Page 32 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

Cleanup of the island starts around three; Nixie has no time for mess. We all walk together as far as we can until the path splits. Valli has to head to the office, Cipher to pack away the generators, Cave to his field, and me to my dead people, or lack of dead people. Valli kisses all three of us goodbye, and I watch Cave stare at her until she is out of sight. Then he stands there another few seconds, watching the empty path until I bump his shoulder.

“We will see her at dinner. It’s a shift, not her walking away.”

He looks at me and taps my chest once. Then he peels off toward the corn, and I bounce off toward the cemetery to see what needs to be done.

I love the island after Harvest Moon. Everybody works together and is nice, which is deeply unnatural for us. It usually lasts about three days, and then it’s back to normal. I head toward the main part of the island first, needing trash bags, as I forgot to bring them from the shed. I cut through the alley and Rue flags me down from the bar, telling me before I go home to pick up the food he has made for us.

“Nixie is in a good mood. So feed your girl, we need you to keep her happy. I think she is a good fit here.”

I laugh at Rue. “I keep her more than happy,” I say with a wink.

His face pulls up in disgust. “The numbers came in this morning. We broke every record.”

Right on cue, I hear Nixie—her voice carries when she is happy. “Next year we are doing it bigger and better, and you will be running a zone.”

I step forward to where I can see Valli’s face; she isn’t sure what to say. I grin the rest of the way to getting the garbage bags from the storage room.

On my way back, I snort when I see a crate of tomatoes on the security office steps. There is a note on the crate, and I’m nosey so I take a peek.

Sorry about the footage, you know what I mean;)

The office door is open, and Vesper is sitting in front of the wall of screens with a tomato in her hand, the Jester standing to her right.

“You watched it back?” he says, sounding delighted about something.

“I watch everything back. It’s one of my jobs.”

“But you liked it, didn’t you?”

Vesper throws the tomato at his head, and he catches it, then takes a bite. “Needed one more day on the vine,” he muses.

I keep walking and find Cipher behind a theme park ride, halfway under the contraption, his boots and legs sticking out like the machine is eating him. There are parts laid out on a tarp beside him in a perfect line, left to right, and I know better than to touch any of them. I’ve done it before, and he didn’t talk to me for a day and a half.

“Knock, knock,” I say, tapping on the machine.

“I’m busy, Noa.”

“You’re always busy. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. I figured it was time to give him a service. He just ran for nine hours straight, so I thought he deserved one.”

“You gave a machine a gender?”

“Of course I did. You can’t tell me he doesn’t seem manly.”

I laugh and sit on the tarp, passing him the wrench when he asks.

“You know what I realized?” I say. “You’re fixed.”

His hand pauses. “What?”

“Your chest. You reached all the way across, and three weeks ago you couldn’t even lift the wrench I passed you without pulling a little face.”

“I don’t have a little face.”

“You have a whole face, buddy, and it does things.” I knock my knuckles against the machine he is working on. “I just noticed, is all.”

He comes out to look at me, wiping his hands on the rag that lives in his back pocket, and for a second, he doesn’t say anything.