“You should smile more,” I told him, biting into the Sweet Cinnamon Bun of Death. Oh yeah, this was a diabetic’s nightmare. my teeth were screaming for mercy. “You’re very cute when you smile, you know.”

He cocked his head in that puzzled, adorable way. “Don’t I smile?”

“Not very often,” I admitted. “Mostly you look like you’re trying to decide where the next sniper attack will come from. Some might call that paranoia, but you know…” I shrugged and took another bite of Death by Icing.

He chuckled. “It isn’t being paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”

I blinked at him before I realized he was making a joke. Laughing, I threw my wadded up napkin at him (he caught it, of course) and shook my head. “See, I knew you had it in you somewhere.”

Finishing the last of the bun, I wiped my hands and stood, tossing our trash into a nearby bin. “Well, now that I’m sufficiently hyped up on sugar and preservatives, wanna go shoot some zombies with me?”

Garret

I was beginning to reach the point where Ember’s sudden, random phrases didn’t startle me quite so much anymore, but still, this one threw me a bit. “What?”

It wasn’t exactly my fault. This morning, I’d woken with a massive, raging headache, the inside of my mouth feeling like I’d swallowed cotton soaked in vomit. The events of last night were a bit of a blur, but I think it involved Tristan, a karaoke bar, and alcohol.

Lots of alcohol. When I’d stumbled into the kitchen this morning, red eyed and bleary with pain, my partner had laughed, slid a cup of black coffee my way, and pronounced me a real man. I was too hung over to talk, so I had to be content with flipping him the finger. Fortunately, I had a high recovery rate, and by this afternoon I’d felt almost normal again. Enough to track down the girl partially responsible for my temporary lapse of judgment, anyway. But apparently, I wasn’t one hundred percent recovered from my first experience with hangovers, because I was almost certain Ember had just said something about shooting zombies.

She laughed, taking my hand and pulling me upright. My senses buzzed at her touch. “I take it you’ve never been to an arcade before, either. Come on. I’ll show you.”

She led me across the crowded mall, past dozens of clothing stores interspersed with the random phone or jewelry kiosks. Finally, at the end of the mall in a dark little corner, she pulled me toward an entrance lit with hundreds of flashing neon lights. Strange sounds came from within: automated shouts and screams, revving engines, and metallic buzzers, bells, and whistles.

“What is this place?” I asked, peering through the door.

“It’s an arcade,” was the reply. “I always see it when I’m here with Lex and Kristin, but they’d rather shop and do boring things, so I’ve never been inside.” Her arm rose, pointing to a boxy black machine near the front, a screen glowing blue in the center. “See that one?

It’s a zombie shooter. I’ve always wanted to try it, but the girls aren’t interested and Dante is never at the mall, so…”

She looked at me hopefully. I followed her gaze, trying to understand what she wanted. Zombie shooter? At least the “shooter” part was somewhat familiar. “This is…a game of some kind?” I guessed.

“Well, yeah. Of course.” Her eyes sparkled as she glanced back, eager and excited. “How ’bout it, Garret? Wanna give it a shot? Or are you scared I’ll beat you?”

I smiled. A game that involved shooting things? She didn’t know who she was dealing with. “Lead the way.”

A few minutes later, I stood in front of a boxy black machine, a flimsy toy gun in my hand, gazing at the screen in the middle. Island of the Hungry Dead, it spelled out in dripping letters, just as a deep, automated voice said the same. Ember grinned at me and hefted her “gun.”

“Ready?” she challenged.

“This is extremely impractical,” I told her as a dark swampland appeared on the screen before us. “There’s no way a firearm like this would shoot anything.”

And then a zombie lurched out from behind a tree and lunged at

the screen. A bright, fake spatter of blood appeared on my side, and Ember hooted, clicking her plastic gun. The zombie exploded into completely unrealistic clouds of red ooze and disappeared, and the girl blew on the muzzle of her fake pistol like it was smoking.

“That’s one for me,” she announced, as more zombies lurched toward us with arms outstretched. A grin quirked her lips as she glanced at me, smug and challenging. “Come on, Garret, aren’t boys good at this kind of stuff?”

I looked back at the approaching zombie hoard, raised my gun, and smirked. All right, I thought, imagining myself back in the Vas-yugan Swamps, facing a murderous juvenile dragon and its gang of human smugglers. You want me to shoot things? Here we go.

“You are a total cheater,” Ember announced later that afternoon, after our fourth play through. I grinned at her, the handle of the toy gun smooth and familiar in my palm. She glowered at me, small form bristling with annoyance. “And a liar.”

I blinked innocently. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no way you haven’t played this before,” she raged, pointing firmly to the screen, where the words Victory! Player Two were flashing again. “No one can be that good a shot on their first try.

You’ve done this before. Admit it!”