Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  BobTheeQ: I’m more concerned about making sure you four are all right. We all need space to decompress after yesterday’s win. Jake had a weird surprise, Ki and P put themselves out there in front of a lot of not-so-nice people, and Muddy

  BobTheeQ: Wait, where’s Muddy?

  JHoops: probably asleep

  ElementalP: It’s 2pm?? how???

  shineedancer: oh come on i thought we agreed to do these postmortems as a team

  shineedancer: i had to explain terfs to my little sister this morning and muddy’s getting his beauty sleep?

  BobTheeQ: If you need to vent, we’re here. I can disable LanguageBot if you need to use all of your words.

  shineedancer: it doesn’t matter, i know this isn’t really muddy’s thing

  JHoops: you deserve to feel supported tho

  JHoops: that’s the point of Unity. blue cross. black shield.

  shineedancer: ur right

  shineedancer: just . . . ​it matters that we won though, right? even if we don’t get past the next round tell me that being there and winning one match matters.

  JHoops: it matters

  BobTheeQ: You should be really proud of yourself, Ki. I can talk to Muddy if you want.

  JHoops: is there anything else we can do?

  ElementalP: not really for me

  shineedancer: just having yinz around to listen helps

  shineedancer: idk what i’d do without unity backing me up

  BobTheeQ: It’s what we do, Kiki.

  JHoops: we got u

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Emilia, Sunday

  THIS IS THE worst fake campaign meeting I have ever had the misfortune to host. For all my field hockey squats, I don’t think I’m going to have an ass after Penny finishes tearing me a new one.

  “You know,” Penny says through her clenched jaw, “when you ask someone to lie for you, it’s nice to actually tell them why.”

  “I know and I’m sorry,” I reply for the millionth time today. “I totally should have told you. That’s it, though, I promise. The whole truth.”

  For all the time I’ve spent building up the lie of my double life in my head, it took a surprisingly short time to explain it. At first I thought it would be smart to hold some parts back—the part about getting bullied off the game a few years ago and everything Jake-adjacent were the two things I considered keeping to myself—but the moment I brought Penny upstairs and sat down on my bed, I couldn’t stop myself from word vomiting absolutely everything I had experienced with GLO. The harassment, Fury, the tournament, the money, my mom, Jake, all of it became fair game.

  No pun intended.

  “This is nuts,” Matt Pearson chimes in from the desk chair across my room. “You are the last person I would ever expect to do this. Wow.”

  I still can’t 100 percent compute that he’s in on this too. Penny was right to bring Matt along today, considering he’s the one who found the video of me on the Wizzard-Claricom Arena’s Instagram last night, but it’s really the cherry on top of the WTF sundae that one of Connor’s soccer teammates is in my bedroom listening to me spill everything I’ve been hiding for years.

  When they both showed up this morning, Penny smoothed over my mom’s confusion by introducing Matt as our new campaign manager. It gave him just enough clout to be allowed in my room as long as we keep the door open and Matt’s butt never touches the bed.

  “Thanks, Matt!” Penny snaps. “Valuable contribution, as always.”

  “Don’t be mad at him,” I say. I owe more to Matt than I’ve ever owed anyone in my life. If he had sent that video to Connor or posted it anywhere else, even as a joke, everything would have gone up in flames overnight.

  “Matt, is the live still up?” I ask.

  He pulls his phone out of his varsity jacket pocket to check. “It’s got, like, two more hours.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” I bury my face in my hands. “I told you my side; can you just tell me how you found it?”

  “Hold on. I have screenshots.” He taps at his screen while he talks.

  “Can you not have screenshots?”

  “Give me a minute. I wasn’t sure it was you at first. I was just clicking through the location tag for the new arena, and they had your intro on there.” He wordlessly holds his camera roll up to show he has every screenshot he took highlighted and deletes them all in one fell swoop. “I was going to send it to Connor like ‘yo, this looks just like your girlfriend,’ but something told me to, like, stop and verify before I did anything, so I DMed Penny instead.”

  “You’re lucky I was clearing out my DMs last night or I would have missed it. I don’t even follow Matt on Insta.”

  Matt looks up from his phone to make a wounded face. Sorry, man, Penny’s follow/follower ratio is flawless, and very few people make the cut.

  “Yeah, and then I was like,” Penny says, picking up the story, “that’s def her, but what the hell is she doing there, and I looked up the company and the team and saw what a big deal it was and like ‘whoa she’s been doing this for a while and didn’t tell anyone, so let’s chill out and find out what’s going on.’ ”

  “And that’s when you called me,” I clarify.

  “To find out why you were lying to me about why I was lying for you. Because that’s what friends do to each other, for sure.”

  “Yeah, Penny, no offense, but . . .” Matt starts scrolling back through Instagram to show her the original video. He leans forward in the chair so Penny can grab his phone. “You don’t know gamers. Guardians League Online is better than most because Wizzard takes that Gamergate stuff seriously, but look at what these guys said in the live comments. They don’t even know who Lia is.”

  My stomach drops. I’d been avoiding social media except for a few quick checks of my private accounts to keep up appearances all weekend. I definitely didn’t think to check what the comments on the arena’s live video looked like.

  Penny glances at the screen, then grabs the phone from Matt’s hand. “Holy shit,” she mutters as she scrolls, “you didn’t show me this on Saturday. Lia, have you seen this?”

  “No, and I don’t want to. Please don’t show me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My curiosity gets the better of me. “Is it . . . really bad?”

  Matt takes his phone from Penny, far more gently than she snatched it from him in the first place. “Some of it is good. It kind of starts out with a bunch of assholes being like ‘I bet she’s awful, fuckin’ SJWs, Fury just has her on there for a diversity slot.’ This one guy was being loud in there. You can see his comments popping up a lot.”

  Penny grabs the phone back to see who Matt is talking about. He surrenders it willingly.

  “Anyway, the comments kept going through the rest of your match, so right after it ended, that guy kind of had to, uh . . .”

  The live video must have shown my checkmate! I poke at the screen in Penny’s hands to scrub forward, and sure enough, the guy who was being a jerk before got completely dunked on after Fury’s win.

  Okay, that tastes good. That tastes really, really good. It sucks that it took winning to shut that guy up, since it only proves what I’ve known since the first time I played GLO—I have to be unassailably great to prove I belong in the same room as guys who are half as good. That’s something I’m used to, though. It’s the same fight I have at school, or in my extracurriculars, or literally anywhere else I occupy space in Hillford. It’s why my parents are so hard on me, I think. They really can’t find out about any of this.

  “Some of the comments before you won are bad, bad,” Matt explains. “But after the checkmate, it was like”—he makes a brain-exploding motion around his head—“goddess mode, who is KNOX, yada yada yass queen, and now everyone wants to find out who you are.”

  “But the bad ones were still commenting!” Penny adds, gesturing to the phone again. “What is wrong with these people? She’s just playing a stupid game, and they’re acting
like Lia broke into their house and cut their dicks off!”

  Matt and I explain at the same time:

  “Yeah, they’re kind of—” “That’s the vibe.” “Guys are bad. I’m a guy and, like, it’s bad.”

  I really do envy Penny’s confused expression. Bless anyone who’s never ventured into the gaming underbelly of the culture war.

  “That’s why I keep it all separate,” I say once Matt and I stop talking over each other. “It’s the internet, Pen. They love figuring stuff out, and it’s honestly a toss-up. Some of them want to find me to tell me I’m awesome; some of them want to send a SWAT team to execute me on my couch. If they get my name, it’s easy to find out where I go to school”—I look pointedly at Penny and Matt—“and who my friends are. It’s better for everyone if nobody else knows I’m KNOX.”

  “And what about Jake? Will they do that to him too?” Penny asks.

  Matt snorts. “He’s literally a nerdy white guy.”

  I hold my hand up. “Actually, he needs to be a secret too. My team wouldn’t be thrilled if they knew I was friends with anyone else competing in the tournament.”

  “Since when are you friends with him? I have no idea who ‘Jake’ is,” Penny says. She still has Matt’s Instagram open and doesn’t ask before typing in his search bar.

  “No, that’s fine, you can use my phone for that,” Matt mutters under his breath.

  I lock eyes with Matt across the room while Penny searches. He looks more amused than ticked that Penny’s taken over his phone, and I try to give him a thank-you smile while she’s distracted. He shrugs in response.

  “It’s Jake what?” Penny asks.

  “Hooper,” I reply.

  “Ugh, private profile. I can’t get a look at him.”

  “Let me see.” I lean over her shoulder. The profile she’s looking at has Team Unity’s logo as its thumbnail. “That’s him. But again—I’m not really friends with him. We knew each other when we were kids, and he recognized me at the tournament, so I had to say hi and, like, bring him up to speed. It’s nothing.”

  Penny raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t say it was anything. You said you were friends, and now it’s nothing. Do you trust him?”

  “I do. He’s cool. I mean, he’s not, like, at all. He’s fine.” It feels weird to be talking about Jake with Penny. The world-smashing tectonic crunch of discussing GLO with Penny was hard enough. With one of Connor’s friends here, I can’t tell her about what happened with Jake. Does that mean I’m lying?

  It’s not like I can omit a negative. Nothing happened when we were in my car after the tournament. Something almost did, but the almost means it didn’t happen. I didn’t kiss Jake Hooper. See, truth! Lawful good all the way down.

  “Yo, is this your setup? This is sick.” While I’ve been watching Penny cycle through Matt’s social media in an attempt to find Jake, Matt apparently got bored and started opening the drawers in my desk. He’s found where I keep my gaming PC, rigged inside a cabinet I made from taking the desk drawers out and gluing the fronts together to make a false door. You’d think I need a better hiding place, but the desk was a hand-me-down from my dad, and those drawers had been stuck for ages. My parents don’t think I have the skills to fix a stuck drawer, let alone build and hide an entire PC.

  “Yep. That’s Florence,” I say nervously. I don’t like Matt having my secret cabinet open while my bedroom door isn’t closed.

  “You built a computer and named it Florence?” Penny snorts. I know she still loves me, but she’s not going to let me live a single second of my newly discovered nerdhood down, potentially ever.

  “Of course, ’cause she’s the machine,” Matt says matter-of-factly. “That’s dope.”

  For the second time since Saturday, I realize I’ve massively underestimated a boy in my orbit. Matt Pearson couldn’t pass a history quiz without a TARDIS, but he’s no dummy. I’d never tell him how little I thought of him before, but I am about to throw a rare compliment in Matt’s direction when my mom calls us down for lunch.

  “Oh, I’m not really that hungry,” Matt says. Penny tilts her head at him like she’s looking at a picture of a puppy in a hat.

  “Sweet summer child. You can’t turn down food in this house,” she explains.

  I take Matt’s phone from Penny’s hands and haul myself off the bed to hand it back to him. “Just eat and don’t say anything about anything.”

  Halfway to the door, Penny taps my arm and waves Matt on to go downstairs. “I need to talk to Lia for a second,” she says. Matt eyes both of us, Penny smiling and me looking gently terrified, and takes the out he is given. Once we hear my parents greet him in the kitchen, Penny pushes the door to my bedroom closed with the tip of her finger.

  “I’m still mad,” she says. “When you asked me to cover for you, I thought you wanted to hang out with Connor or do something, I don’t know, normal?”

  “Penny, I—”

  She grabs a pen from my desk and holds it up. “I have the talking stick. This tournament is a big deal for you. I get that. I mean, the money alone is huge, but there are going to be weekends where I need my VP available for real campaign meetings. And after-school stuff too. How often do you practice with your team . . . Angry?” She hands me the pen.

  “Fury. Every night, pretty much. Even after field hockey I’m up till midnight or sometimes later.” I don’t have much else to say beyond that, so I pass the pen back.

  “That’s not going to work,” she sighs. “I’m dropping you from the ticket.”

  I try to yank the pen back to respond, but Penny holds it tight. Can she just let me explain?

  “No, nuh-uh. You don’t hide a huge part of your life from your best friend unless it’s something really important, but come on. You signed up for this tournament knowing you’d be half-assing my campaign. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  I’ve been so focused on getting Penny to seem less angry that I wasn’t really paying attention to her feelings until now. She’s not mad, I don’t think, but she’s hurt. If I were her, I’d be hurt too. I’ve blown her off so many times for GLO-related stuff, and she’s smart enough to put those skipped diner nights and sorry-I-can’t-sleepovers together now that she knows the whole story.

  “I . . .” I look at the pen in Penny’s hands. She places it slowly back on my desk. “I wanted to be a good candidate, you know.”

  “You’re the perfect candidate, actually. Well, you were.” She punctuates that with a sarcastic toss of her braids. “I thought you were, at least.”

  “Will you let me fix it?” There has to be something I can do. I can draw up a list, convince anyone to be on her ticket, do cartwheels in the cafeteria on election day, anything to help get Penny out of the mess I put her in.

  “Let you? You’re gonna fix it,” Penny replies. “And if you pull this off, I’ll do you one better.”

  Pull what off? What am I pulling off?

  “I want Connor on my ticket,” she says simply. “He can get me the soccer team, and, like, half the school is in love with him, so that will make up for losing the athlete loyalty I’d earn with you.”

  “You want to run with Connor?” I mean, cool strategy, but that’s a way bigger get for Penny than asking me, her . . . ​ objectively shitty best friend. I’m going to have to work this out for her. It’s the least I can do.

  “Yup. He was my second choice, and you’re going to convince him for me. While you do that, I’ll cover for you with your parents on tournament days. If you lose . . . ​we’ll explain that you dropped out to focus on Model UN or something.”

  “And if I win?”

  Penny wraps me in a hug. Wait, I thought she was mad at me. Is Penny inventing a new, angry hug? “If you win, you’ll have new problems and even God can’t save you.” Well when you put it that way, damn. “This whole thing is just so you.”

  “You think so?” I gasp when she releases me.

  “I mean, yeah. Only you would be Olympic-level
good at something and never tell anyone about it. You’re, like, obsessed with making everything so much harder than it needs to be. I’m your friend, Lia! It really sucks that you didn’t trust me. I don’t know. It hurts that I had to find out through Matt.”

  I think back to Matt deleting the screenshots without me asking and letting Penny use his phone mid-warpath. “He’s actually not that bad.”

  “Right? Go figure. He might make a half-decent campaign manager for real.” She opens the door to start going downstairs. “Imma go hire him.”

  “Wait!” I say. I kneel down and close my PC’s false cabinet. Penny watches me line up the hinges and shakes her head in disbelief.

  “Florence,” she mutters, “my god.”

  I’m impressed with how much restraint my parents have shown with lunch knowing we have guests over. Penny’s here all the time, but Matt is New People, so I thought there’d be a spread of enormous proportions—instead it is merely massive. My dad grilled some chicken and chopped it up for salad in a bowl big enough to bathe a spaniel, and Mom threw together a cheese board that takes up half of our kitchen island. When the two of us get to the kitchen, Matt is thoroughly entranced by my dad, who is using a pair of chopsticks to flip thin medallions of plantain in a pan of bubbling oil.

  “Yo, Lia, can I come here for lunch all the time?” Matt asks. “The plantain chips in the vending machine at school suck compared to these.”

  “It’s all in the timing, young Padawan,” my dad explains. “Here, that one’s almost ready to flip.” He hands the chopsticks to Matt, who holds them like Obi-Wan just trusted him with a lightsaber.

  Dad smiles and points to Matt’s first frying attempt. “I like this kid. Matt, are you into computers at all?”

  Matt nods robotically, focused entirely on his chips. I think he’s actually breaking a sweat from sheer concentration. “Yeah, my brother builds ’em.”

  “After lunch I’ll show you what I have in my office. No one else around here is a techie. I might have some components your brother would be interested in.”

  Matt breaks focus to look over his shoulder at me. Yeah, I know, dude. Telling my dad I picked up more computer skills than he knows would be mad suspicious. He doesn’t know about Florence, and that’s exactly how I like it.