by Alexis Nedd
Since I know I’m going to be on camera, I pull my hair back in a ponytail instead of twisting it into a bun. Normally my curls flopping around my neck would distract me, but having a distinctive hair pattern will make me stand out more on-screen. I hate that I’m thinking about that, but it’s the kind of thing my mom would suggest if she was in here helping me get ready. Better to do it now before she can correct me. I can also wear a headband since our school colors are an eye-catching light blue, but if I don’t have anything in UPenn navy, I could accidentally look like I’m repping Columbia. Perish the thought.
What would my days be like if I didn’t have all of this per-formative garbage bouncing around in my brain? Quieter, maybe. I’d probably sleep better too.
Out on the field, Mom is already set up with the camera and a tripod that she has produced out of who knows where. As far as I know, she has no prior experience with videography, but that’s never stopped her from spontaneously developing a skill before.
“All right, ladies, circle up!” My mom’s voice carries across the field and summons everyone to the center. The roll call confirms that we’re all here—even Audra Hastings, who threatened to quit for the lacrosse team when she found out Connor asked me out. She’s had an obvious crush on him forever and thinks I’m too . . . something (studious? loud? brown?) to date the guy she likes. I’m not 100 percent sure I want Connor to be my boyfriend, but if him buying me matcha pisses her off so much, I don’t mind seeing where this goes. Audra can buy her own coffees and also eat shit.
My mom in coach mode is a sight to behold. She’s shorter than most of the girls on the team but shouts with all the authority of a drill sergeant. A lot of the girls on the varsity team like her because she doubled our win/loss ratio in three years, but there are still a few who complain that she’s harsh. To be clear, she is harsh, but you can tell the girls who don’t get her are the ones who can, like, call their mom a bitch when their friends are over and feel no fear. You know. White girls.
Coach Mama separates us into two teams I can tell are set up to give my squad an advantage for the camera. She’s given me Kendra, who passes to me whenever she gets the chance, and Preeti, the goalkeeper I can never score against. The other players are assigned on the same principle, so Audra (a weak link, let’s be honest) is on the other side. We line up, Mom blows the whistle, and the game is on.
Like I do in GLO, I play offense in field hockey. Instead of calculating damage and shooting bolts at enemy tanks, my job is to pass this ball out to someone who can run it down the field and line myself up for a shot at the goal. Field hockey doesn’t have healers because, uh, magic isn’t real, but I guess our defense kind of does the work a healer would do on a GLO map. They can’t make the offense any less exhausted or make it hurt less when we take a stick to the shins, but they do prioritize giving our damage dealers a shot at scoring. Aw, this metaphor is almost making me excited to play today.
So wait, if DPS is offense and healers are defense, then I guess the goalie is the tank? No, that doesn’t 100 percent work. Tanks are strong-ass characters with more health and special abilities than DPSes or healers. They’re really hard to kill, which is why taking an enemy tank out is an instant win in GLO. We call that method of winning a match a “checkmate.” If someone took the other team’s goalie out in field hockey, we’d call it a “homicide.”
The other method of winning a GLO match is more mundane: you have to stake a claim on a payload that’s hidden somewhere on the map and stay close enough to it to jack up enough points on a payload timer. If a team member dies or gets pushed too far from the payload, they lose points. You also need every team member alive to get a payload win. To that end, the field hockey ball is the payload. Or it would be if a field hockey ball were made of diamonds and all it took to score was to sit on it while a bunch of wizards and aliens and shit attacked you with a host of elemental magic spells whose effects can be countered with a complex strength/weakness system that depends on which character you’re playing and the map’s environmental factors.
Yeah, no. GLO is so much cooler than field hockey. I really tried something just then, but this game will never get me going the same way sniping fools as Pharaoh does. That doesn’t change that I still have to play. Starting now.
I smack the ball out once the whistle goes off and pass to Julie, who can dribble like no one else on the team, and charge forward to see if I can find a gap in the defense.
“Woo-hoo! Go, Lia! Hit her with your stick thing!”
That’s Penny, who I didn’t know was coming to practice but am glad to hear from the sidelines anyway. She’s bouncing up and down so hard she has to hold her braids in her hand so they don’t whip her in the face. I check to see if Connor is with her, but I don’t see him there. That’s fine. It’s nice that he still does other things besides follow me around. My mom objected to me dating Connor when I told her about our accidental first date, but I think she’s secretly pleased that I’m dating another varsity player. She thinks we look nice together, and we do, but IMO we looked just as nice when we were just friends hanging out with everyone else.
I quickly scan the other people watching the practice to see if there’s anyone else I know. Sometimes guys show up just to watch us do things in shorts, but there aren’t that many this time. Well, there’s a few. A couple of dudes are camped out on the bleachers, but they’re not watching the practice. One of them is Todd Price, who I’ve known since we were little kids pouring beans in Monteronni, and the other is a guy with dark hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a T-shirt that—Wait a minute!
His T-shirt is black with a shield design and bluish X across the front. I know that shirt, or at least I know that cross. It doesn’t look like something he got in a store; it has mesh sleeves like a sports jersey and something written on the breast pocket. Can’t read it from this distance, but that symbol is so close to sparking something I feel like I’ve forgotten. Something really, really important.
I’m still staring at him when he looks back. Oof, now it’s weird. I feel like I’m halfway to recognizing him, and because I’ve been caught, I find myself smiling. Who are you? I’m so close. What a crazy feeling! Isn’t he—
That’s when Audra wrecks me. Staring at the bleacher guy took longer than I thought, and I miss a pass from Kendra. I react too slowly to snag the ball with the flat of my stick, so the only thing I’m feeling now is a hard weight slamming between my shoulder blades and the muddy grass of the field coming up to meet my face. I have the sense to toss my stick away so I don’t break or land on it, but the fall still knocks the wind out of me. The squelch of the wet ground in my ear is gross enough, but grosser still is rolling over and seeing Audra’s blond head looming over me with the fakest apology face I have ever seen in my life. She really should stick to sports since Penny has the theater covered.
I’m still on the grass when my mom makes it over to me from the sidelines and offers a hand to pull me up.
“Can you stand? Does anything feel like you can’t move it?”
I’m more worried about my wrists, which would be a big injury for field hockey and an even bigger one for GLO. I roll them once, twice, and then stretch my fingers. Everything feels fine. Throwing my stick away was a good call.
“We got that on camera, didn’t we?” I say to show my mom I’m fine. As long as I got jokes, she’ll know I’m not that hurt.
“Big time,” Mom replies and peeks over to where the DSLR is still sitting on top of the tripod. I’m dazed, but I can make out the red glow where the recording light is still on. That’s not making it into the highlight reel.
“You stopped midswing.” She’s back in coach mode, trying to make whatever just happened to me into a learning experience for the team now that she knows I haven’t broken any bones. “What happened, you cramp up?”
“Yeah,” I lie and take one more look at the bleachers to see if the guy in the T-shirt is still there. He’s not, but Penny is, and I can hear her
cussing out Audra in some gorgeously colorful terms. “My arm seized up, and I couldn’t follow through, and then Au—”
Audra interrupts me to save her own butt. “I thought she was shielding and couldn’t stop on time. I slid right into her, and I’m so, so sorry, Coach Romero. You sure you’re okay?”
I was not shielding. Audra attacking offense from behind would be a foul and a green card in a real game. She’s lucky my mom was too distracted by the camera to see what actually happened. Still, there’s no point in being pulled into the athletics office for a talk about leaving drama off the field. Nothing can make this practice go over; my time with Fury tonight is too important.
“It’s cool. I didn’t mean to shield; the cramp just froze me. So, you know. No harm, no foul.”
Audra rolls her eyes at me behind my mom’s back, and I give her nothing in return. She’s lucky she didn’t hurt my wrists and mess up my chance to play in the tournament this weekend. Whatever beef she has with me over Connor is completely one-sided, and I simply do not have the bandwidth to engage with her low-grade bitchery for the sake of a guy.
Guy! Who was that guy on the bleachers? Preeti helps me up, and the first thing I do is scan again to see if he’s still there. I hate the feeling when I can’t grab the information I want from my usually organized brain. I just need to get one more look at him, and I know I’ll be able to put the pieces together.
But he’s gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Team Unity, Friday
[Team Unity has exited the map. Queue again?]
BobTheeQ: Nice job, team!
shineedancer: ahhhh we’re gonna kill it tomorrow!!!
ElementalP: you’re all welcome for the HEALS
JHoops: half of those were mine but go off I guess
BobTheeQ: Jake, P, you’re both pretty.
ElementalP: pretty good HEALERS
MUDD: i wish we were up against fury tomorrow we’d destroy them
BobTheeQ: I’m feeling good, glad everyone else is feeling good. P and shinee are you both set to carpool?
shineedancer: the jersey girls are ready 2 road trip. we got pocky.
MUDD: i’m riding with my friend who got tickets
JHoops: I . . . got the bus schedule
ElementalP: ruh roh
BobTheeQ: What happened to your dad driving you?
JHoops: arghhh
JHoops: we had a fight
JHoops: my Spanish teacher sent him an email about my test scores and he thinks GLO is making me dumber
BobTheeQ: I’m sure he doesn’t think that.
MUDD: you can’t get any dumber
ElementalP: MUDDY I SWEAR TO GOD
shineedancer: no bby jake are you ok
JHoops: i had a pretty good week so I can take it
BobTheeQ: Good week!
ElementalP: DO TELL
JHoops: KOD smiled at me
MUDD: so are we thinking a spring wedding or do you wanna wait for June
JHoops: i mean she kind of smiled? i was watching her play field hockey and she looked over at me like she kind of knew who i was and I was like ‘omg she’s looking at me’ and then she fell down in a bunch of mud and I ran away
MUDD: lmaoooooo
ElementalP: she’s human after all
BobTheeQ: Well, that’s certainly something to talk to her about. After tomorrow.
JHoops: idk it kind of made my week
shineedancer: you’re so cute I could murder you
JHoops: so cute you’ll swing by Hillford and give me a ride?
shineedancer: lol no you are so out of our way
ElementalP: but we love you
shineedancer: and we think you’re smart, right muddy?
MUDD: so smart
BobTheeQ: Keep your head up, man. You’ve been on fire, everyone’s been on fire this week. Don’t be late tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the gate and I will be wearing the hat.
BobTheeQ: Wear the jerseys.
BobTheeQ: Bring the lint brush.
MUDD: very important ^^^
BobTheeQ: Get some sleep fam. We got winning to do in the morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emilia, Round 1, Saturday
A FEW THINGS I’m learning at my first GLO tournament:
1.There are a lot more people interested in watching this than I thought there would be. The Wizzard-Claricom Arena is huge and so new it still smells like paint, but there have to be thousands of people here for the opening day of the competition. I know because I pushed through most of them to get to the front door before Byunki texted and told me teams were going through the back like real-ass athletes.
2.Should have expected this one, but a lot of people are surprised that I’m a girl? I tried not to get caught up in how Byunki was marketing my debut because that’s a recipe for me getting crushed under pressure, but he didn’t tell anyone that Fury’s new DPS was a woman, and that’s going to be a weird reveal when it happens. I also learned Byunki lives for drama. I’m going to make that point 2.a.
3.People are loud as hell at these things. Everyone plays with noise-cancelling headphones so we should only be able to hear each other, but I can hear the crowd even backstage, and the sound is incredible. I think that if my parents could see what a huge deal this tournament is, they might actually be impressed. I mean, they won’t, there’s no reason they’ll ever see me play, but it’s still cool as hell.
To be blunt, my parents would hit the roof if they found out how much time I spend playing GLO or doing literally anything that isn’t going to help get me into college. They didn’t have money growing up and sacrificed to give me every advantage—my mom missed her own mother’s funeral for a job interview at the Monteronni school I attended when I was a kid, because teaching there would mean free tuition at the state’s best Head Start program. My dad worked full time for decades, taking a 5 a.m. train every morning to New York while building his VPN company on the side before he could quit and support his own business. Squandering an inch of the headway they earned is like crapping on my abuela’s grave while telling the two hardest-working Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania that they’ve wasted their entire lives.
Of course the risk of my parents finding out that I’m here is fairly low. I told my mom I was heading out early to meet Penny at Starbucks for a campaign meeting and told Penny I needed her to cover for me for something “personal,” which she assumed was Connor adjacent and didn’t interrogate further. I hate lying to both of them and won’t sleep tonight to make up the campaign work for tomorrow, but so far so good. I can totally keep this going as long as nothing unexpected happens. Right now all I have to worry about is waiting in the green room the arena assigned Fury for the tournament.
I feel like I knew empirically that green rooms aren’t actually green, but it was still kind of a bummer to walk in and see that we’re basically quartered in a windowless basement room. The walls are white concrete, there’s some grayish bargain carpet on the floor, and the only furniture they gave teams to start is an L-shaped couch, a coffee table, a mounted TV screen to watch the live feed from the stage, and a whiteboard with a new box of markers.
I didn’t expect them to roll out the red carpet for a bunch of amateur teams, but I’m sure it will be different once they start using the arena for professional matches. Maybe we get an upgrade every time we progress in the tournament like in Animal Crossing. Banners and little trophies and stuff. At least our jerseys look official. Wizzard sent all the teams a link on where to get them so we’d all look professional onstage, but we had to pay for them ourselves. Byunki covered ours, because he’s the best.
I really wish Byunki would hurry up and get to the green room. I’m getting antsy sitting here by myself. I can hear other players and staff walking around in the hallway, and I don’t want anyone else to accidentally walk in and see me. Even if they assumed I belonged here, every interaction backstage seems like another way someone can get my real name out of me or ask me questions I
really don’t want to answer. I’d feel better if the rest of Fury were here. They’re a lot more interesting than me. If any one of them showed up, I could parry any attention right back toward them, just like Byunki promised he’d do when I told him I was worried about showing up today.
I know that seems very dramatic, but I really do have my reasons. Aside from my parents is the issue of being, you know, a girl competing in an esports tournament. I’m well aware of what just showing up here could do to Fury and my online life, which is why I need Byunki to protect me.
If the greater GLO community doesn’t know who I really am, the worst of them won’t be able to find me. When I first started playing GLO, I loved everything about this game. The characters, the strategy, and the players themselves too. For a while it was enough to be good. I got invited to waiting rooms with people I watched all the time on Twitch, played some matches with absolute legends, and made friends all over the server on Discord. It wasn’t until I bought my first headset and got on voice that everything changed for the worse.
It was stupid. I was stupid. I thought they wouldn’t care that I was a girl, but the second those same players heard me speak, my inbox transformed into the online equivalent of Dante’s second, fifth, and seventh circles of hell. I was fourteen, man; I didn’t need to know what that many different dudes’ dicks looked like. My dad’s entire business is internet privacy, so my IP address was safe, but that didn’t stop hundreds of men, boys, whoever, really, threatening to hurt me when I beat them in a round, rape me if I got ahead of them on the leaderboard, and track me down if I dared report or block them. I don’t even know what they would have done if I still had an accent like my mom or if they knew I wasn’t white.
It was light-years beyond anything else I’d experienced, which is saying something considering the residents of Hillford aren’t the most enlightened Philly-adjacent suburbanites in America. When I created a new account and started over, I stayed off voice entirely and didn’t say anything that hinted I was a girl. Some of the same guys who harassed me even tried to play with me again, not knowing the person whupping their butts was the girl they tried to drown in hardcore porn GIFs a month earlier. Nobody suspected anything, I kept having fun, and one day Byunki DMed me with an offer to try out for Team Fury’s new DPS slot.