SARAh GRIFFIN 29

Summer Sureby saRah GRIffIn

T he line of machines spans back to further than Shannon can see in the dark, or seems to at least. The air smells like old beer and older smoke, and maybe soap, someplace underneath that age. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Its him, she knows it, and like muscle memory she takes it out and flicks her eyes to the screen. Stupid boy, full of please can I call you, and I dont understand why youre not replying.

Shannon sets her jaw and slides her phone into her back pocket, like, whats to understand? Ignores it as it buzzes again like, youre eighteen, Im twenty, it happened once, it was bad, it didnt help either of us. It buzzes again like, youre not in love, youre just panicking.

The pinball soldiers along the wall are flashing hysteria, bells and lights from the wild west to Metallica to the Addams Family, starving for quarters.

There arent that many people here and it is dark enough that Shannon feels protected.

She chooses an unmanned unit far enough away from the open entryway that she cant be seen from the street, by the night, by anyone she knows who might happen by. The grimy spectrum of this terrible dive is easy to disappear into. It feels like being in the hull of a starship, like a place that shouldnt exist, certainly not beside a yoga studio in the wealthier reach of town. Its not like a regular arcade, the long abandoned halls of her soda-fueled childhood hyperactivityits like something more serious. The smatterings of hipsters and bikers and nerds are stationary at their cabinets, focused, passionate.

The Theatre of Magic declares the glass sign at the far end of the machine. Sure, thinks Shannon, fumbling in

her pockets for quarters. She places her small hands on the cabinet her hands are on his chest, her hand is on his cheek. Sure. Lets stay here. An illustrated woman beside the neon scoreboard is frozen, eternally casting a shining ball towards the player in the unpainted world outside. Doves, chains, a white rabbit, a flaming chest. Sure, thinks Shannon, the tiger and the vortex.

The playfield is a small glittering city and she is the starving one now, a hungry god, a conqueror with a silver ball. The cruel gravity of the playfields trajectory is against her but that is science, and she has decided she is magic. Sure. The terrain at her hands blinks and thrums with some music or other, inaudible over the roar of its litany of neighbors, all their symphonies merging into a drone, if a drone could be ecstatic, if a drone could be the circus.

DECEMBER 2014 - APRIL 2015SARAh GRIFFIN30

Ciarans vulnerability had been shocking to Shannon the night before, but what surprised her the most was how it sickened her. What a luxury that softness was, what a cop out. How dare he be so tender, how dare he try and lay meaning upon her body. She would take his declarations to her grave, they would bury his passionate tears with her, but would hold his mistake as a lesson to herself. She has been him before, she is sure she will be him again. She ignores the buzzing of another received plea but resolves to call him later and hear him out. The chasm between theory and practice when it came to good ideas was wide and utterly bottomless, and lined with weepy teenage boys all the way down.

The whites of his eyes when she told him she was leaving to go home flashed in her vision againshe felt something a little worse than regret. Pity, she thinks.

The velvet red metropolis of machines and light pulls her focus, another tiger, this time with a blade, sits on a lever, overseeing the game. The death in her gut lifts slightly. She slides a silver disc into the machine. She hits the plunger and releases the hard, gleaming ball into the roaring land below her.

Shannon can barely see it amongst the density of light and colour so just hammers at the buttons. She loses the ball; it is gobbled down by a hole and the city below her blacks out in disappointment. The clutch of

frustration in her chest is true and it feeds the creature another quarter and tries again. And again. And again. Each time it feels like shes eeking the ball a little further, to a different area, hitting the flippers at just the right moment, but in reality she is fumbling blind. This is uncharted land, but she is a fool for its beauty and has no idea what she is doing.

She maintains her composure and doesnt look up, in case someone around her starts to talk to her. Shes not a hipster, or a biker, or a nerd, so they wouldnt anyway. She feels safe here at the helm of this glowing messevery release of the silver ball was a fresh start.

If she liked Ciaran more she might bring him here to show him how failure works. How every lost ball is just another coin in the heavy gut of the machine.

If she told him he wouldnt listen. Hed have to figure it out for himself.

At the Addams Family machine to Shannons left, a shorter girl with a ring in the center of her lip squares

up. The chains hanging from her jeans jingle. Her hands are mostly market silver. Her lips are bright, bright red (expertly, the ring is clean) and her eyes are winged severely, like Amy Winehouse, like crows. Shannon doesnt mean to catch eyes with her, but it happens, and then her solitude is broken. Shannon rolls her eyes to herself, wondering how exhausting it must be to show the world how much you dont care. She adjusts her yoga mat on her back and attempts to chart the map below her and ignore her new neighbor.

Sanaa Khan

SARAh GRIFFIN 31

She feeds the Theatre of Magic a quarter, shoots the ball like lazy gunfire, loses, sighs. Considers a beer, if only to break the ten in her purse for more quarters, sure theres no shortage of change at the bar. Her next sigh is too loud and the girl beside her turns to her. Shannon freezes, she doesnt want this conversation but the girl says, Having trouble with the targets? and Shannon nods. The girl snorts a laugh, blue eyes lit (Ciarans eyes are blue but blue like cold water, not blue like electricity).

What do you think? Shannon replies, beginning to walk away. Fuck The Theatre of Magic, and the punk playing Addams Family, shed walk further in and find some other shining country to assault with her profound lack of skillshed hit the bar on the way. The girl with the silver in her mouth catches Shannons sleeve gently and says, Slip me some quarters and ive got something thatll help you.

Shannon meets her eyes again and realizes that the girls pupils are blown out, enormous, earnest. Tonight is a write-off, she decides, and offers a nod of sure. Fine. Sure.

The beer is the right kind of sour and her blue eyed neighbor passes her a hit on a tab smaller than her pinkie fingernail, must be half of something, no wonder she only wanted a few dollars. Maybe its bad, Shannon thinks, as she places it under her tongue and feeds the Theatre of Magic a quarter. It wakes up at her hands harder this time. Shannon swigs her beer and flips the ball, useless, but still so beautiful. The lights get bigger.

She leans forward, her numbness unraveling, thread by thread. The ball pulls the black from her eyes and she is a vortex, she is a tiger orange and black as she stares into this city of life and fire. She cant feel anything except now, now the glow and thinks maybe the blue eyed girl might be electricity after all.

Across the town, Ciaran keeps writing. She is his flaming empire, his burning city. She is all the digital letters he can muster. He cant stop, he wont stop.

Sarah Griffin is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. She lived in San Francisco for 3 years. Her collection of emigration essays, Not Lost, was published by New Island Press in 2013. Her YA debut, Spare & Found Parts, will be published by Greenwillow Press in 2016. She tweets at @griffski.