I nearly say, “Les?” to clarify, but I don’t, because maybe he has a weird lisp and I’d be calling attention to it, and besides, are guys really named Les nowadays? He said Lesh. Lesh. I say it back to feel it in my teeth on the sides of my mouth. I say it again.
“Okay,” he says. “Yes, Lesh.”
“Sorry,” again. “I guess I’ll see you.” And I’m up, with my tray, on the way to the bus window.
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CHAPTER 12
LESH TUNGSTEN
I walk home alone. I walk home alone because I don’t want to see Greg. I just want to whisper her name to myself for ten blocks and change. I just want to whisper her name to myself until it’s the same as breathing. I want to whisper her name to myself until I hear it in the sound of my breath and the rustle of the leaves in the trees, until I hear it in the sound of late-summer rain on the roof over my bed.
I whisper it to myself to the rhythm of the music in my headphones, with each inhale, with each exhale, with each stride.
I whisper it to myself with the key in the lock, and my feet on the steep steps to my room, and my socks shushing on the thick rug, and then I say it out loud—right out loud, in my ugly voice—as I open the character-creation screen and type it into the name field.
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CHAPTER 13
SVVETLANA
The air hums. It is the life of the tree, and of the trees within the tree, and of the water—the rain and the pools, glowing with moonlight, and the water even within the plants. It is the heartbeat of the cats and the boars and the timid deer. It is the prattling eight-legged steps of the spiders in the cave to the north. It is the gentle wind circling around and up and down the great tree in the center of the forest.
Svvetlana opens her eyes. Life surges around her, and she must catch her breath. Before her is an elf man, and he presses his palms together gently and bows. She closes her eyes to him and opens them again, in the manner of a gentle curtsy. He speaks of the power of life, and he tells her, “Kill six pigs.”
“Really?” she says, for she—a holy elf woman, practically bubbling over with light and goodness—did not expect to have to do exactly what the heathen, animalistic, violent orcs had to do. Still, she complies, and, spotting a small pig not far off—it is the color of young dandelions, speckled with black, and stands out strongly against the deep greens of the forest—raises her hands to cast a spell.
Holy light bursts from the heavens, and it comes down upon the pig, which rushes at her, its tusks flashing in the soft moonlight.
“Ah!” she screams as it strikes her ankles and the tops of her feet. She thumps it with her staff—a simple, narrow length of strong wood—and it falters briefly, but strikes again. “Ah!”
Svvetlana closes her eyes and sheathes her staff across her back. She summons the life force of her heart and mind, and the bright energy of the woods and the water and the sun and moon in the sky. It is holy, and it blasts from the sky and destroys the pig. With a squeal, the beast falls to its side. It looks so peaceful now, so timid. Svvetlana kneels beside it and says a prayer, and then digs through the corpse. She pulls away a piece of meat and a pair of frayed cloth gloves, which she supposes it had eaten.
They’d fit quite well and with ten armor points are better than nothing, so she slips them on. Then she stands, wields her staff, and eyes the horizon for another squat, rambling, dandelion-colored shape among the deep green grass so that she might kill it.
Svvetlana sits on the stone edge of a pool. Its water shines in the green-and-silver moonlight, filtered through the thick foliage all around. She has reached level four—the same level as a new orc, halfway across the world—and she is catching her breath, drinking water from a leather pouch and reading through her quest log: only one remains, and soon her quests will take her out of the safety of these novices’ woods and into the wide, wild world. Already she’s mastered two spells: one that destroys, and another that heals.
“Wanna group?”
Svvetlana stands. Before her is another elf—a man. He carries a simple wooden staff—actually three small staffs, held together at their ends with bands and twine—and a small bow. At his side is a black-and-white cat—something like a small, oddly colored tiger. He has very long blue hair, tied in braids that fall down on either side of his face. In the back, his hair is tied into a small, upright ponytail. But his eyes—so golden and bright, they even cast a golden light over her face. The light warms her, and she moves closer.
He smiles, and his cat sniffs at Svvetlana’s sandals, then presses its nose against her knee. Svvetlana reaches down with her free hand and rubs its head.
“My cat likes you,” the hunter says, for that is his class, and the cat is the devoted partner in his trials. He is a bit taller than Svvetlana, and when she looks into his face, the light from a wisp—a glowing spirit of the woods—catches her eye.
“So wanna group?” the hunter says again.
“Okay,” Svvetlana says. “What are you doing?”
“Leveling as quick as possible,” the hunter says. He runs off, and his cat follows. Svvetlana hurries to catch up. “My friend has a level-forty paladin. He’s going to meet us.”
“Okay, cool,” says Svvetlana. Together, the two elves and the black-and-white tiger gallop through the tall dewy grass toward a dark cave mouth at the edge of the clearing.
“Wait here,” the hunter says. He stops, and his cat circles his legs before settling into a lazy stretch to lie down.
Svvetlana stops nearby.
“Is this your first toon?” the hunter asks.
Svvetlana blinks twice and shakes her head. “Yeah, pretty much,” she says.
“We’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”
“Thanks.” She turns in a slow circle and spots a fawn. With one finger, she lets loose a blast of holy light from the heavens and strikes it down.
The hunter laughs. He and his cat slaughter a handful of fawns, squirrels, and huge moths. The silence makes Svvetlana edgy, and briefly she considers leaving the hunter’s side, leaving the forest outright. Finally, though, he speaks. “I have three 50s on a different server.”
She falters an instant and says, “Wow.”
He smiles at her, and a moment later—atop a long-haired, big-horned ram—a dwarf arrives. “Ready, bitches?” he says as he dismounts.
He doesn’t wait for a response. He simply joins their group, charges into the cave, and lets loose. At his feet, the stone ground seems to burst into flames. Svvetlana can only watch as the ironclad dwarf destroys giant spider after giant spider. She can barely raise her hands to cast a spell before their enemies are dead before them.
The hunter laughs. “We’ll be level 15 in no time,” he says. “Then he’ll take us on some dungeon runs.”
“Okay,” Svvetlana says. She’s hesitant to say more, unsure of herself, unsure of how a lady of her station is expected to behave.
“We’ll get you some good gear.”
Svvetlana nods, and she goes back to watching the dwarf. He’s stopped at the top of a long outcropping of rock deep inside the cool, moist cave.
“Go turn in the quest and get the next one,” he says.
The hunter and his cat head for the exit, and the young priestess follows. When they reach the quest-giver again, Svvetlana’s body fills with light, and she nearly bursts with pride. She’s leveling furiously now. These two, she realizes, will take her to the ends of the world if she lets them.
“Girls are always healers,” the hunter says. He is running behind her as they head back to the cave, and Svvetlana begins to wonder: Is he behind me jus
t because, or is he watching my …
No, she thinks. He couldn’t possibly be.
“What’s your name?” he asks. “Is it really Svvetlana?”
She doesn’t respond, not right away. She just stops running—maybe he’ll pass her. But he stops too, and she turns to face him.
“So how old are you?” he asks.
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CHAPTER 14
LESH TUNGSTEN
“Aw, crap,” I mutter, and I lean back in my desk chair and check the clock: nearly eleven. I’m slightly troubled by how long I’ve been playing, and by the little bit of first-night homework I still haven’t touched. I’m more troubled, though, because: “This dude thinks I’m an actual girl.”
I get up, crack my neck and back and knuckles, all of which have seized up something fierce, and lean over the keyboard to check the chat window.
The hunter, Stebbins, has typed: <
“Christ, and he wants to hook up, apparently.” I glance at my door—it is somehow ajar—so I stretch a little and close it with my foot. Then I drop back into the chair and groan. Of course, I could explain right now—I’m a sixteen-year-old boy in Minnesota—but then I’d be on my own again, more than likely—that is, if this hunter and his high-level friend are indeed only helping me out because my avatar has a bouncy rack and great legs.
Not that I blame them.
I decide to play it safe, and so I say nearly nothing at all: <
The paladin—still inside the cave and waiting for us to get back with our new quests—laughs in party chat. <
That seems to be the end of it—at least for now. I sag in my chair a bit and follow Stebbins into the cave. For some reason, this is easier when I know he’s not behind me, watching my gossamer priestess robes flutter around back there. Anyway, it’s just until I get the hang of the game—the dungeons, being a priestess and a healer. For now, I’ll hang with these guys. I’ll stay friendly, but I’ll keep my distance, and no one will get the wrong idea.
So I’ll be a tease. Great.
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CHAPTER 15
SVETLANA ALLEGHENY
“Lana!”
I’ve been hiding in my room since I got home from school. It worked okay for a couple hours, but Henny has been calling up to me for the last thirty seconds. It started with my mom, but she only tried once. Then Henny took up the job, calling first from the bottom of the main steps, and then thumping her way upstairs to the top of the main steps to shout again.
“Lana!”
I heard her exasperated, precocious soupir grand, and then her little impossibly heavy feet tramping across the second floor to the bottom of my steps—my steep, uncarpeted, creaky and narrow steps. “Lana!” It’s sharp that time. I slip into my bed and pull the cover over me and hold my breath. I’m certain I’m still, undoubtedly asleep to an outside observer, when Henny reaches my room. She’s probably kneeling on the second-to-top step, sticking her head into the attic, craning to see my desk, finding it empty, crawling into my room, just a few feet, and finding my bed, seeing the lump behind the canopy that is me.
She pokes my hip. She pokes my shoulder. She pokes my head.
“Lana,” she says, finally quietly. “Lana, I know you’re awake. Get up and come downstairs. The Dannons are here.”
“Oh no,” I say, because I can just see them all, standing on our front stoop, huddled against the rain—is it raining?—their pale, drooping faces and big, white, worried eyes. “Fry told us Lana wasn’t feeling well at school,” they’re probably saying. “We just had to come and see how she’s doing.”
“Tell them I died,” I say, and I roll closer to the wall and pull the duvet on tighter. It’s so warm and nice in here. All I can smell is the lavender laundry detergent and my own breath.
Henny doesn’t reply at once. She’s thinking it over.
I peek out. “Will you?”
“Okay,” and she plods back to the steps and down. She can’t be halfway down the main steps when I hear her announce like the town crier, “She died!”
There are gasps (not at my death, which they wouldn’t have believed, but at my audacity and sacrilege in saying I’d died) and mumbles and aggravated masculine sighs, and then more feet—two of them unfamiliar, on the steps, and before I can jump up to leap from the window, which would be preferable, he’s in my room.
“Wow, you are sick,” Fry says, and he sits at my desk and leans his elbows on his knees—settled in and prepared for some real talk. Ha!
I sit up cross-legged, with the duvet still over my lap and around my shoulders and up over my head, but so I can see and he can see my face—shadowed slightly, I hope. “I’m fine, Fry. I’m not sick. I wasn’t sick. I was never sick.”
He sits up, aghast and astonished. “You sure looked sick to me,” he says, and he’s desperate for a good snicker. I can tell. I don’t like him, but I know him like the underside of my down comforter. He’s been around longer, actually, but he’s nowhere near as pleasant to be with. The point is, I know what he’s thinking before he does. And I know when he wants to go all hyena. This is one of those times. “Your face went totally white.”
“My face is totally white,” I say.
“Whiter than normal,” he says. He’s sneering—that lecherous smile he’s got is at about seventy percent. And I think about what Henny said, and I know why: it’s because I’ve let this go on—I continue to let this go on. Fry believes my genuine disdain for his person is some kind of playful sparring, like we’re characters in a romantic comedy from the 1980s, and I am right now continuing to let this go on.
I pull the comforter more tightly around my shoulders and curve my back. I am a cozy potato bug. “Fry,” I say.
“Who was that guy who cursed me out?” he asks.
He cursed him out? The boy in black cursed him out?
“No one,” I say, which is about as close as I can get to a straight answer without giving an actual straight answer.
“Whoever he is, he’s a jerk,” says Fry.
I nod under my goose-feather fortress. “I know,” I say, and I start again: “Fry.”
“I was just worried, Lana,” Fry says, and I can’t even accuse him of interrupting, since I have no idea how to continue anyway. Besides, he called me Lana instead of blondie. He must sense this won’t end well. “I mean, you really looked sick. If you could’ve seen your face … it was scary. I thought you were going to puke or have a seizure or something. Are you epileptic?”
I shake my head, staring through the little breathing and seeing gap in my hood at the wall behind Fry. The anxiety is coming back—it’s the false starts, and the sensory memory, I think. It’s miserable. It’s nauseating.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I would have known if you were epileptic.”
“You have to go,” I say.
He stands. “Okay,” he says, and I know I haven’t said enough.
“Fry, I mean you have to leave me alone,” I say, I think a little firmer, but the world is getting fuzzy, so I fall onto my side, with the comforter still up over my head, and look at him shifted ninety degrees. “I think you’re pretty annoying. I don’t want to hang out with you. I don’t want you to hit on me anymore.”
“Hit on you,” he says, not quite a question. Barely alive, even.
“Right.” I roll over to face the wall, waiting for his footsteps on the steps. I wait and wait. I’m breathing better, but st
ill no footsteps.
“Is that it?” he says, because he’s still here, of course, otherwise: footsteps. And I don’t know how to answer. What does he mean? I haven’t dumped him; that wouldn’t make sense. So is what what? “What about what happened the other day?”
“When I punched you in the stomach?”
“Tell me that wasn’t flirting.”
“That was assault,” I say.
He’s quiet. Another minute, and finally footsteps. Heavy ones. On the steps, on the second floor, on the main steps. The front door is opening and opening and closing. And it’s opening again and closing again.
I can breathe and I can see, and I can sit up and I can throw off the comforter and I can walk to the top of the steps and listen to the brief silence before it collapses under six excited feet rumbling up the stairs and across the second floor and toward me. I have some explaining to do.
Henny and I sit on the back deck. It’s chilly—it’s still summer, according to astronomers, but we all know it’s autumn now. This season always makes me think of Roan—I suppose because of her color palette. I’ll see her tomorrow, because the Gaming Club will finally meet, the first of our semiweekly official meetings for the next nine months. I couldn’t be more thrilled.
“That was pretty cold, Lana,” says Henny. “Cold, cold, cold.”
Thrilled besides that. My parents tore into me, with Henny kneeling before the top step to my room, arms crossed and disinterested mug set to moderate. How could I be so cruel to the poor boy, my parents wanted to know. He was positively crushed, my mother pointed out. Do you know how long we’ve been friends with the Dannons, my father demanded rhetorically.
It ended with the two of them turning to leave, and snapping at Henny, “Hen! Don’t eavesdrop!” which I felt was entirely unfair, because it’s not like she was hiding in a closet or hanging from the eaves. She was kneeling in plain sight. She’d clambered up the steps with them, and only a person blind, deaf, and with no sensory perception whatsoever would have missed her. That doesn’t count as eavesdropping.
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