Night Games -- a TDK Fanfic
Title: Night Games
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Characters: OC's, references to the big boys. More of a continuation of the lives of Gothamites, I suppose.
Rating: PG
Genre: This is totally crack. Or fluff. Or maybe both, I'm not sure...
Summary/Excerpt: "You still wanna be a villain?”
“Yeah. Harvey’s probably gonna try to be Batman.”
"He usually does."
A/N: I'm shameless and really should look this over before spitting it. But I didn't. Feel free to catch any errors, critique, etc.
Tonight, Joey Bowers is the Joker and he’s stuck in the shed between the poop scooper and the three wooden-handled rakes.
It’s very dusty, and he’s trying not to sneeze. The white paint Holly smeared across his face is itchy and his mother’s lipstick tastes strangely brackish, like water from the Narrows.
(Joey’s never gone to the Narrows, but he likes to brag that he has. Only Sammy Sheri - a seven year old girl - believes him. The others just roll their eyes.)
Outside, Batman counts. Loudly, sometimes skipping numbers and slurring the jump from “twenty-niinnne....thirty-one!” as to hasten his exile at the tree-stump, he quickly runs through thirty and forty before finally slowing down at fifty.
He pauses.
Shouts: “READY OR NOT, HERE I COME.”
And Joey Bowers, whose lipstick stretches all the way to his ears, waits.
It’s not that Brian Edsi - Batman - has supersonic hearing or anything, but he’s unusually good at stumbling on people. Like a homing signal or something.
Tonight is good, though. Clouds roll above the night lights in Gotham, leaving the only light around to come from the buzzing street lights at the end of the cul-de-sac. No moon. No wind. Since it’s a Friday, all the teenagers have fled their houses to go do whatever (and Holly says that her mom said that all they do is have sex sex sex) teenagers do, leaving all the adults inside to watch television.
Outside, it’s just the six of them: the motley crew of Joey, Holly, Brian, Rachel, Sammy and Harvey. And there’s a bonus: Batman Edsi has a slight fear of the dark.
Briefly, Joey wonders where Rachel Yindel is. When they were all getting their costumes ready, the boys (of course) asked Rachel who she was.
She only smiled, said: “You’ll see.”
Rachel is scary, sometimes.
And outside, Brian stumbles over a bush and curses.
He shouldn’t know the words he does, but then...Brian’s older brother, Richard, is a shameless pothead and wannabe hippie with a penchant for the dramatic and profane.
(“Wrong fucking place for that,” Brian’s father tells his mother as they discuss Richard while waiting for him to return from curfew. All the
parents think that Gotham’s has gotten worse..)
“I’m gonna - ” and Brian pauses, coughs and attempts to growl “ - find you!”
The growl sounds like a shameless impersonation of Joey’s cat, Snuffles, and Joey has to bite his lip to stop laughing. For all of his twelve-year-old gangly size and muscle borne from the karate classes his parents put him in, Brian is actually somewhat of a pushover.
(Meaning that Batman he is not.)
Nonetheless...pseudo-Batman has been blessed with both a combination of luck and something resembling clumsy instincts, and within seconds of his declaration of hunting down every last of the depraved criminals that are hidden around the block, Brian’s instincts lead him to Joey’s hiding spot as he scuffs his Sketchers (and he’s complained to his mom that he wants those cool skate shoes, but she keeps telling him it’s just a label, and really, he has no idea what that means) on the pockmarked concrete outside the shed.
From light that floats dimly over from the nearby streetlight, the conical head of the Bat appears, peering through the grainy and fingerprint-smeared windows cautiously. Ears made out of black bike-helmet visors catch the streetlight and throw a demonic shadow on the cluttered floor of the shed. The mask (essentially a mutation of everything Brian could find in the basement that looked remotely Batman-ish) swivels and looks down, trying to see into the darkness and jumble of the shed. Joey pulls his feet closer to his body, holds his breath.
Batman stands there a second. Five seconds. The pre-teen attention span is short, and within a minute, Batman’s silhouette is ducking down and moving away. Joey waits, because he’s played hide-and-go-seek long enough to know how the “I’m-going-to-pretend-you’re-not-there” game works, but after thirty seconds, Brian doesn’t return.
Exhaling audibly, Joey cautiously extends his left foot out into the narrow corridor of light, pushing his body up at the same time to crane his neck over the two boxes blocking a view of the front of the shed.
No Batman.
Five more movements, all in the underwater slowness of a criminal who doesn’t want to get caught. He almost snags his foot on the rake and cautiously pulls his shoe to the side.
And then there’s a scream, muffled, but close off.
He has a feeling it’s Holly. Or Sammy. Those two couldn’t hide if you gave them that Harry Potter invisibility-cloak thing.
(It’s a secret: Joey reads Harry Potter. But he doesn’t, really, because only losers read Harry Potter.)
But: because the illustrious Batman is distracted, Joey has a chance to fly the coop. Holly can actually run, and while Sammy’s legs are too short for her to really outpace gangly-boy Brian, she’ll give him a run of his money.
So...
The Joker moves.
Foot still lodged behind the handle of that damned rake.
And as if God himself had ordered it himself, the whole back of the stupid shed seems to collapse inward, rakes crashing, boxes climbing over one another, gardening utensils flying like shrapnel, bricks thudding on concrete.
This is all done rather loudly, and at the most inopportune time possible because - as the dust clears and Joey coughs, waving a hand around his face - he sees the visor-eared silhouette of the Bat through the glass abruptly screech to a halt, and turn in his direction
“Crap.”
He bolts a little too suddenly, foot catching on a fallen broom and sending him sprawling. Rolls to his feet, cursing (and yeah, he knows bad words, too) just as Brian tries to theatrically kick open the door. And fails.
Joey can’t help but laugh, and from the other side of the door, Batman growls, “Shut-up.”
He laughs harder. “Dude, that was - ”
A hand sheathed in a Bat Gauntlet (actually, it’s protective bike-gear that Brian is wearing, but from a distance, you wouldn’t know the difference) abruptly finds one of the door handles and rips open a door, and Joey finds himself facing his (supposedly) arch-nemesis.
They stare each other down for a minute, unmoving largely because Brian finds himself distracted by the carnage of his parents’ supply shed that he - no doubt - will have to clean up.
“Man, what the heck did you -”
Joey does what Joey does best (translation: fucking with people), lightly reaching forward and punching Brian in the gut before screaming,“Psyche!”
Brian glowers, lunging for him, but it’s too late now, because Joey feints to the right, cackles, and then bolts, right under the Bat’s swinging arm to freedom.
But he has to give Brian props - he recovers his stature quickly, and it doesn’t take too long for him to be right on Joey’s heels.
Naturally, Joey runs like hell, shrieking around a mangled little sapling and then climbing the fence (sneakers scrabbling for purchase, a splinter lodged in his right palm) to the front yard, where he sees Holly and Sammy standing in a corner of Mr. Lane’s driveway.
Change of plans. Joey stops, nearly gives himself whiplash when he pivots and charges, bulldozing towards the two obvious female villains of the crew.
Holly remains momentarily frozen with a quizzical look on her face, cat-suit muddy (and no, she didn’t buy it at Wal-Mart, she made it herself, thank you very much) from probably lying in someone’s garden, mascara and black face-paint smeared. And then she blinks. Realizes Joey’s scheme.
“Jerk!” she screams at him, before grabbing Sammy’s hand and hauling her up to run. Sammy shrieks theatrically - the red wig bouncing on her head when leaves and crap falling out of it - as she gets her legs under her and attempts to keep up with Holly.
The Bat huffs on Joey’s heels.
And Joey laughs. Again. Still chasing after Catwoman and Poison Ivy with the Bat breathing down his neck because this is how hide-and-go-seek should be played.
But Brian, of course, is not the Bat, and though his stamina is impressive, it’s not that impressive. Pretty soon he starts to relent, edging out from directly behind Joey to the side in an attempt to catalogue who is easier prey.
Sammy staggers, nearly face-plants, and in the split second that she almost loses it Holly lets go, sprinting towards a nearby yard with a call over her shoulder.
“Sorry, Sammy!”
“But, Holly -”
]The Cat skirts around the Koltiska’s old truck, then stops on the other side, eyes barely reaching over the truck bed as she makes an evaluation of what will happen to her (ex) partner, confused and stuck in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
Joey’s already back in someone’s yard (not the Maples, thank goodness, because that evil mutt-thing of theirs scares the living crap out of Joey and the rest of the gang), sneaking around the shadows to get back to home base when he hears the explosive “THAT’S NOT FAIR!” echo from the beyond the fence. No doubt, a very bewildered Sammy Sheri is probably getting close to crying because Batman wasn’t supposed to get her, and she doesn’t want to be It, either.
Joey stops for a brief second to savor what he can hear. Sammy whining briefly before Brian tries to compromise.
“But I don’t - ”
“We’ll work together. You wanna help me get Holly?”
Pause. And then Sammy’s nasally sound of petulance is transformed into something mean and excited.
“Yeah!”
Sneaky little girl, that Sammy. She’s not the quickest in terms of speed but her brain is devious in that frightening younger-elementary school way that even manages to scare big sixth graders like Joey, Brian, Rachel and Holly. She already probably catalogued where her big brother, Harvey (fifth grader, short, brown hair, bull-nose, Dad’s a washed-up boxer but he treats the kids better than any other single parent Joey knows) hid earlier and it won’t be a surprise when she hunts him down as a present for Brian.
(She’s got a little-kid crush on him. Joey and Rachel tease Brian mercilessly about it.)
Sure enough, barely a minute after once enemies became partners, Joey - in the midst of climbing the Vatesli’s fence - hears a chirp barely 25 meters in front of him. He stops, curled over the top of the barrier, and sinks down in an attempt to not to get noticed by Sammy the Poison Ivy.
From around the front porch of the house she creeps, before pausing right next to the rasping AC block and a rather large bush. Sammy stands there a minute, evaluating, and then turns her head.
“Hey, Bri - I mean - Batman, here’s the Hatter!”
Harvey’s hideout was terrible, anyway - his oversized, homemade Mad Hatter hat sticking out of the bushes like a homing beacon. Nonetheless, Harvey didn’t expect his little sister to snitch on him, and he squawks, still buried in the bushes: “SAMM-Y, you can’t do that!”
“I just did!” she announces, and from the angry growl that Harvey makes, it’s obvious that he didn’t want to get busted by his little sister.
“You’re It now, too,” Sammy says gleefully. “You can help us catch Catwoman, Joker and...” Pause. “What was Rachel, anyway?”
“I dunno,” Harvey/Hatter replies, wounded from the heart of the bush.
Doesn’t matter to Sammy. She doesn’t skip a beat.“Anyway...you’re It!”
Harvey rises from his crappy hide-out in the Vatesli’s front bushes, ridiculously tall hat he made out of cardboard and colored paper wobbling precariously on his head. “You cheated,” he tells Sammy accusingly as they begin to walk out towards the cul-de-sac.
“Nuh-uh. I was just doing what Batman told me to do.”
“Batman’s a cheater,” the Hatter says.
“You’re just mad I caught you.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah-huh.”
A snicker comes from behind Joey, followed by the arthritic creak of a wooden fence being overloaded with too many occupants.
“Dorks,” the voice says, and while Joey recognizes it dimly as that of Rachel, when he turns his head and sees the mask he gasps and loses his balance, rolling over into the other yard with a very audible thump.
High above on the fence, a burlap sack with holes for eyes and a terrible-sewing job for a mouth appears.
Joey: “Ugh.”
The burlap sack grows two arms, which brace themselves on the fence and tilt the head casually to the side. It’s not difficult to imagine Rachel smirking beneath the mask.
“Did I scare you?” she asks.
“Um...” and he still can’t breathe, lying on his back on the Vitesli’s well-groomed lawn, a rock digging into his shoulder, “Yeah.”
A pause. Rachel clears her throat as if to speak and then stops when she hears an indignant cry carry out from over in the Koltiska’s driveway (“SAMMY!!”)
“Sounds like Holly got it.” she says absently, then, returning to the winded Joey on the ground. “You okay?”
“Um,” Joey narrows his eyes, tries to focus the two faces above him into one. “Kinda.”
“You like my costume?” Rachel’s voice brightens as she raises a foot to the fence.
“You’re - Scarecrow,” he finally musters, pushing himself up onto his forearms.
“It gotcha.” she says, and he can hear the triumphant note in her voice.
Joey raises a hand to his forehead, scrunches his nose and then realizes somewhat belatedly that he still has paint on his face. He pulls a hand away and stares at white caked on his palm with squinted eyes. “Yeah.”
Rachel lands beside him with lightly, the fence squeaking in wake of her departure, and crouches.
“You sure you’re cool,” and while it’s not necessarily a question, it isn’t a die-hard statement, either.
“Think so,” he says, then - air now moving more smoothly through his lungs as he looks over Rachel’s costume again, “You know, you really do look scary.”
Beneath the burlap, there’s no doubt that Rachel’s grinning. “Mission accomplished.”
Rachel’s somewhat new in the neighborhood, the Newton’s adopting her about two years ago. Word has it that Rachel was raised in the Narrows when she was young - that she was there the night the fear poison (and that’s what all kids call it, because toxin is a word none of them fully comprehend) drove everybody crazy except the kids living out in Suburbia, like Joey and the gang.
Rachel’s alright, really. She’s nice, smart, athletic and (Joey only has told himself this) pretty. But sometimes, you can tell that she’s not all there - her eyes move a little too quickly, her sense of humor is a little off-kilter and scary.
[“Good kid,” Joey’s parents would say, “but when she gets older, I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley.”]
“So it’s just you and me now,” she says after a moment. “Should I rat on you like Sammy did on Harvey?”
He shakes his head, tries to move into a seated position. “That’d be pretty bratty of you,” he admits.
The burlap sack nods, and then Rachel stands. “I know. I’m a bad guy, but I’m not that mean.” She lowers a hand to Joey.
“Thanks,” he says, as she pulls him up.
“Yup.”
Beat.
“So...”
Rachel looks out over the yard, considers. “Holly’s probably trying to run them off her tail.”
“Won’t get very far,” Joey coughs, then covers his mouth quickly, “considering that she’s got Brian, Harvey and Sammy chasing after her.”
“Yeah, but Brian’s probably tired.”
“Really?”
Scarecrow Rachel tilts her head towards Joey and the irritated look beneath the burlap is palpable. Joey takes a step back, corrects himself.
“‘Kay. So do we just go to base?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. You still wanna be a villain?”
“Yeah. Harvey’s probably gonna try to be Batman.”
“He usually does.”
They start walking (silently, though, because the last time Joey got caught in the Vitesli’s yard, he got grounded and had his allowance taken away for a week and a half). Break into a jog towards the next fence that Rachel scales easily and Joey climbs a little more clumsily, cursing when one plank digs into his left knee.
They land in home yard, low to the ground and quiet.
Another shriek from the front. Joey waits for a sign that someone might be back here when Rachel speaks again.
“Holly. Let’s just run.”
It’s definitely anti-climactic, their arrival to that gnarled old tree stump in the middle of the Edsi’s backyard (a thing too deep-rooted for Mr. Edsi to try to pull out, too damn ugly to really let be seen by the neighbors, so Mrs. Edsi tries to disguise it with dusty and ripped lawn-furniture). They manage to witness Holly’s fall from villainess status as she trips into the backyard, caught by - of all people - a victorious (if gasping for breath) Sammy/Poison Ivy. Batman Brian and Harvey Hatter follow shortly thereafter, wheezing. The group huddles around Holly, gloating only briefly as Holly rises from the ground and points a finger.
“Look.”
Batman, the Mad Hatter and Poison Ivy turn, surprised.
“How did you get back here?” Brian asks and then, when he sees Rachel, “Whoa. Nice costume.”
“Scary,” Harvey adds.
“Thanks.”
“Magic,” Joey says. “I’m awesome that way.”
Brian rolls his eyes. Snorts. “Whatever.”
Holly limps towards them, playing the drama-queen card.
“I can’t be It,” she says adamantly. “I’m hurt.”
“You’re just mad because I tagged you,” Sammy declares.
Holly shoots her a look and raises a hand.
Harvey interrupts.
“ Sammy, you’re It. You got tagged second.”
“So? You got tagged third.”
Brian clears his throat, and the argument stills.
“I know how to do this,” he says solemnly.
Joey knows what’s coming and slowly begins raising his right arm.
“Nose goes!”
Index fingers fly to the tips of noses.
Joey’s second. Sammy’s third. Holly and Harvey fight for a tie (“You so were last, Harvey!”). A second passes of indistinct argument and bickering before everyone suddenly notices that Rachel didn't even bother raising her hand.
They pause.
Rachel clears her throat, straightening her back as she rests her hands on the tree stump. She lowers her head for a moment, then looks up.
“You better start running,” she rasps.
Fin
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Characters: OC's, references to the big boys. More of a continuation of the lives of Gothamites, I suppose.
Rating: PG
Genre: This is totally crack. Or fluff. Or maybe both, I'm not sure...
Summary/Excerpt: "You still wanna be a villain?”
“Yeah. Harvey’s probably gonna try to be Batman.”
"He usually does."
A/N: I'm shameless and really should look this over before spitting it. But I didn't. Feel free to catch any errors, critique, etc.
Tonight, Joey Bowers is the Joker and he’s stuck in the shed between the poop scooper and the three wooden-handled rakes.
It’s very dusty, and he’s trying not to sneeze. The white paint Holly smeared across his face is itchy and his mother’s lipstick tastes strangely brackish, like water from the Narrows.
(Joey’s never gone to the Narrows, but he likes to brag that he has. Only Sammy Sheri - a seven year old girl - believes him. The others just roll their eyes.)
Outside, Batman counts. Loudly, sometimes skipping numbers and slurring the jump from “twenty-niinnne....thirty-one!” as to hasten his exile at the tree-stump, he quickly runs through thirty and forty before finally slowing down at fifty.
He pauses.
Shouts: “READY OR NOT, HERE I COME.”
And Joey Bowers, whose lipstick stretches all the way to his ears, waits.
It’s not that Brian Edsi - Batman - has supersonic hearing or anything, but he’s unusually good at stumbling on people. Like a homing signal or something.
Tonight is good, though. Clouds roll above the night lights in Gotham, leaving the only light around to come from the buzzing street lights at the end of the cul-de-sac. No moon. No wind. Since it’s a Friday, all the teenagers have fled their houses to go do whatever (and Holly says that her mom said that all they do is have sex sex sex) teenagers do, leaving all the adults inside to watch television.
Outside, it’s just the six of them: the motley crew of Joey, Holly, Brian, Rachel, Sammy and Harvey. And there’s a bonus: Batman Edsi has a slight fear of the dark.
Briefly, Joey wonders where Rachel Yindel is. When they were all getting their costumes ready, the boys (of course) asked Rachel who she was.
She only smiled, said: “You’ll see.”
Rachel is scary, sometimes.
And outside, Brian stumbles over a bush and curses.
He shouldn’t know the words he does, but then...Brian’s older brother, Richard, is a shameless pothead and wannabe hippie with a penchant for the dramatic and profane.
(“Wrong fucking place for that,” Brian’s father tells his mother as they discuss Richard while waiting for him to return from curfew. All the
parents think that Gotham’s has gotten worse..)
“I’m gonna - ” and Brian pauses, coughs and attempts to growl “ - find you!”
The growl sounds like a shameless impersonation of Joey’s cat, Snuffles, and Joey has to bite his lip to stop laughing. For all of his twelve-year-old gangly size and muscle borne from the karate classes his parents put him in, Brian is actually somewhat of a pushover.
(Meaning that Batman he is not.)
Nonetheless...pseudo-Batman has been blessed with both a combination of luck and something resembling clumsy instincts, and within seconds of his declaration of hunting down every last of the depraved criminals that are hidden around the block, Brian’s instincts lead him to Joey’s hiding spot as he scuffs his Sketchers (and he’s complained to his mom that he wants those cool skate shoes, but she keeps telling him it’s just a label, and really, he has no idea what that means) on the pockmarked concrete outside the shed.
From light that floats dimly over from the nearby streetlight, the conical head of the Bat appears, peering through the grainy and fingerprint-smeared windows cautiously. Ears made out of black bike-helmet visors catch the streetlight and throw a demonic shadow on the cluttered floor of the shed. The mask (essentially a mutation of everything Brian could find in the basement that looked remotely Batman-ish) swivels and looks down, trying to see into the darkness and jumble of the shed. Joey pulls his feet closer to his body, holds his breath.
Batman stands there a second. Five seconds. The pre-teen attention span is short, and within a minute, Batman’s silhouette is ducking down and moving away. Joey waits, because he’s played hide-and-go-seek long enough to know how the “I’m-going-to-pretend-you’re-not-there” game works, but after thirty seconds, Brian doesn’t return.
Exhaling audibly, Joey cautiously extends his left foot out into the narrow corridor of light, pushing his body up at the same time to crane his neck over the two boxes blocking a view of the front of the shed.
No Batman.
Five more movements, all in the underwater slowness of a criminal who doesn’t want to get caught. He almost snags his foot on the rake and cautiously pulls his shoe to the side.
And then there’s a scream, muffled, but close off.
He has a feeling it’s Holly. Or Sammy. Those two couldn’t hide if you gave them that Harry Potter invisibility-cloak thing.
(It’s a secret: Joey reads Harry Potter. But he doesn’t, really, because only losers read Harry Potter.)
But: because the illustrious Batman is distracted, Joey has a chance to fly the coop. Holly can actually run, and while Sammy’s legs are too short for her to really outpace gangly-boy Brian, she’ll give him a run of his money.
So...
The Joker moves.
Foot still lodged behind the handle of that damned rake.
And as if God himself had ordered it himself, the whole back of the stupid shed seems to collapse inward, rakes crashing, boxes climbing over one another, gardening utensils flying like shrapnel, bricks thudding on concrete.
This is all done rather loudly, and at the most inopportune time possible because - as the dust clears and Joey coughs, waving a hand around his face - he sees the visor-eared silhouette of the Bat through the glass abruptly screech to a halt, and turn in his direction
“Crap.”
He bolts a little too suddenly, foot catching on a fallen broom and sending him sprawling. Rolls to his feet, cursing (and yeah, he knows bad words, too) just as Brian tries to theatrically kick open the door. And fails.
Joey can’t help but laugh, and from the other side of the door, Batman growls, “Shut-up.”
He laughs harder. “Dude, that was - ”
A hand sheathed in a Bat Gauntlet (actually, it’s protective bike-gear that Brian is wearing, but from a distance, you wouldn’t know the difference) abruptly finds one of the door handles and rips open a door, and Joey finds himself facing his (supposedly) arch-nemesis.
They stare each other down for a minute, unmoving largely because Brian finds himself distracted by the carnage of his parents’ supply shed that he - no doubt - will have to clean up.
“Man, what the heck did you -”
Joey does what Joey does best (translation: fucking with people), lightly reaching forward and punching Brian in the gut before screaming,“Psyche!”
Brian glowers, lunging for him, but it’s too late now, because Joey feints to the right, cackles, and then bolts, right under the Bat’s swinging arm to freedom.
But he has to give Brian props - he recovers his stature quickly, and it doesn’t take too long for him to be right on Joey’s heels.
Naturally, Joey runs like hell, shrieking around a mangled little sapling and then climbing the fence (sneakers scrabbling for purchase, a splinter lodged in his right palm) to the front yard, where he sees Holly and Sammy standing in a corner of Mr. Lane’s driveway.
Change of plans. Joey stops, nearly gives himself whiplash when he pivots and charges, bulldozing towards the two obvious female villains of the crew.
Holly remains momentarily frozen with a quizzical look on her face, cat-suit muddy (and no, she didn’t buy it at Wal-Mart, she made it herself, thank you very much) from probably lying in someone’s garden, mascara and black face-paint smeared. And then she blinks. Realizes Joey’s scheme.
“Jerk!” she screams at him, before grabbing Sammy’s hand and hauling her up to run. Sammy shrieks theatrically - the red wig bouncing on her head when leaves and crap falling out of it - as she gets her legs under her and attempts to keep up with Holly.
The Bat huffs on Joey’s heels.
And Joey laughs. Again. Still chasing after Catwoman and Poison Ivy with the Bat breathing down his neck because this is how hide-and-go-seek should be played.
But Brian, of course, is not the Bat, and though his stamina is impressive, it’s not that impressive. Pretty soon he starts to relent, edging out from directly behind Joey to the side in an attempt to catalogue who is easier prey.
Sammy staggers, nearly face-plants, and in the split second that she almost loses it Holly lets go, sprinting towards a nearby yard with a call over her shoulder.
“Sorry, Sammy!”
“But, Holly -”
]The Cat skirts around the Koltiska’s old truck, then stops on the other side, eyes barely reaching over the truck bed as she makes an evaluation of what will happen to her (ex) partner, confused and stuck in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
Joey’s already back in someone’s yard (not the Maples, thank goodness, because that evil mutt-thing of theirs scares the living crap out of Joey and the rest of the gang), sneaking around the shadows to get back to home base when he hears the explosive “THAT’S NOT FAIR!” echo from the beyond the fence. No doubt, a very bewildered Sammy Sheri is probably getting close to crying because Batman wasn’t supposed to get her, and she doesn’t want to be It, either.
Joey stops for a brief second to savor what he can hear. Sammy whining briefly before Brian tries to compromise.
“But I don’t - ”
“We’ll work together. You wanna help me get Holly?”
Pause. And then Sammy’s nasally sound of petulance is transformed into something mean and excited.
“Yeah!”
Sneaky little girl, that Sammy. She’s not the quickest in terms of speed but her brain is devious in that frightening younger-elementary school way that even manages to scare big sixth graders like Joey, Brian, Rachel and Holly. She already probably catalogued where her big brother, Harvey (fifth grader, short, brown hair, bull-nose, Dad’s a washed-up boxer but he treats the kids better than any other single parent Joey knows) hid earlier and it won’t be a surprise when she hunts him down as a present for Brian.
(She’s got a little-kid crush on him. Joey and Rachel tease Brian mercilessly about it.)
Sure enough, barely a minute after once enemies became partners, Joey - in the midst of climbing the Vatesli’s fence - hears a chirp barely 25 meters in front of him. He stops, curled over the top of the barrier, and sinks down in an attempt to not to get noticed by Sammy the Poison Ivy.
From around the front porch of the house she creeps, before pausing right next to the rasping AC block and a rather large bush. Sammy stands there a minute, evaluating, and then turns her head.
“Hey, Bri - I mean - Batman, here’s the Hatter!”
Harvey’s hideout was terrible, anyway - his oversized, homemade Mad Hatter hat sticking out of the bushes like a homing beacon. Nonetheless, Harvey didn’t expect his little sister to snitch on him, and he squawks, still buried in the bushes: “SAMM-Y, you can’t do that!”
“I just did!” she announces, and from the angry growl that Harvey makes, it’s obvious that he didn’t want to get busted by his little sister.
“You’re It now, too,” Sammy says gleefully. “You can help us catch Catwoman, Joker and...” Pause. “What was Rachel, anyway?”
“I dunno,” Harvey/Hatter replies, wounded from the heart of the bush.
Doesn’t matter to Sammy. She doesn’t skip a beat.“Anyway...you’re It!”
Harvey rises from his crappy hide-out in the Vatesli’s front bushes, ridiculously tall hat he made out of cardboard and colored paper wobbling precariously on his head. “You cheated,” he tells Sammy accusingly as they begin to walk out towards the cul-de-sac.
“Nuh-uh. I was just doing what Batman told me to do.”
“Batman’s a cheater,” the Hatter says.
“You’re just mad I caught you.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah-huh.”
A snicker comes from behind Joey, followed by the arthritic creak of a wooden fence being overloaded with too many occupants.
“Dorks,” the voice says, and while Joey recognizes it dimly as that of Rachel, when he turns his head and sees the mask he gasps and loses his balance, rolling over into the other yard with a very audible thump.
High above on the fence, a burlap sack with holes for eyes and a terrible-sewing job for a mouth appears.
Joey: “Ugh.”
The burlap sack grows two arms, which brace themselves on the fence and tilt the head casually to the side. It’s not difficult to imagine Rachel smirking beneath the mask.
“Did I scare you?” she asks.
“Um...” and he still can’t breathe, lying on his back on the Vitesli’s well-groomed lawn, a rock digging into his shoulder, “Yeah.”
A pause. Rachel clears her throat as if to speak and then stops when she hears an indignant cry carry out from over in the Koltiska’s driveway (“SAMMY!!”)
“Sounds like Holly got it.” she says absently, then, returning to the winded Joey on the ground. “You okay?”
“Um,” Joey narrows his eyes, tries to focus the two faces above him into one. “Kinda.”
“You like my costume?” Rachel’s voice brightens as she raises a foot to the fence.
“You’re - Scarecrow,” he finally musters, pushing himself up onto his forearms.
“It gotcha.” she says, and he can hear the triumphant note in her voice.
Joey raises a hand to his forehead, scrunches his nose and then realizes somewhat belatedly that he still has paint on his face. He pulls a hand away and stares at white caked on his palm with squinted eyes. “Yeah.”
Rachel lands beside him with lightly, the fence squeaking in wake of her departure, and crouches.
“You sure you’re cool,” and while it’s not necessarily a question, it isn’t a die-hard statement, either.
“Think so,” he says, then - air now moving more smoothly through his lungs as he looks over Rachel’s costume again, “You know, you really do look scary.”
Beneath the burlap, there’s no doubt that Rachel’s grinning. “Mission accomplished.”
Rachel’s somewhat new in the neighborhood, the Newton’s adopting her about two years ago. Word has it that Rachel was raised in the Narrows when she was young - that she was there the night the fear poison (and that’s what all kids call it, because toxin is a word none of them fully comprehend) drove everybody crazy except the kids living out in Suburbia, like Joey and the gang.
Rachel’s alright, really. She’s nice, smart, athletic and (Joey only has told himself this) pretty. But sometimes, you can tell that she’s not all there - her eyes move a little too quickly, her sense of humor is a little off-kilter and scary.
[“Good kid,” Joey’s parents would say, “but when she gets older, I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley.”]
“So it’s just you and me now,” she says after a moment. “Should I rat on you like Sammy did on Harvey?”
He shakes his head, tries to move into a seated position. “That’d be pretty bratty of you,” he admits.
The burlap sack nods, and then Rachel stands. “I know. I’m a bad guy, but I’m not that mean.” She lowers a hand to Joey.
“Thanks,” he says, as she pulls him up.
“Yup.”
Beat.
“So...”
Rachel looks out over the yard, considers. “Holly’s probably trying to run them off her tail.”
“Won’t get very far,” Joey coughs, then covers his mouth quickly, “considering that she’s got Brian, Harvey and Sammy chasing after her.”
“Yeah, but Brian’s probably tired.”
“Really?”
Scarecrow Rachel tilts her head towards Joey and the irritated look beneath the burlap is palpable. Joey takes a step back, corrects himself.
“‘Kay. So do we just go to base?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. You still wanna be a villain?”
“Yeah. Harvey’s probably gonna try to be Batman.”
“He usually does.”
They start walking (silently, though, because the last time Joey got caught in the Vitesli’s yard, he got grounded and had his allowance taken away for a week and a half). Break into a jog towards the next fence that Rachel scales easily and Joey climbs a little more clumsily, cursing when one plank digs into his left knee.
They land in home yard, low to the ground and quiet.
Another shriek from the front. Joey waits for a sign that someone might be back here when Rachel speaks again.
“Holly. Let’s just run.”
It’s definitely anti-climactic, their arrival to that gnarled old tree stump in the middle of the Edsi’s backyard (a thing too deep-rooted for Mr. Edsi to try to pull out, too damn ugly to really let be seen by the neighbors, so Mrs. Edsi tries to disguise it with dusty and ripped lawn-furniture). They manage to witness Holly’s fall from villainess status as she trips into the backyard, caught by - of all people - a victorious (if gasping for breath) Sammy/Poison Ivy. Batman Brian and Harvey Hatter follow shortly thereafter, wheezing. The group huddles around Holly, gloating only briefly as Holly rises from the ground and points a finger.
“Look.”
Batman, the Mad Hatter and Poison Ivy turn, surprised.
“How did you get back here?” Brian asks and then, when he sees Rachel, “Whoa. Nice costume.”
“Scary,” Harvey adds.
“Thanks.”
“Magic,” Joey says. “I’m awesome that way.”
Brian rolls his eyes. Snorts. “Whatever.”
Holly limps towards them, playing the drama-queen card.
“I can’t be It,” she says adamantly. “I’m hurt.”
“You’re just mad because I tagged you,” Sammy declares.
Holly shoots her a look and raises a hand.
Harvey interrupts.
“ Sammy, you’re It. You got tagged second.”
“So? You got tagged third.”
Brian clears his throat, and the argument stills.
“I know how to do this,” he says solemnly.
Joey knows what’s coming and slowly begins raising his right arm.
“Nose goes!”
Index fingers fly to the tips of noses.
Joey’s second. Sammy’s third. Holly and Harvey fight for a tie (“You so were last, Harvey!”). A second passes of indistinct argument and bickering before everyone suddenly notices that Rachel didn't even bother raising her hand.
They pause.
Rachel clears her throat, straightening her back as she rests her hands on the tree stump. She lowers her head for a moment, then looks up.
“You better start running,” she rasps.
Fin