“As in... the hockey player?”
“Yeah, obviously.” She’s laughing as she says it, already sizing up the next hole.
“Why is that obvious?”
She glances back at me with her eyebrows raised as if I’ve just asked the stupidest question before she hits her ball. It ricochets off the wall, stops three feet from the hole and she holds her arms up in triumph. “Hole in one!”
“That’s not even close to a hole in one.”
“It’s going to be. Watch.” She walks forward and taps it in. “See.”
By hole seven my ball is in the water hazard.
I watch it sink and turn to look at her. She’s examining her fingernails like she didn’t just kick it in there. Which she absolutely did. I watched her foot connect.
“That was my ball.”
“Was it? I didn’t see.”
“You literally just kicked it in.”
“Prove it.” She’s already lining up her shot.
This girl just cheated to my face and dared me to do something about it.
I look at the fake pond with the plastic lily pads, then at her ball sitting in perfect position two feet from the cup.
Two can play at this game.
I pick up her ball.
“Zach, what are you?—”
I throw it. Hard. It sails over the fence and disappears behind a truck in the parking lot.
Her mouth falls open. “You did NOT.”
“I absolutely did.” And I don’t feel bad at all, which is new. Actually, I feel like I just won something I didn’t know I was competing for.
She stares at me and then she starts laughing. Not the polite laugh girls do on dates. Full volume, head thrown back, doesn’t care who hears her.
I’m laughing too, which is weird because I just committed what feels like mini golf vandalism and there’s definitely a kid behind us crying and a woman complaining to her husband about out of control youths. I look back and see an employee walking toward us and everything about his body language says he’s had enough.
My stomach drops because I know what’s about to happen. I’m a rule follower. I keep my head down and don’t make waves because that’s how you stay on the roster, that’s how you keep your spot, that’s how you?—
“Yeah, so.” He says. “I’m gonna need you both to leave.”
“Totally fair,” Mackie says before I can apologize or explain or try to fix it. “We were way out of line, very sorry.”
She grabs my hand and pulls me toward the exit. I can’t resist because me, Zach Almardon, who has never even gotten a detention is now getting kicked out of a mini golf course.
“We just got kicked out,” I say when we reach the parking lot,and I know I sound like I’m stuck on repeat but my brain can’t move on from this wild turn of events.
“Yeah we did.” She’s grinning at me over the hood of my car, face flushed from laughing.
“I’ve never been kicked out of anything.”
“How does it feel?”
