Mouth dry, I look for something to hold on to. Something to keep it all from spinning away. My gaze falls on her stuff again, and I ask, “You have the game on your laptop?”
“Yeah,” she says. Her face clears, an inside light turning on. “You wanna play?”
Without a thought, she puts her Mac in my hands, and she bounds over to her desk. Pushing crap out of her way, she pulls up Warcraft on that big-ass screen and logs in. I keep stealing looks because I want to see what the game looks like on a monitor like that. Big and beautiful, realer than I’ve ever seen it.
Turns out her laptop is almost as good. Everything bad shifts back. My headache’s starting to fade; my tight chest loosens up some. Meeting Arden is terrifying, but now it’s kind of amazing. All of a sudden, I’m seeing our real world, mine and hers, with all the magic turned on. There’s so many details that I never saw before.
Last night, we logged out together. And on the screen, there’s Arden standing right next to me. We’re exactly where we left each other, exactly where we belong.
This is what’s normal for us: tinkly music in the background and Goblins wandering by trying to sell us springs and gears. And Arden, in the skin I know best. Purple-haired and half-rotted. Some kind of punk zombie. I’m a cow-Shaman, and right now I feel more like myself than I do in real life.
I type, but I say out loud, too, “Hey, sexy, Where’re we going?”
“Darkmoon Faire?” she asks. I hear her relief, even as her words pop up on my screen. Maybe this is what it would have been like if we’d been voice chatting this whole time. Easy to talk, comfortable in real life. “I’m tired of grinding rep.”
“Lead the way,” I tell her. But before I follow, I cast a healing spell just to see it with the effects turned on. Ribbons of enchanted water swirl around my hands. They explode into silvery fireflies, sparks and stars and shadows I never saw on my old laptop.
Everything’s brand-new.
(KEYSMASH)
It’s easy to burn off hours in a video game. Everything’s beautiful, and nothing hurts for long. Midnight comes and goes. We get bored screwing around at the Faire and end up grinding rep on daily quests.
Basically, we’re doing the same quests over and over, earning points to buy better gear. With better gear, we can kill bigger monsters. And why do we want to kill bigger monsters? They drop better gear. This whole game is the sound of one hand clapping.
But we do it because we like it. Because want to see the big monsters. And here’s the thing—it’s just me and Arden; we gotta figure out how to do all this stuff, just the two of us. Even though there’s a Looking for Group tool, we don’t use it. That way lies madness: aggros who call everything and everybody a fag, griefers who drop connection just to get everybody killed, and fucking n00bs (shitty players) who need to stop QQ and l2p (quit crying and learn to play).
Me and Arden, we’re never gonna be in a group big enough to take down the really impressive shit. But we do all right, the two of us.
And right now, we’re doing all right, too. Every time Arden types LOL, she actually does it. For real, she laughs out loud. Sometimes just low and under her breath, amused. Then, there are times when she throws her head back. Her whole body; she laughs with all of it.
All the flirting we do in the game makes sense in the box, and now, a little bit out of it. For me, anyway.
“I can’t believe how much you cuss,” Arden says while pounding her keyboard into paste. Some monsters, you take down with skill. Some, you take down with strategy. And some of them? You find out the hard way that you can’t kill them at all, so you just keysmash and hope you hit the right buttons to win the day. (This only sometimes works.) (It ain’t working right now.)
Jamming on my keys, I say, “No shit I do! You’re dying!”
Arden’s character drops, and about two seconds later, mine does too. The screen fades to grey, because Warcraft is funny like that. We’re both dead and the thing we were trying to kill is back to full life. If we want another go, we’ll have to start completely over. But not before we put ourselves back together.
When we reappear on screen, it’s ghostly versions of ourselves in a graveyard. We either have to run back and get our bodies or let the graveyard resurrect us. If we let the graveyard angel rez us, though, it breaks all our armor and weakens us so we can’t do anything for like, ten minutes.
“What time is it?” Arden asks, then answers herself when she looks at the in-game clock. “Whoa. You wanna just rez tomorrow?”
I’ve been moving slow for the last couple of pulls. As the healer, it’s my job to keep Arden alive while she kills stuff. I have to be alert. And usually, I am. But today ate my lunch and I’m exhausted. What’s left of my brain wants to shut down.
I sign out and close the laptop. Then, I lay back on Arden’s bed, holding the computer against my chest. It’s hot, and the hard drive is still buzzing. Soothing me.
When Arden heaves herself from her chair, she lurches out the door. No idea where she’s going, but she disappears down the hall. Her voice hums in the distance; must be talking to Concrete Blocks.
If I’m not gonna ask her to quest with me, I need to get my shit and go. That’s a thought I have, but my body doesn’t care. I lay there, weighed down with a laptop, letting my eyes close. My thoughts swirl around, tangling and untangling in the quiet. The car’s probably still at the gas station. I probably still have a room in Village Estates . . .
Before I can think too much about facing my mother again, Arden comes back. She falls into bed beside me. The motion washes her spicy scent over me. My heart speeds up, excitement and anxiety all together. Are we gonna lay here, all silent again?
“I told Dad you’re staying the night,” she says. “Basically the one good thing about him being a dick about me. I can have boys in my room and shut the door.”
The prickly heat of a blush stings my skin. She doesn’t mean it like that; there’s no way she means it like that. Somehow, I manage to say, “Score one for the silver lining stick.”
We lay there a minute; I tell myself I’m ignoring the quiet electricity that hops from my skin to hers. I tell myself she’s not feeling it, and I shouldn’t be either. I hate being half-right—when she breaks our silence, it’s not flirting anymore.
“I don’t want to be nosy,” Arden says, pushing hair out of her face. “But didn’t you have a thing today?”
Weight pulls me down. Invisible, internal. I slide the laptop onto the floor because I don’t want to drop it. My throat tight, I try to pick the right words. I guess it’s a fair thing to ask.
It’s so easy to make up a life on the internet, but I always told the truth about being sick. About dying. Then everything killing me just up and disappearing. All better, clap-clap, jump right back in, Dylan! Probably, Arden was the only one outside my house who knew I was registering on the last day before spring break. So I could go back the same time as everybody else.
Of course she wants to know what happened, because it obviously didn’t go like I planned it. Instead, I snuck up on her. Showed up at her door. Reality on the front porch, knock-knock-knock. Some part of me wants to roll over and cover her with my body. To stroke her face and tell her if she’s even sad a little about all those cancer jokes we used to tell, don’t be. But I can’t. I’m afraid of her in real life.
So I answer, because she asked. “I went.”
“But you didn’t stay.” She sounds so worried. It’s written in her eyes, too. In the slant of her dark brows, marring the pretty roundness of her face.
This should have stayed in the game. Maybe three hours ago, we should have typed this all out. Too late, now. My voice gets thinner as I explain. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m fucking stupid.”
She’s restless beside me. Shifting, finally rolling on her side. She tucks an arm under her head and stares at me. Right through me. Her other fingers drum on the mattress. I feel their vib
ration in the springs—a touch that reaches me, without any physical contact. “Dylan, come on.”
“It freaks me out, crowds and shit,” I say, and that’s one reason. That’s the truth.
Arden studies my face. Realizes that’s not everything. She sounds hesitant, but she says anyway, “Is that all?”
Nothing hurts, not physically, but all I can think about is the pills I have in my bag. It’s like they send up a signal—hey, you could take us. We could help.
Those thoughts I shove way down. Instead, I let the rage up—I hate narcotics. I hate them, and I hate all those assholes at school who used to try to buy them off me when I was a freshman. And for that matter, all the douchebags who gave me ten bucks so they could put their drugs in my locker.
Because nobody’s gonna bust me, right? If they do a random locker search, nobody thinks nothing about Cancer Stefansky with a prescription bottle next to his binder. I wanted the money. I needed it. So I hated them and took it anyway, and then hated myself some for good measure. A flash of sweat and heat spills over me.
And Arden, because she’s good and nice and sweet, asks if I’m okay.
That’s what breaks me. Because she looks at me when she says it. Her gaze holds mine. Suspended, waiting for an answer, she actually expects one and wants to hear it. I can’t remember the last time somebody asked if I was okay and waited to hear the answer. As weird as it is to see her in skin and bones instead of pixels and text, Arden really is the only friend I have left.
“They wouldn’t let me register,” I admit. Now that the words are out, they rush fast, loose over my tongue. I sit up because I feel like I’m drowning in them. “My mother wasn’t there, and they wouldn’t let me register.”
Arden frowns. “Was she late or something?”
“She worked last night,” I tell her. “She figured I could take care of it myself.”
This registers on Arden’s face. Her soft mouth tightens. There’s a hint of her poured-stone father there, hardening her expression. When she talks, her voice is still gentle. Like she’s keeping her anger away from me. “Are you serious?”
As a heart attack, I want to tell her. A lot of things, I kept to myself. But now, I want to tell her about all the times Medicaid paid for my cab rides home from the clinic because Mom didn’t want to drive. And all the times the cab didn’t show up, because they know if they’re coming to a hospice, chances are, they’re getting somebody one step from dead or puking in their backseat.
It all bubbles up in my chest, acid and salt, churning and twisting. I grit my teeth. I close my eyes. And I shake my head, because there’s some things I don’t want to say out loud. Like, if I admit them, it stains Arden somehow. Pushes her farther away. Back into her clean, bright world where shit like that just doesn’t happen.
“I don’t wanna talk about this,” I say.
Settling beside me, I feel Arden shift. Her weight bends the mattress toward her body, pulling me in. She says, “I thought you’d sound different.”
I rest my hand on my heart. I like to feel it. Steady, steady, steady. Taking my pulse reminds me that I’m not dying anymore. Not at two in the morning, not at my age. No adverse cardiac events for this boy. My head swirls again; I’m falling asleep. I can’t stop it, and I’m not going to try anymore.
I rasp when I finally reply, “Surprise.”
(BEFORE)
Sometimes when I sleep, my subconscious coughs up the past. Slices of myself, half-remembered, half-forgotten.
Dozing and dream-addled in Arden’s bed, I go back. She’s the friend I have now, but when I was little, I had convenience friends. The kids up and down my street, the ones that rode my bus to school.
They came in sibling flocks: four different Carmichaels, a murder of Johnsons. I was the only singleton, so I got to be the tiebreaker. Most of the time, I hung out with Coy Carmichael. She’s my age, and she liked to bake stuff. Free cookies if Coy was around.
My mother worked nights then, too. In the summer, she’d come home after her shift, smelling like grease and cigarettes. She’d watch me eat leftover diner pancakes for breakfast. Then she’d send me outside with a cloak of warnings.
Don’t slam the door. Don’t make any noise. Don’t wake me up unless somebody’s bleeding.
It was all-day freedom, nothing like the kids from High Point that shared our school. They were the ones with new backpacks and bright white shoes. All the time, they had lessons and practices and classes. Their eyes got big and jealous when they found out that we had nothing to do but run the neighborhood. No teachers, no lessons, no rehearsals.
They were the ones who leaned forward when the cop came to school to talk about stranger danger. Like they ever had a chance of standing alone on a street corner and being asked to find a lost puppy.
Everybody from Village Estates sat in the back, listening like it was a foreign language. We talked to strangers all day long. People leaning out their car windows, asking for directions. Clerks up at the 7-Eleven, the guys my mom called the Young Turks down at the car wash. Sometimes the owner would give us a couple dollars to dry windshields. Sometimes he threatened to get a gun if we didn’t leave. Excitement, bitches. We had it.
Back then, I thought we lived near the woods. Next to a river. After four days of hard rain, the drain that fed it (should have been my first clue that it wasn’t a river) gushed out a current strong enough for inspiration.
Coy and I drug a plastic wading pool out of a dumpster to go sailing.
Me and her, we jumped in and it worked. It actually worked. The pool floated with both of us in it, and the current caught us right away. We were sailing, bitches. The water tickled through the thin plastic. The pool spun around and around. I remember lights flashing through the reedy trees that lined the culvert. Gold flickers, big as quarters, and we washed by so fast. It was a carnival we could afford. Just ours. All ours. Those kids in High Point could only wish and want.
Screaming and laughing, we thought we might make it to another state. Maybe we would have. But we stopped because somebody called the police. Not on a couple of fourth graders endangering themselves by rafting in the storm drain. But because we were trespassing, and making noise, and far enough from our houses that no one recognized me and Coy. We didn’t belong. We were a nuisance.
The same cop who stranger-dangered us at school left his car door open. Walked down the ditch and tossed a piece of concrete block into the water a couple yards in front of us. The pool didn’t have brakes, so we washed right into it. The concrete cracked the pool, and water rushed in. The joyride was over.
Clomping down to grab us, the cop bitched under his breath when he got his shoes wet. Yanking my arm up hard to “help” me to shore, he scowled. “Go home,” he said. “Don’t let me catch you messing around down here again.”
His fingerprints on Coy’s arm lingered. She was redheaded and speckled, and her skin was thin like tracing paper. She rubbed and rubbed the spot as we walked back up the river. The trip home was slower and steeped in resentment.
“Asshole,” Coy whispered. We could run around if we wanted to. Cussing was a different matter. A flyswatter on bare back thighs was no joke, so we kept the mouthiness down low. Backward dog whistle, just loud enough for kids to hear and not adults.
Nodding, I rubbed at my arm too. The marks had already faded, but I wanted them back. It was a badge. Something to show off; we could tell stories about getting arrested. But only if we had proof. Coy’s proof flamed on. Mine disappeared under grime and friction burn.
“Double asshole.”
Agreeably, Coy said, “His asshole is so big he poops Buicks.”
I almost fell down laughing. It hurt my ribs, but I couldn’t stop. Officer Friendly who really didn’t give a damn about you if you were from Village Estates, not just an asshole but a double-wide. Dissolving into tears on the sidewalk, I grabbed Coy’s arm and kept pulling it. Saying it over and over again, I wheezed laughter and hiccupy sobs of delight.
Coy kept trying to top it. Bigger and bigger, meteorites, a whole Venus, Battlestar Galactica—but she’d already won the award. For the rest of forever, when we saw police (and we saw them a lot), they were Buicks.
—The Buicks are down at Jamie’s house again.
—Crystal got the Buicks called on her—she was shoplifting Juicy Fruit.
—That Buick was looking at your ass.
That was fourth grade, and in fifth, Coy transferred to Loughner Creek Middle School. Open choice: if your parents felt like doing the forms, they could send you to a different (better) school than the one you got assigned. Me? I went to Virginia Finch, right down the street. So Coy and I were friends, but not everyday friends anymore. She got a new band of convenience buddies, and I got a diagnosis.
When I first got sick, Coy turned up at my door with a cupcake. She lied and said, “I made too many.”
There’s no such thing as too many cupcakes. It’s just an easy C-word to say, one nobody has to whisper.
That’s the last time I saw her, really. At my door, anyway. She still lives down the street. She goes to the better-choice high school, with a better class of people. I watch her leaving with them at night, climbing into their shiny, shiny cars. They laugh, the radio boom-boom-booming as they pass by in slow motion.
Her hair streams out the window and she drives away, further away than we ever sailed together.
(ALARM CLOCK)
When I wake up, gravity gives up on me. I fall out of bed; I hit the ground hard.
The floor is unfamiliar, hard. Pretty, polished wood instead of thin, stained carpet or patterned tile. Nothing smells right; where’s the Lysol and the stale air? Where’s the off-and-on beeps that go down the hall, echoing at different times?
All this confusion breaks when I hear Arden arguing with her dad. Arden! I’m not at home, and I’m not back at the hospital. I’m a little pin in a map—Amaranth, Pennsylvania—and I blew up what was left of my life yesterday. Shit.
Looking for Group Page 4