Re: mal/hannah/si
She was looking for someone, and she didn't glance toward the pinball machines even once, because pretending only lasted until the town limits, and now they were trapped inside truth and real things.
Look and look and glance and glance, and she assumed someone who liked electronics might come to a little arcade glowing neon bright in the darkness. She was waiting. Waiting for what happened next, and sometimes it was good to take things into her own hands. Sometimes, because mostly her entire life felt like it was in the grip of someone else, someone not her, and she was just pulled, pulled along, step after step after step, and never digging in her heels and walking her own way. The visit to the house was supposed to maybe be about that, about reclaiming, and she'd had vague thoughts when she set out in confusion. But she lost herself along the way, and now she was here and back.
Here and back, and more herself than she'd felt in days and months and years. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but it felt better. She'd always been not okay since the house, since the tea party, since Mom. She'd driven the family crazy with her own crazy, and just as much as Si had, if in a different way. But she felt mostly herself now, and it felt to her that she'd been asleep a very, very long time.
She kind of knew what he looked like, the one she was seeking. It was a tiny, tiny town, and the girls at the park talked about lonely men and potential business, and she knew what the owner of the electronics store looked like. Si was parking the car, and they'd just gotten in, and she'd seen the post about the party. So, here and now, she looked.