Adelaide Beck dared Tristan Presley to become her best friend in the fifth grade... and he said okay.
After a summer of doing nearly everything together, Tristan suddenly becomes distant with her. Adelaide had always guessed that natural causes had...
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"So what's it going to be like in there?" I asked Tristan as we pulled out of my driveway.
"Dark." He replied, "and smelly, like sweat."
"Ew."
"Well it's not that bad. I mean once you get past the stench and the poor lighting and the creepers that hang around the dark corners, it's actually kind of nice."
"Wow you're really selling it aren't you?"
"Just stay close." He looked over to me and I saw the street lights shine over his serious expression.
"I will." I smiled reassuringly at him and laced his hand through mine.
When we got there, I was a little confused. It just looked like a simple Italian restaurant, but I guess that was what kept it hidden.
"Soo," I said breaking our comfortable silence, "what, Is the Alfredo here going to magically transport us to the underground?"
He snorted, "come on dork."
I climbed out of the car with him and he held the door open for me to the restaurant. It was basically empty, with just one old couple eating dinner together.
I looked back at Tristan, waiting for the next move. He took my hand and led me to the back, where the kitchen was.
There was a man stationed by a silver door in the back, past all of the stoves and the washing machines. It just looked like a freezer door to me. He was sitting on a stool watching us approach.
"Tristan." He nodded in a greeting.
Then he looked over to me with some judgement in his eyes, "she good?" he asked.
"She's good." He replied simply.
The man kept staring for a moment longer, then sniffled through one nostril and moved to open the steel door for us.
And just like that a freezer door was suddenly an illegal entrance to secret ring fighting. Could I be arrested for just being here? I probably should have thought about this more thoroughly.
We walked through a dark hallway that curved a little and the sounds of shouting and cheering and punching and groaning were getting louder and louder as we came closer to the ring.
The hallway opened into a giant cave looking room that had high ceilings and a boxed out section in the middle. There was lots of dim lighting but I could still see all of my surroundings.
There were two men in the ring now, and people were shouting divided cheers of who they were rooting for.
I tightened my grip around Tristan's hand as we passed the people who were focused on the current fight. They seemed like a rough crowd and I didn't want to lose Tristan.
