Stuck at the Galleria

Act 3: Tagged! (part 2)

A little while later and a floor or two down, the two of us arrive at our destination: the west wing of the mall's lowest level.

Tre and I both look at the big red thing in front of us but with different expressions.

"No, you wouldn't. That's insane."

It was a brand spanking new Honda Civic, fresh off the delivery truck. They'd just brought it in that morning.

"Well, I'm a bit off my rocker, in case it's not obvious," I reply.

"You don't have the keys." 

I take out a ring with two Honda keys on it and jangle them in his face. "Way ahead of you there, sport."

"Where'd you even get those?" he mutters.

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," I say, snickering a bit.

He rolls his eyes. "But it doesn't even have any gas in it!"

"Tell that to the fuel meter when I start this thing."

"Alright, well, feel free to try."

"Jeez, Tre, will you live a little? Three years without me and when I wanna have fun with you you're all like, 'no, Nora, I'm too busy being boring to have a life.' Come on!" I say.

Tre looks at me intently after I finish my speech and then lets out a loud, mocking pffffffffffffft.

"I don't even sound like that, not even close!"

"Do too!" I reply.

"Do not..." He listens to himself. "Well, okay, I guess I do."

He mutters something under his breath as I unlock the driver door and reach in, and in a jiffy the engine roars to life with a loud whir.

"Haha, I was right for once and you admitted it!" I say it as mockingly as I can.

"So?"

"So, you have to get in the car with me."

"Uh, what?" he asks, even though he knows exactly what I mean.

"Sorry, Charlie, dem's da rules." I said, digging around the dashboard for a button to turn on the lights.The high beams of the headlights flashed open and burned in the Honda emblem from the grille into his eyes.

"Geez, that's some painful advertising!" he yells as I turn the high beams off.

"Well, I didn't know it would be so bright!" I reply. After that I honked the horn. "Now you getting in or what?"

"No! You don't have your license!" he says in a tone as if I didn't know it already.

"Who cares, just get in the car."

He rolls his eyes and jumps in on the passenger side.

"So, what's the point of this?" Tre asks me.

"To get to the other side of the mall, silly!" I tell him with a giggle.

"Wait, you mean this isn't the dangerous part?!" he shouts.

"It won't be if you fasten that seatbelt!"

And with that, I mash my foot down on the gas and the Civic starts speeding down the first floor as fast as it could. Tre yelps a bit and frantically clicks his seatbelt in as I push the car forward. I take one hand off of the wheel for a sec and turn the radio up.

The loud bass and screaming guitars fill the car with their sweet sounds. I expect Tre to get all bothered about it, but surprisingly, he seems to like it, as he nods his head to the beat of the drums.

"Sleigh Bells!" he says with a smile.

"I didn't think you'd be the type," I reply.

"Are you kidding? This band is amazing! Woo!"

I join him in the head-bobbing as we sped down to the west wing. Unbeknowst to Tre, I was taking him to Watt's World, the other arcade here at the Galleria. There was a certain game there that I knew he'd never play if he knew what it was-- and so I had to keep it a surprise.

But first we had to get there. "Ugh, this thing is so slow."

"Nora, if this is slow, I don't want to see fast," he says as I look at the speedometer. It was tailing 100, not quite in the red but pretty close.

"What are you going to do, make it redline or something?"

"I can't. It won't let me. Safety feature Honda put in this year. Don't you watch the commercials?"

"Okay, okay." he says. "Y'know, there's a turn coming up."

"Calm down, I got this, watch."

The Civic perfectly moved into the hook of the street-- err, hallway-- as it changed directions without missing a beat.

"Nice." He smirks in a "not bad" kind of way.

"Thanks." I do the same smirk. Another turn was coming up to get to the arcade. "Hang on, check this out, I got another one."

I heave the steering wheel around with a long turn, and the Civic wraps itself over the angle to the crossing hallway. As I try to move it back into position, though, I can't. It stays in the same angle, and the Civic starts to careen. I was losing control.

"Oh, no." I say with a monotone voice. The music cuts off abruptly, and Tre turns to me with a nervous stare.

"Huh?"

"I can't move it."

"You can't move what?!"

The tires scream as we drift over the middle of the boulevard. The steering wheel keepsitself locked up on me, try as I might to get the darn thing out of its jam. I slammed on it twice and the horn honked.

"Aargh!" I shout. This wasn't going at all like I thought it would.

I slam the brake but it doesn't stop the car. The emergency brake isn't any luck either. Crap!

"Oh gawd, what's happening? What's happening, Nora?!?"

"It's.. not... stopping!" I yell as I pull back on the steering wheel. My efforts are futile, though, as evidenced by the breaking of the glass doors to the arcade around us. I peered over the wheel and found a long winding ramp in front of us. Normally I would just find that to be an odd architectural decision, but at that point I was scared of it.

The Civic pulls up the ramp and goes flying. I open the sunroof and pull halfway up. There were ropes hanging over us, and I had a feeling that if I could time it just right, we could make it onto one without crashing with the car into a possibly explosive death.

"Get out and jump!"

I pull Tre's arm and we fly out of the hole in the roof. I catch one of the ropes just as Tre climbs out of the car, which goes barreling down the arcade, knocking down a bunch of games in the process.

"You alright, T?"

"...mommy... hold me..." He chatters his teeth as I pull him up onto the rope.

"You're sure that.. that... WASN'T the dangerous part?"

"Oh, nooooo," I say with a grin. "The party's just begun!"

"Aw, frak."

Right as he finished saying it, the Civic burst into a hot, huge orange ball.