The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  “Come on,” his dad said after a while. “Help me get the sign up.”

  * * *

  Alex’s father had come home late the night before. He lingered at work because, deep down, he was terrified to find out if Alex had passed the test.

  Bao Dinh didn’t understand Alex. Bao had nothing growing up. He’d faced war, starvation, and worse, but his family had always been close and warm. Alex had grown up wanting for nothing, yet he’d never been happy. It was baffling. How many nights, after ten hours at work, had Bao tried to teach Alex baseball, not because Bao cared about baseball at all, but because he wanted Alex to know his father loved him?

  When Alex didn’t come home, his parents were worried at first, until the text came in that he was sleeping over at Kenny’s house. Even then Bao couldn’t sleep because he knew that might mean the test went poorly.

  Mr. Dinh saw the belt on his bed and shuddered. He got on his knees before sleeping and prayed. Please, God, let him pass. He hated the belt, but he’d tried everything else. Kindness, sternness, prizes, consequences, praise, shame, love, fear. Nothing worked with Alex. He was like jelly, always slipping through your fingers. Where would he go next year? What would he do? Please, God, let him pass this one test. Then he’ll see the way forward.

  Bao Dinh didn’t sleep all night.

  But when Alex walked in the next morning, looking disheveled and smelling like dirt and rain, Mr. Dinh was perfectly dressed, drinking orange juice and reading the morning paper as if he’d slept a full eight hours and was ready for life.

  He didn’t look up from the paper when he asked, “How was the test?”

  52   ONES AND ZEROS

  The official renaming of World’s Fair as Charlie’s burger joint was that night. It was so easy, Arthur marveled at his good fortune—he subbed right in for the old manager, threw up a temporary sign, and the staff kept everything else running like clockwork, same as always. They put up some flyers around the neighborhood announcing the name change and promising 10 percent off that night: Same great place, new name! They posted on Yelp and Facebook and Instagram.

  And then they waited.

  Would people show up?

  For now, the only other change his dad threw into the mix was teaching the staff his secret sauce. It wasn’t complicated—one-third Worcestershire, one-third soy sauce, one-third mustard—but he wanted it just right before they added it to the burgers. Charlie found himself watching his dad lost in the activity and decided to slip out and take a break.

  Vanhi was sitting on his front porch when he got home, legs dangling off the steps. Her red-black hair was bright and cheerful in the sunlight.

  She smiled when she saw Charlie. “Why do you look so happy? Did you see Mary?” Vanhi raised an eyebrow.

  “I haven’t seen her since the woods.”

  “Since you kissed in the woods.”

  “Since she swore off men.”

  “My kind of girl.”

  “And sent a nasty text saying what a social liability I’d be.”

  “What?” Vanhi patted the porch next to her. As he hopped up, Charlie heard musical laughter from around the corner. Vik came running from the backyard.

  “Charlie! Charlie!”

  “You brought Vik?”

  “I’m on duty. Both parentals are working today.”

  “Hey, my man!” Charlie said, ruffling Vik’s hair as he wrapped his arms around Charlie.

  “He loves you,” Vanhi said.

  “Right back atcha,” Charlie said.

  They watched him run off to play in the yard.

  “So what about this text? Are you spying on Mary?”

  “No, Peter showed me.”

  Vanhi sighed. “How do you even know it’s real?”

  “Game-certified. That’s what Peter said.”

  Vanhi stared at Charlie for a long time. Then she shook her head. “How do you know he’s telling the truth?”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “Think about him and Caitlyn.”

  “So? He still wants me to be happy.”

  “You don’t see him so clearly. You never have.”

  They glared at each other for a moment.

  Charlie shook his head and changed the subject. “So why the visit?”

  “I … I wanted to say I was sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For the other night. For voting against quitting.”

  “Did you play last night?”

  “We got chased by a bunch of digital bull-men. It was awesome.”

  Charlie felt a pang of jealousy picturing them playing without him. “Have all your dreams come true yet?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Have yours?” she shot back.

  “It’s been a good day, actually. Things with my dad, they felt like … almost like before.”

  “Really? Why now?”

  He hesitated, then told her about the restaurant.

  She gave him a funny look. “You know that has to be…” She didn’t have to say it: the Game.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “This guy who had to give it up suddenly … something must’ve happened to him.…”

  “You think I’m a hypocrite?”

  “No … I mean, it’s for your dad after all, but…”

  “Why don’t you lay off the judgment? I’m the one who tried to quit. And lay off Peter, too, while you’re at it. You’ve always been out to get him, since the day he came.”

  “People say he deals drugs, Charlie. You know that, right?”

  Charlie hesitated for just a moment, the image of that brown bag from Peter to Zeke coming back. The one Charlie had carried. He pushed the thought away.

  “That’s bullshit. He’s never said anything like that.”

  “At St. Luke’s, and now here, too.”

  “Why would he? He doesn’t need the money.”

  “That’s right. He does it because he likes it.”

  “You’re just spreading lies.”

  “Charlie…”

  “He’s the only one who was there when my mom died. What did you do?”

  “What?”

  “What the hell did you do?”

  Vanhi’s eyes watered. “Charlie, I … I didn’t know what to … I tried.”

  “You did shit. So stop trashing him and take a look in the mirror.”

  “Why are you guys fighting?” Vik asked.

  They had no idea how long he’d been back at the porch watching.

  Vanhi smiled abruptly, trying to show Vik everything was okay. “Come on, Vik, let’s go.”

  “You’re jealous of Peter, but you weren’t there,” Charlie snapped, as Vanhi scooped up Vik and went to her car. “You’re jealous of Mary but you wouldn’t date me. You tell me not to lose myself, then you choose the Game over me. Who the hell are you, Vanhi? What do you want?”

  She spun around. “Don’t you get it? Just because I don’t love you doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

  “Well, that’s helpful.”

  Vanhi scowled. She opened the door and helped Vikram into his car seat.

  “You know, that’s just the problem with you computer guys,” she snapped over her shoulder. “You want everything to be black or white, one or zero. That’s not the world, Charlie.” She squeezed Vik’s hand and strapped him in. “It’s all just a shitload of gray.”

  53   FATHER/SON/GHOSTS

  Heading back to the restaurant for the opening, Charlie started to panic. It was too good to be true, the way the place had just fallen into his dad’s lap. Arthur was just too happy, especially when Charlie was on the outs with the Game. Was it a trap, was his dad about to be crushed, his crazy dream destroyed in some public, humiliating way? Charlie wanted to say, Wait, postpone the opening. But how could he? How could he even begin to explain why?

  He remembered something else, too—that crazy question the Game had posed to him two days ago, when he was searching for a way out.

 
; Do you love your dad? Y/N?

  He’d asked:

  Is that a threat?

  And the Game said:

  No! Good News!

  That same phrase his dad had used yesterday: Good news!

  Coincidence? Sure, it wasn’t the most unique phrase. But the Game loved to hint, to tease. It was filled with clues and Easter eggs. Had the Game used that phrase with Charlie, then implanted it in his dad’s mind, too—perhaps it told the suddenly broke and desperate seller to call Charlie’s dad and say he had “good news” for him. The Game was adept at suggestion, at neurolinguistic programming. At programming people.

  Or maybe it was just the obvious phrase for the delivery of … wait for it … good news. And in that case, Charlie was just losing his fucking mind.

  Something else was gnawing at him. Good luck seemed finite in the Game.

  Had hitting Y caused someone else’s ruin? Tanked or blackmailed the seller and directed him to Charlie’s dad?

  So Charlie went back to the restaurant resolved to tell his father to stop everything. And when he got there and saw his dad beaming, happy for the first time in two years, Charlie said nothing.

  He kept his mouth shut.

  And prayed that the Game wasn’t about to destroy his father by raising him up higher than he’d ever been, so it could cast him down all the harder against the saw-toothed rocks.

  * * *

  Kenny stood outside Eddie Ramirez’s house.

  Kenny hadn’t slept since Eddie was thrown out of school. He was crippled with guilt. It was bad enough having spray-painted alt-right garbage on the wall. It felt like vomiting on the school. But the worst part, the part that had gnawed at him all night, was the look on Eddie’s face as Kenny and Candace slinked out of the room. Shell-shocked.

  Kenny kept telling himself, Eddie was coming for us. We had no choice. It was kill or be killed. But that wasn’t how Kenny felt inside. He felt like he’d ruined someone’s life to save his own, and he was sick about it.

  Eddie’s house was a small tan ranch-style, one story tall and aging, in a middle-class enclave called Eleanor Heights. Kenny parked his car. He felt a buzzing in his pocket and glanced at the phone. It said:

  Don’t.

  No explanation. Just Don’t. Which was weird, because Kenny didn’t even know what he intended to do. Confess? Lay himself on the cross for Eddie? Torch his friends to save an asshole? No, there had to be a middle ground. A way they could both get through this. Right?

  As he approached the house, he heard shouting inside. Kenny glanced over his shoulder. The neighborhood was quiet and no one was on the street. His phone buzzed again. He stopped under a tree and looked.

  Isaiah 42:8. Do not speak the unspeakable name of G-d.

  But that was it. That was the only way out for everyone. To tell him about the Game. The way it had manipulated all of them—Kenny, the Vindicators, Eddie, too. Even Candace.

  Yet the Game was one step ahead again, warning Kenny not to speak of the Game before he realized he was going to.

  He shivered and looked up and down the street again. Nothing but gray skies and silent houses. No one was stalking him. No one that he could see.

  Then the Game said:

  Put on your glasses.

  Kenny put on his Aziteks. The neighborhood was still empty and quiet. He looked back at Eddie’s house. It was horrifying. On every eave, every gutter, every ledge, curled in every corner and squatting on every nook and branch, there were demons, ugly, gleaming creatures, eyes burning red, expressionless, looking right at Kenny. They squatted like vultures with men’s starved torsos and heads on long necks. Veined wings and curled nails.

  All of them breathing slowly, with thin, diaphanous skin over ribs that were bent and crooked like fingers holding up small pulsing hearts.

  They lined the phone lines over the house, the television antenna, milled in the grass, crouched in the trees.

  The shouting was coming from the window near the front of the house. Kenny pressed against the glass and tried to hear. Eddie was pleading his case to his father and mother. Kenny could hear bits and pieces of different voices. Not my fault! I didn’t do it! Do you think we’re stupid? I can’t explain! How could you do this to us?

  Kenny lost track of how long he stood there, ear to the glass. It was too easy to imagine this exact conversation in his own house. Finally, blessedly, they stopped shouting and Kenny heard the front door open and this was it. What would Kenny do? He started rounding the corner toward Eddie.

  The Game spoke again, this time on his Aziteks:

  Malachai 3:6. Only the High Priest may utter my name, ten times, on the holiest day.

  Kenny wiped the message away. Eddie was heading toward his car. Kenny made up his mind. He would tell Eddie everything. They would work it out together. If Kenny had to withdraw from school or be suspended or repeat a year, so be it. He would take responsibility for his actions. And that would matter, wouldn’t it? He thought of something his father had told him once when they were watching the news together and some politician was resigning—It’s never the crime, it’s the cover-up. Confess, confess, confess!

  “Eddie!” Kenny shouted.

  Eddie! the Game echoed back in his ears, mocking him.

  500 Blaxx!

  flashed on his screen and tallied on his counter.

  Eddie glanced his way, then turned his back.

  “Eddie, wait!”

  Eddie, wait! the Game taunted.

  800 Blaxx!

  “Go to hell,” Eddie shouted.

  Kenny tried to close the distance between them, but Eddie spun around and stepped forward, grabbing Kenny by the collar and shouting, “You fucked me,” and shoving him hard onto the lawn. Kenny pulled himself up, but Eddie was already coming around the driver’s side of his car and opening the door.

  “Wait! I can explain everything.”

  Wait, I can explain everything!

  1300 Blaxx!

  Kenny’s gut clenched, but he ran toward Eddie anyway until a demon jumped between them, ten feet tall and filled with flames and red veins. Kenny stepped through it as Eddie’s engine roared to life and the car began to pull away.

  2100 Blaxx!

  Shit—Kenny ran to his car to follow Eddie and fumbled for his keys.

  3400 Blaxx!

  At first Kenny didn’t see or hear the car that was already coming down the block behind him at a steady clip. It was speeding up as it got close, then swerved abruptly, engine roaring.

  Kenny moved at the last second, but it made impact and sent him hurtling headlong into the grass.

  * * *

  Vanhi sat fuming at her computer, trying to process her fight with Charlie. She put Pink Floyd on YouTube and played bass along with “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” but that was too slow, so she tried “Immigrant Song.” Her fingers sailed over the thick strings with Zeppelin, and for a moment she was lost in the music. But when it got to the line “we are your overlords,” it all came crashing back and she got mad again and turned it off.

  The Game told her from the computer:

  You need to see this

  She put on her glasses, and the screen was just as she’d left it, her new and improved essay still there. But then it dissolved and she was inside the internal gearbox of the Harvard system. Names spun past her on the screen like on a roulette wheel, their scores, essays, recommendations, all turning on the dial like constellations of stars. It felt sickening, and yet not surprising, when the wheel slowed, then trickled past the last few names to land on Charlie Lake.

  There in front of her was the whole of Charlie’s application. The early ace SAT score (1,590), the grades—freshman year, 4.0; sophomore year, 4.0; junior year, 2.1. The essay (she couldn’t bear to read it):

  On December 3, 2015, my mother died from Stage IV ovarian cancer. I was the primary caretaker, unofficially, as my father succumbed to the stress and pressure of the situation. I realize now …

  The topic
was “Please describe a significant experience in your life.” Jesus Christ, she thought, that oughta do it.

  Charlie told her he wasn’t applying. He said, right to her face, that he hadn’t even started an application. But he had. It was right here.

  If it’s even real, she reminded herself.

  Did Charlie do this? Did the Game? Freshman year, they had a pact. Charlie and Vanhi against the world. They’d apply to Harvard together. They’d both get in. Then they’d set the world on fire. But now they both had blemishes on their records—and Harvard wasn’t going to take two charity cases from one school. No way would Harvard forgive her D, uber-essay or not, if Charlie was also applying, with a much better excuse for his black eye.

  Her screen shivered. The Game made her an offer, without speaking or explaining itself. But she knew exactly what it meant.

  Charlie’s and Vanhi’s applications flickered back and forth between one another. The numbers and words began to melt and flux between them. Her SAT became 1590. His became 1550. His freshman year 4.0 flickered with her 3.89 until they transposed. His essay, so simple yet gutting, wavered into I have long been impressed by Harvard’s strong academic reputation. Most tantalizing, her D, that junior-year disaster that she’d hidden from her parents, then hacked back, became an A. She’d never dared hack it permanently—getting caught was too risky—but the Game could get away with it on a level she never could, making sure people saw exactly what they needed to see at the right time to never suspect a thing. In the swapping transcripts, her D was sucked into the muck of Charlie’s junior year. His 2.1 barely changed, to a 2.0. The difference to Vanhi’s GPA was huge. It went from a 3.6 to a 4.0.

  For Harvard, that was a world of difference.

  It was all just numbers on a screen.

  The part of her essay about the D was gone now, too. She wouldn’t need it anymore—there was apparently nothing left to apologize for.

  The button at the bottom of the page was flashing. It wasn’t a Harvard button. It was a God Game button. It said:

  SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT …

  You probably won’t even know it, she thought to Charlie. Your application will look just fine to you. You’ll hit Submit. And the bits and bytes will transform from what you saw to what I made happen. And you’ll never know why they rejected you. No one ever does.