You ever have one of those times when you know what you want to have happen next, but you're kind of stuck on how to write it?
That's basically what happened here. I'm so, so sorry that I let it wait this long, and will try to do better.
Also, sooner or later I'm probably going to run out of P&F songs that work as chapter titles; after that, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. Maybe start using Milo Murphy?
Once they made it to the ground floor, Stan looked down at Vanessa and shrugged.
"Lead the way."
She rolled her eyes, but turned and marched over to the nearest bus stop, where a bus was just barely pulling up.
Ugh. Bein' surrounded by gross strangers in a confined space with windows that never open all the way. This was a great idea.
Again, Stan felt a wave of longing for his car, and tried not to think about how it had been reduced to a heap of scrap metal as he joined her.
To his mortification Vanessa had to pay for the bus tickets, since, again, Stan didn't exactly have any money of his own.
The bus driver just smiled as she put the cash in the machine. "Aww, is your brother letting you pay? That's so cute!"
Stan saw the warning sign in Vanessa's eyes and the way her fists were starting to clench, and quickly pulled her to the closest empty seat that didn't have gum stuck to it.
"Let's not get kicked off before we reach the arcade," he whispered.
She glared at him, but then sat down resignedly and pulled out her phone, which she stayed on for the rest of the trip.
Her level of hostility stung a little, since he'd thought they were kind of okay now after the West Coast Tech incident, but he tried to shrug it off. He just amused himself by counting how many times he could look around and see several people on their phones at once.
Stan had expected something a little like the old arcade he and Ford had sometimes visited back in Jersey, and occasionally been in serious danger of being banned from for various, um, misdemeanors: an old wooden building with a Pong console set up in the center of the room, along with this new game called air hockey and a few skee-ball stations.
He'd forgotten that he was in The Future.
When they reached the right stop, Vanessa pulled him off the bus to face the biggest, loudest, flashiest building he'd ever seen.
On the roof there was a massive neon sign, which flashed red and blue letters that it took Stan a few seconds to decipher as the word "ARCADIA."
Right under them was the entrance: a pair of massive glass doors which allowed him to see that pretty much everything inside was made up of bright neon colors: the carpets, the walls, the lights-the games.
Everywhere he looked there were games, flashing with lights and with tiny pixelated forms leaping and jumping across the screens, and clustered in front of them were throngs of excited children and teenagers, many clutching pizza and soda in their free hands.
"...Hot Belgian waffles."
Vanessa gave him a look over her shoulder. "What, did they not have anything like this back in the 70's?"
Stan shook his head wordlessly as they stepped inside-and were immediately engulfed in the bursts of colored light, and the smells of sugar, grease and adrenaline, and the sounds of machines bleeping, dinging and making laser noises.
I wonder if this is what Las Vegas is like.
Seconds later, he was almost knocked over by a redheaded girl about Vanessa's age that was storming for the entrance.
"When I get Mom, you guys are so busted!" she yelled over her shoulder-and immediately turned and smacked into the door. She gave a frustrated yell, before shoving it open and rushing out.
Stan wondered what that was about, but shrugged and followed Vanessa to get their tokens.
As they did, he noticed that one wall of the arcade was covered from top to bottom with shelves filled with cool stuff, from stuffed animals to chocolate to lava lamps, and that they all had tags attached to them. As he watched, some kids went up to the counter clutching handfuls of tickets, which they exchanged for a giant teddy bear and some silly putty.
Vanessa checked her watch, and frowned, before reluctantly handing him some tokens. "Okay, so how this works is you play the games and win tickets, and-"
"Yeah, I know how arcades work. It's like an indoor carnival." Stan tucked the tokens into his pocket, and looked around uncertainly for something that he might know how to play. All these games were so much louder and flashier than he was used to, and his Mom-given instincts were screaming at him that a lot of it was probably rigged to cheat kids out of their money, which would be a dream come true for him if he were in charge of it all instead of being expected to participate-
The sound of yet another loud sigh and the feel of a hand catching his arm snapped him out of it.
"Okay, let's try this." Vanessa pulled him towards a spot behind some of the louder games. "You ever played skee-ball?"
Stan was, in fact, a semi-decent skee-ball player, so Vanessa left him to it. It wasn't as popular with the other kids, so Stan happily lost himself for a while in the rhythm of getting the ball in a hole and tried not to get too nostalgic about it.
It didn't work too well when he kept remembering how he and Ford got chased out of the arcade when the owner caught him sitting on top of the machine and tossing balls into the center hole one by one so they could for sure get extra tickets.
When he was down to five tokens Stan gave up, and collected his winnings before wandering around looking for something else that was familiar to a 70's kid.
He nearly missed the dark form curled up behind the game where the little yellow ball thing apparently wandered through a maze trying not to get eaten by ghosts.
"Vanessa?" Stan did a double take to make sure the form was familiar, and then crouched down in front of her.
"Leave me alone," she muttered without looking up.
Stan just glanced at her watch; immediately he saw the problem.
"...Maybe he's just running late?"
She scoffed. "Or he forgot cuz he got too distracted working on that stupid machine." Finally she lifted her head, rubbing her face on his sleeve. "Whatever. I don't care. Actually I'm glad, cuz he'd probably just embarrass me or something, like he does everywhere else."
Stan tilted his head. "Everywhere else?"
"Yeah! He shows up to all my swim meets, and this one time when I had a part in the school play he sat in the very first row and started cheering as soon as I walked onstage, and he always wants to know how I'm doing and what I'm up to pretty much every second of the day!"
"Yeah, that sounds…awful." Stan rubbed the back of his neck.
Vanessa didn't notice. "So-whatever. It's fine." She sniffed and blinked again as she got to her feet.
Stan…wasn't sure how to deal with this kind of problem. Except, of course, by looking around for a payphone so he could call Dr. D and tell him to get his butt over here-until he remembered that Vanessa had a cell phone.
"Ya tried calling him?"
Vanessa glowered. "It was the first thing I tried, and it went to voicemail."
"...That's like an answering machine, right?"
"Yeah." Clearly she was too upset to be impatient with his lack of experience with modern technology.
After a moment of mentally searching for anything to say that might be helpful or comforting, all Stan could come up with was a weak, "That sucks."
Surprisingly, this got him a tiny half-smile, followed by a dry, "You always know what to say."
"Hey, at least I'm not saying it's okay, right?" He shrugged. "I know better than ta go with empty platitudes." Hey, what do you know-he'd remembered one of those fancy vocab words everyone back home thought he was incapable of understanding.
Vanessa snorted. Then she glanced at the door, and her smile faded into another disappointed sigh.
An idea arose for at least helping her take her mind off things when Stan looked at the game she'd been hiding behind.
"...Hey, um, you any good at this?"
Vanessa glanced at the console. "Kinda. Haven't got the top score or anything."
"Ten tickets say you can't teach a total newbie how ta play it."
She narrowed her eyes at him; Stan just looked back at her with the same innocent face Ma used on the rare occasions when she'd helped run the pawn shop.
"...Well, there is a sweet set of plastic vampire fangs I've got my eye on…" she mused, before nodding. "Okay, fine. Deal."
She turned toward the game-before turning back and glaring at him challengingly. "Don't think for a second that you're a decent substitute for Dad." After a moment she realized what she'd said, and flushed. "…Not that I care about him not being here or anything. Like I said, it's fine."
Stan shrugged. "Wouldn't dream of it, squirt."