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The den was a mess.
Archie couldn’t be bothered fitting all the game pieces back into their boxes, but Auntie insisted, so Archie helped by going around and gathering the fiddly bits, and Auntie sat at the game table and sorted them all.
Olu packed up the leftovers—mostly the tamale fixings and the mac‘n’cheese; anything sweet that hadn’t been eaten up had already been carried off by the rest of the crew at the end of game night. Cinnamon rolls, tiramisu, brownies, snickerdoodles; all gone.
Except Jim’s birthday cake, of course. Roach had baked two, knowing his friends, and Archie had hidden the second one in their basement fridge.
She swept up all the sparkly glitter pens from their attempt at Charades (only Stede and Ed ever scored points at Charades, what with their weird couple-y language that no one else understood), and brought Auntie the pads of Mad Libs, which Frenchie had refused to play after he’d noticed the title of the sheet on top (“‘Cats, 10 Good Qualities’? Cats are witches! I’m not touching that game!”).
Then she crouched by Zheng’s feet to collect all the scattered Scrabble tiles. Zheng looked down at her from over the top of the Eternal Storm scores she was totting up. “You’re in the lead,” she whispered.
“I am?” Archie cried. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
Zheng, frowning and looking fond at the same time, went back to her clipboard.
Archie kind of liked surprising that look on Zheng’s face. But this time, she hadn’t meant to be so loud.
Eternal Storm was the most difficult of all the games they played, even compared with the card game, King, that the Swede had tried to teach them, and that bird-collecting game Buttons liked, 60 birds in one house, or whatever.
Archie was usually good at the more physical, inventive stuff, like Jumanji or Twister. Cluedo was boring, Monopoly was only fun if they played in teams. Sometimes they played Gin or Hold ’Em, usually when they needed to raise money for a group gift.
If Anne and Mary joined in, the crew played Cards Against Humanity. If Mary and Doug joined, they played Risk or Yahtzee or Backgammon.
With the kids, they played Uno or Battleship or Carcassonne. (Or Louis, and sometimes even Alma, went, “Help, my homework is due in less than an hour, aaa!” and they all got into helping Louis parse Accept/Except and Affect/Effect or quizzing Alma on spelling bee words like Librocubicularist.)
Once every few months, John led them on a D&D adventure. She still remembered Izzy’s anguished cry, “All I did was ask for a role-playing game. You never warned me I’d be pitched into it for real! And I asked for hobbits on a grail quest, and not one hobbit have I seen!”
If game night coincided with a celebration, Jackie asked Swede to invent a cocktail for the occasion, and they all played Never Have I Ever.
Out of all of those games, Eternal Storm was the trickiest, partly because the rules kept changing. It didn’t involve cards, or gestures, or game tokens. You couldn’t win it with a name change or an inner alpha or a wolf spirit. You couldn’t hide a trick card or tell chaotic stories or go “6, 7!” or gain a lead through some other grift (no matter how many times Pete and Frenchie tried). The only way to win was to be smart and quick—and lucky.
Archie kept quiet, poking about under the table for the figurines from Sleepover Party! and Area 51, and Ed’s favourite game, Absolute Fishing Disaster.
She’d tried to play differently tonight. Not blurt out the first answer that came to mind, or even the second, the way she usually did, striking like a snake. And, apparently, moving slowly and steadily had paid off.
“The Thing!” Pete had cried.
“No, the Cream of the Caribbean,” Stede had countered. “1717!” Getting in two answers at once, which wasn’t fair.
“You’re both wrong,” Zheng had told them. “One chance left. The answer to the always-asked question is...”
“Hope,” Archie had said quietly.
Under cover of everyone’s shouts of surprise, she’d shared a look of triumph with Jim.
Jim, who’d been the one to begin instilling hope in Archie, from the moment they’d met. Archie had just come out of a... Well, call it a cult. A terrible, confining relationship that had slowly closed off every chink of light in her world.
She’d found the strength to get out, and to take the only good thing from that entire decade, her pet python, a rescue she’d adopted on a whim. He’d passed away a couple of years after that, old for a python, at 27, and only now, another ten years on, had she begun to think of devoting herself to a new pet.
Back then, she’d been as disoriented as if she’d entered a parallel universe. Or maybe it was the fourth dimension— Hope. Her own strength had saved her, but Jim, then Olu and Zheng, and all the crew, had shown her the sort of love and kindness that hope led to.
And hey, if it meant she could win at Eternal Storm for the first time ever, that was a nice bonus.
But wait— Zheng wasn’t done checking yet.
She’d moved to the desk, and their tired old laptop took its time starting up. Whumm, whumm.
“Why do people use Word?” Olu muttered. “Crazy.”
“Anytime you want to take over, be my guest,” Zheng said.
“No way.” Olu held his hands before him, palms out. “For Eternal Storm? I can’t handle the crew like you can.”
Archie snickered. Every tournament involved at least a week of complaints and arguments afterwards, from Lucius insisting that his sketches of Pete should be counted, and Roach demanding that his Rosy Maple Moth Pie earn him at least a head start, to Fang asking why his pet goat earned him points but his pet dog didn’t.
“Why are people so disorganised?” Auntie grumbled, sorting the Lunch Card Loss game pieces into their relevant boxes. “It drives me crazy.”
“Auntie.” Zheng opened her trusty spreadsheet. “Not everyone grew up learning to play by your rules.”
“Yeah, mate, I’d be lost if I had to play alone.” Archie filled her hands with stray Snakes and Ladders tiles off the desk. “Roach and Fang could team up,” she mused, generous with her new status of Winner. She peeked over Zheng’s shoulder. “Math is a wonderful thing,” she sang.
“Cálmate!” Jim muttered, collecting Exploding Kittens cards off the coffee table.
“Oi!” Archie dumped her tiles in Auntie’s lap and leapt across to snatch the cards out of Jim’s hand. “It’s your birthday, you’re not supposed to do anything.”
“If it’s my birthday, I should get a choice,” Jim said, but flopped back onto the couch anyway, casual-like, one leg hooked over the arm.
“You can choose ways to relax,” Olu said firmly. He shot Archie a meaningful look.
Archie looked around. All the game boxes had been put away; Auntie was on the framed poster-straightening step, nudging the one that read Wicked Is Not Wicked half a centimetre to the left. As far as Archie was concerned, that meant the place was tidy enough. Olu had carted all the dishes off to the kitchen; it was Archie’s turn to load the dishwasher and wipe down the sink, but she was waiting for—
She nodded at Olu. He grinned and slipped out of the room.
Jim noticed, of course, but maybe assumed he needed to pee or something. Archie was being sneaky enough for both of them anyway, aiming for diversion, trying to get a rise out of Jim by saying things like, “How to teach someone English... It’s a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”
Jim threw a cushion at her.
Archie tackled Jim, and they rolled about, tickling each other.
“Quit it,” Auntie commanded, and Archie remembered that she might be winning.
“We are wild!” she cried, but she tumbled off Jim and made herself look properly busy, straightening the rug then making sure the coffee table was dead centre on top. She didn’t want to get docked any points by the fairies deciding she didn’t deserve a win and making Zheng’s finger slip on the keyboard, or some other fairy interference. Stede said that was all silly superstition, but Frenchie did seem to know what he was talking about.
Archie wasn’t taking chances, not tonight. Jim’s birthday and a win at Eternal Storm, and here came Olu with the secret cake.
She scurried over to Zheng and tapped her on the shoulder. “It’s time.”
“Good, I’m done.” Zheng pointed to the scores at the bottom, then shut the laptop. “I’ll announce it tomorrow, okay?”
Archie bounced on the balls of her feet, effervescent, like a brand new bottle of Aperol. But tonight was Jim’s night. She danced off to meet Olu in the doorway, helped him unload the dishes and little dessert forks off his tray.
Jim was making “aw, you shouldn’t have noises” but the rest of them drowned them out, starting to sing before Olu had even lit the candles.
In a few minutes, they each had a thick, gooey slice, and happily dug in. Olu, Zheng, and Auntie got into a spirited discussion of which games to bring out next time, when the kids would be with them.
Under cover of their chatter, Archie leaned in to Jim’s side, and whispered, “I won.”
“Eternal Storm? Oh! That means—”
“Yep. I get to choose our next vacation spot.” She shovelled a chocolatey-orange bite into her mouth and let it melt on her tongue. “And our next pet. I think I’ll call it... Eternal Serpent. No! Elapid Storm. Or—”
Jim shuddered. From across the table, Auntie, Zheng, and Olu all watched her, wide-eyed.
“What? Snakes are harmless! But, okay.” She swallowed her last bite of cake and licked some cream off the back of her fork. “Maybe we’ll start with a visit to a snake sanctuary.”
She clattered her plate onto the table and sank back onto the couch, arms spread wide. “I’ve got all month to convince you. It’s gonna be great, being Queen.”