by Alexis Nedd
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “I mean, no, I wasn’t right then because it was really sticky and stuff, but I’m fine now. I showered.” He pauses, more to catch his breath than to think about what he’s actually saying. “I didn’t, like, only shower then; that wasn’t my only shower. I shower every day, so it’s not like that was my one shower and I’m done for the week.”
From the cadence of his speech, Jake’s in ramble mode. I’d stop him, but I find it oddly charming. He talks the way I think, nonstop and always trying to cover every possible interpretation of whatever he’s going to say.
“I was more asking if you were okay, like, emotionally.”
“Oh. Yeah. Once it was over, nobody really noticed. Perks of being invisible.”
“That’s not—”
A trumpet interrupts whatever dumb thing I was about to say. We’re up for the freestyle map. I hadn’t planned on playing much longer tonight, but now that I’m in, I can’t help but feel the same flutter in my chest I get whenever I’m up in GLO. Right as Pharaoh spawns in front of the cathedral—and, look, it really is all made of crystal—I flag him for combat, just in case I want a little target practice while I try to get through to Jake.
“Hold that thought. Where did you spawn?” I ask.
“West side, in the gardens.”
“Coming to you.”
The late-night crowd is mostly role-players with very few people toggled for combat, so it’s a piece of cake to keep Pharaoh moving through clouds of fog and remain unharmed as I make my way toward Jake’s Pythia. The map is dominated by the cathedral in the center—like most things in GLO, it’s a bizarre architectural combination of gothic spires and glowing alien tech, with buzzing blue screens in the place of stained glass windows and suspicious surveillance droids instead of gargoyles. In front of the church is a stone plaza where a few players are mingling—Lucafonts and Envys dressed in last year’s spring fever skins, Munes and Hyves wielding the Diamond-tier editions of their standard weapons—but Jake’s coordinates place him to the west, in what looks like a hedge maze when I zoom out on my minimap. Pharaoh fits right in as I half run, half hop down the stairs and move toward the coordinates on my map.
When I finally see “[JHOOPS]” hovering above a player, I can’t contain my laugh to a volume-controlled snort. His Pythia is wearing a cross between a nurse’s outfit and a clown suit, complete with a big red nose and a jaunty candy striper’s uniform. It’s an exclusive from way back in the game’s day-one patch, when all the healers got silly Patch Adams outfits to celebrate the launch.
“Sweet Christmas. You look ridiculous,” I say as our characters link up. A reddish tint on the side of my screen indicates an enemy nearby who’s probably confused as to why two combat-flagged players aren’t tearing each other to pieces, but I spin my camera and slam a crossbow bolt into their shield as a warning. Not now, twerp.
“Nice shot. Your mummy looks like an Oscar,” Jake says as the other player turns tail.
“Thank you. It’s fashion.”
“You were going to say something before?” he says.
Was I? Playing around with Jake for a few minutes put me in an entirely different headspace to the stressed-out, anxious garbage brain I’ve toted around all week. Wait, I remember. “Why do you think you’re invisible?”
I hear a creak, like Jake is closing a squeaky door or moving around in a seriously dilapidated chair. I can almost picture him rubbing his neck out of habit, messing up the way his hair falls in the back.
“There’s this cool maze thing here; want to check it out?”
Sure, I’ll walk the maze. I follow Pythia’s lead around the fountain and toggle my character to slow-walk alongside Jake as the purple alien hedgerows rustle with animated life. This is a good map. The maze will make PVP even more interesting, especially if the devs hide the payload somewhere in the middle.
“The invisible thing is nothing,” Jake says after a long pause. “I mean, you know. It’s part of your thing. And it’s fine, by the way. The thing is totally cool with me.”
“My thing?”
“The thing. You don’t notice me, I don’t talk to you, nobody at school finds out you’re a Diamond-tier necromummy, and sometimes you GLO chat me in the middle of the night. Your very normal thing.”
When you put it like that, it does sound cold and one-sided, which makes me feel a little defensive. I don’t want to ignore Jake; I have to ignore him. Even if it’s functionally the same thing, I would hope that my intent matters a little bit. Then again, if I look at what happened on Monday from his perspective, I don’t think any intention could have excused it. Of course Jake thinks I don’t think about him—how was he supposed to assume anything else?
“Jake, you know I notice you, right?”
“Mm?”
“You said you don’t talk to me and I don’t notice you. That’s not . . . that’s not the thing.”
He makes a “hm” noise, and I don’t know if it’s a skeptical “hm” or a thoughtful “hm.” My deep, irritating need to clarify—to have him understand exactly where I’m coming from—brushes up against the fact that I have absolutely no idea where I’m coming from.
“Just because we can’t talk doesn’t mean I pretend you’re invisible.”
“Okay,” Jake says quietly, then lifts Pythia’s hand to cast a bolt of magic almost directly at my Pharaoh’s face. “Almost” is the operative word, because when I spin to avoid it, I see another player, whose level is way too low to be in this server turned to stone behind me. It’s probably some Diamond player’s alt. They must have forgotten they’re outmatched by almost everyone else in the map. That attack has a seven-second countdown, so Jake and I re-toggle our sprint and move out of range before they crack out of their casing.
“Thanks,” I say. “Where were we?”
“We were talking about me,” Jake says, “which is weird for me.”
“I wish you were nicer to yourself,” I reply.
“Hey, Em?” he asks, changing the subject while stifling another yawn. The yawn snaps me out of the fallen-in feeling I’d had on the exploration map and reminds me that I’m not standing at the edge of the world with Jake Hooper; I’m slouching in my pajamas with a cold mug of Café Bustelo and six hours until I have to be up for school. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“I saw you on my first day at Hillford. I wanted to say hi to you, but I didn’t know if you would have wanted me to.”
That’s not really a question, but I know what he’s asking. At this hour of the night, our last four combined brain cells have definitely fallen in sync.
“I wanted you to. Or I would have wanted—Okay, maybe not fully in context because then the whole tournament thing would have been even weirder to deal with, but in a vacuum, and speaking solely on the concept of you saying hi on the first day of school—”
“You really wouldn’t have minded?”
I honestly don’t know the answer to that. Now that Jake’s here being sleepy and delightful on voice chat, it seems like it should be obvious, but realistically I don’t know how I would have reacted to seeing him at school before the tournament. Half of me would have liked it very much. If he talked to me then the same way he’s talking to me now, I don’t think I would have had any other option.
Then again, if Jake had just rolled up to me and started talking about games, I would have had to shut him down fast. I’d never be able to talk to him like this if I pegged him as a threat from the start. Knowing that I would have done that makes me hate myself a little more.
When I started building up these walls around my gaming life and my real life, I told myself I was doing it so I could have everything I wanted. I hadn’t considered that the separation meant there were other things, better things, that I’d miss out on. Penny is one thing; she understands one half and is trying to learn a new language to decode the other, but Jake doesn’t have to translate. He gets all of it, straight out t
he gate. That’s why everything with him feels so easy.
I was missing Jake before I even met him at the tournament.
“Actually it could have blown everything up if you did,” I answer honestly and surprise myself by staying honest: “But I wouldn’t mind.”
“I won’t blow anything up.”
The red highlight appears again, this time on the bottom of my screen. That player who we turned to stone earlier is back; I just can’t see where. I know Jake sees the danger glow too, because his Pythia blesses me with a defense boost and whirls around to face the maze we both emerged from.
“I know you won’t. Thank you,” I say as I navigate Pharaoh in front of Pythia. She’s a great healer, but Wizzard tempered her powers by giving her a smaller amount of health compared to other characters. If Jake drops, he’ll be kicked back to the waiting room, and what can I say? I like exploring this map with him.
“Wait, I want to try something. I don’t play with Pharaohs a lot,” Jake says quickly. “Shoot into the maze to draw him out; make sure you miss.”
Sir, KNOX does not miss. “Why? I could paralyze him with a clean shot.” Our hidden enemy is playing Nero, an alien character weak to Jake’s poisonous Pythia.
“Trust me,” Jake says. I can hear his smile through the audio.
“Fine, but don’t go telling your team I have a bad eye,” I mutter and level a shot into the bushes. Nero emerges and comes straight for us brandishing a shiny galactic sword that is, in the words of Wizzard’s legal team, definitely not a lightsaber.
“Keep shooting and missing. He’s going to come for you.”
“Are you sacrificing me?” I almost yell. “I thought we were cool!”
“We are cool, hold your ground,” Jake says quietly. When Nero is two steps away from me, Jake calls out another attack: “Boost my magic, go!”
I still think he’s being a little bossy, but let’s see what his thotty snake can do. I hit my key for Pharaoh to buff Jake and watch as Pythia slams her staff into the ground to generate a bubble of sickly green magic around us both. The other player charges right into it and loses a quarter of their health with a stun on top. How do you like that poison damage multiplier, bro?
I’m impressed. The timing on that was absolutely perfect.
“Nice ability!” I observe. I’m too tired to bother with this Nero any further, so I take advantage of the stun to open a portal back to the spawn point. “Hop in here. This guy’s annoying me.”
“Sure.”
One purpley swoosh of magic later, Jake and I are back on the plaza. Some of the players from before are still around, but they’re all crowded in smaller groups and dropping emotes in a pattern I recognize as some elaborate RP argument. Jake and I may as well be computer-generated nonplayer characters, total NPCs in the backdrop of whatever scene they’re playing out.
“Why are we even toggled for player-versus-player combat?” I ask. It’s too late to undo the PVP choice now, but I’m seriously regretting thinking I would need any further distraction when I have Jake on the mic.
“I dunno. I figured you would, and if you needed a healer I wanted to be there.”
That’s exactly what I thought he’d say. I don’t understand where Jake gets that selfless impulse from.
“See, that’s nice. I can’t see you blow anything up when you’re that nice.”
“Don’t think that,” Jake says so quietly I almost don’t hear him on the mic. “I’ve ruined things for people before. A while ago I told someone something I shouldn’t have, and I learned not to do that anymore.”
That’s not a great sign. Not a bad sign, either, if he really learned his lesson the hard way. “What did you tell? Was it about GLO?”
“Nah, something else. I don’t want to talk about it. I keep my mouth shut now, so it’s kind of better that no one listens to me.”
“I’m listening.”
Jake sighs again into his mic. “You are. Which, by the way, is totally nuts. Just from a personal standpoint, for me.”
“Me too.” Wait, that didn’t come out right. “Not nuts that I’m listening, just nuts that we’re, like, talking like this. I don’t get to talk to anyone like this.”
“You don’t have heart-to-hearts with random guys in front of towering monuments to Space Catholicism?” Jake jokes.
“No, I do that all the time, obviously. Totally normal Wednesday. Don’t let me keep you up, though,” I say. “See you on Saturday?”
“You still want to risk it? It’s okay if you don’t.”
“I do.” Of course I do.
“Okay, tell you what. You bring the car; I buy you a matcha latte. Just the biggest . . . grande-est . . . green tea thing you’ve ever seen. I’ll dump half of it all over myself, just how you like it.”
“Jake!” If I laugh any harder, I will wake up my parents no matter how far their bedroom is from mine. “I have to get to bed. I’m delirious. Sorry.”
I can almost hear his smile through the microphone, the same smile he gave me in front of his apartment when he said it was super cool not being my friend again. It makes me smile too.
“Em, you gotta stop saying sorry.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Team Unity Chat, Friday
BobTheeQ: I’m going to keep it real with you. That was balls.
shineedancer: I messed up the countdown, my bad
MUDD: and their Klaudio burned me out
BobTheeQ: Jake, you stayed alive. Where were you?
JHoops: I whipped their carrigan into the lake to short out his mech special
JHoops: by the time he was in ki and muddy blinked out
BobTheeQ: We can’t let this happen tomorrow. We were on fire last week, what happened?
JHoops: muddy’s balor was literally on fire just now if that helps
MUDD: can you not
BobTheeQ: In less than twenty-four hours, we play Beast Mode. If we beat them, we get a shot at Fury. With the way we’re playing tonight Beast is going to eat us alive.
ElementalP: idk maybe we’re TIRED and if you let us sleep we’ll be fine
BobTheeQ: Fine isn’t going to give us a win over Beast Mode.
JHoops: isn’t there a thing like “bad dress rehearsal, good show”?
MUDD: if it turns out you’ve been a theater kid this whole time i will physically hurt you with my hands
BobTheeQ: We’re running Pygon Fortress again. If we can’t get our timing right with the environment, we’ll run it again. And again.
shineedancer: bob r u ok
shineedancer: i know you really want a shot at Byunki but you don’t even sound like you right now
[LanguageBot]: language, KI
BobTheeQ: I’ll be OK when I know we’re tight enough to not embarrass ourselves tomorrow. Trust me when I say it’s vital that we get to the next round.
MUDD: i’m with bob
MUDD: like it was fun and games going into round 1 but we’re one match away from taking fury down. it’s not cute anymore we need to focus.
shineedancer: what, like you focused on our postmortem last week?
ElementalP: THERE it is
shineedancer: which was mandatory
shineedancer: because you can just show up and play and not have to worry about everyone’s fucking son coming out of the woodwork to make your life hell because you’re good at a game
[LanguageBot]: SECOND WARNING, KI
MUDD: sorry i couldn’t make it to your therapy session girls i was resting up so we could actually play later
JHoops: dude that’s not the point. we all said we’d be there for Ki and P and you didn’t show up. do better next time
MUDD: says the guy who would kick us off a bridge if KNOX said so
ElementalP: ummm?
BobTheeQ: What does that mean?
MUDD: nothing.
MUDD: jake didn’t mess up that last match. he’s not the problem here
ElementalP: does that mean ki is the problem here?
<
br /> shineedancer: it takes two to deal damage BRO, you got set on fire before you could even start your clock.
shineedancer: check your six before you come for me booboo
BobTheeQ: Everyone is right and everyone is wrong. Muddy, show up for the postmortem on Sunday. If we don’t have each other’s backs we have nothing.
MUDD: if we win tomorrow i’ll show up anywhere
BobTheeQ: Ki, let it go. Muddy messed up but we need our DPS in sync for tomorrow. Hash it out on DM, or don’t, just get it together for tomorrow.
shineedancer: let’s go with don’t
BobTheeQ: Jake, I don’t know what Muddy’s talking about but you’ve been quiet on KNOX all week. Is there anything I need to know about?
JHoops: nope
BobTheeQ: Penelope . . . IDK, you good?
ElementalP: i mean i’m breathing
BobTheeQ: Mics down, we’re going back in. This is important, so take a few deep breaths and get in the game. Muddy, swap from Balor to Nero so you don’t get caught up with the fire weakness. Ki stay on Doctor Jack for the ice attacks.
BobTheeQ: Healers are fine on Pythia and Castor, I’m swapping Fabella for Reigh.
Shineedancer: on it
MUDD: I can def do nero
BobTheeQ: We’ll only run Pygon one more time before bed. Jake has to be up early for the bus.
[Team Unity is queued for battle]
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Emilia, Saturday, Round 2
I’VE NEVER FELT more like a ninja than I do right now, pulling slowly into the parking lot of Hillford’s second and noticeably crappier Dunkin’. It’s not a bad feeling, and it’s certainly not a new one relating to the tournament, but knowing I’m here to pick up Jake before engaging in further GLO-related subterfuge adds a little extra thrill to the usual proceedings. A thrill garnish, if I may. Thrarnish.
That thrill is of course 100 percent related to Jake’s status as my competitor in this competition, naturally. The fact of it being him specifically is a nonfactor. Byunki would be furious with me if he knew I was fraternizing, and I don’t know what Jake’s team would do if they caught us together (knowing what I do of Team Unity, they’d probably kiss him on the forehead and give him a kitten), but I simply and purely do not care. Giving Jake a ride is the right thing to do, and surreptitiously flipping Byunki the bird might be the only thing that gets me through another day at his hypercompetitive mercy.