Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  “Can’t leak what everyone knows. PR 101.”

  Now there’s an idea. As I look out into the audience, there’s a sea of shiny silver-and-blue sparkles raining down all over the arena. It’s coating my parents, lucky as they are to be so close to the stage, and if I squint through the lights, I think I see Matt attempting to hold a sweatshirt over Penny’s hair while she bounces up and down with her fists held high. Can’t leak what everyone knows. That’s a tactic Penny would approve of.

  “Come here,” I say. I don’t have to yell because Jake knows exactly what I want him to do.

  He reaches out to cup my cheek in his warm, no longer sweaty hand. When his lips touch mine, I see stars explode behind my eyes. Or maybe that’s just the confetti.

  EPILOGUE

  Jake

  JAKE HOOPER WAS kind of feeling his new persona: guy in a suit with a fancy-ass umbrella. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even worn a suit and panicked two weeks ago when he realized the plastic-wrapped one in the back of his closet looked like it had been cut for a toddler. It hadn’t; he’d just grown a lot over the summer, but that didn’t help him when it came to having something decent to wear to the homecoming dance.

  The suit he ended up wearing was new and blue. His dad had bought it for him. It was the craziest thing; by the time he got home from the match, his dad had fielded a dozen calls from press wanting to know about his prizefighting son, and he finally seemed to understand that Jake’s gaming habit was worth a damn. He wanted to know everything, mostly about the girl Jake was kissing in front of thousands of people, and when Jake told him he was taking that same girl to a dance, he drove Jake to the mall to get his son a suit. They talked a lot that day, more than they had in almost a year.

  Jake knew that one day of suit shopping with his dad wasn’t worth much compared to the lifetime of relationship trauma he was looking forward to unpacking with the mandated individual therapist Wizzard provided for its league players, but it was a start.

  Also, again, he looked damn good in this suit. There was something about being fancy in the rain with a magnificent black umbrella—one of the long ones, not the foldy ones that bend the wrong way if you look up and sneeze at the same time—that made him feel like the star of an old-timey movie. Jake couldn’t dance to save his life, but while he was waiting outside the school doors, he was seized with an uncontrollable urge to jump up and click his heels. He thought it might feel magical, like tonight was the enchanted evening he always imagined school dances to be.

  Perhaps tonight was not that magical. He nearly launched himself into a puddle on his third try. Luckily, Matt Pearson was there to catch his elbow and save Jake’s suit.

  “It’s mad slippery, bro, watch out.” Matt had an umbrella too, but compared to Jake’s, it was nothing. “You got a famous face. Try not to smash it.”

  “Thanks, Matt,” Jake replied. “I don’t know what I was trying to do.”

  “Singin’ in the Rain,” Matt said. “I get it. I love that movie.”

  “It’s the suit,” Jake admitted. “It’s really doing something for me.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s where all your newfound confidence comes from,” Matt snorted. “Def not from walking around with your hand in Emilia’s back pocket all week. Or the hundreds of thousands of dollars you’re going to rack up next year. Or going viral, having an army of gamers declare your relationship ‘goals’; can’t forget Good Morning America, that was pretty dope. But no, you’re right.” He looked Jake up and down. “Suit’s cool too.”

  Jake’s face got hotter with every word that came out of Matt’s mouth. Yeah, all of those things had happened, but on the inside he was still, you know, himself. He held his head a little higher these days and didn’t walk into a closed door every time Emilia smiled at him, but the foundational elements of Jake Hooper were mostly the same. He was just better at being Jake. Like the suit, the fabric was all there, but the fit was so much nicer.

  “Thanks, man,” Jake said after an awkward pause.

  “Yo, thank me for nothing. Hook me up with some GLO Unity merch or make me your assistant. I can’t do shit, but I’m fun! Actually, could you introduce me to that Ki girl on your team? I thought she was cute, but when I saw the way she handled that ice fight, whew! The cold never bothered me anyway.”

  “Ki’s gay as hell. Sorry.” Jake was not sorry, but it was a hard habit to break. He had been breaking it, though, slowly and with Emilia’s help.

  “Damn it.” Matt kicked the ground and sent up a small splash.

  “Wait a minute.” Jake looked over at his friend. “Aren’t you here with Penny tonight? I kind of thought you two were . . . ​ you know . . .”

  “Purely professional. I mean, political. We’re here as a united front. It would be pretty messed up if the VP dated the president. Besides,” he added, grinning, “she’s got bigger things on her mind. We win one high school election and she’s talking about studying political science in college. Wants to be the youngest congresswoman in Pennsylvania so she can change online harassment laws.”

  “Wow.” Jake hadn’t known Penny for long, but that seemed exactly like something she would want to do. Before he met Emilia, he thought Penny was another one of those intimidating people who thought they were cooler than everyone else. He was right, but she was also focused, passionate, and fiercely defensive of the people she liked, a short list that now included him. She’d be a great tank, now that he thought about it. “I almost feel bad for the laws.”

  Jake watched a light bulb switch on over Matt’s head. “Wait, you think I could be her assistant?”

  “I think you can do anything. You’re the best Matt I know.”

  Matt’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “You mean man?”

  “Nope.”

  Before Jake had to explain that, he caught sight of Coach Romero’s car pulling into the school parking lot. Emilia wouldn’t be driving anytime soon, but he was glad her parents agreed to lift her eternal grounding for one more night, if only because they couldn’t really argue with a check big enough to cover most of her college tuition after taxes. Also, and this might be the suit talking, but Jake thought Emilia’s mom had a soft spot for him. Like, yeah, he aided and abetted her daughter breaking a billion rules, but he also staged a parental coup solely to make Em happy. Maybe she was just glad he wasn’t Connor. Either way, she waved at him through the window of her Jeep, and Jake waved back. Weird how much Emilia looked like her. Coach Romero basically cloned herself.

  Jake hadn’t told Emilia he was wearing a blue suit and wasn’t surprised at all to see her emerge from her mom’s car in a dress that nearly matched him anyway. Emilia and Penny shrieked in unison when they felt the rain hit their hair, which Jake picked up as his cue to rush forward and hold his umbrella over his . . . wait for it . . . girlfriend. He looked through the car to make sure Matt had Penny covered, and he did. He’d make a fine congressional assistant one day.

  “I’m coming back at ten,” Coach Romero threatened. “Be outside or you’re walking home.”

  “I’ve walked farther!” Jake said cheerily, after he shut the car door.

  “Yeah, but I haven’t,” Emilia muttered. With her heels, she didn’t have to get on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Hi, you look beautiful.”

  No, come on. That’s what Jake was supposed to say! He sputtered for a moment as he walked her toward the door.

  “You . . . ​same,” was what he managed to get out. “So pretty. Always.” Not amazing. The power of the suit had failed Jake for the second time.

  “Good thing you play better than you talk,” Penny observed. She and Matt had fallen into lockstep with them once they got around the car. Jake thought Penny’s dress was fantastic too. Not everyone could pull off bright gold, especially with a massive, shoulder-spanning sash that declared in glittery capital letters that its bearer was “JUNIOR CLASS PRESIDENT.” He was about to feel bad for Matt when Penny pulled an extra-small “VP” button
out of her purse and pinned it to his lapel.

  “I would have made you guys buttons too, but I didn’t know what to put on them,” Penny said once Matt received his honors. “First I made ‘Unity’ ones, but that seemed kind of vague. Then I used up a few trying to fit ‘Guardians League Champions’ on there in blue glitter, but I kept spelling it wrong.”

  “It’s really okay, Penny,” Emilia sighed. She must have heard this story in the car. Jake held her hand to lend her patience and/or give her something to squeeze in case she ran out.

  “Then I just kind of lost it and made ones that said ‘Jake!’ and ‘Emilia!’ but, like, what would be the point of that? Like I have no idea. I was really tired. Anyway, let me know when your mom wants her button maker back, Matt.”

  “You could have done the blue cross on a black pin,” Jake offered, trying to be helpful. “You know, put it on the little circles.”

  “Who am I, Kandinsky?” Penny said dismissively. “Let’s go in.”

  He really only had 12 percent of an idea of what Penny was talking about at any given time. She had the same effect as Emilia, making him feel smarter by association.

  Jake took a few steps forward and was about to get the door for his new squad when he remembered something.

  “Em, I have something for you.” Jake couldn’t believe he almost forgot. He’d found it in his room when he tore up his closet and sort of planned his whole night around this moment.

  “Aw, you didn’t have to get me anything. But what is it?” Emilia asked.

  Before Jake could grab it from his pocket, the school doors exploded outward. Audra Hastings barreled out of them and nearly crashed right into Matt.

  “Audra,” Penny said coolly. “Happy homecoming.”

  Audra might have been a backstabbing jerk, but whatever she’d been through looked like karma had gone slightly overboard. Her face was unnaturally red from nose to chin, and her blown-out hair had already met its maker in the rain.

  “Did you see him?” Audra gasped through heavy breaths. “Does he know I’m out here?”

  “Who?” asked Emilia.

  Audra looked up to see who she was talking to. Her face fell when she realized she’d run up to exactly the wrong crowd.

  “Connor,” she said miserably.

  “You mean your date?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah, duh,” she spat. “He’s rolling out his plan to make this the best homecoming ever, and if he finds me he’s going to keep . . . rolling it.”

  “Oh. Oh no,” Emilia said, suddenly serious. “What was it? Did he stuff your locker with confetti and now it’s everywhere? Bring you chocolate but it’s all the shitty pink stuff that’s barely chocolate?”

  “Yes and yes,” Audra sniffed. “But throw in a giant bouquet of flowers that I am clearly allergic to; like I didn’t tell him I can’t have hydrangeas near me.” She gestured to the rash on her face, which in Jake’s estimation would not be going away anytime soon. “And he spilled a jar of honey on me in the car.”

  Emilia nodded empathetically. “Because you’re his honey. Been there. If you have any alcohol, it’ll get the stickiness out.”

  Audra brightened up. “I have vodka in my water bottle! I need to get to the bathroom. Thank you.” She checked for Connor through the door’s slim rectangular window and dove back inside.

  Jake thought Emilia handled that remarkably well. If Muddy turned up complaining that people were being mean to him online after Fury dumped him from their roster, Jake would kick him in the dick, not give him advice.

  “Hey, Emilia.” Matt tilted his head. “Vodka doesn’t get honey out of fabric.”

  “Oh, I know,” Emilia deadpanned. “But the chaperones are going to smell her a mile away. Give it twenty minutes; they’ll call her parents.”

  Penny’s eyes widened. “For real?” she asked.

  Emilia shrugged. “Yup. And good luck to her, getting Klein to bend any more rules that screw over my best friend after that.”

  “I love you.” The confession tumbled out of Jake’s mouth before he could stop it. Truth was stupid like that.

  He could barely explain it—one second he was watching Emilia disguise pettiness as kindness, and the next he was stuck in a time-stretching moment again.

  Jake was eleven years old and completely in awe of the bossy, curly-haired girl who showed him the shield trick in Knights of Darkness and waited for him to get pizza. He was twelve and thirteen and feeling his heart leap into his throat every time he went to a party and saw her there, knowing she’d want to play. He was fifteen and hiding from her in the arena, and she’d found him anyway. He was caught in the rain, and she basically kidnapped him. She opened up to him, she saw him, and told him he wasn’t stupid.

  Jake had never gotten over his crush, not even a little bit, and having her hand in his right now was more than the culmination of everything he’d felt over the years. It was proof that he was better than he ever dared to think he was. Fierce, beautiful, brilliant Emilia Romero wanted him. Together they were champions. If anyone could stand in Jake’s place and not be in love, they were lying to themselves. Jake was simply not a lying kind of guy. The suit wouldn’t stand for it.

  “We’re gonna go,” Matt whispered. He physically pulled Penny away and through the school doors, leaving Jake with Emilia in the rain. It wasn’t pouring as hard as it was when she pulled up in her car and started this whole wonderful mess, but Jake thought the rain was one of those moments where life rhymed regardless.

  “I love you too.” Emilia said it so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world instead of the most wonderful.

  Jake wanted to say a lot of things in response to that. What came out was “Cool.”

  He could do better than that. He dug around in his breast pocket to find something small and round. It used to be shiny, but whatever garbage metal they made Hillford Mall Arcade tokens out of had oxidized hideously over the past few years.

  “This is for you,” he said. “I mean us, technically.”

  Emilia took the token from his hand. “No way. Is this from my roll?”

  “It was my roll. Half of my roll, you insisted.”

  “You were so weird,” the girl Jake loved and allegedly loved him back crooned.

  “So I went to the mall with my dad to get this suit, and I checked the arcade, and there’s, like, ten more high scores on there. We’re totally bumped off.”

  “Unacceptable. We’re champions. People pay us to play games, you know.”

  Jake grinned. “I know! Huge mistake on their part. Anyway I thought . . . ​with everything going on, we haven’t had time for a real date yet. Maybe later since you’re still grounded . . .”

  “You’d sneak me out of the house one weekend so we could eat arcade pizza and win the Knights of Darkness high score once and for all?”

  “Yup.” To be honest, Jake had been gearing himself up to ask her parents very nicely for permission, but sneaking out would work too. If there was one thing he’d learned about Emilia, it was that literally no one had the power to tell her what to do once she knew what she wanted. Add that to the list of reasons he loved her.

  Emilia closed her hand around the token and smiled. As far as Jake was concerned, whatever came next could wait forever as long as she kept looking at him the way she was right now. Next year’s tour and playing in the league. Probably the coolest thing that would ever happen to him in his entire life. It still couldn’t be better than standing here with Emilia in the rain.

  “I’m in if you are,” she decided, then opened the door to join the homecoming dance. Jake followed her through, knowing he’d just hit start on a brand-new game.

  GLOSSARY

  Checkmate: A method of winning a Guardians League Online match in which the other team’s tank is killed, ceding the victory to the killer’s team.

  Cooldown: The time it takes for a character’s attacks to recharge.

  Crit: Short for “critical hit.” An attack tha
t deals way more than usual, but they only happen a small percentage of the time (and never when you need it).

  Debuff: An in-game action that places an ongoing negative effect on an enemy character, like poison, burning, freezing, or a curse.

  Devs: Short for developers, as in game developers.

  Dox: The despicable and in most cases illegal practice of publishing an individual’s contact information online against their will. If you dox people, you are a bad person.

  DPS: A character in a game who’s there to wreck the opposition. They excel at dealing Damage Per Second but have lower health as a result.

  Ganking: Harassing another player by coordinating to swarm and kill their character repeatedly.

  Healer: Low health, low damage, but any team would crumble without them. Healer characters have the essential ability to top up their teammates’ health and keep them in the game. Underappreciated.

  Loadout: The armor, weapons, and abilities a player character takes into battle. Some games allow you to change the loadout whenever, others only allow it between missions or matches.

  Main: The primary character used by a player. Usually the one they are best at playing.

  Mana: An in-game resource that allows player characters to use magical spells. Players start with a finite amount, but healers can sometimes boost mana along with health.

  Meta: Short for “metagame,” the meta is a set of rules or conditions that affect how a game is played. Updates to an online game can change the meta by making characters stronger or weaker, encouraging players to come up with new strategies.

  MMO: Stands for “massively multiplayer online” game. If a lot of people play it and can interact with each other online, it’s probably an MMO.

  NPC: Nonplayer character. Any character in a video game that is not controlled by a player, usually referring to nondescript background or filler characters that are basically set dressing.

  PVE: Player vs. environment, a game mode that disallows players fighting each other because fighting nonplayer dragons and stuff is valid too.