Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  “How’s the campaign planning going, Madam President?” my mom asks while she tosses the grilled chicken salad.

  “Going good, Mrs. Romero,” she says sweetly. “Much better now that we have Matt as our campaign manager.”

  “That’s good to hear.” My mom eyes Matt standing at attention next to her double-size kitchen range and appears to make up her mind about him. “Every campaign needs a good manager. Have you done student government before, Matt?”

  “Heck no,” Matt replies. Penny coughs loudly, and he changes his tune. “But, I am . . . ​really interested in civics. Because”—he looks over my mom’s shoulder at Penny and me for a hint at what to say next, but I got nothin’—“we . . . are —”

  “The future, Mrs. Romero,” Penny finishes for him. “We are the future of America, and it’s our job to learn how to be good citizens. Matt understands that, right, Matt?”

  “I do.” He flips the last plantain out of the pan and admires its golden texture. “Hundred percent, I totally—that’s my whole thing.”

  My mom nods solemnly, more amused than confused.

  “I think that’s admirable,” my dad adds happily. “You’re all a few short years from college, and that’s when you can get really involved in the process. You know, when I was at UPenn—”

  I groan. My dad has exhausted every single possible story about his time at UPenn. I hear them at the dinner table, at parties, doing yard work, in the car, through the door of the bathroom when I’m getting ready for school . . .

  “Everyone knows you went to UPenn, dear,” my mom says, not unkindly. “Emilia, grab some forks and knives from the drawer. Everyone else can take a plate and come around the island. Someone has to feed the future of America.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Romero.” Penny walks over to take her plate. “So it’s fine if Emilia comes to my place next Saturday? The debate is the Monday after and I need an audience to really nail my delivery.”

  “That’s fine.” Mom nods. My dad gives a thumbs-up over her shoulder. I shoot Penny the most grateful, wide-eyed expression I can manage and feel marginally less terrible when she sticks her tongue out in response. Penny has my back. I guess Matt does too. Last night may have been on the bizarre side of interesting, but everything is coming up Emilia.

  PART III

  Jake, Sunday Night

  JAKE HAD DONE the math, and there was a 28.6 percent chance of his dad being in the kitchen at the exact time Jake was hungry for dinner. He was aware of developmental research that suggested eating meals as a family was conducive to stronger parent-child attachment and a lowered chance of psychological problems, but as far as Jake was concerned, that ship had sailed a long time ago. He was here, his relationship with his dad was meh, and whatever his parents were going to do to him complex-wise was pretty much in the bag at this point.

  Still, he was very hungry. Bob gave Unity a break from practice today so they could cool off from yesterday’s tournament, but Jake spent most of his afternoon checking up with Ki and Penelope and trying to noodle his way through homework assignments that felt cosmically unimportant in the scheme of Jake’s suddenly remarkable life. Somewhere between another chapter of Beowulf and some absolutely incomprehensible bullshit about triangles, he felt his stomach rumble.

  Jake rose from his desk chair with every muscle in his leg tensed to stop the chair’s old springs from squeaking. He poked his head out his bedroom door and squinted to see if his dad’s bedroom light was on. It wasn’t, which didn’t tell him much. His dad slept a lot lately. Sometimes Jake would be chilling in the apartment for hours without realizing his dad had been asleep in his room the whole time. Jake crept a little farther down the hallway and peeked around the corner to check the kitchen light. It was on: 28.6, your number is up.

  He tried to look nonchalant as he strode into the kitchen on bare feet and saw Jacob Hooper the Elder eating a plate of reheated ziti at the table.

  “Dad!” he said. Too high key, tone it down. “You are awake.”

  “Haven’t seen you all weekend, son. Where did you go yesterday?”

  There wasn’t any special reason Jake didn’t talk to his dad about the tournament. Not a reason like Emilia had anyway. When he was in the car with her, which by the way was freaking incredible, Jake understood her issue as being one of systematically detrimental attention. By no fault of her own, her existence in the world of GLO was a beacon for other people’s opinions and garbage commentary. Jake didn’t talk about the tournament for the exact opposite reason: no one gave a shit what he did.

  “I met some friends,” he said. The inside of the fridge was packed with leftovers. He pulled the rest of the ziti his dad was eating out from underneath something steaky-looking and a tub of mixed greens. When did I make this? Jake thought, looking at the marker date on the bottom of the Tupperware. Thursday. Still edible.

  “You’re already making friends at school. That’s good.”

  Jake shut the fridge and grabbed a plate from the cabinet. “Not from school, Dad. My friends from that game thing.”

  His sudden need to be honest wasn’t an attempt to connect with his dad. Jake knew enough about himself to realize that. It was guilt, manifesting in a regurgitative urge to say something true after lying to Unity all afternoon.

  He really, really hated lying to his team about Emilia. Lying by omission counted, and he’d cringed when Ki reminded him he hadn’t even told them her name. Unity had a right to know that he’d gotten a ride home with Em, and they definitely should know that she was driving him to Round 2 . . . ​but telling them would break Emilia’s trust. What kind of choice was that? A smarter person could have figured it out to some grand moral satisfaction. Jake figured he’d just do what he always did and kept his mouth shut, like he promised.

  “Your internet friends?” Jake’s dad had perked up for a moment when he imagined his son hanging out with “real” people, but hearing that Jake had instead been palling around with a group of weirdos from the world wide web deflated him once again.

  “Yup.” Jake noted the change in his dad’s voice and responded as dispassionately as possible. He concentrated on the microwave buttons and punched them in one by one to stay calm. “The internet friends. We actually—”

  That niggling feeling that he should tell the truth crawled up Jake’s spine again. Just because he was good at secrets didn’t mean he liked them. “We had a tournament. The game we play is doing a thing at that new arena. My team got past the first round. If we w—”

  The sound of a fork dropping onto an empty plate stopped Jake from saying anything else. When he was younger, knowing his dad was angry with him made him want to crawl somewhere and hide, but after what happened last year, Jake found he could bear his father’s toothless disappointment better. What was he going to do, honestly? Blind Jake with his own projected expectations?

  “So you played video games. You snuck out all Saturday and didn’t tell me where you were going because you went to play video games.”

  Something Emilia said echoed in Jake’s head. “That’s the vibe.”

  “When I was your age, I snuck out too, you know.”

  There was no way to avoid the rest of the conversation, so Jake pulled his dinner out of the microwave and sat down across from his dad. Lay it on me, he thought. Nothing I haven’t heard before.

  “We’d get into trouble. We’d hang out in someone’s backyard. This time of year, there were bonfires and girls. We played real sports.”

  “Girls play video games too,” Jake said quietly. No way was he going to say anything else, though. Not about that girl.

  “Those two on your ‘team’ you used to talk about? One of them isn—”

  “Don’t. Stop it. You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jake was surprised by the ferocity in his own voice. He’d spent enough time talking to Kiki today to want to punch the next person who misgendered her, but he’d never raised his voice to his dad about it before.

 
Jake wasn’t the kind of person who defended himself even when he knew in the back of his mind he was right. There was always that voice telling him that he might be wrong or was too stuttery to say what he was thinking and should probably shut up for the sake of everyone who had to listen to him. It was the voice that made him preemptively call himself stupid before anyone else had the chance to lob it at him as an insult. When someone called him dumb, Jake had long ago realized it was easier to say “I know” than “I’m not.”

  Emilia didn’t let him say that last night. She would have kicked him out of the car the next time he said he was stupid; he got that sort of energy from her. Maybe that was why he felt okay telling his dad to stand down.

  After a tense silence, his dad spoke up again. “Fine. I’m . . . ​ Two years ago h–she was different, right? I can’t keep up with all that.”

  Jake had touched the metaphorical stove once and wondered what would happen if he tried it again.

  “Try,” he said simply.

  “Try a sport,” his dad replied, half joking. Jake did not get his tension-diffusing skills from that side of the family. “I would be more comfortable with this game thing if you were also putting yourself out there more. You can’t spend the rest of your life stuck behind a desk pressing buttons.”

  Mr. Hooper’s job was literally sitting behind a desk pressing buttons. Jake was feeling brave tonight. Bringing that up was a level beyond brave. He decided, however, to avoid that option on the conversation tree.

  “It’s different now, Dad,” he said. He could tell he was getting whiny, which his father never tolerated. “Lots of people play GLO. This tournament is a really big deal.”

  “Will it bring your grades up? Will it get you into college so you can do something with your life? Jesus, will it get you a girl’s phone number so you can take her out?”

  “Honestly, debatable.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” his dad asked. He rose from the table to rinse his plate, not even looking at his son. “I’m just telling you the facts. Last year was hard. We both had to adjust. By now you should be . . .”

  Jake got up then and dropped his plate in the sink. He knew what his dad was going to say, and it would be the end of the conversation. Be normal. Be a man. Be the kind of guy who crushed beer cans against his head at bonfires and married his high school sweetheart, only to have that marriage end in fire and flames when—­

  “. . . happier.”

  Unexpected. Jake stood by the kitchen door quietly, still hoping he had time to slip away if this whole situation got any weirder. It didn’t seem like his dad had anything else to say. He was standing over the sink rinsing plates to put in the dishwasher. He looked the same as he’d looked ever since they moved to the apartment, since he started sleeping all weekend and relying on Jake to batch-cook meals for the week. Jake’s dad looked defeated. Checkmate: life.

  “Okay, I’m gonna go,” Jake said. Be happy in my room was the unspoken retort he decided to keep to himself.

  Jake tiptoed around the corner and down the hallway toward his room, not relaxing until the door was shut behind him and he settled back into his squeaky, creaky desk chair.

  So that was terrible, he thought. What else did you expect?

  Being an all-powerful healer in GLO was Jake’s dearest fantasy. Pythia was venomous, sure, but when Jake played her character, he could fix anything. He could make people stronger whenever he wanted, and his friends depended on him to do just that. He was good at it. Jake could do that math. Whenever he unplugged his brain from the game, the reality of his tiny bedroom in the apartment he had no choice in moving to washed over him in a lukewarm wave that felt like absolutely nothing. His dad was depressed. His mom was far away. This was his life. He was an idiot.

  Stop saying you’re an idiot.

  Jake felt his lips jerk up in an involuntary smile. That was what Emilia would say to him right now. He could feel as bad as he wanted, but he couldn’t call himself stupid. Everything about yesterday was the opposite of a lukewarm wave. It was a . . . ​ red-hot . . . ​beach? A very cold pier. This metaphor was getting away from him. The point was, it was different. Emilia had pulled up next to him in the parking lot, and every moment with her was pure energy. He felt smarter and funnier; she was surprising and honest. By the time Jake got home, it was dark outside, but the world had never looked so colorful.

  Especially the part when Jake thought she wanted to kiss him. He was wrong, obviously; she’d never want that when she was dating Connor Dimeo, but as far as mistakes go—whew. A whole thrill ride in the space of a few awkward milliseconds.

  Jake let the energy of the impossible propel him to sit up straighter in his chair and turn his computer back on. He reached a leg out from underneath his desk and flipped the switch of his white noise machine with his bare toe. The GLO log-in screen glowed before him as he typed in his username and password. He didn’t have to practice with Unity tonight, but he wanted to hang out in one of the freestyle maps for a bit.

  The first thing he noticed when he logged in was that his friend list showed no one online. Unity was asleep. Jake should soon be too. The second thing he noticed was that two seconds after he logged in, a DM request appeared on his screen. GLO was good about knocking out spam, so random messages weren’t common on his competition account. He checked his list again to make sure no one was awake and clicked the request with trepidation.

  Message from: beloveandabow. Accept?

  Who the hell was beloveandabow? Something about the name seemed familiar albeit unplaceable in Jake’s memory. He accepted the message and almost fell straight out of his chair.

  Jake! It’s Em. Found your account. Penny and Matt know & they’re cool but there was a video today. Need to keep tabs on it. If you hear anything from the gaming club, text me?

  The following line of text would have frustrated Jake’s dad immensely. His son got a girl’s number from a video game.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Emilia, Monday

  JAKE IS BETTER at this “secret friend” thing than I am. I gave him my phone number fourteen hours ago, and he hasn’t sent me so much as an emoji, but he’s managed to stay in contact all day without me even seeing him. First came the note on the library chair Penny always saves for me during our free period: Todd knows nothing. Then, after English, a scrap of notebook paper was shoved in my locker vents: Jaime and Evan, nope. I think my favorite one this morning was in biology, when I got to class and noticed that someone with terrible handwriting had scribbled a cypher only I would understand in the corner of the whiteboard: ENJ: All Clear.

  How did he even get into the bio lab? I think Jake might be a ninja.

  I don’t even know who the names are. I’m guessing they’re the students most likely to have watched the Instagram live before it disappeared. All that matters is that Jake Hooper is somewhere on the Hillford West campus going full rogue on the entire gaming club, and he’s doing it for me. I mean, he’s also clearly a drama queen and could just text me the damn updates, but even his reluctance to leave a digital trail that could connect us is . . . sweet? I’ll go with thoughtful. He’s careful, and I appreciate that.

  Now that I’m at lunch, I half expect to find a sticky note with coordinates for a clandestine debrief in my cafeteria burger. I take a bite, and nope, just mystery meat and soggy tomato.

  “Check your six.” Matt tilts his head up to get my attention from across the table. “He’s coming.”

  I whip around to see if it’s true. Oh. He meant Connor, not Jake. I have a plan to convince him to join Penny’s ticket today at lunch, so of course he meant Connor. There’s no reason I should be disappointed about that. None at all.

  “He’s late. Lunch is almost over,” Penny adds, annoyed. “You did tell him we had to talk to him, right?”

  “I did,” I confirm. “And I asked him to come early, so I don’t know what that’s about.”

  While I’m talking, a pair of chilly hands wrap ar
ound my face from behind.

  “Hey, girl,” Connor’s familiar voice whispers in my ear. I’m sure it’s supposed to be sexy, but the deep weirdness of Connor’s growing expectations after only two dates is starting to grate on me. Also, if he presses his fingers on my face any longer, he’s going to smudge my makeup.

  “Hey,” I answer and peel his fingers away from my hard-won lash volume. “It’s halfway through lunch; where were you?”

  “You said you wanted to hang out, so I drove out and got you something,” he explains grandly, then drops a crumpled paper bag on the lunch table in front of me.

  I dig into the bag and pull out—joy of joys—a plastic tub with two half-melted scoops of bright green matcha ice cream. That explains the cold hands. Penny has the decency to hide her smirk by looking down and letting her braids make curtains over her face. Connor slides onto the bench next to me and looks beyond happy with himself. How am I supposed to eat like this? Serious question, I don’t have a spoon.

  “Thank you.” I feign all the enthusiasm I can for two green, sludgy lumps. “I’ll wait until it’s all melty and drink it like a milkshake.” Penny likes ice cream like that because she’s an alien.

  “So what’s the group meeting about? What’s the tea?” Connor asks.

  Penny recovers from behind her hair and raises an eyebrow at me. I nudge Matt with my foot under the table since I planned on him easing Connor into the idea.

  “We’re talking about the election, man,” Matt begins cheerily. “I’m Penny’s new campaign manager.”

  “That’s great!” Connor reaches across the table and claps Matt on the shoulder. “Making headway with the theater girls, that’s dope.”

  Penny locks eyes with me across the table. I know, girl, I know. He’s still a good choice for VP.