25. Joel

CHAPTER 25

JOEL

I pick up one of the brightly colored boxes and read it suspiciously. "Don't Blink Twice. The game of strategy and tactics. Can you double cross your opponent before they stab you in the back?" I put the box down and give Anna the most dubious look I can summon up. "This sounds stupid."

We're sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by games. Anna sits with her legs crossed neatly, her hair tied back like she's about to start doing some hard thinking. I'm not sure about this plan at all. She's going to win.

"Trust me," she says, opening the box. "Me and Ben used to play this all the time as kids. It's fun."

"Why can't we just play video games?"

"Because Ben doesn't have any, and you told me you've never played a board game in your life. So we're going to change that."

"You're lucky I like you," I say, folding my arms like a sulking child. This seems like it's going to involve some heavy thinking. I'm not good at thinking, and I'm worse at losing. I don't see how this can remotely be called fun.

"Stop complaining," she chides, tipping out a huge bag of plastic pieces, squares and triangles and whatever you call a five-sided shape. She sorts them into piles by color and shape and I refuse to help, watching closely as she lays out some cards and hands me a pile of pieces. "It looks complicated, but the rules are actually easy, okay?"

She starts explaining them and I swear I'm trying to listen, but she says so many words and every single direction has some weird exception and I can't keep track of it all. The pawns can only land on the same colored squares, and if you roll a six you draw a card, and you win by getting three blue pentagons, and if you lie well enough to your opponent you can trick them into giving you all their yellow triangles which are like currency or something because on top of just being a game, you have to know the story too, which is that you're an assassin trying to stay alive and keep your job while the king is having you hunted down or something.

I don't tell her that I didn't know the word for pentagon.

"Got it?" she asks, beaming. That look is the only thing that's worth doing this for, the way her eyes crease and her cheeks get cute little dimples.

"No," I say grumpily.

"Good," she grins. "You can go first."

She hands me two dice, one with numbers and one with colors. I release them onto the board and watch as they tumble forward, clattering against each other when they bounce. Anna stares at me, waiting for me to make a move. I've rolled a six and a yellow, so I pick up a yellow pawn and slide it six squares away from my home.

I look at her for approval, and she nods.

It takes me a little while to get into it, but when I finally can remember the basic rules without her telling me what to do every time I roll, I actually start enjoying it. I didn't even realize people still played board games. I thought this kind of thing died out with cellphones.

Anna's really into it, though. It's obvious that she's played this a million times because every time I make a move I think is good, she undermines me straight away.

"Aha!" she says, grinning. "I'll have all your yellow triangles now, please."

"Wait, what?"

She points at the board. "See, you're in the alley which is usually safe, but I've got lucky and escaped the castle by the secret passage."

"Oh man, you were just about to get got by the guards."

"Yup, but I rolled a three and, combined with giving up a crystal — the blue pentagons — I came through the passage and ended in the alley. And I'm going to use the blackmail card I drew earlier to make you give me your gold."

To make her point, she holds up the card with a flourish. There's a drawing of two men in an alley, one holding a knife like a threat, the other wincing away. You have dirt on your opponent that you swear to reveal if they don't give up their wealth , it reads.

I sigh as I push my tiny pile of triangles over to her so she can add them to her ever-growing stack. "But aren't we trying to get the crystals to win?"

"I'm excited to see how many crystals you can get with no cash," she beams.

"This game is stupid."

"You're only saying that because you're losing."

"You could help me out?" I try and give her my very best sad eyes but for a change she is absolutely unmoved by my efforts.

"Roll again," she commands.

The dice do me dirty and I end up in jail.

Anna manages to get another crystal. I imagine sitting in my tower, sadly watching her through the bars of my cell as she does better job of assassin-ing than I am.

To add to the humiliation, I only just get out of prison when she gets her last crystal and wins.

"Ha!" she says triumphantly. "The king's mine, sucker!"

"You had an unfair advantage," I pout. "Can we just watch TV now?"

"You enjoyed yourself really," she says, and I pout harder because she's right. That doesn't mean I want her to be.

She scoops all the pieces back up and I fold my arms, refusing to help on principle. "Can we at least play something easier next?"

"Okay," she concedes, folding up the board. "You pick something you want to play."

I turn back to the boxes as she finishes packing up the pieces. None of the titles are that informative, so I pick up a game at random and read the back of the box. Suitable for all ages! it claims, which is a good start.

Skimming the directions, it seems like it really is simple and I can't be bothered to look at any other games so I toss this one between us.

"Oh, Wordsmash! Ben used to be the worst at this."

"Shit," I say, because Ben is the smartest person I know. It runs in the Romero gene pool.

"Don't worry! It's easy."

"You said that about the last one." I give her another dubious look and she reaches out to take my hands.

"Trust me, okay? It's charades, but with words. You have to describe the thing without saying the word."

I give her a blank look. I kind of get what she's saying but I don't get how it makes sense, or how she thinks I'm going to know what any words mean, let alone give definitions.

"I'll go first, okay?" She picks a card from the top of the deck and reads it before flipping over the sand timer. "Okay, so it's a sport. They have a stick"

"Hockey?"

"No, it's in the air, it's got a net. It's like—"

"Oh, uh, lacrosse?"

"Yeah!" She slams the card down in victory, starting a pile in front of her.

An hour later, we're rolling around on the floor in laughter as our attempts to describe stuff at each other has started including friendly yelling and huge gestures like that helps anything.

Tears in her eyes and clutching her stomach, Anna jokingly berates me. "How the hell have you never heard of Mozart?"

"Do I look like the kind of guy who gives a shit about classical music?"

"Dude, everyone knows Mozart!"

I fling up my hands in defeat and neither of us stop laughing. Anna's destroying me at this game too, unwilling to go even a little bit easier on me even when I asked her really nicely. But for maybe the first time ever, the outrage at losing is completely an act.

She's as much a sore loser as I am, yelling affectionately at me if I win so much as one round.

By the end of the game there are cards scattered everywhere and we're breathless from yelling and laughing and screaming.

I have to give it to her. This was way more fun than watching movies.