.”

  Cooper and I ponder her words. “What are you saying?” Cooper asks, challenging her. “You’re not who we think you are?”

  “No, I’m not,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m just saying, when your back is against the wall, there’s no telling how someone might react. They may be capable of things they would never have dreamed of doing in another circumstance.”

  “Like what?” I ask. I wonder just what she means by all of this.

  “Well, let’s see. We’ve already collectively broken into and taken stuff from two restaurants in the food court and a designer dress store. That alone says something. Technically we’re all thieves here.”

  “I don’t think that means we have a darker side,” I argue. “It was a decision we made in order to survive. Think of it like Boom Beach. We are trying to build up a base and amass resources for the good of our people. We aren’t intentionally breaking the law for our own benefit.”

  “Aren’t we?” Samara says. “Whose benefit was that for then?”

  “It’s just different.”

  “Lots of really bad decisions are made in the name of survival.”

  “That doesn’t make someone a bad person.”

  “In the eyes of the court it does. People steal food or write bad cheques to feed their kids. They go to jail.”

  “But they’re not really hurting anyone. At least physically, I mean.”

  “A woman might think she doesn’t have it in her to fight back when a man’s hurting her. She may feel too weak or scared, but push her far enough and one day she might just snap and find herself stabbing him to death.”

  “Are you planning on stabbing someone soon?” Cooper says, laughing.

  “Maybe,” Samara says. “I would if I had to. And I wouldn’t even think twice about it.”

  We wait for a smile or a laugh, but she keeps a straight face. I laugh nervously. My dream girl could be a mass murderer, and apparently, I’m okay with that.

  “That’s the thing,” she says. “I don’t think I’d lose any sleep over it.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” I say. “But I still don’t think that makes someone a bad person. I don’t think you’re the conscience-less, morality-depraved soul you’re making yourself out to be.”

  “Some of us just aren’t as good as you, Zachary.” She says my full name and it sends tingles down my spine. She turns on her heels and heads back to the rest of the group. I watch her walk away until I can’t tell where she is; I’ve lost her silhouette in the dark.

  “Did I say something wrong?” I ask Cooper. “I think I’ve upset her.”

  “No. I just think maybe she’s dealing with more than we understand,” Coop says. “That, and we can’t all be like Zach.” He pats me on the back and smiles.

  Voices grow louder. We see light streaming toward us from the flashlights and hear the shuffling of feet.

  “Check the security cameras,” one of the voices says.

  “Would if we could, except that’s a little hard when there’s a power outage.” I recognize Erwin’s voice.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” another voice says.

  As they approach, I see that it’s the two men in the track suits. They’ve been handcuffed, and they look pretty irate.

  “Good thing I caught these two when I did,” says another voice. The man in the business suit emerges from behind George. “They would’ve left with half of the store.”

  The two men scoff. “Why don’t you check his pockets?” one of them says. “He’s the one who was in there stealing. You didn’t find a thing on us.”
r />   The man flashes his wrist in the air. “This is a three-thousand-dollar watch. A Baume & Mercier. Why would I have any need to steal jewellery when I can clearly afford it on my own?”

  “Look, I’ll tell you again … we were the ones who saw him in the store. He was the one who broke in.”

  “A.J., don’t bother. They aren’t even listening to you.”

  “So, what? I’m going to go to jail for some other dude’s crime? You’re going to frame me for it? I don’t think so. Joaquin, I will not let this happen.”

  “Without security-camera footage, how can I be sure?” George says. “I’ve got two different stories.”

  “And you’re going to believe the rich guy over us then,” the one called Joaquin mutters.

  “This has nothing to do with money,” George says. “It already looked bad when we walked in to see the two of you on top of him.”

  “We were the ones stopping him! We were trying to hold him and get him back to you guys!”

  “We’re not criminals,” A.J. spits. “We’ve got wives and babies, man.”

  George, Erwin, and Rory exchange glances.

  The business man stares smugly at the two in handcuffs. “No one in the world would believe that I would rob a jewellery store. Especially not with you two in there at the same time. Have a fun trip, boys. We’ll see you in court.” He laughs and walks off.

  “This is unbelievable,” Joaquin says. The two of them shake their heads.

  “So much for doing the right thing,” A.J. says.

  “Look, I’m going to hold you until I get things figured out. Perhaps a jewellery store heist wasn’t such a hot idea today.”

  Both men remain quiet, defeated.

  My insides churn again thinking back to the men in the corridor. There were definitely two people. That, I am sure of. Even in the darkness it was easy to tell that there were two silhouettes.

  The man in the business suit has been alone the entire time we’ve been stuck here. And there were definitely two people who called out to me when I spotted them. I ran back to the group scared out of my wits. Two people were coming from that very direction and they weren’t acting friendly. How can it not be these two guys?