The Memory Wall

by Lev AC Rosen

  “SHE SAVED me,” Nick says at the lunch table. “If she were an NPC, she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yeah…,” Nat starts. She opens up a plastic container and pushes her shoulders back. Then she opens the box and takes out a pair of chopsticks. “But that doesn’t mean she’s your mom. And the designers said these AIs are super advanced, so they seem human.” She uses the chopsticks to fish out a small yellow column and takes a bite, then looks around.

  “I thought you said you didn’t bring your mom’s food to school,” Nick says.

  “Yeah,” Nat says. “But…I don’t know. I just felt better knowing there was someone else I ate with who was like me. I mean, I know you’re not any part Chinese, you don’t identify as hapa, and that’s fine. It’s not really about you. It’s about me. I can’t explain it.”

  Nick shrugs but feels his face warm slightly. “Cool,” he says. “It looks good. And if we agree she’s a real person, then—”

  “Do you want a bite?” Nat interrupts. Nick looks down at the peanut butter sandwich Dad had made him. For some reason, Dad had tried toasting the bread, and it was blackened at the edges, giving it an unpleasant smoke-and-wood flavor. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t make his own sandwiches. Mom used to make them, so he’d never had reason to before, but now he does.

  “Sure,” he says. Nat expertly plucks another column from her box and places it on Nick’s tray. “What is it?”

  “Har gao,” Nat says, and shrugs, popping another into her mouth. “Shrimp dumpling. Not kosher, but delicious,” she says, eating. Nick picks his up with his hands and takes a bite. It washes his mouth with flavor, bright and briny, then savory, like a match lit on the tongue.

  “It’s really good,” Nick says. “I haven’t had really good food in ages.”

  “You should come to the restaurant!” Nat says suddenly. “After school.”

  “I don’t know…” Nick looks down. He’s supposed to take the bus home and wait for Dad to finish teaching. He could ask Dad to pick him up at the restaurant, but then he’d meet Nat, and for some reason Nick doesn’t want that. He takes another bite of the har gao. “There’ll be food?” he asks.

  “Oh yeah. It’s late lunch hour—the place is half-empty. I usually spread out in a booth and study, and Mom brings me snacks. Your dad won’t mind, will he?”

  “He’ll have to pick me up there,” Nick says.

  “That’s perfect!” Nat says. She takes another har gao out of the container and puts it down on Nick’s tray. Nick snaps it up.

  “What’s perfect?” he asks between the two bites it takes for him to finish the roll.

  “Well, you know the GamesCon in the city this weekend and how I have tickets? I was going to go with my parents, but I asked my mom yesterday if instead of one of them…I could take you.” She takes another har gao from the container but drops it for a moment, then looks down and picks it up. “Only for Sunday, but that’s the day the Wellhall people are talking.”

  “That would be awesome,” Nick says. He watches her hands. He feels electric—the thought of going to GamesCon is a fantasy come to life. If he can go.

  “My mom said it would be okay…but she’d have to meet your dad, and he’d have to okay it. Since she’ll be taking us.”

  “Okay,” Nick says. “I’ll go with you after school. I can text my dad.”

  “Great!” Nat’s face relaxes, and Nick realizes how nervous she was, how her freckles had been swarming like anxious bees.

  “What is that smell?” says Charlie, sauntering over to their table. Nick and Nat lock eyes and simultaneously sigh.

  “Its food, Charlie, go away,” Nick says softly.

  “Someone puts something that smells like that in their mouth?” He leans over the table they are sitting at, staring at Nat. “No wonder you hang out with her. Her standards seem pretty low.”

  “ ’Cause she’ll put anything in her mouth,” one of the guys behind Charlie says. The rest of them chuckle. Nick wonders where Charlie got this gang from. Did he hire them, like you do in video games?

  “I’m telling you this for your own good,” Charlie says, turning back to Nick, “ ’cause we’re friends: You can do better.”

  Nick stares down at the table. He knows he hasn’t made eye contact with anyone since Charlie came over, but somehow he can’t lift his head like he knows he should. To defend Nat. To stare Charlie down. The silence goes on long enough that Charlie straightens up into a winner’s posture.

  “Later,” he says, walking away.

  “Sorry,” Nick says, finally looking up at Nat. Her face is blank, and he’s not sure if she’s mad at him.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Nat says. “He’s the schmuck.”

  “Yeah, but I should have said something,” Nick says, and looks down at the food Nat gave him.

  “I can stand up for myself,” she says, shaking her head. “And besides, you talk back to him, it just goes on longer. Let him get his moron out and walk away. I can’t believe you used to be friends with him.”

  “We played video games together.”

  Before Mom’s bad day, anyway. Charlie always invited him over, and he had good snacks, good drinks, and his mom was never home since the divorce. It was awesome. Even the last time, before Nick became a freak, had been fun.

  “Get the power up, get the power up!” Charlie had shouted, pointing at the screen. Nick had the controller. He was better at the levels that had you racing through stuff instead of just shooting hordes of bad guys. Nick spun the space commander over a rock to grab a weapons upgrade. “Nice!” Charlie said, and raised his hand to give him a high five. Nick paused and slapped him on the hand. He didn’t turn to face Charlie, but he felt himself smiling stupidly, widely. “You really rock at this stuff, Nick.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said, unpausing the game.

  “I feel like you’re my secret weapon,” Charlie said, taking a soda out of the minifridge in his room. “Like, no one else at school who plays this is really friends with you, so they don’t know how good you are.”

  Nick laughed. “I’m not a weapon,” he said. “I’m just good with my hands.” He paused. “All the girls say so.”

  Charlie snorted his soda, spitting foam onto the rug. “Dude, don’t try to be smooth. It doesn’t work for you.”

  Nick laughed, feeling his cheeks warm slightly. He focused on the game, moving the guns quickly enough, dodging lasers. Better to focus on that instead of how idiotic he must have sounded.

  “Seriously, though,” Charlie said, stretching out his legs on the floor. “You never talk about girls. Do you like girls?”

  “I like girls,” Nick said. He couldn’t look away from the screen to face Charlie. He had to focus on killing the aliens.

  “It’s cool if you don’t,” Charlie said. “We live just outside New York City. You can like guys.”

  “I like girls,” Nick said, his voice a little more insistent than he meant it to be.

  “Cool,” Charlie said. “Me too.” He took a long drink of his soda. “So, you like any particular girl?”

  “What, like from school?” The space commander had a minigun now, he was fending off hordes of aliens. Normally, Charlie would take the controller at this point, but he wasn’t asking for it, so Nick kept playing.

  “Yeah, from school,” Charlie said. “Who do you think is hot? Who do you want to ask to the end-of-the-year dance?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Jackie’s cute.”

  “Yeah, she is,” Charlie said, slapping Nick hard on the back. Nick swallowed. He felt like he was being tested. Charlie’s hand was still there, squeezing his shoulder. It wasn’t that Charlie was so much more popular, or so much cooler, or anything like that, but Charlie was a guy. That guy. The guy Nick sort of wished he was sometimes, who could make everyone laugh, who could talk to anybody. If he were in the game, he would be Severkin, but without the bows and knives. He’d probably go in for an axe. But Charlie didn
’t play as Severkin. He played as a mage named Donnell and shot fire from his hands at anything that moved. Charlie’s hand pulled back, and Nick realized it had been there for a while, gently rubbing his shoulder.

  “I’m going to tell Jackie you like her,” Charlie said. “I’m going to be your wingman. We’re going to make this happen.”

  “No,” Nick said quickly. “Please don’t.” He wanted to turn around, look Charlie in the eye, make it clear that he was serious, but the space commander was jumping through anti-grav tunnels and shooting at aliens, so he couldn’t look away from the screen. His hands got sweaty, thinking of Charlie whispering in Jackie’s ear, Jackie’s nose turning up in disgust, the giggling whenever she saw him in the corridors. Most kids didn’t really know who Nick was, and he was okay with that. He didn’t want to become the guy who was stalking Jackie.

  “Why not? You need a girlfriend. We all need girlfriends. Junior high will be so cool. There’ll be more girls to choose from.” He took another long drink from the can of soda, then crushed it in his hand and tossed it away. “But first we’re gonna get you and Jackie together.” He slapped Nick on the back again, hard, and this time the controller flew out of his hand. “Dude!” Charlie said, grabbing the controller off the ground. “Don’t get us killed just ’cause your hormones are distracting you.”

  “Sorry,” Nick said, happy to lean back a little, not focus on the screen. “But seriously, don’t talk to Jackie. I appreciate it, but…I’ll ask her myself, when I’m ready.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said, his eyes reflecting the screen. Charlie wasn’t good at carrying on a conversation and playing at the same time. Nick leaned back and wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans.

  “How about you?” Nick asked. “Who do you like?”

  “What?” Charlie said, half turning around then whipping his eyes back to the screen.

  “What girl do you like? You know mine.” He looked up at the screen, where Charlie was taking out a scantily clad green alien woman in a metal bikini. “Or maybe you don’t like girls?” Nick joked, trying to sound like Charlie. “We live just outside New York City—it’s okay to not like girls.”

  Onscreen, the alien woman pressed her hands around the space commander’s throat and squeezed until the screen went black.

  “What?” Charlie asked, his voice cracking a little. He didn’t turn around. “You think I’m gay?”

  “What?” Nick said. “No—I was just doing what you did….” He shivered, afraid he’d done it wrong again. He shouldn’t have tried to imitate Charlie. He wasn’t smooth.

  “Oh,” Charlie laughed, turning around. “Right.” He laughed louder. “Dude, I was being serious—I mean, no one is going to think I’m gay, but you’re…harder to figure out.” He punched Nick’s shoulder, knocking him back a little, then returned to the game and hit Continue.

  “I like Jackie,” Nick said. “I’m straight.”

  “Who cares?” Charlie had said back then. “You’re not going to do anything about it.” The space commander came back on the screen, his gun at the ready, aliens surrounding him. “So, I think we get a new power next level. Immunity or sleep grenades?”

  “Maybe he just leveled up,” Nick says to Nat now, shaking off the memory. “Or switched classes or something when he got to junior high.”

  “You leveled up,” Nat says, staring at him. “He got hit with an intelligence-draining spell. If he was ever cool to begin with, which I somehow doubt.”

  Nick smiles. After they’d beaten the space commander game, he hadn’t seen Charlie for a while, and then there was Mom’s bad day. After that, everyone noticed Nick. They called him the “son of that freak,” or “the son of that poor woman,” or “the son of” something else. Charlie stopped talking to him, stopped responding to his texts, even when the DLC for the Space Commando game came out. Nick got angry for a little while, and wrote lots of emails to Charlie that he never sent, and then the summer came and his parents were talking about the home, and he forgot all about it. His brain was filled with other things.

  “Thanks,” Nick says, taking out his sandwich. No more har gao are forthcoming. “But back to my mother…”

  “Reunne,” Nat says, her voice soft as the feathers on a flying arrow.

  “Right,” Nick says. “Reunne. She saved me.”

  “I know,” Nat says. She looks up at him, tilting her head. “But I don’t think that proves anything.”

  “But everything she said does,” Nick says, his hands suddenly darting out without his meaning to. “It’s just like East Berlin. She knows about my project, so she’s helping me. I’ve been doing all this reading, and the secret police in East Berlin, the Stasi—they called themselves the ‘shield and sword’ of the Communist Party.”

  “Okay,” Nat says, nodding. “But that could be part of the game. The last one was based on Greco-Roman mythology and World War One. They use historical influences and various mythologies. So it’s probably intentional.”

  “Yeah.” Nick nods. “But she’s using that, you know? She’s telling me about what it was like growing up in that world. She recognized what the game was based on and is using it to create a history. She did that with the last one, too. When I was out from school, she’d play the game and set up these, like, treasure hunts and archeological digs in the game. And then she’d write me these little notes and leave them on the controller. They all related back to Greek mythology and World War One stuff, too. Like, she was teaching me. But now she’s doing it from inside.”

  “That’s so cool, that your mom played like that,” Nat says. “My parents don’t get it at all.” She takes a long drink from her water bottle.

  “Plays,” Nick says after a moment.

  Nat nods slowly, then starts putting her trash together on her tray. Without asking, she takes Nick’s trash, too, and piles it all together.

  “It’s just a big coincidence,” she says, standing with the tray of trash. “That the game would also be based on the place your mom is from.”

  “I know,” Nick says. He feels heavy, like if he were to stand, he might fall through the floor. Maybe he’s crazy. “She just feels so real.”

  “She does,” Nat agrees. “She really does. So maybe it is a coincidence. A really great one. Or maybe your mom is online, manipulating stuff in the game so it suits the story she wants to tell better. Maybe she reverse-pickpocketed all those blue robes onto the mages. I mean, we never really hear about the Sword and Shield stuff from anyone else.” She gets up and throws out their trash. Nick watches her. She’s in jeans today with a bright blue T-shirt. Her hair is held back with a white headband, but otherwise it flows loose down her back. The blue streaks swim through it like perfume, and for a moment, Nick wonders if the texture of the streaks is different from the rest of her hair.

  Nat sits back down. “You okay?” she asks. He wants to say something, but his voice is suddenly clamped down by his throat, so he just nods. “We should get to class.”

  They stand and head out of the cafeteria, walking toward history.

  “Thanks,” Nick says as they stop at his locker so he can get his history books. “For believing me. I know it sounds crazy, but…just the way she looked at me, how she winked. It’s like she’s trying to set up this puzzle, and I feel like if I can just solve it…”

  “I get it,” Nat says, leaning against the locker next to his. Nick looks over and stares at her for longer than he probably should, smiling, then starts turning the combination lock, trying to remember the right numbers. He feels almost like he’s levitating, but then a locker a few down from his slams shut and he plummets back down. Nick glances over. It’s Charlie and his friends again, snickering together.

  “She’s, like, ten years older than me,” Charlie says, bragging. “She’s fine, huge boobs. And at the wedding, she was all like ‘We’re gonna be family’ and pulled my head into them. It was awesome.” He was lying, Nick knew. Charlie hated his new stepmother. Or, at least, he’d ha
ted her when his dad had run off to California with her, leaving him and his mom. Maybe things had gotten better at the wedding. The other boys start laughing, and one of them high-fives Charlie.

  “You hit that!” one of them shouts, and Charlie nods, laughing. Nick realizes he’s staring at them instead of at his books and quickly looks back in his locker, but it’s too late. Charlie felt the stare, and turns his eyes on Nick and Nat, a wolf grin on his face.

  “Yo, freak,” he says. He walks over to them, and Nick focuses on taking books out of his locker and putting them in his bag. The task seems much more complicated when he puts so much attention on it.

  “Go away,” Nat says.

  “I hear you’re a half-breed, like freak here,” Charlie says. “So does that make you like a Chinese wigger? A wink, maybe?” Nick looks over at Nat, who is bright red, like she’s been punched in the stomach. If Nick were Severkin, really Severkin, he would say something that would reduce Charlie to tears and have the whole hall laughing. He would saunter off with Nat. But Nick isn’t Severkin. He stares at Nat as she blinks a few times, then turns away and closes his locker, not quite slamming it. He takes Nat by the arm and tries to walk away, but Charlie grabs his backpack and pulls him back. Nick lets go of Nat and turns around, his eyes on the ground.

  “You forget who I am, freak?” Charlie asks. “Your mom forget me, too? Maybe I should go over there one day, tell her I’m the female body inspector and ask her to lift her skirt up again so I can get a photo.”

  “Charlie,” comes a voice trying to sound stern, from down the hall. Nick looks behind him. Ms. Knight is walking toward them. She’s trying to stomp, he thinks, but it’s like a fawn trying to be an elephant. Charlie lets go of Nick’s backpack and Nick turns away, heads down the hall. “You okay, Nick?” Ms. Knight asks as they walk up to her. Nick nods without looking up.

  “What a bitch,” Charlie fake-whispers to his friends, loud enough that Nick can hear it from down the hall. “I heard she slept with Principal Aran to get the job.” His friends laugh like excited donkeys.