The heartstopper

Chapter 17

After returning to their room, Charlie took his phone off of the charging port, turning it on to seeing a dozen notifications. He had several from the Paris Squad group chat which he had already seen the messages from via Nick's phone. He cleared those messages without reading them, getting a glance at a message from his mother. Deciding to worry about it later, he cleared her messages as well as the message from his dad. The final few notifications were from Tori.

[Tori🥤: I'm sitting in your room to blog]

[Tori🥤: Ollie misses you, mom and dad don't want me to tell him about what's going on]

[Tori🥤: I hope you're okay]

Charlie gave the messages a small smile and opened up his phone, opening Toris messages.

[Charlie 🧸 : As long as you don't touch my stuff]

[Tell Ollie I miss him too! Maybe we can call later?]

[Charlie 🧸 : Things are complicated, I think I'm ok tho]

Charlie pressed send on the final message, staring at the phone screen, hoping to see 'seen' pop up next to his messages but Tori was probably having dinner by now or busy already blogging in his room. Charlie shut his phone off, placing it next to him on the edge of the bed.

"I'm assuming dinner will be delayed," Nick commented, typing on his phone.

"Probably, I'm sure they still need to reorganize themselves," Isaac shrugged.

"Maybe we could head down to the arcade," Tao offered. The hotel room was slowly starting to feel smaller and emptier.

"Do you think it's open?" Asked Isaac. There was a good chance it would still be closed from that day's events.

"We can always check,' Charlie joined.

"Great. I'll go find Elle and the others," Tao jumped up from the bed and skipped out of the room. Once he came back, he was dragging Elle by her wrist with Tara, Darcy and Imogen following behind.

"Hurry up you three, I've got to beat Tao at dancedancerevolution," Elle exclaimed.

The squad headed down to the main floor, following Tao's directions down the halls and past a sign that read; 'Bar, 18+, ID's required'.

"Ooh! A bar, we should check it out!" Darcy beamed.

"'Bar, 18+, ID's required,'" Nick read out. "I have a slight gut feeling that we're not meant to be in there,"

"All we need is are fake IDs and hope that no one there speaks English," Darcy claimed.

"Where are we supposed to get fake IDs?" Tara laughed.

"You're supposed to already have them, how are you getting your boos otherwise?" Darcy questioned. Elle raised her eyebrows in speculation.

"Oh come on, have any of you had even a sip of alcohol before?" Darcy gasped dramatically.

"We're we supposed to?" Asked Charlie. He'd wanted to try alcohol in the past but has never gotten the chance to, if you don't count the odd sip of wine which had a low alcohol percentage to begin with.

"You poor thing," Darcy cooed. "We should all go and get drunk,"

"Or," Nick intervened. "We could do something legal and continue on our way to the arcade," he gave the other a pointed look.

"Yeah, sorry Darcy but you and alcohol don't mix" Tara voiced.

"Okay but what about for your birthday? We can't party without alcohol!" She insisted, grabbing Tara's hand.

"I don't know if we're going to have a party, we should probably wait till we arrive back in London," Tara said apologetically.

"But we need to celebrate your big sixteen!" Darcy cried out.

"We'll throw a small celebration just for us," Elle offered. "Now, let's go so I can put Tao in his place,"

Tao scoffed at this, "You'll never win, I will break your winning streak!" He yelled, starting to walk further down the hall.

"You wish," Elle grinned, sprinting to catch up.

They ended up all jogging all the way to the arcade which had glowing lights and a dark patterned carpet. The sound of the arcade machines rang through the room.

Elle and Tao ran right past the group to find the dance dance revolution machines, which were situated at the back of the room. Imogen had challenged Nick to a game of 'hoop it up' while Tara and Darcy went to play some racing game, leaving Isaac and Charlie to fend for themselves.

"What're you going to play?" Charlie asked the other boy.

"I was thinking of going to the coin pusher machine," Isaac smiled.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it then," Charlie gave a smile back before walking down the center of the arcade, checking the layout of the room.

Walking past different games, he saw Nick and Imogen focused on throwing their basketballs into the hoops, determined to beat the other competitor. He then walked by Tao and Elle laughing as they danced their hearts out at the dance dance revolution machines. He also passed Tara and Darcy who were giggling as they raced against eachother, Tara in the lead.

Charlie ended up stopping at a claw machine, the possible prize was a variety of stuffed animals including a frog, sloth, bear, monkey or turtle.

Charlie put a coin in the machine and started the game, failing at his first attempt to capture the stuffed frog in the claw of the machine. He put in a second coin and failed again. After continuing this for ten minutes, a small kid came up beside him and put a coin into the claw machine beside him, that one having themed prizes of stuffed sea animals. That kid won a stuffed shark on his first attempt, which only frustrated Charlie even more.

"Not so easy now, is it?" Nick called from behind him. At Charlie's fifteenth birthday party he had been the one who constantly lost at the game while Charlie laughed, not it was Nick's turn to do the same as he stood and watched with Imogen by his side.

"It's because these games are rigged," He insisted, adding another coin into the machine. Charlie did end up getting the stuffed frog, finally. It only took all but three of his coins, but he did get it, only to find out that there was a hole in the stuffed animal.

"Want a pathetic looking frog?" Charlie offered to Nick.

"Oo! It's so cute, not pathetic at all!" Imogen gasped.

"I guess you could have it," Charlie handed the frog which he had worked so hard for to the girl.

"Thanks," Imogen took the frog, getting a better look at it.