princess [rt]

xviii. street fighters

Late August...

Mallory's POV

"Mal, if this is going to work out at all, you really need to learn how to play Street Fighter, not just mash a bunch of buttons." Richie rolls his eyes as the screen projects "GAME OVER". Richie was trying to teach me how to play the game, but it was hard to understand everything.

"I'm trying. And hey, when was the last time you even picked up a book?" I sass back, placing another quarter into the game.

"When did school get out?"

I roll my eyes and press start. The fight starts and I frantically beginning pushing buttons, not knowing what I'm doing.

"Why are you jumping? Just punch him!" Richie laughs, running his fingers through his hair.

"Help me! I have no idea what I'm doing!"

Richie places his hands on top of mine as he started taking control of the joysticks. He starts moving the joystick, jumping over the enemies' fireballs and attacks. My cheeks start to burn as Richie's hand stayed on top of mine. It was a nice feeling.

Richie had been showing me new things almost every week. I had already "mastered" Ms. Pacman and Dig Dug. Street Fighter was the next challenge. Also, Richie's favorite game.

"You can't just smash all the buttons randomly and expect to win. That's like having sex with everyone within our grade. You end up with some disease and die from seeing Eddie naked."

I roll my eyes. "First of all, that's disgusting. Second of all, that's not true at all because I've already won two fights, and third of all, that's disgusting!" I start to press random buttons again and watch as my character jumps and rolls on the floor, taking no damage.

"How do I punch in this stupid game?" I squeal.

"Here, do this." Richie takes control of the joystick, jerking it down, then down-forward, and then forward. "Now punch him!" I press the button and the character jumps in the air, yelling "Hyduken!" and K.O.'s the opponent. 

"How did you do that?" I jump up in the air, wrapping my arms around the small boy. 

"It's easy really." Richie adjusts his glasses as we both pull away. "One of the easiest combos." 

We continue to play the game for what felt like hours. I started to understand everything. My go-to character, Chun-Li, was one of the only girls. I learned some of the combos too. Richie always played as Ryu, the original character.

"Hey Richie, I'm going to go to the bathroom, be right back." I begin to walk away when Richie puts his arm on the shoulder.

"You sure you don't want me to go with you?" He winks. 

"Positive, big eyes." I release his hand and walk into the bathroom. I didn't actually have to go or anything, I just wanted a break. The game had started to hurt my eyes, and the game definitely was not clean. 

I wash my hands and mess around with my hair, getting it out of my face. After I finish cleaning up, I walk out of the bathroom, back to Richie. Halfway there, I stop in my tracks.

"Bill?" I run-up to the boys. What was Bill doing here? 

Richie turns around, noticing that Bill was there.

"What do you want? See that guy I'm punching, I'm pretending it's you." Richie continues to play the game, punch and kicking his opponent. 

"I-I-I-It got Beverly" Bill stutters.