Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  BobTheeQ: Please be careful around Fury next week. That payload win put us on B’s radar. Don’t forget he plays dirty.

  ElementalP: is that what put us on B’s radar

  shineedancer: like are you sure

  BobTheeQ: Not funny.

  JHoops: ?

  MUDD: sounds like a story

  MUDD: and I DON’T CARE

  MUDD: let’s start on the pygon fortress map. it didn’t turn up at all in round 1 so Wiz is probably saving it for round 2

  shineedancer: ugh i hate pygon fortress it has so many fricking environmental hazards

  ElementalP: Muddy’s right tho

  MUDD: i’m always right, you people don’t listen

  BobTheeQ: Good thinking ahead. I’ll queue it. Mics down, we’re going to voice.

  ElementalP: can i sing you guys a song while we queue

  JHoops: no

  MUDD: no

  BobTheeQ: Abstain.

  shineedancer: yes please <3

  [Team Unity is queued for battle.]

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Emilia, Wednesday

  “YOU’RE JUMPING TOO early, KNOX! Erik can’t get the heal up in time. Coordinate, for god’s sake; we only have a few more minutes.”

  I am, or rather Pharaoh is, jumping exactly when I need to jump. Erik is slow on his heals tonight, and Byunki is either too distracted or too annoyed to notice. The combo we’re putting together is hard enough without our tank lumbering around shouting at us like a drill sergeant.

  “Reset the combo; we’re trying again. Ivan, take her health down.”

  On a real GLO map, players can’t hurt people from their own team. Friendly fire would make GLO a total mess, considering all the elemental magic and circumstantial damage a team can deal in some relatively enclosed spaces. Team Fury is working on a freestyle map tonight, a closed clone of real maps that turn up in competition with different rules. On this map, Ivan can whack my Pharaoh around all he wants and I’ll actually take damage. It’s what I’ve been doing all night, basically: standing still and letting Team Fury beat the crap out of me to nail this combo. Every once in a while, I get to jump off a building.

  I watch as Ivan’s character slashes at Pharaoh until my health is critical.

  “Sorry, Knoxy,” he jokes. “I know I’m not supposed to hit a girl.”

  How does he feel about getting slapped by one? Ugh, I need to calm down. None of this is personal. Still, I’m getting tired of watching my little necrobuddy take everyone’s shit tonight.

  “That’s enough,” Byunki notes over voice chat. “KNOX, get back on the roof. Take your place, Erik.”

  I mechanically tap the sequence of moves that brings Pharaoh up from the ground level of this map to the top of a ruined bell tower. We’ve run this so many times I could do it in my sleep. It’s late enough that I might actually have to if this practice goes on any longer. Byunki said he had to break early to do something else tonight, which was the first time I ever heard him indicate he might have a life outside of GLO, but early for Byunki still won’t give me enough time to finish my calculus homework, refresh my bio reading, or proofread the sample position paper I need to submit ahead of Model UN tryouts.

  “Everyone ready?” Byunki asks. The rest of Fury takes their places for the combo. “KNOX, jump.”

  With Pharaoh’s health already down, I leap from the tower and aim for an area just behind Erik’s Jenkins character. Please get this right, I think as Pharaoh plummets. I’m tired, and my head hurts, and I’m having a bad week already. If Erik doesn’t get his heal/harm wall up in time, I’ll take enough fall damage to drop and we’ll have to load this map all over again.

  Byunki clicks his tongue as a signal, and Erik slams a horizontal heal/harm right below where Pharaoh will land. I see it bloom underneath him, and—thank god—it’s fully operational when he hits the ground. Instead of taking fall damage, Pharaoh is powered all the way up. For my part of the combo, I use the surge to whip off three successive crossbow bolts that hit Byunki, Ivan, and Han-Jun square in the chest. Easy peasy, once Erik got his shit together.

  “Gorgeous,” Ivan moans. “Seriously, can a combo be sexy? I’m feeling something over here. Something adult.”

  “No one cares, Ivan,” Han-Jun comments. He and Erik are the quietest during these practices. I can never tell if they’re concentrating or if they have a separate healer chat where they talk about the rest of us.

  “Good job,” Byunki says begrudgingly. “I’d tell you to run it again, but I have to go. Keep that in the bank for Round Two, Erik. It’s a good combo. Your strategy is getting better.”

  “Oh, actually,” I chime in, “it was my idea. Remember?” I told Byunki I thought we could do something cool with Jenkins’s horizontal heal just a few hours ago. I told him Pharaoh’s near-death surge ability could piggyback on it with a triple bolt. We’ve spent half our time tonight practicing it; how could he forget that it was my combo in the first place?

  Byunki’s tone shifts from impatience to annoyance. “Whatever, it’s not about credit, KNOX.”

  I DM Ivan on the side: is he srsly doing this again

  Ivan types back quickly: its not a big deal, let it go

  Fine. Ivan’s right. Byunki’s been better with me in the first half of the week, and I don’t want to mess it up by throwing a tantrum three days before competition. Then again, asking to be credited for my strategy shouldn’t constitute a tantrum in anyone’s book.

  “Tomorrow we’ll try it again and see how it works with the rest of our playbook. KNOX, since you’re on a strategy kick, I want you to analyze Chronic’s tank choices for Saturday. I really gotta go. Stay sharp. Same time tomorrow.”

  Great, more homework. All I have to do now is watch all of Chronic’s matches, find out their elemental weaknesses, and do a statistical breakdown of who they’re likely to play in their swap spot within a margin of error Byunki feels is adequate. At least it’s more fun than bio.

  Ivan DMs me a goodbye before signing off while Han-Jun and Erik drop offline. The freestyle map times out and kicks me back into the GLO main screen.

  “Emilia?” Mom taps at my closed bedroom door. “Can I come in?”

  “Just a second!” I shout back and quickly switch my monitor cords from those that connect to Florence to those attached to the laptop I use for school. As far as my parents know, that’s the only computer I own. Sliding Florence’s cabinet closed takes a little longer.

  “Is everything okay?” Mom asks.

  In the last moments I have before she gets suspicious, I pull my arms into my pajama shirt and spin it around so I have it on backwards.

  “All good, I was just changing! You can come in.”

  Mom opens the door and finds me posed over my bed going through my homework papers.

  “Were you just getting changed? Your shirt’s on backwards.”

  I look down at my shirt and force a laugh. “I was, and yeah. Look at that. I’ve been so deep in”—I check the worksheet on my bed—“the Krebs system I didn’t even notice when I put it on wrong.”

  “You’ve been busy lately,” she remarks. “I’m checking to make sure you’re staying on top of things.”

  “I am, Mom.” My grades aren’t dipping any, thanks to my one-woman summer school program, but I’d be lying if the pressure from the tournament hasn’t been throwing me off with school, Connor, and my upcoming extracurriculars.

  “What’s the rest of your week look like?” she asks. This is more than a check-in; this is a full status report. I clear my throat.

  “Bio quiz tomorrow, and we’re wrapping Gatsby in English, so the test on that is next week. Calc is still basically going over precalc since it’s early. AP US History is still precolonial.”

  Mom nods. “You have field hockey tomorrow too. And how’s the campaign going? I talked to Dad, and he said he’d be happy to make you two a website.”

  “That’s okay,” I say too quickly. “Uh, Penny has our socials cov
ered. Websites are a little millennial, you know? We’re doing a lot to keep the support up.”

  “Sometimes a lot isn’t enough, Emilia,” Mom says. “You need to be the best, not just better if you’re going to stand out.” She pauses. “I don’t mind you dating Connor Dimeo as long as he doesn’t distract you from what’s important.”

  “Oh, he won’t,” I snort before I remember who I’m talking to. “I mean, he gets it. He’s in most of my classes, so he knows the workload.”

  “Are you still going to Penny’s for the campaign meeting on Saturday? Will he be there?”

  Right, that’s this week’s excuse for the tournament. “I don’t think so. It’s kind of a whole-day thing, and he has other stuff to do.”

  “Next week you should have Penny over here and invite Connor. I think your father wants to meet him.”

  God, that would be a scene. I don’t think my dad ever needs to meet Connor for any reason. I may have told Connor I’d be his girlfriend to checkmate Audra, but I’ve been trying to backtrack on that since the ice cream incident on Monday. Just thinking about Jake’s face, knowing he heard me call Connor my boyfriend right after he humiliated him . . . ​it makes my chest clench up badly.

  “Maybe!” I reply. “I should get back to my bio, though. Once I finish that and my position paper, I’ll head to bed.”

  “Stay up as late as you need,” Mom agrees. “It’s a big year for you.”

  I know. I know, I know, I know. “’Night, Mom.”

  “Good night, Emilia.”

  No rhythm is more familiar to me than the sound of my mom walking from my bedroom to hers at night. Down the hallway, up a small landing, the sound of the door to the master suite opening, a pause, and the same door closing with a muffled knocking noise. It’s the rhythm of my parents fully retreating into their world and leaving me a scant few hours to spend some time in mine.

  The bio can wait, the position paper is basically done, and it’s not even midnight yet. I wait another few minutes to make sure neither of my parents feel like emerging for a glass of water and hold my pose next to my bed in case they do. It takes another few minutes until I’m fully in the clear.

  Florence is still on in her cabinet, so all I have to do is switch the monitor cords and the GLO main screen appears again. A green dot by my recent contacts list indicates that someone on my contacts is online. Is Ivan still practicing after Byunki let us go for the night? If he was, I can’t blame him. I’m about to do the same thing.

  I click the list to see if he wants to play together but see his username logged off. The only person on my list currently playing is Jake. JHoops. Maybe, if I was careful . . .

  Nah. Don’t do it. He probably thinks I’m a monster for the ice cream thing.

  This is useless, I think to myself as I hover over his name in my GLO mailbox. I told him to leave me alone, and now I’m bothering him. The way he looked at me doesn’t matter. What he thinks of me is irrelevant.

  He didn’t leave me any more notes after lunch on Monday. He didn’t have to, since his recon mission was complete, but I had sort of hoped that he might keep it up through the week. The surprise of it all made for a very exciting morning. I liked the idea that he was trying something fun for me. It’s exactly something I would like, and I didn’t even have to tell him that. He just did it.

  That day was a lot more fun than the others in this week. On Tuesday I found a bunch of floppy rose petals crammed in my locker courtesy of Connor, and they stained one of my notebooks. Today it was confetti. Now that I’m thinking about Connor, I check my phone to see if he’s left me any texts while I was playing. Oh, yup. Five new messages, none of which I will check tonight. He can live with assuming I’m asleep. Or terrible. God, it would be nice if he just realized I’m the worst.

  Now you sound like Jake, I think. It’s something he would say. I don’t want him to think he’s the worst. I should talk to him, get in quick and apologize before dipping out of his life forever.

  When I click on Jake’s player profile I can see his most played characters (Pythia, two other healers, a DPS that got nerfed quickly after launch), his win/loss ratio, his ranking, guild association, and achievements. It’s a gold mine of information on Jake the player that fits perfectly with what I know about Jake the person.

  I have to stop myself from scrolling down to look at more of his stats. After Unity’s healer-heavy performance in the first round, I know Byunki would kill to get a look at these numbers, but I’d have to be a jerk of titanic proportions to bring Jake into my inner circle one moment and betray him to Fury in the next.

  Not handing it over is technically betraying Fury, I think. For the moment, Fury can suffer.

  Hey, it’s Em, I tap into a DM.

  A long pause from Jake’s side of the screen.

  I wish GLO chat did the three-dot text thing. I never feel more alive than I do when those ellipses appear, then disappear, then appear again. It’s watching someone else’s mind work in real time. This message window gives me no such pleasure. After a minute, I peek up at Jake’s name on the profile window to make sure the green dot hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s there, just out of reach.

  Gatsby, my brain volunteers. God, no. That guy sucked.

  Who? he finally replies.

  Oh no. I check the previous message in our DMs and see that whoever JHoops is never responded to my initial message. Did I send my phone number to a complete rando? How did Jake know to leave the notes then, if it wasn’t his account?

  sry wrong person, I type quickly and exit out of the message window. Well, that was humiliating. That’s enough GLO for tonight. I slide my cursor up toward the log-out button and am about to dip when a new message window pops up. It’s JHoops.

  messing with you em

  Really? I wish that didn’t make me smile, but it does. The guy has one move, and he’s gotten me with it twice in five days. Before I can come up with a response, the message window unexpectedly glows greener with an invitation to voice chat.

  The green window pulses to the tune of the GLO ringtone, and the hypnotic gradient washes everything on my desk the bright verdant color of . . . ​matcha, unfortunately. I take it as a sign.

  “Hey. Again,” I say once I answer the call. I’m sitting up straighter in my desk chair now, like I’ve been sent to the principal’s office and Klein’s just walked in with disappointment on his face.

  “Oh, wow,” he says, and from the crackle on his microphone, I think he’s letting out a breath he was holding for as long as it took for me to answer, “it’s you.”

  “Yes, I just told you.”

  “Sorry, yeah. It’s just weird communicating.”

  “I gave you my number!”

  “Right. I didn’t want to . . . ​I didn’t want to intrude. Figured there was an easier way of letting you know you were okay without leaving a digital trail.”

  He thought a morning of deep espionage was easier than sending me a text message? High drama Jake Hooper strikes again. Can’t say I hate it.

  “The notes were . . .” I stop myself to think of a more neutral word than the first one that comes to mind. Amazing? Delightful? The only thing that made my day this week? “. . . ​ cool. Nice touch with the bio whiteboard.”

  “After I did it I was like, ‘Aah, that was corny, like way too corny.’ ”

  “Jake.” I have to stop him before he talks himself into another self-effacing spiral. “It was dope. Thank you. And thank you for checking in the first place, obviously. Def helped me sleep easier this week.”

  I hear Jake chuckle into the mic. “No it didn’t! You’re awake now.”

  “Touché. So are you, though.”

  “I’m kind of in a waiting room and don’t want to get out. Do you want the ID?”

  Right. People who are logged into GLO at midnight are usually there to play the game. That’s fine. Playing through the conversation I actually want to have with Jake might make it easier for me to get through it.
>
  “Sure, yeah. DM it to me. I’ll meet you in there.”

  The message window blips again with a room code from Jake. It’s for another freestyle map, but this one is a beta, which makes it perfect for role-playing or just hanging out on the server with friends. Back when I first played, freestyles were where I met some of the guys who turned out to be total assholes. Before they found out I was a girl, they were pretty cool to hang out with.

  Some of the more popular beta builds get overloaded, hence the waiting room, and the one he’s invited me to is Crystal Cathedral, an unreleased map for Diamond-tier players to beta test before Wizzard releases it to the rest of the game. It’s a flex that Jake is even in the waiting room and a compliment that he knows I’d be able to get in alongside him. There’s still a bit of a wait (the hottest club on the internet is this beta map), so we have a few minutes to talk before we’re in.

  “Who are you playing?” I ask as I sort through the many, many Pharaoh skins I’ve collected over the years. Should I go for his extra-dead-looking Halloween outfit or the rare gold robes I got before GLO nuked their loot boxes?

  “I am Pythia and Pythia is me,” Jake replies. I don’t ask what skin he’s putting on his poison prophetess.

  “Cool.” I settle on the gold robes. I feel like a sleep-deprived turd, so Pharaoh will have to look fresh for both of us. “Hey, before we go in, can I talk to you?”

  “Mhm,” Jake answers sleepily. If I keep him up any longer, I’m going to have more than one thing to apologize for, and that will surely be the thing that kills me.

  “I, um. I want to say sorry about Monday. With the ice cream.” It’s a good start. I don’t want this to come across as one of those crappy non-apologies, though, so I keep going after Jake leaves me hanging in deserved silence.

  “I’m so, so, so sorry I didn’t help you, or stick up for you. Or get you a paper towel; you definitely could have used a paper towel. I saw you, and it was my fault he threw the ice cream, and I feel horrible. Are you okay? Were you okay?”

  “Em, that was two days ago.” He seems surprised I brought it up.

  Dilemma: how do I explain that I’m a massive coward who was scared of admitting that I did a bad, mean thing without sounding like a massive coward who does bad, mean things?