Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  In the immortal words of John Mulaney, we don’t have time to unpack all that. First of all, I’d smoke any one of Connor’s friends at Madden, though it’s not his fault he doesn’t know that. Second of all, girlfriend? I need to clear some stuff up with this boy, like, yesterday.

  But first: getting home. Connor’s voicemail disappears when I swipe through my phone and connect my map app to the car’s Bluetooth. Everyone else is still inside watching the day’s final GLO rounds, so there’s no one in the parking lot to slow me down when I pull out of my spot and make my way toward the side exit. Almost no one.

  Jake’s still there, looking wet and miserable in my rearview mirror with no bus in sight across the entire abandoned lot. I glance at my map. Thirty-five minutes back to Hillford without traffic, forty given traffic and the current total downpour. I have time. I could help if I wanted to.

  Why should I, though? The easiest thing to do would be to have faith in his niceness and ignore him at school and for the rest of the tournament. Being seen with him at either place could lead anyone to make the connection between KNOX and Emilia Romero, student at Hillford West. I’ve been on Tumblr, and I follow the Philly GLO subreddit. I know what kind of investigation even a blurry picture of two people talking can spark. He’s the only link anyone on both sides of this horrible divide could use to out me, not only to my family and friends in Hillford but also to the entire GLO gaming community.

  Now that I think about it, Jake was the reason I thought it would be fine if I went on voice chat in GLO in the first place. I think I’d assumed every gamer was like Jake, who only cared about how well I could play and always treated me like an equal he could learn from. Naive assumption, I know, but I don’t want to be angry at my younger self for not knowing how shitty things are.

  Jake doesn’t know it yet, but he holds the key to Fort Knox, and one word from him could burn it to the ground. Jake Hooper, who is shivering in the rain at a bus stop a few minutes away while I sit here in a warm car knowing that being seen with him is the worst thing I can do for myself right now. Jake who was once so nice to me it made me have faith in gamers as a whole. Gamers.

  God damn it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Team Unity, Saturday

  ElementalP: WEEEEEEE

  shineedancer: ARE THE CHAMPIONS

  MUDD: jesus christ stop

  ElementalP: boo

  BobTheeQ: I promise if we make it to the finals I’ll tell muddy to let you finish.

  shineedancer: but that was one of the greatest GLO matches of all time?

  JHoops: OF. ALL. TIME.

  BobTheeQ: There you are! You’ve been running and hiding from us all day, I thought you’d want to stay for some pictures.

  MUDD: seriously i know you’re always like ‘where’s muddy’ but today the name of the game was where the hell is jake

  LanguageBot: language, MATTHEW

  MUDD: really Bob?

  BobTheeQ: Don’t worry I customized LBot for everyone while we were waiting for Jake today.

  shineedancer: really? Hell! Damn! Byunki!

  LanguageBot: language, KI

  ElementalP: omg I love it even more now???

  JHoops: that’s neat

  JHoops: and sorry, I was in a weird place n wanted to get home asap. at the bus stop and it’s so cold i hate this

  BobTheeQ: You played well today in spite of everything. Proud of you and the whole team. I’m getting in my car so I’m off chat. We’ll talk tomorrow and see you buddies next weeeeeek for round 2!

  JHoops: bye bob

  BobTheeQ: Love you bye.

  [BobTheeQ has left the chat]

  MUDD: anyway we need to dangle a picture of jake’s long lost love in front of him before every match because he was way on top of those heals today

  JHoops: please do not do that

  ElementalP: leave him alone Muddy

  ElementalP: hold on K is about to start driving so I’m typing for both of us now

  ElementalP: how are you feeling bby jake?

  ElementalP: about all of it

  JHoops: wait was that you or Ki?

  MUDD: does it matter they’re the same person

  JHoops: fair

  JHoops: it’s all cool, I didn’t see her or anything so it was fine

  MUDD: i stuck around backstage to see fury leave and she wasn’t with them

  ElementalP: that is weird, you think they’d want to show her off after the checkmate

  ElementalP: Ki says we stan an intentionally mysterious queen

  JHoops: yeah i think she’s doing it on purpose and i don’t want to make fury mad so can you guys not kjfblhreg

  MUDD: . . .

  MUDD: is he dead

  ElementalP: I KNEW WE SHOULD HAVE DRIVEN HIM BACK TO HILLFORD

  JHoops: sorry dropped me phone

  JHoops: i gotta go my

  JHoops: bus is here

  MUDD: i’m not staying online if its just me and the girls

  ElementalP: get home safe baby Jake!

  ElementalP: Ki says muddy can choke

  [MUDD has left the chat]

  JHoops: oh don’t tell anyone that I know KNOX from before that’s what i was going to say

  JHoops: Fury might try to take me out idk theyre scary

  ElementalP: good idea. have fun on the bus!

  [JHoops has left the chat]

  ElementalP: hell yeah i’m gonna spam the chat with song lyrics and there’s nothing anyone can do about it until they log back in

  LanguageBot: language, PENELOPE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Emilia, Saturday

  TO BE CLEAR, I did think this through, but something about the ten straight minutes of complete silence that followed the moment I pulled up to the arena bus stop and told Jake Hooper to get in my car makes me think that I didn’t think it through enough. Do I want him to talk? Talking would mean we’re being cordial, which is too far down the path to friendly, and friendly is not the goal here. I’m literally, in the actual definition of the word, not here to make friends. Jake is in my car because if I didn’t offer him a ride, he’d get a cold or something, and I didn’t see anyone wipe down the tournament stage’s keyboards between matches. He could get everyone sick. That would be terrible. This is actually so selfish of me, driving Jake back to Hillford. And because I’m doing this for selfish reasons, we absolutely do not have to talk.

  Except that if we don’t talk, this whole decision has the air of a kidnapping instead of a rescue.

  Listen, I didn’t force Jake to accept the ride. He was messing around on his phone when I drove over to him; I’d hoped he was hailing a car, which would save me from having to save him, but when he looked up and saw me through the window, he dropped the phone in a puddle and held his arm out as if to stop me from driving away while he scrambled for it.

  “Hey! Hi. It’s me, Jake!” he said, like that wasn’t the entire reason I was at the bus stop in the first place.

  “I know,” I shouted through my rolled-down window. “Get in.”

  For all his stumbling over himself earlier, I didn’t have to ask him twice. He was shivering so hard it took him ages to send a final text to whoever he was talking to and dry his phone on the inside of his shirt. The heat from the car fogged up his glasses, but he didn’t make a move to clear them up with his shaking hands.

  “Thanks,” he managed to say through chattering teeth. “J-just need to warm up.”

  “Nope, you’ll die,” I said. It would look worse if someone saw him leaving my car after idling in front of a bus stop for a few minutes. “Let me drive you home.”

  If he looked surprised, I couldn’t tell behind his whited-out glasses. Dude looked like Kevin from Sin City—and while a bespectacled comic-book cannibal was not the most charming comparison I could have made for the virtual stranger I had invited into my car, the bright light coming from the bus stop’s painfully white lamps made it the most apt.

  “Okay,” Jake said, too cold t
o argue. He gave me his address and leaned back to let the blowing heat bring him back to life.

  That was those ten minutes ago, and now we’re here on the highway. The rain has lessened up, but there’s still something creepy about driving quietly in a straight line when someone else is in the car not talking to you. If I start playing music right now, would it be too obvious that the silence is killing me?

  Out of nowhere, Jake turns to me like he’d been gearing himself up to say something for the past few minutes. Maybe the silence was killing him too.

  “You know, I didn’t get to see your match with the checkmate. Was it cool?”

  I can’t tell if he’s asking in his capacity as my competition or my hostage, but it can’t hurt to tell him something he could easily look up on YouTube when he got home. Obviously, I have no business telling him what happened after my match, but I haven’t really had a chance to flex about my win since Byunki rained on my parade. It might be nice to put the fear of Fury in someone who could actually come up against us in competition.

  “It was cool,” I begin. How much should I tell him? “I played Pharaoh since Vulcan came out with Lucafont. Used Erik’s Special to get eyes on the payload, and I got first blood. It was a slap fight at the end, but our healers double sacrificed to give me a shot at the tank.” That wasn’t exactly what happened, but the video wouldn’t include audio of Byunki’s warnings to me, and that’s a much better narrative to lay over the facts of the match.

  “Smart.” Jake nodded. “Do you always play DPS?”

  “What am I supposed to be, a healer?” Healers are stereotyped as the caretakers of the team, so any girl in gaming gets asked if she heals. I wouldn’t have had as hard a time as a girl in GLO if I had played a cute little field nurse, but it’s not my thing and never will be. Nothing against them, but I just resent the assumption. “Are you asking if I’m a healer because I’m a girl?”

  “No! Come on.” Jake throws his hands up, offended that I was offended. “I’m a healer; I was just wondering if Fury lets you switch roles. We switch sometimes.”

  I’m not talking Fury’s strategy with a competing team, but if Jake’s team is as cohesive as they are while still switching their placements, they’re better than I thought. It’s hard enough to master more than one character in GLO, let alone a completely different mechanic.

  “I’m DPS. I’m always DPS.”

  “You hit ’em where it hurts.”

  “That’s the vibe.”

  And . . . ​more silence. I’m so good at talking about stuff when it comes to my real life—dances, classes, whatever Connor and his friends are into—but why am I so bad at this when the topic is something I actually like?

  Jake surprises me again by speaking up. He’s either one of those people who has to fill a silence or he’s determined to get some Fury secrets out of me. I glance over at his face—his glasses have defogged on their own, revealing his huge, dark eyes, and I make a mental note to watch what I say around him: Sure, he looks cute when he’s wet and helpless, but there might be a devious mind lurking under all that hair. Engage but do not trust.

  “You used Pharaoh’s special on Lucafont? The Shatter thing? We don’t play him, so I don’t know his loadout.”

  This topic is fine. Pharaoh’s loadout is a fact, not a secret.

  “Yeah, it’s this crossbow bolt that Pharaoh traps a soul in before shooting. The animation is really cool. You can only do it if at least one opposing player has died in a certain radius because the implication is he’s, like, harvesting their spirit as a weapon, which is dark but also kind of sick?”

  Jake’s eyes widen. None of GLO’s healer characters have powers like that. “Wait, that’s horrible. I love it.”

  “It’s really horrible and awesome,” I reply, because it is. I wasn’t nuts about Pharaoh when I first started playing him, but after a few months that little necro-rogue has grown on me. “And against a ghost character, it’s like ping and their spectral armor totally collapses.”

  “They must have thought you wouldn’t come out with Pharaoh if they played Lucafont. Luca’s only useful if—”

  “—if you’re playing Envy, which is hilarious because—”

  “They nerfed her in the new meta.”

  “Exactly! Ugh, I’d never play Envy now. Her support is garbage.”

  Jake goes quiet for a moment. I sneak a look away from the road and see him staring sadly out the window.

  “Jake?”

  “I play Envy,” he says softly with a hint of hurt in his voice.

  “Oh, buddy, I’m sorry.” Now I feel awful. I really didn’t mean to tease him; I just got excited for a second! I didn’t realize how easy it would be to get carried away joking about GLO because I never talk to anyone about it. Every meme, in-joke, and fandom quirk exists solely online for me, so actually speaking about it face-to-face is something I only started to do this afternoon with Fury and now with Jake, who I’ve just insulted. Again. “Envy’s great for a mech build, I guess? Is she your main? Wait, are you really an Envy main?”

  On cue, Jake turns back toward me with a huge grin. Once he sees the confused look on my face, the grin turns into a very un-Jake-like giggle.

  “I’m messing with you, Em. Envy sucks! Literally don’t trust an Envy main; they’re all monsters.”

  Oh my god, no one’s called me Em since I was little. The last time I talked to Jake, it was probably still my nickname. Once I started playing field hockey, the girls on my team started calling me “Lia,” which I sort of hate, but it was better than hearing them mess up the vowels and call me “Amelia” forever. Aw, I miss being called Em. It’s sweet that he remembered. I make another mental note, underneath the first one: Subject is still nice (probably). Adjust trust expectations accordingly.

  “I deserved that for the healer thing. And Envy mains really are the worst. Who’s your main healer? Castor?”

  “Penelope mains Castor. I play Pythia.”

  I snort. Pythia is a good healer, but she’s also the subject of more than one downright filthy piece of GLO fanart. Something about a half-snake, half-woman priestess with a big staff and a forked tongue drives the hornier segment of the gaming population absolutely bonkers, and every new skin Wizzard releases for her only fuels their fire. You ever see a scaly, murderous Medusa with triple-D boobs dressed up in a rubber Mrs. Claus dress? Check out last year’s GLO’s holiday skin pack. Merry Chrissstmasss.

  “What?” Jake sees straight through my snorting. “Pythia has good defense, and her Prophesy attack negates future damage! Why are you laughing?”

  “Because you have to spend seven hours a day looking at a thotty lizard!”

  “Well you spend all your time looking at what would happen if the Mummy had a baby with Kylo Ren.”

  Oof. He’s spot on about Pharaoh; he’s canonically four thousand years old, kind of a space lich, and loves wearing capes. Before I can shoot back at Jake’s accurate but not entirely kind comment about my dangerous son, Jake speaks up again.

  “How do you even find the time to play at Fury’s level and still, like, be you? I don’t do anything else besides GLO, my grades are garbage, and I don’t—no, can’t—play a sport. Do you have a twin; are there two of you?” Jake leans across the car and jokingly examines my face while I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road. “Are you the good twin or the evil twin?”

  Great question. I’d have a much easier time if there were two of me. We could do that thing from that movie about the magicians and be two people living the same life. She could take the math SAT, and I’d take the reading section; she’d dominate field hockey while I climb the GLO leaderboards. Imagining that Illusionist lifestyle feels almost too good, so I yank myself away from the fantasy and shift my eyes over to Jake, who is still squinting at me like he’s trying to find the telltale birthmark that proves I’m not actually Emilia.

  “It’s just me. I don’t sleep a lot, I guess. Kinda sucks, actually.” Shouldn’t have said that
. Is it too late to backtrack?

  Jake shifts back into his seat now that I’ve obviously bummed myself out.

  “So why do you do it?”

  Great question number two. Why do I do this? I take a minute to change lanes so I can get to the exit that leads toward Hillford, but this time the silence isn’t awkward. After I get in the right lane, I peek over at Jake again, and he’s calmly looking out the windshield, listening to me say nothing. It’s the first time in a while that any conversational silence I’ve had hasn’t been awkward. Everyone always expects me to have a quick answer to everything, and he’s just waiting to pay attention to whatever I say next, whenever it comes. Space, I think. This is what it’s like when someone gives me space.

  “I think . . . ,” I begin, but don’t know how to end the sentence. “What if I told you that GLO is the only thing I’m good at?”

  “I’d say . . . lying.”

  “Okay, Saga cat, fine. I’m good at a lot of things. What if I told you GLO is the only thing I’m good at that I actually like? And everything else is just doing what everyone expects me to do. Like, I’m proud of my grades and field hockey; I know I’m on a great, shiny path or whatever, but none of it feels like I do it for me.”

  “Oh,” Jake says, nodding, “is it because you picked this? Like even if it wasn’t exactly GLO, you’d like whatever it was that you picked because you got to choose it for yourself.”

  Wait, yeah. Exactly that. Out of everything in my life these days, GLO is the one thing I do that no one else told me to do. I don’t pick my classes, my extracurriculars, my schedule, and I definitely didn’t pick Connor. I didn’t even realize that was why I did this, and he clocked me in seconds. Mental note number three: Subject might be a genius. Trust or distrust, he’s on his own thing.

  “Kind of? Actually yeah, no that’s it. I don’t get to choose a lot, and I chose this. Is it like that for you too?”

  “Nope,” he says with a shrug, “but I get where you’re coming from. I just don’t, like, uh. Um.” He rubs at the back of his neck. I remember that habit from when we were younger. “I’m better at being Pythia than I am at being Jake. I’m not good at a lot of stuff, and I don’t want to be this dumb, awkward guy all the time, so Unity and all of them are, like, they know the best me, and it feels nice? To know there are people who know the best me even if that’s not, like, me me.”