Desert Tree was the largest residential project in Royal Valley. The neighborhood was built up from the flats surrounding the oasis city in the 1960s, and its emphasis on modern irrigation meant that there were many canals and artificial ponds to keep the shade-giving trees hydrated. Most had grown well since being planted, and they blocked out enough sunlight to keep the streets from egg-boiling temperatures—and made the community look more like a New England district than one within a Californian valley.

In a village with a thousand houses and two grade schools that emphasized its youthful population and was proud of its mastery over its H2O usage, it was no surprise that water guns and balloons were a common sight, along with above ground pools, Slip N Slides, or failing those, arrays of sprinklers that could fill entire roads with a faint layer of mist on the hottest days. It was in the super-suburb that Wes had gone to school and grown up with his friends. Similarly, Jace went to the same school—but lost his friends.

Under the 5:23 dropping sun, all variety of bugs made a ruckus as the power lines buzzed, and a group of kids had gotten together for an hour-long game of water-based combat. There were six of them, and they had gathered in front of one of the few mock-adobe style houses on the block. For now, they chatted to each other, as the one black boy of the group checked his watch or adjusted his glasses every several seconds.

“Here.” Wes handed Jace the new binoculars as they watched at a distance from their car, parked on the street a few houses away. “It starts at 5:30 sharp. The kid with the watch is our timekeeper, keeps it set to the time of his satellite TV. He’s organized.”

“Yeah, but won’t the people who live here come home from work?” Jace asked. “We’re sitting in someone’s driveway…”

“Nah, this is the Feldlitz place. They’re a nice old German couple who vacation back in Deutschland in the summer.”

Wes reached back and grabbed his attaché case, opened it at an angle so that only he could see the contents, and quickly closed it again before Jace could steal a glance. Wes revealed his own binoculars, and he dusted off their lenses as Jace tried out his pair.

“So… we’re just going to follow them around in the car or something?”

“What? No. That’s too conspicuous. We keep our distance and watch the game without risking a change in its outcome. Then we’ll get dinner.”

“Did you… do this a lot last time?”

“On a few occasions. For no other reason than to relive some of our great ones.”

“How do you play?” Jace wondered as he focused on each of the six faces for a moment. “Do you just run around shooting each other with water?”

“No, there are rules. It’s freeze tag, first off. But if we managed to get four other kids roped in so it’s five versus five—then we do capture the flag. We had three blocks to choose from, our arenas. It turned out that in our circle of buds over there, we all shared a block with someone else. Our houses were bases. That adobe is where Colin Robinson lives. He’s the shrimpy kid at the end, with the big glasses he just got at the start of fifth grade. He was my right-hand man, best friend since preschool. He’s cool and smart, and pretty easy-going. Jared Reiner lives on the other side of that block…”

Wes nudged Jace’s binoculars over to the kid with his arms crossed, who had slicked-back dark brown hair and a beat-up old Anaheim Angels jersey.

“That guy… Ugh, what can I say about him? I dunno how much you can relate, but he’s one of those friends that you think is really cool to hang out with, only you’re too young at first to realize how he really thinks about you in return. He’s already a jerk by this point. I just didn’t want to accept it yet. We eventually have a falling out.”

Jace went over to the taller kid currently laughing, maybe sharing a joke with the younger Wes. “Who’s the one in the sweet-looking shades?”

“Oh, that is Zach Pentino. He became the full-time cool guy of fifth grade, what with ol’ Charlie gone. He kept me in second place. He’s still officially part of our crew or whatever you wanna call it, but he put in the fewest hours because of his busy schedule. Guy was always a party animal, even at ten. Knew the streets, led our mall runs…

“Anyway, by middle school he actually had ‘contacts’ and was the first to get all the hot new intel—the happenings. By high school, he was setting up backyard keggers. Yeah. Zach was pretty awesome.” Wes then shoved Jace’s binoculars down and looked him straight in the eye very seriously for a moment. “But don’t become a Zach.”

Jace rolled his eyes and replied, “And the one keeping track of the time?”

“Arthur, or Arty Teller. The moral compass of our group. Reserved, friendly, always there to back you up. Had a thing for photography. Went through a disposable about once a week, recorded a lot of the moments we all shared. Funnily enough… he was also the best at forming insults to get back at kids who made fun of him, or us.”

Jace forgot who the last kid was, so he looked through his magnified peepers and re-found the child in overalls, whose blond hair was popping out from under their forward-facing blue baseball cap adorned with a single smiley face.

“Guess that just leaves the boy in the denim overalls.”

“Jace… That’s not a boy. Look again, and notice the pigtails.”

Surprised, he lowered the binoculars and turned to his uncle. “Huh? Really?”

“She’s not even a tomboy. That’s Sadie Lorraine. We grew up five houses apart. She didn’t always hang out with us either, but man, she tied us together. At least, for as long as possible. There were times when we kind of stupidly ‘competed’ over her, sure, but for the most part, we accepted her as just part of the group. She wasn’t tough, didn’t have to fight for anything, didn’t mind gross stuff… She’s altogether cool, really. There also weren’t many other girls that lived near her, so she hung out with us quite a bit.

“But, yeah, me, Jared, Arthur, and Colin—we were the mainstays, ya know, the ones who rarely did anything without us all being there. But Zach and Sadie made us whole. God, I miss them, or at least the way they used to be. Jared not as much.”

“Don’t you talk to them anymore?” Jace asked. “Like on Facebook?”

“Eh, well, you know… Things do change… Oh! It’s starting. Come on!”

Wes got out of the car as the six broke into two teams, with Arthur and Zach on Young Wes’ squad. They ran off to the east, while the other three took the west, leaving what Jace thought was supposed to be one of the team’s bases undefended.

“We have two minutes to get into position,” Wes explained. “We’re supposed to get as far away as possible from either home base. Let’s follow Little Me, okay?”

After getting onto the sidewalk on the block across the street, where the two tagged behind and parallel to the group they were following, Jace made a suggestion. “I think we should have a nickname for your younger self? Things will just get confusing.”

“Hm. Good point. I didn’t really think about that when it was just me here, sometimes checking in on… me. We could just call him my full name, that I don’t like.”

“Wesley? I dunno, it’s still your name. What about… West?”

“God no. I experimented with calling myself West in high school. It was a disaster,” he huffed as they tried to keep up with the nearby running children.

“Then how about Wessy? No, no… That’s horrible too.”

“Wessy? Wessy… Mom called me that. It’s demeaning, but let’s try it for now.”

Wessy’s team turned the corner at the intersection where four blocks converged and slowed their pace. Jace followed his uncle across the street, to a curb where they got a decent look at two entire sides of the “Colin-Jared Arena”. Team Wessy stopped near someone’s yard, its house also empty, and ran down the clock near a sycamore as they strategized—and performed walkie-talkie checks, using units Jace hadn’t noticed before.

“Whoa. You guys took this seriously,” he commented.

The three then pumped their weapons and checked their sidearms, which were traditional water pistols. Wessy’s rifle was the largest. Arthur, who had a bright blue gun with a purple tank, seemed to be looking at it a little enviously. But it didn’t impress Zach, who rocked a pair of classic green and yellow Super Soaker 50s. He was the only one to dual wield, though both guns were small compared to the newer models.

“Yeah, we did,” Wes replied. “But, keep in mind, we started doing these games in second grade. Three years is an eternity when you’re young. We had time to evolve.”

“Geez. Did any of you join the military?” Jace asked rhetorically.

Arthur checked his stopwatch with one hand held up. The moment time hit zero and the game officially began, Wessy signaled for him to go back in the direction of the opposition’s base, and for Zach to follow him farther down the block.

“Guess I was the captain of this game,” Wes explained, the two on the move again to keep up with him. “We switched around, of course. So, yeah, freeze tag… Our rules were, if you got hit on the leg or arm, you had to act like it was blown off. That could get pretty dramatic,” he said with a smile. “And a tad violent, looking back.

“A leg meant you either fell to the ground or started hopping around on one—usually you chose to hit the ground. If your gun arm is hit, you have to drop your Soaker. But you can pick it up with your other arm and shoot back, if you get the chance. Head or torso, and you’re down right away. Until you get, uh… healed?”

“So… you’re dead, and you just stop moving?”

“You can sit. We also have a shade mercy clause, so if you’re in direct sunlight, you can at least crawl under the nearest tree or something. You can be unfrozen if a teammate touches you. But trying to rescue someone means you can be lured into a trap, too. Oh, and you radio in if you go down, but you’re not allowed to give your mates a location or anything else, and you can’t talk anymore after that.”

“But since water is clear, aren’t there arguments about if you got hit or not?”

“We figured that out a long time ago, bud.”

They stopped and watched Wessy and Zach sneak over to the side of a house, look over the fence into the backyard, nod to each other, and go in through the gate.

“This is where it gets a little more involved. See, we use food coloring in our water. Red or blue. So, we can’t just refill at any outdoor faucet we come across.”

“And I hope that’s one of your houses they just snuck into…”

“It is. That’s Jared’s place. But right now it’s the other team’s base. Each base has a giant bucket filled with its team’s colored water, so pretty much unlimited ammo. But it’s easy to get snuck up on while you’re refilling, and you can’t move the bucket.”

“So why’d you go into their base at the start, when no one needs refills yet?”

“Probably just cutting through to the other side of the block, maybe going for a sneak attack. C’mon, let’s head back and see if we can catch any cool moments.”

“Too bad we don’t have a drone. We could fly overhead, see the whole thing.”

“The kids would probably think aliens or the government were invading if they saw it,” Wes said as they made their return trek. “Also, prior to the game, we get to hide three ammo caches per team around the block—soda bottles with our water in it. If you find someone else’s, you can drain it and leave it there to insult them.”

“I hope you didn’t leave garbage around the neighborhood…”

“We weren’t monsters. And society pounded an environmental message into us.”

“Right… but blowing your friends’ limbs off, that was okay.”

“So, anyway, these caches gave you something to think about. You didn’t know how long a game would be, because sometimes they were short, other times, they went on for so long that we only got one round in a day. Do you go for the refill as soon as you need it, or save it for another round—that might not even come?”

“You ever try having water balloon grenades?”

“Yeah. They made things too complicated. The literal splash damage was a pain to figure out, if water got on your legs or whatever. Better off relying on a good shot.”

“But don’t water guns not shoot that far?”

“Not after the first couple of blasts, so gunfights often turn into scrambling and dancing around one another. And other times, you get a nice, silent kill at a distance.”

A second after they turned the corner, a shouting match broke out down the road. They hurried across the street and took cover behind a car, where they watched Wessy and Zach emerge from a gap in the wooden fences between several houses, and flank Colin and Jared as they were walking stealthily on the sidewalk. The moment the two saw them coming, they were already in range of their attackers’ water jets.

Spraying from both teams ensued, but Colin was already down by the time he had reacted. Jared managed to evade the streams for a few seconds as he fired back and dodged to the left, but then trapped himself in a bush. Wessy and Zach hit him much more than they needed to, just for their personal enjoyment, and then ran off laughing.

Jared yelled at them, stepped out of the bush, and sat on the ground near Colin, also dismayed. Arthur had been charging down from the other side of the block to assist his team, but after they took care of the enemy themselves, he stopped and caught his breath. Before his comrades ran off, they signaled to him to guard the prisoners.

“Guess this will be a short one,” Jace commented.

“Maybe not.” Wes kept his binoculars up. “I think I’m starting to remember it.”

Jace went back to watching. After around a minute passed, Arthur heard his walkie-talkie go off, and raised it to his mouth to speak into it. He shook his head as he likely answered a question pertaining to if he had seen Sadie or not.

Then, while his guard was down and he was not at all expecting it, she stealthily crept out from behind the hedges of a neighbor’s yard, only a few meters away from her fallen allies—and not even they knew she was coming.

Grinning and quite confident, she got in very close, took out her service pistol, and then did a little whistle. Arthur flipped around and got sprayed in the face.

“Ugh, Sadie!” he called out, and she snickered.

She gleefully tapped her teammates on their heads, and the three ran off as Arthur wiped his glasses and reported in that he was down. Just like that, the game had shifted from one team on the brink of defeat, to them facing only two opponents.