Flashlight Tag

I'll be honest with you, I almost turned the truck around when I saw her.

It was eleven forty at night, the middle of nowhere in the Yucatan, and there she was at the check-in table under a string of yellow work lights. Valentina Lansing. My Valentina. Well, not mine, not for two years, but you know what I mean. Thirty-one years old, same lean build, same wild black curls pulled back in a bandana, same bossy little clipboard waving in her hand. My stomach did a full drop, like stepping off a curb you didn't see.

Forty-two years old, and an ex could still flatten me. Ridiculous!

I'm Brit, by the way. Firefighter out of Tucson. I'd driven most of a day and paid for a shuttle and a boat and a ride in some guy's ancient pickup to get to this snowmobile staging area carved into the limestone jungle outside Ticul, because my friend Ray swore this flashlight tag tournament was the best night of the year. Nobody told me Valentina was running it.

She looked up from the clipboard. Her whole face froze. Then it did this thing, this slow crooked grin I remembered way too well.

"Brit Carrington!" she hollered across the concrete floor. "Oh my god, get over here before I faint!"

"That's a strong word," I said, walking over like my knees worked. "You look... wow."

"You look like you've been lifting fire trucks!" She came around the table and hugged me, quick and firm, and stepped back before it could get weird. "Two years and four months. Two years and four months and you show up at MY tournament."

"Ray signed me up. He didn't mention the organizer." I shrugged. "I figured, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Ha. You have no idea what the worst is. Wait till you hear the rules."

Here's the setup, as best I understood it. The staging area is this big open shelter, concrete floor, steel roof, two huge roll-up doors, one facing the dirt trail and one facing the scrub. Snowmobiles in the off months, which is all months here. Tournament base camp. The jungle around it is all ceiba trees and low limestone hills and brush that grabs at your legs. Midnight, everyone fans out with flashlights, and when you get caught in somebody's beam, you pay a toll.

"Okay, so," Valentina said, crouching behind the table and coming up with a big rubber boot. A captain's boot, salt-stained, cracked at the sole. Inside the cuff, old faded ink scrawls, names half worn away. "This is the Boot. It marks who is It. You hold it, you're the hunter. You flash somebody with your beam, they take off one piece of clothing and toss it where they stand. When the Boot comes back to the table, we count items. Whoever lost the most is It next round."

"That seems backwards," I said.

"That's the fun! Being It is winning AND losing!" She laughed and pushed the boot at me. "Also, fair warning, some people play to strip other people, and some people play to get caught. You'll figure out who's who fast."

I took the boot. It was heavy and smelled like old rubber and salt water. The ink inside said names like MARISOL and PETEY and what might have been DRAKE, written and rewritten over each other until it was a mess of letters.

"Who wrote all these?"

"Everyone who ever held it. You're supposed to add your name when you're done. Tradition." She leaned on the table, and up close she smelled like bug spray and lime, and my brain went sideways for a second. "You okay, Carrington? You went somewhere."

"Just tired from the drive," I said. Liar! My heart was hammering and it wasn't the drive.

Everybody else was milling around by the doors, twelve or thirteen players, locals and expats, laughing and checking headlamps. Valentina called the rules out again, loud, and people groaned and cheered. Then she did the draw, little folded slips of paper in a helmet, and of course, of COURSE, my slip had the mark.

"Brit's It," somebody shouted, and everyone hooted.

"Fine, fine," I said, holding up the boot. "I'll be merciful."

"No you won't," Valentina said, grinning. "You were never merciful at anything in your life."

We had dated three years ago, her and me. Eight months, when I was thirty-nine and she was twenty-eight. Met at a mutual friend's BBQ, she was calibrating crash test dummies for a living, which is a real job and she never let me forget it. It ended when my department moved me and she wouldn't leave her lab, and we did the long-distance thing badly until there was nothing left to save. I hadn't seen her since. There. Now you know.

I stepped out the roll-up door into the moonlight with the boot under my arm and my flashlight in my hand, and the jungle swallowed me. Counting started behind me, everyone hiding in the dark, and my heart was already going.

The moon was big and white and the shadows under the ceiba trees were deep as pockets. I walked the trail a ways, then cut into the brush, boots crunching on limestone. You could hear people crashing around, giggling, someone yelped way off to my left when a beam found them.

Then I heard her.

"You can't hide from me, firefighter." Valentina's voice, off to my right, singing it. "I calibrated crash dummies for six years. I know how bodies move through space."

"That's the creepiest trash talk I've ever heard," I yelled back.

"Come out where I can light you up."

And here's where I need to explain what my dumb self did. Because I could have gone quiet. I could have circled around and tagged her. Instead I stood up on a low rock ridge and shined my own light toward her voice and called out, "Right here, Lansing. Come and get me."

Her beam swung and hit me full in the legs.

"Gotcha," she screamed, delighted.

Rules are rules. I laughed and sat down right there on the rock and pulled off my left boot and chucked it into the brush. It vanished with a thump. Somewhere behind me a voice yelled "ONE!"

"Your aim is terrible, I gave you that one," I called.

"Take what the light gives you." And she was moving, I could hear her boots on the rock, quick and light. She'd always been quick. Soccer in college, never let me forget that either.

I hopped down off the ridge on one boot and one sock and started hunting, sweeping my light through the trees. Caught a guy named Petey behind a boulder, he groaned and shed his hat. Caught a woman who I think was Ari and lost her again in the brush. The tournament was chaos and I was loving it, and in the back of my head, all of it, Valentina's voice kept pulling at me like a hook.

Then her beam found me again.

It caught me square across the chest and torso, and she whooped from somewhere upslope. "Fire-resistant jacket. Lose it."

"It's not fire-resistant, it's just a jacket."

"Lose it anyway, rule-lawyer."

I laughed so hard I nearly fell over. But I unzipped it, slow, and I don't know why I went slow, except that her light was on me and I could feel her watching through the dark. I shrugged it off