Page 8 of Now That It's You
“No, LARPers. Live Action Role Play. It’s sort of like make-believe for grownups.”
“What for?” he whispered.
She shrugged. “To check out of real life for a while, I guess.”
Kyle looked down at the three bowed heads. Checking out of real life didn’t seem like such a dumb idea.
He looked back at Meg, then pointed at her chest. Not at her breasts, at the necklace. “Stone of Plutarnius?” he murmured.
Meg fingered the necklace. “I got it at a garage sale,” she whispered. “It cost two dollars and Kendall said it looked good with my gray coat.”
The man in the helmet looked up then and gave them both a formal nod. “Sir Knight,” he said to Kyle. “We must form our parties. The quest awaits.”
Kyle swallowed. “Quest?”
The woman in purple looked up. “For the chalice, of course.”
“Of course,” Kyle agreed.
“Let us make haste,” the ogre said, pointing at the baggie in Kyle’s lap. “I see you bear weapons?”
He looked down at the baggie of marshmallows. “Uh?—”
“Poison gas,” Meg said. “Or arrows or lightning bolts. I saw it on TV once.”
“What?”
“That’s how LARPers simulate throwable weapons,” she said. “They toss little beanbags or foam pellets or?—”
“Marshmallows,” Kyle finished, regarding the baggie with renewed interest. He looked back at Meg to see her assessing him.
“So, which are they?” she asked.
He hesitated. Playing make-believe with a bunch of crazy lepers the day after his brother died would probably earn him a ticket straight to hell. He’d probably end up on a talk show featuring the world’s most insensitive bastards. Or worse, his mother would find out and he’d feel like hell for doing something silly and irreverent while she sat home flipping through pages of Matt’s baby book, her thumb stroking the tiny lock of newborn hair taped to the first page.
Kyle swallowed and gripped the bag of marshmallows. “They’re lightning bolts.”
“I thought so.” Meg nodded and rubbed her palms down her denim-clad thighs. “Shall we play?”
Meg wasn’t sure what had gotten into her.
One minute she was sitting stoic and respectful, behaving as appropriately as any not-quite-widow should.
The next minute she was asking her ex-future-brother-in-law to join her in a role-playing game.
“Not that kind of role-playing.”
“What?”
Meg blinked, startled to realize she’d spoken aloud. “Role-playing. Um, not the kind where one person dresses in a naughty schoolgirl costume and the other pretends to be the stern headmaster with?—”
She stopped talking, wishing she could yank her tongue out of her mouth with a pair of pliers. What the hell was wrong with her?
But if Kyle was wondering the same thing, he didn’t say it. He lowered his voice again, even though the LARPers kneeling at their feet were close enough to hear every word. “You want to play.”
Meg couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement, so she hesitated, then nodded. “If you do. I mean, if you don’t think it’s too?—”
Too what? Disrespectful? Nuts?
