Runaway

Chapter 15

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~Uploaded March 23rd, 2014

"The tryouts are simple. There are three stages", Mr. Tanner said as he paced up and down in front of the line up of people that had shown up. I counted two dozen people, all between the ages of about fifteen and nineteen, boys and girls. There was Dylan, Brody, two of his brothers Cole and Spencer, Nolan, Garrett, Andie, myself, Evan and his buddies, Helena and Olivia and a dozen others I didn't know. As far as I could tell, they all really wanted to be on this paintball team, despite that it looked like half of them couldn't even figure out where the trigger was.

"The first one will be over here." He gestured to the lined up targets. "You'll each be given five shots at at the target", he was explaining. Who put him in charge?, I wondered. "Then as many cans and bottles within a time constraint, and finally, for those of you who get that far, you'll have to fire at moving targets that we'll be operating."

His tone was clipped, with an aura of command around him as he paced in front of us like a drill sergeant. Funny, I thought he would be the calm kind of man, considering his kids were so nice. He examined us carefully, probably to freak out the wimps. Even with glasses, he was a little bit intimidating. But man, this guy took paintball way too seriously.

"Any questions?", he asked finally. Not so much as a sniffle came up from the line of people on either side of me. "Good. You kids-" He pointed to a thin girl with glasses at the end of the row then continued up until the larger boy right beside me"-will go first. The rest of you can wait and watch." I could tell the others didn't like being called "kids". I was right there with them. We split up and stood on the sidelines and watched the mayhem fold out in front of us.

The larger boy named Carl would have been shot dead in a battle within its first minute. He was so slow at loading the paint ammo, aiming and firing the damned thing, that it took all my will not to grab it from his hands and fire for him. Chill girl, you'll get your chance.

The girl with the glasses on the other hand, Dina, was a pretty good shot and she was quick about it. Three out of five times she nailed the center target, which allowed her to move on to the next stage. She had more trouble at that part though, her nearsightedness even with her glasses affecting her aim at a more precise target. She and Carl were cut.

Garrett had better aim with a gun than he did with a ball, nailing five out of five targets and knocking down most of the cans and bottles. Go figure. He was allowed to the third stage, but had to wait for the rest of us to make it through.

I watched as the Willis brothers confidently lined up in front of their targets. Before I knew it, they were all splattered with paint, hitting the red target in the center at least four out of five times. I wondered how long they've been doing this.

I turned to Helena on my right. "Hey, Helena?" She turned to me with a smile. "How long has this paintball thing been going on?" She pursed her lips, thinking.

"I think about... five years? Is that it, Liv?", she asked Olivia on her right. Olivia nodded. "Yeah, five years."

"And how long have they-" I gestured to the guys and Andie "-been doing this?" It was pretty obvious that it wasn't their first time wielding a paintball gun. I watched as Cole emptied his paint out onto a target. The center target became completely green.

"Pretty much since it started up. Dylan's brother Jack and his friends started it for a bit of fun and a few adults thought it was such a good idea that it became an annual thing. We go up against the town's other team and the winner gets bragging rights and some trophy they made out of scraps. Mr. Tanner took over these tryouts when Jack left."