What Game Will You Play

Chapter 3

(Edited)

The ball makes it in.

"I got two in! While that's not great, it is still better than nothing," I exclaim to my brother. I am thoroughly impressed with myself for doing that. I thought I would ultimately do terribly, but two out of ten is better than zero out of ten.

The woman at the booth presses something on a small tablet I just now noticed, and then my card pops out slightly from the machine. I take my card back and move out of the way for Devin.

"Let me show you how it's done," he inserts his card, and the woman hands over the ten balls. The first ball goes right into one of the jars floating in the middle, but his second throw bounces off the top of the jar. He continues to throw them, and in the end, he makes eight out of the ten jars, and I make a very annoyed face. At least we are now tied with one win for me and one win for Devin.

He turns around with a smug smile, and I do my best to ignore him and watch our Dad. He misses the first two but makes the third. On his fourth shot, he throws the ball right into the jar, but it bounces out. We laugh about it for a moment before he throws the rest of the balls. In the end, he makes three into the jars, but I know he could have done better.

Since that game is just for fun and was individually played, there is no winner. Therefore, there is no prize, and we move on to the next game.

The next game is more of a table stand rather than the usual bigger stands and booths that surround the carnival, and it requires two people to play. This is a game I am very familiar with since Devin, and I used to play it a lot as kids. The game is arm wrestling, and my brother immediately looks over to my Dad to challenge him in the game.

They both insert their cards and when the woman at the stand says go, they both begin their struggle to push the other one's arm down. Both of them are strong, and there is a lot of back-and-forth struggling, so it is hard to tell who is doing better.

I see the determination in Devin's face. His brows come together in concentration, and his face starts to get a little red the longer the competition goes on. Dad, on the other hand, looks like he is not even breaking a sweet. Ultimately, Devin wins, and he gets excited once again. The lady hands him a piece of chocolate, and we move on.

We play two other games before coming to the next one, which takes place in a building that I know was not there before the carnival was put up. I wonder how much time and money they spent making the carnival for us. I also wonder if we will get more things like this. Maybe the Governors will open this carnival once a month or something, or perhaps it doesn't have to be for just one night.

The sign out front of the building says Mirror Maze in sharp letters. We get in line and wait. Devin is still teasing me about the throwing game and how he could have easily beaten me in arm wrestling if I had played, and I tease him about his lack of directional skills. The game has the word maze in the name, and I know that it means a sense of direction will be needed.

"Remember the first time you came home from school without Mom? You were so sure that you didn't have to take a left turn out of the school that you ended up going straight to the Jefferson's house five blocks away," I say, and we all laugh.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I saw my friend Evan, and I started walking without thinking. I made it home eventually."

"Yeah, eventually being the keyword," I say. We all laugh again, and the line moves up a little more.

I think about how Mom made me walk Devin home every day from school for a whole month after that. To make things interesting, Devin and I wouldn't just walk home, that would be too boring. Instead, we would race each other to the big tree at the end of our driveway. I was always the fastest, but I made sure to run slower so that Devin wouldn't lose me and get lost again.