The Ordinary Haunting II

19. The Innocent Clue - Part 1

Alice wriggled her fingers at the top of her head and then swung her arms alternately back and forth.

"Chicken Run!" bellowed New. Arm and Off groaned and took a swig of beer.

Alice's small teeth appeared on her lip as she frowned at the next card. New's knee started tapping against mine, so I looked over and saw that he was fiercely staring her down. I clicked in front of his nose and he didn't even look as he handed me a potted, acid-green succulent from the floor next to him. He continued his desperate glaring while I hid my grin behind the plant (and checked that its soil wasn't too damp).

Alice flipped herself onto her knees and grabbed handfuls of food, shoving them into her mouth. Gun broke into a chirpy laugh that seemed to make Off swallow whatever objection he was going to raise to Alice ruining three slices of pizza for her charade.

"Mm, I need more," New urged. I smiled at the casual way he'd said it despite his attack eyebrows. None of us had even decided what the prize for winning would be, but in this company of competitive eggheads, it probably didn't matter.

Alice's face brightened and she pushed the tip of her nose up flat. New frowned harder and she repeated the gluttonous eating while hunching over with her nose squashed. New snapped his fingers.

"Spirited Away?"

Alice whooped and they high-fived as she reached for another card from the pile in front of her. Arm and Off double-checked the discarded one before relenting to another drink.

"15 seconds, babe," Arm warned from the mouth of his bottle. Alice waved him away and then mimed putting something on her head, after which she pointed at the sapphire ring on her finger.

"Lord of the Rings!" New shouted. Alice clapped and went to take another card when Gun threw his torso over the deck.

"Which one?" he asked, his perky smirk impervious to Alice's incredulous grimace. New's whole body was jerking now as he rolled his hands at her.

"Five! Four!" Arm and Off announced in quick succession. Alice held her arms out in a wide embrace and New was just opening his mouth when she showed a single finger.

"The Fellowship of the Ring!"

The phone alarm went off.

"Aargh!" Arm flopped onto his back as Alice and New air-hugged across the table in celebration.

"Gun, you shouldn't have said anything! We could have got them on a technicality after the timer ran out." Off pulled his boyfriend's earlobe. Gun pushed himself back into a seated position and popped Off's beer into his mouth.

"I would never help you like that. You're my enemy as well, love."

"You and Tay have zero chance of winning. The least you could do is help me."

"Wait and see, Jumpol. There's not such a big gap."

"That makes Alice and New on seventeen points, Off and I on sixteen, and Gun and Tay on nine," Arm muttered loudly, making marks on a score sheet. Gun's smile stayed but his eye twitched.

New stretched across me for a bag of coloured rice crackers. "How are you so shit at this?" he asked me. "You used to watch movies with me all the time when you were staying at my place."

I caught a hint of his usual pear shampoo, and the memory of sitting on his couch at night after work – popcorn on the table, Luna alert between us, stars reflected in the river out the window, decades of movies playing on the TV – all came back to me strong and warm.