Publisher's Synopsis
Living in South Beach, Staten Island, the "forgotten borough" of New York City, best friends Johnny Romano, Ralphie Molinaro and Giulia Stringer struggle to understand a world that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to them. They're searching for answers to questions that seem impossible to figure out: why are their parents so crazy? How do they live with the hole left in their hearts when someone dies? Why is the gravitational pull of their neighborhood, a beach town next to the Verrazano Bridge that still hasn't shaken off its past, so powerful? What peculiar shapes can love take? And why has a rundown arcade two blocks from the beach become the center of their universe? But the people they meet--from Joey C., the local mob enforcer, to Luke, a transfer student at Tompkins High School, to Dinino, the mysterious owner of the arcade-all have their own secrets to hide. Covering a decade of their lives, from ten to twenty years of age, WELCOME TO THE ARCADE follows Johnny, Ralphie and Giulia as they move through the kaleidoscope of childhood to the insanity of young adulthood, always keeping one burning question in their minds: How do we figure out the greatest mystery of them all-growing up?
