Up All Night

by Laura Silverman

  I emit a squeak and jump, banging my head against the table.

  Jada’s between us, snoring faintly. Khalil crawls around her with surprising adroitness for someone so lanky, but the space is so cramped that my legs end up on top of his.

  “Not exactly ideal,” I whisper, laughing even though my palms have begun to sweat.

  “I wouldn’t say that. Are you all good? I think my heart’s still trying to beat its way out of my chest. I swore Dr. Fleishman was going to storm in and kick us both out of graduation.” Despite the darkness, this close I could trace the pattern of his freckles if I dared.

  But I don’t. “Same. I’m not very good at relaxing under normal circumstances.”

  “And these aren’t normal?” His smile is not as easy as Jaxon’s, as sly as Mal’s, or as broad as Detroit’s. It’s softer, makes his eyes crinkle, and is radiant like the faint predawn light.

  He makes me feel like a jangly bag of nerves, but maybe that isn’t the worst thing. “No, I’m basically sitting in your lap.”

  He wipes a hand across his face. “After I confessed my longtime crush. You can cringe, I won’t be embarrassed.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but I’ve liked you since freshman year,” I whisper. “We can cringe together.”

  Oops. I decide it’s the sleep deprivation loosening my tongue, and not his breath, warm against my neck. Or his hand balanced lightly on my knee.

  “Word? Freshman year? My hair was terrible back then.” He laughs so loudly, I’m afraid it’ll wake Jada.

  “It was,” I agree. “And you were still fine. So unfair.”

  The smile on his face makes me feel warm down to my toes. He leans forward and closes the small amount of space left between us. His warm lips press right against mine and his hand curls around the back of my neck, drawing me in. His lips are insistent and soft and taste like strawberry Carmex.

  A cleared throat sends us both careening apart. I land on top of Jada who wakes with a snore turned snarl. As soon as I can extricate myself from her flailing limbs and squeeze between her and Khalil, I look up and see Detroit and Malcolm.

  “Right before our eyes, can you believe it, Mal?” Detroit grins and pantomimes applause.

  They dissolve into laughter. Maybe I am fearless because I flip them off with one hand and grab Khalil’s neck with the other before kissing him again.

  “We did it. We really did,” Mal says, practically swooning.

  “We should really open a matchmaking service,” Detroit agrees, eyes shining with genuine glee.

  “You two didn’t do anything!” I groan, but I can’t hold back my grin either.

  “Gonna have to agree with Ayana,” Khalil says. “This was all us two.”

  I’m afraid for a split second that they’ll tell him about the plan, but Jada rolls over and bares her teeth. “Will y’all hush? Some of us are trying to sleep!”

  But we can already see that the sun is up and hear the scrape of tables and chairs that means it’s time to leave.

  I climb out of the fort and check my phone for the time. It’s 6:05. I need to thank Jaxon about a dozen times and hand out thank-you gifts to the PTA and make sure everything gets cleaned up, but that can all wait until later.

  For now, we set off for breakfast at Brady’s.

  Detroit, Malcolm, and Jada walk hand in hand in front of us. Khalil and I are just a few steps behind, trading smiles.

  Creature Capture

  by Laura Silverman

  11:50 p.m.

  “Ow!” Curtis yelps.

  I spin around, eyes searching for injury, but all five-foot-ten of him and his muscled thighs and his gangly arms and his I Am Groot T-shirt look entirely unscathed. “You okay?” I ask.

  “Abby, a fly bit me!” he moans.

  “You giant baby. C’mon.”

  “Fine.”

  We make our way through the shadowy woods, my heavy-duty flashlight illuminating the trail. The hunt is about to begin. Creature Capture said the Loch Ness would be released tonight, for the second time ever, between midnight and sunrise, available at different lakes all over the world. My index is packed with fairies and ogres and so many unicorns I now hate those common as heck one-horned ponies, but there’s only one question mark, residing on index box 473, the last creature missing from my collection.

  “I’m going to sell mine.” Curtis takes a giant step forward so we’re side by side. “How much you think I can get for it?”

  I shrug. “A hundred? Depends how many are captured tonight.”

  Selling creatures is technically illegal. But, of course, that doesn’t stop anyone. The game has a massive black market, people trading digital creatures and items for cold hard cash, or you know, bitcoin.

  For me, Creature Capture is about the hunt. Paying for a creature ruins the experience. Also, I don’t have that kind of money to waste. Which is why I don’t judge Curtis for selling. He doesn’t have that kind of money to waste either, so if he can get twenty bucks for selling a white griffin he caught at the top of Kennesaw Mountain last summer, then go Curtis.

  But I’d never sell a creature, especially not a Loch Ness.

  My pulse races as I hold my flashlight steady with one hand and scroll through my item inventory with the other. I’ve been hoarding items ever since the Loch Ness event was announced last month. You can earn items from leveling up, catching special creatures, and discovering hidden caches. I have a virtual backpack full of nets, fruits, and even two lures. Will it be enough? Anxiety knots my stomach. It wasn’t last time. A year ago, I spent every single item trying to capture a Loch Ness from Lake Carlisle and still went home empty-netted. But I was younger then, both in age and player level.

  “What now?” Curtis asks, as we make it out of the woods and to the lake.

  Crickets chirp around us. The air is warm and sticky, summer humidity pressing in, even with the sun long since tucked away. Expensive houses surround the lake. Their security lights cut swaths of brightness through dark backyards and shine across the water. The lake is a public area, yet it feels like we could be arrested for trespassing.

  “Um, hold on,” I say.

  I check the Creature Capture app, eyes scanning the screen. My heart jumps at the mere thought of a Loch Ness appearing. But no luck yet. A lone werewolf prowls the perimeter of the woods. A single water sprite buzzes above the lake’s opaque surface. “No Loch Ness,” I say. “Not sure if I should activate a lure. I only have two, and there are five lakes to hit tonight . . .”

  A lure draws out creatures otherwise hidden. The app will use its random algorithm to populate certain lakes with Loch Ness monsters tonight. A Loch Ness could appear without the help of a lure, activated simply by our GPS presence in their zone, but some will only show themselves with that extra magical boost.

  “Wait—I have a lure!” Curtis pulls out his phone. Of course he has a lure and didn’t tell me. He doesn’t care about Creature Capture like I do. “Yep! Got it when that dragon flew away last month.”

  Dragons are notoriously difficult to catch, but often they’ll escape and leave behind guarded treasure, like lures and berries. Sometimes I’ll throw a weak net on purpose hoping the dragon gets away but leaves good items behind.

  “Okay,” Curtis says. “And go.” Blue dust swirls on my screen the second he taps the lure. I stare, pulse thudding in my ears, waiting for a Loch Ness to emerge. Nothing. But the lure lasts ten minutes, so we need to wait.

  We sit on a crooked wooden bench. One side has sunk half a foot into the mud, the other only a couple of inches. Curtis and I slide into each other. He smells a little sweaty and a little citrusy, his body wash from this morning almost faded into nothing, but it’s a familiar scent, comforting.

  Curtis and I have been best friends since fifth grade when our teacher assigned us to the same math group. Spoiler alert number one: it wasn’t the
advanced group. We spent the session writing an alien story together instead of doing our worksheets. We then went on to spend almost all of middle school together: sci-fi movie marathons, board game marathons, read­ing marathons—­there were a lot of marathons. Every­one assumed we’d end up dating. Spoiler alert number two: it is possible for a guy and a girl to be just friends. And Curtis does like girls. And I do like guys. And I also like girls. But it’s just not like that between us. It’d be like dating my brother, which would be both disgusting and illegal.

  But things changed in high school. Curtis joined the soccer team freshman year, and then he made varsity sophomore year. And suddenly he wasn’t just my Curtis—he belonged to so many people, people who call him Feldman (his last name) or Seventy-five (his jersey number), people who high-five him in the hallway and invite him to parties with alcohol and parents who say I’d rather you break the law under my roof.

  Curtis doesn’t ignore me now. My life isn’t some stereo­typical teen movie where one friend gets cooler than another and then drops the loser like a common green fairy. Curtis isn’t like that. It’s just, I can feel the space, the gap widening between us.

  And it’s not only Curtis.

  I used to have other friends, lots of them, in middle school, but then high school happened. My old friends entered freshman year with new clothes (grown-up clothes, tight clothes) and new hobbies (Instagram, followed by making out, followed by drinking) and new topics of conversation (who is dating who and do we approve). Which makes them sound shallow and me sound like a judgmental jerk. They’re not. And I’m not. My old friends still study and get good grades and read books and are good people—but they added these adult things to their lives—adult things I don’t understand.

  I don’t judge them. I just don’t get them.

  And I wish I could. I wish I could be like everyone else. I wish I wasn’t the only one left who’d rather spend the weekend marathoning X-Files or working on a craft project instead of just chilling.

  Then Creature Capture launched. Junior year. Everyone was playing it. Like, the entire world. You’d see people running toward the same fountain in a park, cheering and yelling, people sharing their screens in the hallway, showing off the weekend’s haul. One teacher even got caught playing during class when he screamed, “OH MY GOD A PEGASUS!”

  For the first time since middle school, I belonged. Creature Capture had us all coexisting in the same world again. Emma Fairfield even traded creatures with me in history class when she asked if anyone had a fire fairy, and I had three sitting in my inventory.

  But then a month passed. And people got bored. And another month passed. And everyone got bored. And then I was the only one at school left playing, well, except for Curtis when I dragged him along. Creature Capture is no longer cool. So now I hide my screen from not-prying eyes and pretend to text when I’m really throwing nets to catch gnomes and particularly pesky leprechauns—those guys take ages to catch but usually come with a gold pot of fruit.

  And I’m glad Curtis had a lure to use tonight but upset he didn’t mention it earlier. He has a life outside of this game, so of course he wouldn’t think to mention his lure when I’ve been cultivating my inventory for weeks. Embarrassment crawls across my skin. If I can just catch a Loch Ness tonight, I’ll have a complete index. And then maybe I can be done with Creature Capture forever. Next year we’ll be off to college, and I can move on to normal teenage stuff. Next year I can be like everyone else.

  Suddenly, a screech blasts out from our phones, the iconic sound of a creature appearance. My heart jumps in my throat, and I scramble to get a firm grip so I can—

  And it’s another freaking werewolf. Of course it is.

  “Must have lured it out from the woods,” Curtis says. “Those guys breed like werebunnies. I have like thirty of them in my index.”

  I sigh as I watch the werewolf sniff around my screen. Werewolves are one of the most common creatures, not worth the cost of a single net to catch them.

  Curtis gives me a sympathetic smile. “Nessy could still come, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, but my mood dips even lower than before. Suddenly I’m convinced this whole hunt will be a failure. I won’t catch a Loch Ness. I won’t complete my index. And I’ll have wasted Curtis’s entire night on this loser game. I just want to be done with this. It’s so embarrassing—

  A noise breaks the silence. But it’s not from our phones. It’s footsteps, quick ones, crashing through the woods, and mingled voices. “Hurry up!” one voice says.

  “I’m wearing flip-flops!” another replies.

  My stomach clenches as two people emerge from the woods, barreling toward us at a full-fledged run. Curtis yelps, scared—because of course—but then he stands up and narrows his eyes. “Is that you Twenty-two?”

  “Seventy-five!” Emily shouts. Emily Clifton, star soccer player, classmate who hasn’t said more than five words to me since middle school. She tightens her ponytail as she asks, “Y’all set the lure, huh?”

  “Sure did,” Curtis replies.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  What?

  Emily Clifton plays Creature Capture?

  No, that can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense.

  “Cool! This is my sister, Gracie,” Emily says. “She loves this game, got the parental permission to hunt after midnight and everything. Any luck yet?”

  Ah, there it is. Emily doesn’t play, not really. Her little sister is dragging her around like I’m dragging around Curtis because Creature Capture is a game for cute little kids and nerds. Real nerds. Not Marvel-movies-and-marathon-the-new-season-­of–Stranger Things nerds. Embarrassment clings to my cheeks. Gracie looks at least a few years younger than us. Her hair is braided into two buns, in a Princess Leia way I could never pull off. Even this middle schooler is cooler than me. Of course she is.

  “No luck yet,” Curtis says. “Think the lure has a minute left though.”

  All four of us turn to our screens, watching as the final seconds tick down. Unease tightens my muscles. I wanted to have fun tonight, catch a Loch Ness with my best friend. But now I feel like I can’t let my enthusiasm for the game show.

  “And . . . time!” Gracie bounces on her feet. “Where to next?”

  “Abby mapped out a route. Y’all can join us!” Curtis offers.

  Mapped out a route. I want to kill him, but I really don’t see myself adjusting well to prison life.

  “Cool, thanks,” Emily replies. “I have a few lures if you guys need more.”

  At that, my eyes flick up and meet hers. I have two lures, so if she has a few, that will cover all four lakes, greatly increasing our chances of catching a Loch Ness. I bet they’ve been collecting dust in her inventory for years. “Oh.” My voice feels stuck in my throat. “Cool.”

  Emily grins, then tilts her head. “Abby, right? I think we have calc together.”

  “Um, history. I think.”

  I know it’s history.

  As we all walk back through the woods together, I tell myself it’s okay. I shouldn’t care what anyone thinks of me playing this game, especially not someone who can’t remember what class we share. I have a better chance of catching a Loch Ness now. This is a good thing. An objectively good thing.

  My hand tightens around my flashlight.

  Objectivity is bullshit.

  1:24 a.m.

  “I like the music,” Emily says as we pull into the parking lot of the second lake. It’s tiny, more pond than lake, and only a dozen feet from the parking lot. The entire zone can be activated from one spot, so we can hunt from the car. It took us thirty minutes to get here, thirty minutes of Emily, Curtis, and Gracie chatting and me silent, charging my fully charged phone.

  “It’s Abby’s Spotify mix,” Curtis replies. “She’s a wizard with playlists.”

  I stare
intently at my phone, cheeks burning red. I love putting together playlists. It’s awesome—like assigning a soundtrack to my life—but it’s nerve-racking to have people other than Curtis listen. I rack my brain and try to remember if there are any embarrassing tracks on We’re Here Tonight, Part II.

  “Very cool,” Emily replies.

  “Thanks,” I say so softly she definitely doesn’t hear me.

  “Y’all see anything?” Gracie asks, eyes on her screen.

  “I’ll drop a lure,” Emily offers.

  Should I volunteer to drop one instead? Am I greedy for hoarding mine? I’ll use them when I need to, but Emily and Gracie might decide to ditch this hunting party early, and then I’ll only have one left. Before I can reply, Emily taps her screen, and the blue dust swirls on mine.

  And then, a cacophony of screeching invades the car.

  “Whoa!” Emily says.

  “A horde!” Gracie screams with glee.

  Every now and then a lure activates an entire horde of creatures. Pixies and griffins cloud the sky. Mermaids and kelpies consume the lake. My pulse ricochets as I rotate the screen, eyes hunting in Where’s Waldo desperation for a Loch Ness somewhere in the melee. The sounds amplify as people capture creatures. I don’t want to waste any nets on commons, but I need to clear my screen to see if a Loch Ness is here. Crap. What do I do? My palms sweat.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  I could ask if anyone else sees a Loch Ness. But does that sound too desperate? If I weren’t so into this game, I’d be tossing nets left and right like a casual player, like Curtis. Desire for a Loch Ness versus desire to not seem like a freak battle against each other. Eventually, I muster up the courage to ask, “Um, anyone see a Loch Ness?”

  But no one hears me in the melee.

  “FUCK YOU, KELPIE!” Curtis screams, then looks up with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, dude is pissing me off.”