The sound of the family fun center was cacophonous. The music attempted to mute various sounds with its beat to create pockets of isolated parties along the alleys. I’d seen one filled party room on our way in, past the bumper cars, the laser tag room, the pinball machines, video games and other devices of arcade fun including skeet ball. There were at least three more parties centered at the top of two lanes in the larger bowling area. You could tell by the balloons, the presents, and the boxes of cake in various stages of demolition.
“Are you going to get shoes?” my hostess asked holding up her blue and purple pair.
“I don’t bowl.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll see about canceling the other lane, then, if other adults won’t bowl.”
I went to help my daughter with her shoes, and realized she’d walked in with flip flops. We’d forgotten socks, but I knew that there was a vending machine nearby that sold them.
I left my group already feeling a bit guilty. I’d made it impossible for my hostess to bowl. I felt discordant, out of the gathering group of kids and adults, stifled by my own reserve avoiding a past time I’d never tried. But I had my excuse to leave the party for a moment.
Away from most of the din, I put my money into the vending machine. The machine had a paper sign taped to the glass that said it only took dollar bills. I put in four dollars and punched in the code for little person socks. The machine lit up a sign asking for exact change. Well, I didn’t have that, so I hit the button to get my money back. Nothing happened.
The food counter was closest. I walked over there. “I’ll be right back!” the cashier said and disappeared. I noticed someone else wearing a name tag coming towards me from the arcade area. I was about to attract her attention, but she walked past me, past the useless vending machine and into the employee area as if I weren’t part of the world behind her eyes. And I, just as easily, drew back from noticing her, averted by the raw scars on her arm.
The scars were horizontal, and nearly covered the area from her left elbow all the way up into the sleeve of her dark blue employee T-shirt. There was one or two below her elbow, and a few more on her right arm. Later I used a pen and made about fifteen slashes before I gave up in horror. I was making smooth lines in green ink I used for editing. Her cuts seemed jagged and raw. I could visualize the soup can lid in her hand yielding enough pressure to cut again and again.
The food counter employee didn’t return, so I went back to the shoe counter to make my plea for kid socks. They refunded my money while assuring me that it wasn’t a requirement for anyone to play in socks. “Yick,” I thought. Another attendant accepted a pair of shoes from someone leaving. I almost coughed in the fog of Lysol he used before putting them away.
I went back to the party. I wasn’t the only adult who did not want to bowl, and then I saw that both lanes score boards were filled up with the kids’ names. A full party of giggling girls. I tried to talk with the other parents in that low shout to be heard over the din.
"Hey! Look at the patterns," I said pointing out designs on the floor and table. The twilight lights, almost black light, also made our clothes shine in garish color.
Pizza came, and then more bowling and cake. The adults inhaled the last pizza the kids had not been able to eat. One adult put out the cake for the kids. I could smell sugar in the icing mingling with pepperoni and Lysol-ed bowling shoes. The kids sang the birthday song for the birthday girl. It was as if the adults weren’t part of the party as they sat at their own table and ate the last of the pepperoni pizza. Soon it would be present time.
I spilled some soda I was pouring into a plastic cup, and used a napkin to wipe it up. I threw the paper into the trash bin nearby. A few minutes later I noticed the cut up girl, again, coming out of the bathrooms behind us. I watched her change out the trash bag from the bin, adding it to what she’d taken from the bathrooms. She did her job silently, moving to get the trash as if no one would or could notice her. As if she knew that people would turn a blind eye the slashed girl taking out the trash. An employee at a family friendly party center of loud music, cheers, and disco lights, she was creating her own pocket world both hiding and flaunting herself, trusting that no one would ask her, “What happened!” But there was no hint of embarrassment for either the trash or the slashes on her arms.
I turned back to my spinach artichoke dip and watched my daughter eat heavily frosted cake, with a smudge of pizza sauce on her shirt. A popular song came on, and some of the girls lined up to do a dance, while others got out the cans and sprayed silly string in each other’s hair.
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