Читать книгу In Real Life - Lawrence Tabak - Страница 9

Part 1

KANSAS

1.

School called. Again. Unexcused absence, blah, blah, blah. My interception rate on these calls is eighty-four percent (This is Seth’s father, how can I help you?), but they had called Dad while I was at Mom’s. So Dad calls Mom and pretty soon I can hear the screaming right through my headset even though I’m in my bedroom with the door closed. And I have a good headset. She’s getting so worked up that DTerra, my best friend, picks it up over my mic and says, “What the hell is that?”

“Nothing,” I mutter and then hit mute. I love the feeling before a game starts. The buzz of adrenaline, the little turning in the stomach. I’m determined not to let a little parental meltdown break the mood. “I HAVE talked to him! I’ve talked to him until I’m blue in the face! YOU talk to him!”

“Sounded like an orc attack.”

Despite the screaming I laugh. DTerra’s real name is Donald Terrance but I usually just call him DT. He lives five hundred miles away in Moorhead, Minnesota, which he says to think of as a twin city of Fargo, if the twins were deformed dwarfs.

“Don’t you yell at me,” my mom is yelling into the phone. “Friday was your day. It was your responsibility to see that he went to school.”

Actually, I did go to school. I just left at lunch. All I had that afternoon was a study hall, gym and a review session in AP physics, which I already understood. I hadn’t really missed anything.

“OK,” DTerra says. “You ready to make our move?”

I say, “One minute.” I actually like to draw out the pre-game excitement. And making the other team wait a couple minutes. It sets the stage. Shows them who’s in control.

Plus I haven’t looked at Brit Leigh’s Facebook page for maybe twenty minutes. She changes her picture about that often, so it’s always worth checking. If she knew how many times a week I visited her homepage I bet she’d have me arrested for stalking. Last time I looked she had 149 friends, which includes just about our entire sophomore class. It’s easy to remember because 149 happens to be the 35th largest prime number, and we have 35 kids in our English class. Anyway, the point is if I had any balls at all I would at least be one of those 149. But I don’t, and I’m not.

“Seth! Let’s take these guys now!”

We’re scheduled to play a two-man game against a team from Germany with a rating a little higher than ours. We’ve been waiting to play these guys for weeks. If we win, we’ll move up into the top ten on our server.

“One second,” I say.

Brit has added a picture of her, a friend and two senior guys goofing around. The four of them are draped all over each other and leaning into the camera and acting high or drunk. Which is possible. Even goofy she looks pretty amazing. Brit and I have been in the same school since middle school. I think we took geometry together. But I never really noticed her until this year.

It started near the beginning of the year. Our history teacher, Mr. Hobson, has this way of talking to the girls in the class. At least certain girls. I’m not sure if it would be more or less creepy if he was younger or more handsome, but he’s an old guy, at least as old as my dad, and when you get up close to him you can see craters in his cheeks and his breath is pretty awful. Anyway, he’ll call on girls in class and say stuff like, “Brit. I bet you know who the Continental Congress assigned to write the first draft of the Constitution. Because I’m sure you weren’t out carousing like half the girls in this school, dolled up like streetwalkers, doing God-knows-what on a school night.”

And Brit, instead of blushing or putting on that “OMG” face and looking at her friends in disbelief, she just stared him in the eye and said, “Mr. Hobson, are you asking me about James Madison or are you asking me about my social life?”

Everyone started laughing and now it was Mr. Hobson who was blushing. Brit and I have American History and English together and if it weren’t for her presence, I’d probably have missed so many classes I’d be flunked out by now.

Actually she knows who I am, I’m pretty sure. She said hello to me once at the mall food court. She was with a bunch of girls and I was with my mother. So I was walking as fast as I could and looking at the ground. The thing is, you have to be someone, do something, before the girls pay attention. So my brother, for years he spends three hours a day shooting hoops in the front drive. It looked like some kind of boredom torture to me, standing in the corner with a rack of balls, shooting the same damn shot over and over. Of course, Garrett would probably say the same about playing twelve hours of Starfare a day. But then he got to be a famous star on the basketball team with every girl in school worshipping him.

I pick up the morning paper and there it is on page one.

Local boy wins world Starfare tournament, $30K

Brit is waiting for me outside of homeroom. Everyone is high-fiving me and patting me on the back. She says, “Seth! That was so cool. I hear you’re going to buy a Porsche.”

I don’t care if everyone is watching or not. I step in close and wrap my arms around her and pull her towards me. Then our lips are meeting and she’s kissing me back and sighing.

“Seth! What the hell?”

DT is always a little wired. It’s not like they’re going to start the match without us. So I tell him that I’ve got to check my broadband speed, even though it’s fine.

I wish I knew exactly what it is about Brit. It’s not like she’s the school goddess or something. She’s got normal, brown hair. Cut shoulder length like most of the girls. Wears the same sorts of nice clothes. But she’s different too. She has this sort of confidence. When she’s standing up in front of the class, like she did last week, giving a report on some old poem…it’s like those moments in a movie where the music wells up and everyone’s leaning forward. She shakes her hair and then brushes a strand back behind her right ear. And my pulse doubles and I can feel something electric glowing inside of me and spreading through my body….

Just before I tell DTerra I’m ready, my mom starts pounding on my door so hard my Starfare Horizons poster starts shaking like a fan is blowing. Luckily I have a lock, but it’s one of those you can pop with a little metal stick, if you work it around a couple minutes. At least it gives me plenty of warning.

“Not now!” I shout.

“Your father is on the phone and you’d better talk to him. And I mean now! Anyway you know I HATE talking through a locked door. Why do you have to lock it anyway?”

Well, that’s pretty obvious, I’m thinking.

“Seth!”

“I’ll call him back on my cell,” I shout. The game is about to start and DTerra is telling me what he’s going to be doing and it takes total concentration. I tell my parents it’s like when my older brother was starting on the basketball team, dribbling down the floor. Would they stand up and scream, “Garrett! You forgot to pick up your dirty socks like you promised” or “Garrett! Have you finished your English essay?” But no matter how many times I explain it, they just don’t get it.

Mom mutters something but I can tell she’s giving up, so now I just have to get my head back into the game. That’s why I dream about getting away from all this school and family crap and just focusing on what I need to do to make it to the top. And making it to the top means making it to Korea. E-sports are huge in Korea, with twenty-four-hour TV broadcasts and teams that train like madmen. The top guys are pulling in six-figure money. I don’t talk about it, because people would think I’m crazy, but someday, if I can cut through all the crap that’s holding me back, that’s going to be me.

Then my room and my mom and school disappear and the game starts. My hand is dancing over the keyboard, my mouse is clicking like a Geiger counter. Every extraneous thought is gone and I’m deep inside the glowing screen, mining resources and figuring out how to counter the German team’s troop development. As I’m clicking I’m shouting out orders to DT and marching across a landscape of spiked mountains and fire-glowing valleys. A skirmish starts and the screen lights up with explosions as we trade cannon blasts. I yell for DT to finish them off while I check the spybots I’ve sent to the western quadrant. My whole being is now tunneled into the world on the screen, every neuron in my brain is firing for one purpose. Another hard-fought, glorious victory.

2.

Thank God, back at Dad’s. He’s on the road; I’m on the Starfare warpath. For once pumping in decent hours, really getting into the groove. I’m taking four AP courses, two are a breeze, two are a pain, but I’ve got sixth period study hall, which means early release. I scamper across the parking lot, between all the hand-me-down Acuras and BMWs, cut through two rows of McMansions on a bike path and I’m plugging in at Dad’s condo. For dinner I take a fifteen-minute break, scoot around the corner and I’m at KenTacoHut—my favorite restaurant. American, Mexican and Italian under one roof.

For months all I’ve been thinking about is this online tournament that gives away seats at Nationals. At my age, the top Korean kids are already challenging the pros. If I can’t even make U.S. Nationals then I’m worse than awful. Rather than dream about becoming a pro-gamer, I might as well plan on winning American Idol. And most dogs sing better than me.

As the day approaches, my classes get longer and longer while all I can think about is getting back to the computer. It seems like a year before we get to the Friday of the weekend tournament. The teacher is blabbering on, something about World War I. As soon as he says the word “battle” Starfare games start echoing in my head like pop music worms. I close my eyes and I can see the flashes of a Starfare firefight, and feel a glimmer of the excitement of battle. When the last bell sounds I’m out of there like there’s a fire and jog all the way home. The computer takes what feels like an hour to boot up and the game queue is endless. I run to the fridge, grab a Pepper, and then, at last, my game is up and I’m back where I belong.

Saturday, 10 a.m. and I’m finally sitting down in my bedroom at Dad’s, waiting for the first round draws to be announced. I’m so wired I can’t sit still. I get up, walk around the room, check to see if the draw has been posted yet, get up, walk around. All I can think about is winning the seat at Nationals in San Diego and getting the free entry and hotel room that goes with it.

Once I get into the first round, I’m actually calmer than I was when I was waiting.

I get lucky and they pick one of my favorite maps, Horizons, and I’m quickly in the zone, coasting by a half-dozen decent players. My sixth qualie match goes fast so I’m a bit ahead of the rest of the draw, queued up, waiting for my next opponent my right leg bouncing up and down like it has a muscle spasm. I’m getting so close, just three more wins. I’m all nerves and Starfare buzz, trying to calm down by scanning one of the Starfare message boards when I’m startled by an IM on my personal account in all caps:

Stompazer: HEY NOOB READY TO GET STOMPED

I don’t even bother replying. This guy Stompazer has been stalking me for over a year. Ever since I got written up in this computer magazine. They did a story on whether the next generation of American players could produce a Starfarer who could compete with the Koreans. I talked to a reporter on the phone for a few minutes and the story itself was pretty lame. But this guy Stompazer thinks he’s going to be the LeBron James of Starfare and is pissed off that they didn’t mention him in the story. He’s a couple of years older than me and I have no problem saying he’s a decent player. But he has way too much time on his hands. Just about every day he’s IMing or emailing me a challenge, saying how he’s going to knock my butt around or grind me into little pieces or stomp my ass. And that’s the clean stuff. I’ve changed my handle a couple of times but someone must be feeding him info because he just pops up and laughs at me for trying to avoid him.

Stompazer: BETTER PUT ON A HELMET ASSWIPE CUZ IM GOING TO KICK YOUR HEAD IN

When I pop up the tournament screen I mutter a few choice swear words, because there it is. I’ve drawn him in the round of eight, game to start in three minutes.

Stompazer: THE GREAT AMERICAN HOPE IS GOING DWN

I try to ignore this guy because I’m pretty sure he’s seriously deranged. And he’s spent all this time researching me and tracking me online. I’m pretty sure he knows where I live. All I know about him, besides he’s nuts, is that he lives somewhere in California and is a senior in high school. He’s had a few good wins, but so far I wouldn’t say he’s done anything to make people think he was going to take the Starfare world by storm. I decide if I’m going to play him, I’m going to have to acknowledge him.

ActionSeth: Hey

Stompazer: THAT ALL U GOT TO SAY…U R SUCH A PUSSY

I’d bet anything that Stomp is a complete loser IRL. Not that my real life is all wins. But at least I’m not spending all my free time harassing people online. I shut down the IM and concentrate on the tournament clock. We’ve played one-on-one ten times and he lets me know every day that he’s up 6-4. What I’ve never told him is he’s so obnoxious that in half those games I just tanked to get rid of him.

But this one counts. A lot. I try not to think about how painful it would be to get this close and go down. To Stomp. But as soon as the start screen lights up, my nerves are gone. As always, the action is frantic. For about twenty minutes it looks like a draw to me. But Mr. Stomp doesn’t know a couple of things. First, I’ve been training harder than I ever have in my life. And I know this Horizon map like the way my tongue knows the back of my teeth. As we get into the midgame it’s pretty clear that I’ve got the upper hand when it comes to knowing the little quirks, taking the shortcuts, squeezing all those extra resources. My material advantage just grows and grows and the more I relax, the more I’m able to press him. I take special pleasure in a furious battle outside his home base, knowing that I’ve got superior numbers. I’m shooting fireballs so fast the screen looks like a strobe light, generating a rumble of sound effects like a Kansas thunderstorm. Normally you’re way too busy to message your opponent but Stomp starts throwing up little IMs on the game screen, stuff like I’m a lucky suck. I just smile to myself and concentrate on finishing him off. It doesn’t take long.

I know Stomp will do everything in his power to stalk me if I stay online, so I shut down the computer and soak it in. Next weekend, it’s the final four. I’m really happy with that, because I’m not getting in the kind of hours I think I need to really take it up a notch. During my best week, I’m getting around thirty-five hours. The Koreans pros, who absolutely dominate, they’re training twelve to fourteen hours a day, six days a week. And they’re working these maps as a team, a dozen of them just pounding on it hour after hour, sharing every little quirk and advantage they stumble on. Even if I had fourteen hours a day I couldn’t compete with that.

Somehow I get through another week of school while all I can think about is the upcoming final rounds. The way I took out Stomp has my confidence level up a notch, but the waiting on Saturday is still excruciating. I’m getting a bunch of IMs from my online friends, wishing me luck. It’s a good thing I have a heavy-duty office chair, because I’m rocking it back and forth like I’m on horseback. Then the clock is ticking down to zero and from the first mouse click I just fall into this incredible groove. It’s hard to explain. I watched my brother hit seven three-pointers one night and I asked him how it felt and he just shrugged and said, “Sometimes you just know everything you throw up is going down the hole.”

I’m in the same zone. Everything just flows. In the battles my mouse is clicking so fast that it’s almost a solid noise and I’m gliding over the map like a marble on glass. I dominate the semis and in the finals I don’t think I miss a single shot and squeak out a really close match against a well-known player, AceMaxer. Just like that, I’ve got a free seat at Nationals right after school gets out. The winner of the individual event at Nationals gets $30,000.

All my online friends, like DTerra, they’re IMing me, screaming stuff like, “AWESOME DUDE!” and “NEXT STOP NATIONAL CHAMP!”

When things settle down it’s just me and DTerra.

DTerra: man id give anything to b there

ActionSeth: so come

DTerra: no way im going to qualify

ActionSeth: come a day early and play the qualies and grind in

DTerra: u think I got a chance

ActionSeth: sure… u said your old man travels a lot

ActionSeth: so get some frequent flier points…u can crash at my hotel, cheap trip

DTerra: OK will work on it…gtg…cu

I shut down the IM and sit there in a bit of a daze. Thinking about what I need to do to win that $30,000 and, of course, what I do with the money. First thing would be the ultimate gaming platform. I waste at least an hour a week browsing for a new rig I couldn’t possible afford. Until I win Nationals. That will leave about $27,000. Which I’ll need to cover my expenses while I train for the pro circuit. I can finish high school doing an online program, which costs a couple grand. I’ve checked it out completely and it’s totally legit. If you’re a famous teen actor or sports star, it’s pretty much automatic. If I’m going to be the first American to break into the pro game in a big way, it just makes sense that I’m going to have to train harder than any American ever has. Especially when you know how hard the Korean pros are working and how the best of them peak at age nineteen or twenty.

Then I plan what I’m going to say when I’m interviewed for Computer Gaming World after I win Nationals. When they ask me what’s the most important source of my success. I picture myself standing on a stage holding an oversized check for $30,000. I have the answer all planned out: “My parents’ divorce.”

That was back in ninth grade and, for one thing, they were spending so much time screaming at each other that it was getting really hard to concentrate on anything. Mom kept the house. Dad started renting a condo in this new development out on 124th street, just down the street from the high school.

Back then Dad and me, we had pretty good times. We’d go to all of Garrett’s junior AAU games and sit in the stands eating popcorn and cheering. Back then I was still in pee-wee ball and he thought I’d be just like Garrett. Except that I was terrible at basketball. And soccer. And baseball. Still, Dad came to all my games and stood on the sidelines and yelled and afterwards we’d go get hamburgers and a milkshake. Tell me that I’d grow into it. To stick with it. Ever since I dropped out of sports he’s been on my case. Telling me that I’m wasting my life staring into a little glowing screen. It’s gotten even worse since Garrett left for college.

That’s probably not all of it. I sort of pieced together that he got passed over for some sort of sales director job. When I think about it, he’s been pissed off about everything since then. But the good news for me is that he took a different position and he’s on the road half the time. And of course I’ve got a key to the condo. It’s almost like having my own place. Plus it’s only a five-minute walk from school, so when I ditch classes, I’m there in no time. Starfare paradise.

I should have known it was too sweet a deal to last.

3.

I think it’s funny when my dad and I have a “serious” conversation in his “study.” First of all, he’s the only person in the world who would call it a study. Like he was a professor or something. True, there is a desk in the corner. Of course, there’s no chair, just a mini-refrigerator stocked with beer where your legs would go. And the big cabinet against the wall isn’t filled with technical manuals or legal books—it opens to a forty-two-inch flatscreen TV. The bookshelves are stuffed with Garrett’s trophies and autographed sports junk. He can spend almost the entire weekend in there, in this big brown recliner, watching football or basketball and drinking beer.

Somehow I’ve got to break through the clutter and get him on board with Nationals. Problem is, even with free hotel and entry fee I still need an airplane ticket, and although I’ve got a couple hundred in a savings account at the bank, I can’t touch it without Dad’s permission. So I’ve got to hit him up for the money. I knock on the door. He insists that I knock before entering. God knows why.

“Yes?”

It’s amazing how much meaning my dad can pack into one word. When he says “yessss?” in that tone, he’s saying, “Now what? Can’t you see I’m busy (watching something incredibly boring and meaningless on TV, like a golf tournament without Tiger Woods)? I’d rather not deal with it at all, but if it’s absolutely necessary, then make it quick.”

So I say through the door, “It will just take a sec.”

Then he says OK and I open the door. I have to stand there, in the doorway, until some no-name golfer finishes hitting a putt from about twelve inches, possibly the most boring televised sporting activity in the world. He putts, the ball barely rotates, excruciatingly slow across the screen. The ball hovers on the edge and then, finally, drops in. Polite applause. My dad turns and says it again.

“Yessss?”

“I’ve got this great opportunity,” I begin, trying to set up the pitch. My dad once gave me this lecture about the secret of sales. He travels around the Midwest selling some obscure service to small companies that can’t afford the really good service that the big companies buy from his competitor.

He arches his eyebrows, and I see I’ve actually, for a nanosecond, got his attention.

“Yeah, I won this big online tournament and I qualified for the Nationals in San Diego. I’ll have to fly in on June twenty-sixth and fly back on the thirtieth. I won the entry fee and I get a free hotel room. That’s worth around $600, about half the cost of going.”

Dad gets this puzzled look on his face and he runs his fingers through his hair. He’s pretty vain about his hair, which is still thick on top, a little gray above the ears. He keeps it fairly long and combed straight back, sometimes with this gel or grease.

“You telling me they have Nationals for all the dweebs who play computer games? What kind of title is that? King of the nerds?”

“OK,” I say, biting my tongue. “But seriously. It’s really hard to get the invite, and it’s a great opportunity. They’ve got $150,000 in prize money.”

I let this sink in for a few seconds, while he continues to stare at the TV, as if he’s worried about missing some amazing chip shot or hole in one, which is nuts, because every time there’s a really great shot they replay it at least a dozen times.

But he turns towards me and for at least a second I’ve got his attention. “Did you say 150 Gs?”

I nod my head.

“So how much you asking for?”

“I can a get a flight for around $400 and then a little something for food…”

“Bottom line, please,” he says, like he’s some big-shot CEO.

“I’ll need about $600, I figure.”

Now I’ve really got his attention.

“Six hundred. That’s a lot of money, Seth.”

“I know.” Knowing it is, and it isn’t. He and a girlfriend once spent that much on bar bills at Vegas in a weekend. Then again, I have to work at a fast food joint every weekend for six months to save that much.

“Six hundred bucks, huh.”

“Six hundred bucks.” It’s possible to have an entire conversation with my dad where every other line is a repetition of the previous one.

“OK. Let me get this straight. You need $600 to go play computer games with a bunch of geeks from across the country. You fly to San Diego, go sit down at a computer and pay to play for three straight days. What I want to know is, how is this different from what you do every day here, for free?”

“Well, for one,” I reply. “No one is putting up $150k in prize money.”

“And you’ve got a legitimate shot at this $150k?”

“Well, not all of it. No one wins it all. It gets divvied up into different events. Different specialties, it’s hard to explain. But I feel like I’ve got a shot at a piece of it.”

After the last online win, my rating jumped up twenty points, and that makes me fifth in the country.

My dad screws up his face in this way he does when he really thinking. Like it takes an awful lot of effort.

“OK,” he says. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

“A deal?” So typical. My dad thinks he’s this great wheeler dealer sales expert.

“I’m going to give you the money for this trip. Not lend it to you. Give it to you. On one condition.” He arches his eyebrows, waiting for me to ask him what the condition is.

“What condition?”

“You can go to California. Play with your nerd buddies into the wee hours. But when you come back empty-handed, that’s it. We forget this whole idea of playing the computer for money. In the meantime, you buckle down, get off that God-forsaken computer long enough to do your homework, stop skipping classes, get your GPA up, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be lucky enough to get into a fine university like your brother.”

So then we shake on it, just like two businessmen. And I get back to my computer and start working on my moves, because I’m going to have to play flawless. Or, as Mrs. Lawson, my English teacher would insist, flawlessly.

4.

The rest of the semester I worry about screwing up and having Dad take back my ticket to San Diego. So I go to all my classes (mostly) and do my homework (as fast as possible, mostly in other classes) and concentrate on getting a seat in English and history behind Brit so I can stare at her the entire class without being too obvious. Even if it’s just the back of her soft, shiny hair, I watch the way the light plays off as if it were some hypnotic kaleidoscope. And for at least that moment, the Starfare game playing in the back of my mind goes on pause.

A couple of weeks after Dad agreed to give me the cash I get an IM from my brother.

3-PointShooter: Hey

ActionSeth: Hey

3-PointShooter: Good going

ActionSeth: ?

3-PointShooter: Heard u got the old man to cough up the dough to send u to some tourney

ActionSeth: Yeah pretty amazing

Garrett, he’s not into gaming like I am, but at least he understands. When I was about nine a friend of his lent us his Nintendo 64 and we started playing Mario Kart. At first Garrett, who was fourteen, killed me, but I spent every waking hour working on it and after a couple of weeks I started winning. It was the first time I had beaten him at anything and he just shook his head and laughed and claimed it was unfair, that I was practicing too much. I think it bothered him a bit until I showed him the times I was posting online—I was in the top hundred in the country on a couple of courses.

We IM a little bit more about nothing much and then he wishes me luck at the tournament.

I’m spending every extra hour I can online, trying to get it together for Nationals. It’s a Wednesday night and I’m at Mom’s. I’ve drawn a game against this kid from Korea. No one famous—they would never mess around playing against crap Americans, but he’s got a really high rating and I’m just barely hanging on. I’m not even sure why I’m struggling. I’ve won at least twenty games in a row and feeling like I’m on my way to a really good showing at Nationals. And then this. The action is incredibly fast and I’m pounding on the keyboard, wheeling the mouse and trying to keep track of three fronts at once.

In an intense game like this, you’re in so deep the room around you just disappears. When you’re in the middle of a battle, and your fingers are flying across the keyboard, you’re not looking at the screen, you’re not playing at a game, you’re IN the game. Like those science fiction movies where someone gets sucked up in a wormhole or drops through a hole in time. It’s sort of like that. You get that same sense of being pulled into this other world. It’s not as though you believe your body has gone anywhere, but your mind, your consciousness is actually sucked through the screen. And you’re not alone.

Not by a long shot. Sure it’s a world with all of these strange creatures and complicated rules, but it has dimensions and textures and players who become friends and geography you have to learn the way you know your neighborhood and the way to and from school. And if you’re good, like I am, then you move through this world with the kind of confidence that Kobe Bryant shows when he cuts to the basket, or when Payton Manning goes back to pass from his five-yard-line with ten seconds on the clock. That’s why it’s simply not acceptable for someone to start knocking on my bedroom door when I’m into a tough game, any more than you’d expect Kobe or Payton to stop, right at that critical moment, and chat up a couple of spectators. I know it might sound conceited, when I talk about these sports superstars, but that’s the way it is.

So naturally Mom pounds on my door at the worst possible time.

“Seth! Seth!”

Out of the corner of my eye I see something unexpected on the northeast corner of the map. Crap, crap crap! Somehow he’s got three cruisers completely armed and moving in formation and that just seems impossible. I had a spybot up there just minutes ago. Unless he had them cloaked. But how?

“Seth! Why didn’t you pick up the phone?”

This comes at me like a voice shouted from a distant mountain across miles of canyons on a foggy morning.

Then I see movement on the opposite corner and OMG it’s another three cruisers that come out of nowhere and I’m thinking, maybe this is one of the Korean pros slumming on an American server. Playing under a pseudonym just to yank someone’s chain. Like mine, because I’ve never, ever seen anyone develop that much firepower that quickly and I realize I am totally screwed.

“Seth, it’s someone from your school.”

Maybe I could distract him with a direct attack right at his home base, but that would be suicidal.

“It’s a girl.”

It’s like the screen blinks and when I look at it for a second it’s not a 3D world but just a flat screen with a dozen blinking blips. I suddenly hear the game’s sounds, which are usually lost in the background, like the computer’s fan. First the crunching sound when one of my land fighters gets crushed. Then the clattering of an army marching on pavement, sounding like hail on a roof.

“What did you say?” I shout.

“Seth, open the door. You know I hate talking through a closed door! It’s a girl from your school. Her name is Bret or Brit, I couldn’t really tell.”

I was going to lose the game anyway.

5.

The only reason Mom isn’t freaking over a call from a girl is my older brother Garrett. I once did a count of his Facebook friends: 298 girls and 87 boys. Garrett Gordon, high school jock exemplar. Minor: tennis doubles, third round state. Major: shooting guard, 19.6 point average. Hobby: going steady with beautiful girls.

Garrett’s been hanging out with a series of girls since eighth grade. So many I gave up trying to keep them straight years ago and just call them all Kimberly. That makes me right about half the time. Kimberly is always pretty and perky and active in school—she’s got the lead in the school play, or is a varsity cheerleader, or has a room full of tennis trophies. And naturally, my brother is always there to give me advice about how to hook up with a Kimberly of my own. And to say I have no interest in the Kimberlys would be a lie. Kimberly looks amazing, I can vouch for this, even when she’s flat on her back on my dad’s sofa, with her hair and makeup mussed, popping up with a gasp when I burst through the door and turn on the light at 2 a.m. back from a night of gaming over at Eric’s.

“Crap,” I said simultaneously with my brother, who was cursing me, and I’m fast enough on the light switch to be unsure if what I saw was a naked torso or a near-naked torso or a semi-naked torso. The image was stuck on my eyes like when you shoot a flash photo in a dark room, and I was happy to have it there, because I would want to examine it carefully, as soon as I got through the living room and into my bedroom.

“Sorry,” I muttered, as I shuffled through the now darkened room, knowing the way by feel.

“Jesus,” I heard Kimberly sigh. “Garrett, I really, really have to go. I had no idea it was this late and if I get caught sneaking in I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

By then I was down the hallway to my bedroom door and I could hear my brother in the background as I locked it, making the kind of soothing sounds people make to calm a fidgeting horse. I just slipped out of my clothes and into bed and closed my eyes really tight, making that picture come back, the shock of blond hair flying into the air and Kimberly’s arms pushing Garrett away. She looked just awesome and I’d give just about anything to be Garrett for just that minute, or better yet, the minute before I burst in, as long as I didn’t have to stay Garrett forever. The last thing I want to be is Dad’s favorite sports star.

So to put it mildly, I don’t have the kind of practice Garrett does at these sorts of things, and when I pick up the phone I’m kind of stuttering so that Brit has to say, “Seth? Is that you?”

“Yah, no nah,” is what I actually spit out.

“Seth?

Finally I manage to say yeah.

“Oh great. Hey, the reason I’m calling your house is that I don’t have your cell and if you check Facebook I’ve friended you. Anyway, you know that final group project thing that we have to do for history?”

Brit Leigh’s Facebook friend? After an entire year of trying to get up the nerve. Just like that? As far as a history project, I’m thinking, but blanking.

“Anyway, Ben and Katie and I wanted to know if you’d be in our group?”

Something about this project thing is in the back of my mind. Maybe a handout we got a few weeks ago?

“We’re going to meet at the library tomorrow afternoon at four, you know the branch over by Panera?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, will you?”

“What?” I muttered.

“You know, be in our group…”

“Ha, yah,” I mutter, thinking, what a moron.

“Seth?”

Finally I managed to say, “Yeah, sure, I guess…” and then, before I can stop it from actually being uttered I add, inanely, “but why…”

There was a pause, and she said, “Seth, you’re kidding right?”

I shake my head before I realize that she can’t see me and say “no.” And I’m not kidding.

“Seth, everyone knows you’re like the smartest kid in class. Like when Mr. Hobson asked about that strategy thing during the Battle of Gettysburg and no one knew a thing about it and you finally raised your hand and explained it like you had just spent a week preparing a report on it?”

“Oh, that thing.” Mr. Hobson asked if anyone could give an example of a critical tactical maneuver in the Battle of Gettysburg. There was a long silence. Since I knew a little bit about the Twentieth Maine’s famous bayonet charge on Little Round Top I finally raised my hand and blabbered on about it for a while.

A couple summer back my mom had decided it would be good for Garrett and me and her to have one last vacation together before he left for college. Since money is always an issue, she got my Uncle Andy to lend her his lake house in Northern Wisconsin. So it takes us almost two days to drive there, which is pretty awful to contemplate in itself, and then we’re stuck in this little house without any Internet connection and a TV that gets three stations.

Uncle Andy has a job with some big corporation in Minneapolis, but his hobby is the Civil War. So I’m stuck up in the middle of nowhere and he’s got about five-hundred books, all on the Civil War. With nothing better to do I read though a couple of them. And what’s sad is that I was actually getting interested, especially in the whole battle strategy thing. I mean, it’s not all that different than the strategies I use in Starfare. So I had read a couple accounts of the Twentieth Maine’s wheeled bayonet charge, which is one of the more famous battle maneuvers in the whole war. That’s why I could answer Mr. Hobson’s question. I got so into it that I went up to the board and drew a diagram, which I can scarcely bear to think about, it’s so em­­barrassing.

So just like that I’m in the Brit Leigh History Group. I say this out loud about ten times. Like pinching yourself to see if you’re in a dream. All because Mom tortured me with that vacation to Uncle Andy’s lake house. The world works in weird ways.

I immediately get on Facebook and sure enough, there’s a message from Brit. Of course, now I have to worry about what Brit saw. I glance through my friends list and realize that it’s not as bad as I thought. Not all geeky gamer guys. There’s a couple of girls who used to play Magic with us at the local card shop. Becca, who’s my friend Eric’s girlfriend. And some of Becca’s friends. And a bunch of girls from school I don’t know that well who probably friended the entire class. And Mercedes, this girl from middle school who told me she was not named after the car. We had this lame unit on ballroom dancing in eighth grade and we sort of became regular partners. I’m not even sure how it happened. After the unit was over she was always sending me dumb little emails and asking if I was going to the football game that night or the mall over the weekend or if I wanted to get together to study. Which at the time was no, no, no because I wasn’t wasting prime gaming time at football games or hanging around the mall and I never studied. Thinking about it now, I just sort of shake my head because she was pretty and nice and I was just clueless.

Then I look more closely at the picture I’ve got posted. It’s awful. And that’s what Brit saw. It’s a picture Mom took of me when we were on vacation. I was sitting on the side of the dock, just sort of staring at the little fish that poke around the slimy poles that hold it up and didn’t even know she took it until we got back home. It was near the end of the vacation and my hair was lighter than it usually is. It’s not as though I liked the picture. It’s just that I hate having my picture taken and that was the only one I could find.

People always say I take after Mom, mostly because my hair is light and wavy like hers, while Garrett has my father’s straight, dark hair. I also got my mom’s height gene, because last time we stood next to each other I was about a half-foot shorter than Garrett, although Mom tells me that all the boys on her side of the family were late bloomers. Come to think of it, my pants aren’t dragging on the ground like they used to, so maybe I am still growing. Anyway, Garrett’s no giant himself. Dad says the only reason he wasn’t recruited by any of the big D1 basketball schools was because he’s not even six foot, although that’s what the high school programs said.

At least it’s an interesting picture, the way the sun was playing off the water behind me. Maybe, I thought, someone would like the way I looked, like I was contemplating the meaning of life or quantum mechanics. Like I was one of those brooding, sensitive boys who get the girls in bad teen movies, when everyone knows in real life they don’t. Anyway, I was probably thinking about some Starfare battle of the past, trying to figure out a more efficient way to harvest lifesource points.

6.

Mom has this big guilt trip over taking her current boyfriend Martin to a week at this yoga or meditation or some other drink-the-Kool-Aid institute in California. She gets all wound up about me staying alone and eating sugary cereal and fast food, but I tell her after all these years of taking care of us, she deserves it. After managing to avoid a teary goodbye scene with them I’m getting really comfortable over at Dad’s. I’m finishing up my third Starfare win in a row when I glance at the computer clock and realize I’m going to be late to Brit’s history group. Especially since I have no choice but to bike. I’m still gasping as I ditch my bike on the library rack.

The group has a table in the back and Brit sees me first and waves. So naturally that reduces me to a state of total imbecility. Rather than have to talk I squirm down into the open chair and pick up a copy of the assignment that’s on the table. I’m pretty sure everyone is staring at me because I’m still breathing hard and my forehead is damp and I wonder if I smell too.

I skim over the assignment and figure out that we have to pick a topic and do a group presentation on the Great Depression. On the plus side, presentations are usually no-brainers. Then again, you have to sit through all the others, which can be excruciating.

“Black Monday and the stock market collapse, WPA and federal job creation, Conservation Corps…” Each one sounding as bad as the previous.

I glance over at Brit and she’s concentrating on the topics, resting her chin on her hand. She’s wearing a T-shirt with these shiny things that make star patterns, including one centered perfectly on her right breast. When she looks my way I jerk my eyes back at the paper.

In the end we choose the Dust Bowl topic, even though one of the girls didn’t even know what it was. And when you think about it, it is sort of goofy name. Sounds like where Kansas U goes to play football in December when they’re 8-6. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to game this so that I can either end up doing some part of the project one-on-one with Brit or do something that only takes fifteen minutes. I end up taking on the computer stuff—setting up the PowerPoint with pictures and maybe getting some old songs to play at the beginning and the end.

When I mention I saw a whole photo exhibit on the Dust Bowl at a museum, taken by some photographer paid by the government, Brit reaches across the table and puts her hand on my arm. I’m stunned to discover just how many nerves a human has in the forearm.

“I just knew you’d be a big help,” she says. I find the courage to meet her eyes and the look she’s giving me seems pleasant enough, but it’s missing anything special. And believe me, I’m open to the smallest, subtlest sign.

7.

There’s great news one week into Mom’s trip. She wants to stay another two weeks at her “Institute.”

“I really feel like I’m close to a breakthrough,” she says when she breaks the news by phone. I have to answer a dozen questions about what I’m eating, but I lie cheerfully, thinking only how much of a win it will be for my Starfare game.

“You deserve it, Mom,” I tell her, and mean it. “It’s great that you can take time for yourself.”

Then she wishes me good luck at the tournament and I tell her I love her, which I know is kind of corny to say, but it’s true, and I know it means a lot to her.

“I love you too honey,” she says, and then we hang up.

With Mom out of the picture and Dad on the road I’m getting tons of online time. Stomp badgers me every night for a rematch, but I just ignore him. Block him from my IM, but he seems to always reappear with a different screen name. I can tell it’s him, because he’s always screaming in all-caps and calling me a putz, whatever that is.

At about midnight the day before Brit’s group meets again I spend my twenty minutes putting up some titles and pasting in photos. At our second and final meeting Brit acts like I should be nominated for a genius fellowship.

“I would have never found that music!” she gushes. “It’s perfect.” I file shared a couple of Depression era songs. “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” opens the show and this Woody Guthrie song about hobos ends it. I’m such a dork that now that I’m Brit’s Facebook friend it’s like my life is complete. I still can’t bring myself to even say hi to her in the hall.

We take the AP exam for Calc two weeks before finals week, which is a breeze, and so it’s pretty much goofing off there. History is just presentations and our group is almost last. I think my PowerPoint kills and Mr. Hobson actually says “nice job,” which is, for him, excessive praise. I love finals week—only an hour or two at school a day.

My gaming is going great. I’m playing straight through to one or two in the morning. Grab a bowl of cereal for dinner, or call in a pizza, and I’m good to go.

Two days before I’m booked to leave I get into a game with a really annoying player who is just awful. He keeps sending me idiotic messages about how lucky I am and how he’s just setting me up for a late game surprise. He’s so bad I decide to humiliate him by taking over his base with miners—which would be like winning a tank battle with Toyota pickups. One good thing about miners is that you can stack them up like Legos and I decide to try to build a bridge over his fortifications. It’s almost working when I realize that I’m giving him time to catch up. So I send some warriors after the miners and I’m amazed that they just cruise up the back of the miners and breach his fortress, destroying him in seconds. There’s no way that warriors are supposed to be able to get through these walls—it’s like the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Saruman uses gunpowder to blast a hole in the walls of Helm’s Deep.

After the game I stop and think about what I’ve just discovered. If players were unaware of this move, they’d never try to defend it and I could turn any game around in just a few minutes. It was like when the U.S. was the only country with the atomic bomb—I could rule at will.

The only person I even mention it to is DTerra, and I don’t go into the details. He’s talked his dad into letting him fly out for Nationals, getting in the night before I do to play the grinder. It will be nice to have someone to hang out with—and rooting for me.

When I finally get to bed the night before my trip I’m still wired from the frantic practice games. I stare at the ceiling, where a break in my curtains produces a little bar of light from a street lamp. It looks like an arrow, pointing towards my door, the hallway, the future.

“Hey Brit,” I whisper. She turns around in the chair in front of me, her hair spinning across her face.

“Maybe you heard—I just won this big tournament and $30,000 and need to celebrate. I’m thinking of dinner at The American Club, maybe scalp some front row seats for Lady GaGa.”

Her jaw drops and now it’s her who’s stuttering.

“I’m going to rent a stretch limo—should we get the Escalade or the Hummer?”

8.

Dad dropped me off at the airport. The whole way he was on his cell, some heated business discussion about the proper way to allocate costs to projects or something. While I’m getting my bag out of the trunk he pulls the phone from his ear and shouts, “Call me when your plane lands.”

While I’m waiting for the boarding call my cell rings. It’s Mom. She says she can’t believe I’m old enough to be jetting across the country by myself. That it was just yesterday that we were sitting at the kitchen table, playing board games.

“You remember Chutes & Ladders?” she asks. I say I do.

“I should have known, even back then, about you and games. Every day you’d beg me to get out a board game or a deck of cards. And you weren’t even in school yet. In kindergarten you could read every Monopoly Chance card. And I’d have to explain what a ‘bank error’ or ‘beauty contest’ was.”

“And then there was the time at the pediatrician’s? You’re four years old, sitting on the floor with one of those really complex wooden 3D puzzles that you have to make into a ball? So we’re sitting there, and the doctor keeps losing his place, distracted by you down on the floor, where you’re working with all the wooden shapes. So finally I say, ‘He really likes puzzles.’ And the doctor nods and says, ‘I see that, but honestly I’ve never seen anyone solve it before.’ And sure enough I glance down and you’re putting the final piece into the ball.”

Then they call my boarding group. Mom says she’ll call me later, to make sure I got in OK.

I’ve got a bunch of saved games on my laptop and I spend the flight going over these. Surprise bonus: they hand out warm chocolate chip cookies and the flight attendant, who looks a lot like that actress from CSI, gives me extras.

The hotel turns out to be really nice, right down the street from the convention center where the tournament is being held. I have a room on the eleventh floor which looks out across the city and part of the ocean, where I can see the front end of an aircraft carrier. My room number is 1123, which is easy to remember—the first two digits add up to the third and the middle two digits add up to the fourth. I try to call DTerra on his cell but get voice mail. That’s a good sign. Probably still in the qualies.

He got a room for one night and then is moving into mine to save money. I’m so anxious to find him and so nervous about the tournament that I don’t really think about how cool the view is, or how blue and sparkly the ocean looks. I throw my bag on the bed, pop my iPod earbuds in and head over to the tournament site to find out a little more about that $30,000.

They really didn’t need to put up all the huge “STARFARE” banners at the entrance to the convention center. All you have to do is follow the flow of black T-shirts, computer backpacks and bad complexions. They’re coming from all directions and funneling through a set of giant glass doors in the side of a white concrete building that is so long and tall it looks like it could have been built to keep out the barbarians on the other side. As I get closer to the doors and pick up my pace I feel taller and lighter.

As I climb the final steps into the center I’m behind a group of three guys and a girl, all in T-shirts with their Starfare screen names on their backs. I catch “Gforce22,” “HelterSkelter” and “GamerzG!rl.” I don’t recognize any of their gamer names. But then only about half of the people there are actually playing in Nationals. On top of the last chance grinder there are at least twenty sidebar tournaments and a lot of people show up just to play in the side events and watch their heroes. The thing is, if they knew who I was they’d probably all stop and stare and start whispering. This realization has a strange effect on me. Back home, at school, I’m lost in the crowd. Here, when people start connecting me to my screen name, I’ll be like one of North High’s celebrities. Like Garrett.

9.

The convention hall is actually a cool place. They keep it kind of dark, so that floor is lit with the glow from the hundreds of monitors set up on row after row of tables. Up front they have four feature tables facing a huge area of seating with giant projection screens above the players so the crowd can watch the matches in real time. Around the perimeter of the room are about fifty different vendors selling everything from gaming mouses to comic books based on Starfare.

One corner of the computer area is roped off and about twenty players are pounding on their keyboards, working to take one of the eight spots open for grinders. I wander over but can’t tell if DTerra is still there. It’s kind of dark and I’ve only seen a couple of pictures of him.

So I check in at the desk for “Players A-G” and get a bag of stuff and a card with my real name and screen name which hangs over my head on a red cord. My screen name is printed in big bold letters and I get stopped a half-dozen times as I wander back to the qualie area. I’m hanging around the roped area, looking at all the players when I hear someone behind me saying, “Holy shit, there goes ActionSeth!” I resist the urge to turn and stare back.

I’m leaning over the ropes, trying to get a better look at a guy who might be DTerra when someone pokes me on the shoulder.

“Hey champ.”

I turn and recognize him right away from his Facebook pictures.

“Jeez,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a giant?” He’s at least six-five.

“Same reason you didn’t say you were a midget.”

“If my brother was as tall as you, he’d be in the NBA.”

Then we’re talking a mile a minute and I find out that he got knocked out one round earlier.

“You’d laughed if you’d seen it,” DT says. “I played it like a real noob.”

We decide to wander outside and try to find a decent pizza place. As I squint into the sunlight DT stops and says in a serious voice, “You run into you-know-who yet?”

“Who?”

“Guess. He’s obnoxious. Hates your guts. And weighs about three-hundred pounds.”

“Stompazer weighs three-hundred pounds?”

“At least. He stomps you, you’re dead. Of course, he’d have to catch you. So don’t worry. The guy can hardly get up a flight of stairs.”

I laugh, picturing him. Because I had pictured him as this jocky, muscular guy.

“And catch this. His real name is Morris.”

“Morris?”

“No joke. He makes the nerds here look like Greek gods. On the other hand, his old man is supposed to be some high-tech billionaire. Maybe he can get him on Biggest Loser.”

We’re both laughing when DT coughs out one more piece of information. “And he just qualified for the main event.”

10.

The hotel has this big meeting room set up for gaming and it’s open all night. DT drags me down to where there must be a hundred players hanging, most of them drinking energy drinks and eating fast food. He nods towards a far corner where a tall girl with long blond hair is standing, watching the action on a laptop. “I’m trying to get a game with her later,” he says. “She said she played you in last year’s online qualifying.”

“Yeah? What’s her name?”

“Morgan, but she plays under RaiderRadar.”

I immediately recognize the name but would have never matched the two. Sometimes I try to imagine a face behind a screen name I’m playing. But “hot tall blond girl” just isn’t the first image that comes to mind.

DT wants me to go over and meet her but it’s already late and I tell DT I have to head up to the room and get some sleep. In bed, I’m a little too nervous to fall straight asleep. Thinking about the tournament and the prize money and how Dad will react. When he sort of reluctantly and absentmindedly asks, “How’d it go?” and I pull out a check for $30,000.

I don’t know what time DT came in because I was dead asleep and I barely hear my cell phone alarm at seven-thirty. The sunlight is painful when I step outside and I’m still groggy when I get to the convention center. They’ve got a big table with stale bagels and dry muffins and I try a bite of each before tossing them. The first round pairings are up on boards around the room and when they say “take your seats” I head to the one numbered 112. I quickly pull out my keyboard and mouse, plug in, and make sure they’re working and right where I want them. They call out five minutes, then count down and suddenly my computer screen lights up and I’m in the Gondwanaland map. But no opponent. After about ten minutes a ref comes by, writes something on his clipboard and tells me that I’ve won by default.

Later I hear that four guys rooming together stayed up most of the night gaming in the hotel and all of them slept through the first round. I shake my head when I hear that. Imagining traveling all the way to San Diego for the biggest tournament of the year and sleeping through it. Actually, one loss doesn’t eliminate you because it’s a mixer. Each round players are paired against others with similar records. After ten rounds, the top eight fight it out in single elimination. Final eighters all get some decent money, but the prize pool is really top heavy. The big money goes to first and second.

I win my second round pretty easily and during the break DT wanders into the hall and finds me working though some moves on my laptop. About a minute later so does the one person I’ve been hoping to avoid.

“Would you look at this,” comes this booming voice from behind my head. “No wonder I couldn’t find you. You’re such a puny wuss.”

When I turn my head there is a wall of human flesh behind my head. Before I can do anything DT jumps up and says, “Well fatso, I’m not.”

Stompazer laughs, this big theatrical laugh like a movie ogre.

“I don’t deal with noobs or stickmen,” he says. “And you’re both.”

Just then the tournament director announces that the pairings for round three are posted.

“I’m just waiting for my chance,” Stomp says, “I’m going to take you down.”

“Sure,” I say. “Just like last time.”

“Last time was a fluke!” He’s all red in the face and almost screaming. “Never happen again. Never!”

I stand up and head off to one of the pairing boards, trying to act like he’s not there. But truth is, he’s a truly creepy presence. Big and obnoxious like one of those giant trolls in a massive multi-player rpg that require a team of forty gamers to bring down.

11.

I start nervously, but sweep my next round and rack up another routine win in my fourth. I’m keeping my secret weapon under wraps until I need it. After lunch break we sit back down and I know I’m going to be paired against someone who is 4-0 or 3-1 at the least. The tournament director gets us all in our seats and I see I’m up against an older guy who is 4-0. He’s got a scraggly beard and stringy hair and looks like he hasn’t slept or bathed since the beginning of the year. Most guys, they’ll say something when they sit down across from you before ducking behind the monitors. This guy, who plays under the handle MilesBlue, says nothing.

“Round five will begin in three minutes,” the announcer says.

Miles comes out smoking and it’s a toss-up through midgame when I decide I can’t wait any longer and begin to sneak some miners up against the back of his main fortress. Then I suddenly stack them up and send a couple warriors over the top. A couple of minutes later the game is over. As we stand up the guy gives me a weird look.

“Sure would like to know how you pulled that off,” he says.

“Practice, practice, practice,” I say and offer him my hand. He declines the offer.

That makes me 5-0. For the final round of the day I’m surprised to get assigned one of the feature tables, even though I should have guessed. Only ten people are 5-0. It’s pretty exciting, playing in front of a crowd, your every move showing up on a twenty-foot screen. I know there’ll be no easy matches the rest of the way, and I recognize most of the guys at the top of the results list.

I used to watch Garrett and his teammates before high school games. Running the drills and slapping each other and just before the lineup was called, making this circle with their hands around each other’s shoulders. I realize I have my own rituals before a match, just like they did. I play with my mouse, moving it to the right, then left, than back again. My right leg gets the bouncies, and I like to rock in my chair. I go through all of this stuff, and do it again, because being on the feature table, it’s just that much more nerve wracking. I stop rocking my chair and focus on the screen as the game clock ticks down.

As the match gets underway I forget about the crowd and the projection of my game and just concentrate on trying to get the upper hand. Only when I pull my new maneuver and hear the combined gasp from the crowd do I remember where I am. The game winds down fast after that.

DT runs over to the roped area and gives me a huge high five.

“Man, you are hot!” he says.

I notice that a whole bunch of judges are congregating around a laptop at the judge’s table. I don’t think much about it. There’s always at least one player who appeals a game or complains that it was the equipment’s fault.

We hang out until they post the final results of day one. Only five of us are still undefeated. But I groan when I see that Stompazer is 5-1.

I figure if I go 2-2 or better on day two I’m guaranteed to make the final eight. That would put me just three matches from $30k.

DT and I head out to the same pizza place we found the night before. Despite being the first week of June, it’s surprising cool outside and the air smells of the ocean and grilled food from nearby restaurants. We talk Starfare nonstop. DT keeps telling me that I’m going to sweep the whole tourney undefeated. That there’s no defense for my new move. I try to be modest, but I’m not arguing. By the time we get back to the lobby I’m so beat I just want to collapse back in bed. DT says he’s going to see if Morgan is hanging in the gaming room before heading up. I’m asleep within seconds of hitting the stack of oversized hotel pillows.

12.

It doesn’t take long, next morning, to figure something is up. Before the assignments come out they have all of the competitors gather in a big scrum in front of the judge’s table. The head referee clears his throat over the mike. Then he taps it and says, “Is this working?” We all shout for him to get on it with and he does.

“After due consideration of yesterday’s match play the judges and Starfare’s software team have decided that a minor patch will be in effect for today’s matches. This will be transparent to most of you, affecting only an anomaly in an unintended use of miners.”

I feel something falling from my chest toward my shoes.

“However, we have determined that nothing illegal or unethical was involved in the use of this bug and all matches from yesterday will stand.”

I feel like everyone is staring at me.

As we disperse and wait for first round pairings I keep telling myself that it’s no big deal, that I can still match up even with anyone in the field. And that I don’t have to win every match to make the final eight.

But I never quite get back my equilibrium and sleepwalk through my first two matches, losing both of them. DT shows up around then and sits me down and gives me a real cussing out. I guess it helps because I win a close match in round three. With one match left, DT and I run through the possibilities and after doing the math about ten times conclude that a win gets me in for sure and that a draw would put me into a tiebreaker with two or three other players. The tiebreak goes to minutes played which would be a give-me, with all the quick games I played on day one.

Final round I get paired with another 7-2 player and as we get set up to play I explain to him that we can both make the final eight if we agree to a draw. But if we play, only the winner will make it. Actually, I don’t tell my opponent that it will go to a tiebreak and it all depends on how fast he won his matches. I guess he’s a little afraid to play me because he quickly agrees to a draw. We call a judge over and then get to sit down and relax and wait for the final eight announcement. I never know what to do, waiting. Luckily DT is there to distract me and we watch a bunch of goofy videos he’s got bookmarked on his laptop.

When they announce the final eight I’m actually relieved that my last opponent is there with me. He would have been so pissed off if he had lost the tiebreak.

Within a few minutes the eight of us take our places at the featured tables. I look out over the convention floor. Every seat is taken. Across the table I’m surprised to see the same bearded guy I beat in round five.

“This time, straight up,” he says.

“OK with me,” I respond.

But it’s not OK. Maybe it’s nerves, maybe it’s the look the guy gave me before the game. Like when he wasn’t playing Starfare he might have a hobby dismembering smart-ass teenagers.

I start slow and although he can’t quite put me away, he keeps his edge right up until the clock runs out. Just like that, I’m out. I can’t even stand waiting around to see who does win. I pick up my $2,000 check from the judge’s table during the break before the final four. I stare at it for a while, thinking that it’s a lot of money. And that it’s not. I mean, I couldn’t exactly whip it out and show it to Brit.

“And what’s that?” she asks.

“It’s money I won playing a computer game.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding with understanding. “Nerd money. That’s very nice, Seth. Thanks for sharing. Got to go—I’m supposed to meet this hunky guy from the football team after school. We’re going to go make out for a couple hours.”

Besides, final eight. So weak. That’s not what I came here for.

I fold it into my pocket and head back the table where DT is watching our stuff. We’re about to head out when a moving mountain steps in front of us.

“Heading home, putz?” Stompazer says. “Are you crying? Looks like you’re crying.”

DT and I split up, to head around him. But it’s not a small detour.

“Maybe I’ll spend some of my $30k to come out to Kansas and kick your butt in person.”

We continue to head for the door, to the sound of his big, deep, infuriating laugh.

DT and I get an early flight, check out of the hotel and take a cab to the airport where we’ve both got to wait hours for our flights.

I’m just sitting there, leaning over, staring at the floor and moping when my cell rings. I check and see it’s my brother.

“Hey,” I say.

“So how are you doing?”

I tell him I lost. And he says something about Dad wanting to bet him that I’d come home empty-handed.

“Not exactly empty,” I say. “I won $2,000.”

“Holy crap, that’s great! I should have taken that bet…and how come you haven’t been taking Mom’s calls? She’s called me three times, wondering if I’ve heard from you.”

It’s true that I got her voice mails, but I had to keep the phone off during the tournament and she was calling from some sort of public phone and didn’t leave a callback number.

“I might as well warn you,” Garrett says. “I think Mom’s really off the deep end with this Institute she’s attending. I’ve done a little Internet searching and I’m not sure what to make of them. I mean, they don’t seem like a cult. Not like the really nutty ones, who are waiting for visitors from space or the end of the world on a certain date. They’ve actually got an accredited university where they seem to be studying a lot of mystical crap. Like trying to figure out how these Indian holy men can slow down their heart rates to like fifteen beats a minute. Anyway, she’s pretty nuts about it. If she calls, you’ll get an earful.”

I ask him when he’ll be back home and he sort of sighs and says that he already told me that he was staying for the summer to work the school’s basketball camps.

“I’ll be back for a couple of weeks before practice starts.” Then he tells me to pay attention at school—that I’d like college and I should stop screwing around and get some decent grades. “You might even think about coming here,” he adds. “Three girls for every two guys. Even a computer nerd might have a shot of hooking up.”

Yeah, I might as well accept it, shoot for being just another anonymous college kid. DT and I head over to an airport sandwich place and we do a replay of the tournament. He tells me that it was a great show, even if I didn’t win. But it’s not true. If I want to make it as a pro, I have to be able to dominate crappy Americans like the guys at Nationals.

13.

Before the divorce, if Garrett’s sixteen-and-under AAU basketball team had gotten deep into one of the big national tournaments you can bet the whole family would be there to cheer and greet him. Instead I pick up a voicemail when I get off the plane from Dad telling me to grab a cab.

Naturally, I have no idea where you go to pick up a taxi and end up wandering all the way down to the wrong end of the terminal. I reverse course and in the meantime a jumbo jet full of Japanese tourists has landed and picked up their luggage and I have to wait in line an hour to get a cab. There’s a couple of Japanese teenage girls in front of me with their parents and they keep looking at me and whispering and giggling, covering their mouths when they laugh. I’m thinking I got some sort of goober hanging from my nose or unzipped pants. I can’t say I’m sorry when they get stuffed into the back of a Lincoln.

I almost choke when I have to pay $65 to the cab driver. That leaves me about two bucks. Inside the condo is dark and smells of cigarette smoke with a hint of overripe garbage. Dad’s left a note on the kitchen table next to a $20 bill telling me to order something to eat if I’m hungry. “Stick around,” he writes at the end. “We need to talk.”

Naturally I’m thinking something about school, but my midterm grades had arrived a long time ago and I was passing everything and it’s too early for final grades.

It must be close to midnight when I hear the garage door. I know I should be working on my game, but I couldn’t resist looking at the results from Nationals. Stompazer got all the way to finals, spilt the first two games and lost a close one in the decider to the guy who beat me, MilesBlue. Stomp took home $12,000. I’m too depressed by that news to do anything but just veg out. So I’m watching the Seinfeld where George gets a job with the Yankees and orders wool uniforms which naturally drive the players crazy.

“Seth,” Dad says as he throws himself onto the couch next to me. To tell the truth, he doesn’t look great. Hasn’t shaved, hair mussed, oozing the smell of smoke and booze.

“Mom sold the house.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I didn’t believe it at first either. Apparently she and that goofball with the ponytail—what’s his name?”

“Martin.”

“Yeah, Martin. Anyway, they’ve decided to move into this Institute in California she’s gotten involved with. So she’s sold the goddamn house. Put it up for sale about $20k below market, took the first offer a week later.”

“She can do that? I mean, you don’t have anything to say?”

“Nah, that’s not even the problem. She can have the frickin’ money from the house. She was the one who needed to have a kitchen as big as this apartment. Counter space for the take-out, I suppose.”

“But what about my stuff?” I had a whole closet full of clothes that I didn’t wear and boxes of stuff that I hadn’t looked at in years. But I bet those Magic cards were worth a small fortune.

“Seth, I promised I wouldn’t say anything until she talked to you, so I would appreciate it if you kind of played along when she calls. You’ll have plenty of time to clear out your stuff.”

It was late and I was pretty burned out from the tournament. Maybe I was missing something.

“And, Seth, there is a bit of a bonus in this.”

“Yeah?”

“Mom wants us to keep the van. Since we have a two-car garage. I’ll need you to help me get rid of some of the junk down there. To make room. She says she’s not sure what she wants to do with it yet. So the way I see it, no reason you shouldn’t be able to drive it, after you get your license. When you’re around.”

I shake my head, like maybe I had heard that wrong.

“I get to drive it?”

“I told her that we were spoiling you, but she insisted.”

That sounded like a really good trade to me. I get to live in one place instead of two. And get a car. Who cares if it’s a dorky looking mini-van? It has a radio, a CD player and air conditioning. I could even drive it to school. Get home faster and practice more.

“Nice.”

“That’s it?” Dad says. “Nice?”

“Extremely nice,” I add with a big grin that says it all. But hadn’t he said something odd? About when I was around? I mean, when am I not around?

“Seth.” Dad was looking at the floor now, not at me. “This is where it gets a little more complicated. Mom thinks that living here, full time, it wouldn’t be the best thing for you. You know how much I’m gone, and your mother thinks it would be better for you to make the move with them to California.”

“California? Are you kidding? Living with Mom and that, that guy? Why can’t I just stay here with you? I’ve been spending most of my time here anyway.”

Dad shakes his head. “I know, I know. That’s exactly what I told your mother. But you know how she is…”

“I know I’d go crazy living in some yoga institute. I can’t even touch my toes.”

Dad looks up at me, chuckles.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not like that, Seth.”

“OK, then you move there.”

“I know,” he mumbles. “I know.”

In the background I hear the TV. A professional voice from an ad for a local used car dealer saying, “No credit? No problem!”

“Listen,” Dad says. “Mom is going to talk to you. She thinks that it would be good for you to go with her. That you could, and I quote, ‘develop spiritually.’ And one thing I agree with—it would at least get you away from that goddamned computer.”

I had heard Mom talk about the Institute and I pictured a bunch of cabins stuck into a side of a mountain and people walking around in white robes and sitting in circles, meditating for hours.

“Dad, you can’t let her do that to me. I’d go nuts.”

“That’s exactly what I told her. But you’re going to have to make the case yourself. You know she doesn’t agree with a damn thing I say. She wants you to at least make a trip out there and see it for yourself. She tells me they’ve got an excellent high school right on the premises.”

I can only imagine what kind of high school that would be. The curriculum would probably be all yoga, Zen meditation and mantra memorization, with breaks for tofu and organic greens. I’m sure there wouldn’t be a computer within miles.

So when Mom calls later that night we have an hour shout fest. She and her boyfriend are living in some sort of apartment at the Institute and they want me to move in. They’ve got this sort of porch room that I’d have all to myself. I manage to get her to admit that not only is there no broadband at her place, there’s not even a TV.

“Honey, it will be so good for you,” she says. “Think of it as a fresh start. I’ve toured the high school and the teachers are just amazing. It’s nothing like what you’re used to. They’ve got an integrated curriculum that focuses on developing the entire spiritual being of each of their students. Their arts program is wonderful. You could start drawing again!”

I groan. When I was about five I got into drawing dragons and Mom thought I was some sort of artistic genius. She even got me a private art tutor for a few months until he tried to get me to draw something besides dragons.

Finally I can see that I have no choice but to agree to visit. Just one more trip to California. Like father, like son. On the road again.

14.

The three days in California at Mom’s Institute feels like a month. At first, she’s telling me that there’s no computers. I don’t see even one TV. Instead I have to go to a bunch of these group meetings and I don’t know why, but they have a million questions for me about computer gaming. Then we go for endless walks and waste at least an hour at each meal, sitting around and talking. But then, out of the blue, they invite me do this experiment and take me behind locked doors where, to my amazement, there’s a computer and a broadband connection. They wire my head with a dozen plugs and have me play a game, while all these machines are clicking and tracking my Starfare brain waves.

When I finally get home from the airport it’s close to midnight. Even though I’m exhausted I check my email and see a couple from DT. I log onto Starfare, slip on my headset, and catch him between games to tell him about the trip. How weird it was out there. Especially the brain wave thing.

“You won’t believe this,” I say. “This guy who runs the place and this scientist. They think playing Starfare is like Zen meditation.”

“It’s got to be at least as good as sitting cross legged and humming ‘om,’” DT says.

I tell him I’ve got to get some sleep and sign off. I’m out for fourteen straight hours and must miss a long and heated phone conversation. Because Dad comes out of his study while I’m eating my second bowl of Lucky Charms.

“Seth, you know how stubborn your mom can be, right?”

I nod.

“Well we’ve been on the phone—more than once—and she’s been scheming again. She’s got you lined up to work at his summer camp they run. She wants you to fly back out in a week.”

I start to stutter in protest but Dad lifts up his hand and silences me.

“Now here’s the deal,” he says, pulling up a chair and getting right to the point. “I think you’re going to like what I ended up negotiating for you.”

“Yeah?” That Dad, he’s a terrific negotiator. That’s why Mom got the house and the van and he got to rent a condo.

“You can stay here for the summer and next school year. On a couple of conditions.”

He’s got my attention. Because I was just thinking, I get forced to move in with Mom, it could be months before I’d ever see another one of those amazing little blue and yellow marshmallows that swell up after a few minutes in milk.

“You’ve got to get off that damn computer and hit the books. B average, or you’re out of here.”

“But Dad,” I begin, thinking that I’ve got some pretty tough courses coming up next year. When I was in grade school I got hooked up with this aggressive Gifted Education program they have in Kansas. It’s called GE, which is totally confusing, because it sounds like a brand of light bulbs.

The way it works is the more kids they identify as “gifted” the more money the school gets. So the day I turned eight, which is the minimum age, I took a bunch of tests and, just like that, I was in the club. Which meant I got to start taking all these accelerated math and science courses, so that when I got to middle school I was taking half of my classes at the high school and when I got to high school I was ready to start with APs. Next year I’ve got two AP courses first semester and I have to commute down to U of Missouri-Kansas City to take math in the afternoon, since I’ve already taken every math course at high school. I’ve already got about fifteen hours of college credit.

“But nothing. B average, or you’re out of here. And this summer—no staying up until four in the morning and sleeping all day. Your mother and I are in agreement—you get a job, or you can ship out. After all, your mother has that job all lined up for you with the summer camp they run out there.”

“But what kind of job?”

Dad gives me one of those looks, like he’s dealing with some sort of moron. I’m pretty sure I’m about to hear about how he started a paper route when he was twelve and worked every week of his life since. But he just shakes his head again and says, “Give me a break. I don’t give a crap whether you flip burgers or shovel horse manure. Just get a frickin’ job before your mother drives me crazy.”

15.

The next morning, a Saturday, while unpacking my jeans I hear something crunching and I pull out my Starfare check. Everything had been so messed that I forgot to even show it to Dad. I smooth it out and take it into the kitchen. He’s standing by the sink with the newspaper and a steaming mug of coffee.

“Not bad,” he says, holding it up to the light like it might be counterfeit. “One month’s rent and utilities. Endorse it on the back and I’ll drop it in your savings account at the bank. I’ve got a bunch of errands to run. By the way, I’m out of here bright and early tomorrow—up to Des Moines, then Milwaukee and Chicago.”

On the way out the door he turns and says, “I left the paper open to the want ads. Why don’t you start by checking them out?”

Instead I plug in my laptop and punch up DT, who’s online, like usual.

We chat back and forth about some of his latest games and then I tell him that if I don’t get a job I have to move.

DTerra: OMG, a job?

ActionSeth: I know. What can I do IRL?

DTerra: my older sister worked at the movies and mom thinks I should apply there except you have to wear this costume with a black coat and a little tie

ActionSeth: they have movies in Fargo?

DTerra: stfu they even have a movie named Fargo and its pretty good 2

ActionSeth: I don’t know about working at the movies any other ideas?

DTerra: I saw this guy from my English class working at the ice cream store and I asked him if they get freebies

ActionSeth: yeah?

DTerra: what?

ActionSeth: do they get freebies?

DTerra: I don’t know…he wouldn’t answer me. I don’t think he recognized me. I sit in the back, besides you’d get pretty sick of ice cream.

DT, he’s always really positive about my gaming. Sometimes I think he just likes being the cheerleader. Because we both watch a lot of pro matches and we both know that I’m not even close to that level. The difference is that DT, he thinks it’s just a matter of time and opportunity. Sometimes I feel absolutely certain I can do it, but most of the time, I’m worried I’m just another day-dreaming kid. Just like every eight year old with a baseball mitt who says he going to be a Major Leaguer when he grows up.

When DTerra signs off I look through the want ads that Dad left but they’re all weird jobs that I don’t even recognize like comptroller and asset manager. Garrett had summer jobs, but they were always working with his high school coach at basketball camps. Too bad they don’t have computer gaming camps.

But then I remember the last time Dad and I picked up pizza at Saviano’s, this place in the strip mall a few blocks away. There might have been a sign on the door, something about help wanted. And I’m thinking, if I’m going to get freebies, I might as well get freebie pizza.

So I get out my bike and head over to Saviano’s.

16.

Sure enough, the handwritten “help wanted” sign on the door is still there, next to an old Jayhawk basketball poster. I step inside. The service counter is in the back of the store, past a dozen or so round tables with checkered black-and-white tablecloths.

Behind the counter a girl is standing with her back to me, folding take-out boxes. I make my way through the restaurant and stand by the cash register for a few minutes, watching her. She picks up a flat sheet of cardboard, does something with her hands which is just a blur, flips it over, tucks in two tabs simultaneously and throws in onto a stack.

I try making some noise with my feet, but she’s already onto another one. She’s wearing a baseball-style hat with an auburn ponytail hanging down. When I look closer I see the iPod cords. Her ponytail does a little circular dance every time she flips a box. She’s singing along softly with whatever she’s playing.

I wonder if I should make some louder noise. And how loud that might have to be to get past her current iTune. And it’s not like I’m buying something. If I clear my throat, that will be really lame, and I can’t just yell something at her. Maybe I should go back to the door and try to open it really loudly. I’m frozen with indecision when she turns, as if I had actually done one of these things.

“OMG,” she says, with a startled jump, staring at me like I had a hand inside the cash register. With a quick wave of both hands she pulls out the ear buds. “How long have you been standing there? I’m so sorry!”

I had already told myself not to look at the menu up on the wall, because then I would look like an actual customer. No problem there, because I’m staring at her, like an idiot. She looks amazing. I’m thinking I had seen her before because there is something familiar about her. Maybe she just reminds me of someone, maybe that girl who should have won American Idol.

As she takes a step towards me, wiping her hands on her sides like she had been tossing pizzas instead of cardboard, she gives me a nervous smile. I’m just frozen staring at her hazel eyes, looking like they know something special, something slightly amusing and private. She’s just my height, so as she steps closer we’re exactly eye to eye and for me it’s like trying to keep your eyes on the road at night when someone is driving at you with high-powered brights.

“You know, you could’ve said something…”

I look down at my feet and nod dumbly.

“Well, can I get you something? The ovens should be hot by now.”

I shake my head and look back up. She’s still smiling, hesitantly. Perfect teeth.

“Well, something to drink maybe?” Now the amusement seems to be transitioning to worry. Like maybe I was retarded or a criminal and had wandered in off the street, having just escaped from some sort of halfway house.

“The sign,” I finally say.

“The sign?” She mulls this over, like it was some sort of insider message, perhaps from someone outside the Matrix.

“Oh, that,” she finally says, pointing to the door. “Did I forget to turn on the neon again? I’m always forgetting that. Because I almost never open. Usually I work the late shift.”

She steps around the counter and then comes back, looking more puzzled than ever.

“It’s on,” she says.

I shake my head and stutter, “Not that sign.”

“Oh,” she says. “So this is some sort of guessing game? Do I get twenty questions?”

I’m completely flushed now and close to just racing out of the restaurant. “No, no. The other sign. About the job.”

“Oh,” she says with a sigh. “You want to apply for a job?’

I nod. She reaches under the counter and pulls out a sheet of paper and a pen. “Here you go. Fill this out, but the owner does all the interviews. He’ll be in after four. You can bring it back then. Best to come early before we get busy.”

I reach for the paper she’s holding. I really want to ask her if she goes to North, because maybe that’s where I’ve seen her.

As I take hold of it she points at my chest with her other hand.

“You go to Dakota State?”

I have to actually look down at my chest to realize I’m wearing one of the shirts Garrett brought back from school.

“That’s my brother’s,” I say.

“The shirt?” she says, her face lighting up again with that knowing smile.

“No, the school. Maybe both. I don’t know. I just grab whatever’s in the drawer.”

“Yeah?” She seems to getting more information out of this statement than I intended. “Well, good luck with the job thing. We could use some more help. Gets pretty crazy here Friday, Saturday nights.”

“Thanks,” I say, and make a beeline for the door, not looking back.

17.

I fill out the application when I get home. The rest of the afternoon I worry about going back to Saviano’s after making a fool of myself. I actually thumb through the North yearbook Mom bought over my protests. Looking at every picture until I’m not even sure what she looked like. So now I’m hoping she’s still there, so I can see her again.

When I get to the strip mall I look through the window before I go inside and see a guy I recognize from high school standing at the counter. I walk up and he sees the application in my hand.

“Hang on,” he says. “I’ll see if the old man is in the mood.”

I stand at the counter, taking in the smell of pizzas and glancing over at the only table occupied—a young family with a little girl in a high chair, another girl standing on her chair while her mom pulls at her shirt, telling her to sit.

“You’re in luck!”

I turn, startled.

“Follow me,” the guy says. As I walk around the corner he says, “You go to North, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you took Calc BC with a friend of mine. We saw you in the hall last year and he’s like, ‘Hey, there’s that little freshman who’s in my calc class.’ And I’m like, ‘Whoa, he’s not even Asian!’”

We walk down a little corridor lined with metal shelves filled with cans of tomato sauce and other ingredients. “I’ll introduce you to the old man.”

At the end of the hall is a metal door that looks like it leads outside. Halfway down we stop and my guide knocks on a battered door to the side.

“Yeah?” I hear someone call.

“It’s Kurt. Got the applicant for you.”

“Hang on.”

Kurt rolls his eyes and whispers to me, “Be patient.” He heads back to the front of the restaurant. It’s at least three minutes before the door opens. The man standing there is short and round and is wearing a worn-out and stained Kansas City Royals baseball hat. He’s not really that old, maybe my dad’s age. Behind him a small desk is stuck in a cluttered room no bigger than a closet.

He just stares at me like he has no idea why I’m there.

“Mr. Saviano?”

“Shit no,” he says. “Name’s O’Neill. Charlie O’Neill. But who the hell is going to buy a pizza from O’Neill’s? Would you?”

I don’t know whether I should say the obvious or if that would be an insult.

So I just shrug.

“Sit down and fill out this government shit storm of paper. Then copy your driver’s license and social security card on that Xerox machine to make sure you ain’t no undocumented alien.”

I’m guessing my driver’s permit will work. It looks pretty much like a license.

O’Neill shuffles through a pile of papers on his desk, like he’s lost something. Then he stops and looks up at me, staring right into my eyes.

“You ever work a cash register?” he asks.

I shake my head, then add, “But I’m good at math.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve got one for you. Steve can make a pizza in four minutes. Tom can make a pizza in six minutes. How long does it take them to do a pizza together?”

The formula just pops up in my head, the way a mental picture appears when someone says “elephant” or “tornado.” It’s 1/4 pizza/minute + 1/6 pizza/minute or (3/12 + 2/12) = 5/12 of a pizza in one minute, or 12/5 for one pizza, which equals 2.4 minutes.

“Well,” I say. “Assuming they don’t get in each other’s way, it would take two minutes and twenty-four seconds.”

O’Neill gives me a hard look. “You heard that one before, right?”

“Not really,” I say. He gives me a harder look, like he might have missed something, first glance.

“Either way, I like your moxie. You can start on Monday, come in at four. Hannah will show you the ropes. We start you at minimum wage, work hard and we’ll talk about a raise after a couple of months.”

“Hannah?”

“Yeah—she’s only been here a few weeks. But she’s real sharp. Worth twice the average kid I’ve had in here over the years. And I’ve had plenty.”

It takes me about ten minutes to fill everything out, and I copy my driver’s permit on an antique Xerox machine in the corner and leave it all on the top layer of the desk. I have no idea where my social security card is. I can ask Dad, but I bet Mom is the one who would know.

18.

When I get home I IM DTerra and tell him I got a job making pizzas. He tells me that’s awesome and asks if I can eat as much as I want for free. I just ignore him because the main thing is that I don’t have to go live at the Institute with Mom, now that I’ve got a job. Because I feel like I’m close to something with Starfare. I realize having that shortcut move at Nationals, that wasn’t about my real skills. I might have even done better without it, because I wouldn’t have got flustered against the guy who won it, MilesBlue.

Even though Nationals turned into an epic fail, lately when I play I get the feeling I’m on the edge of a breakthrough. If I can just climb up that one last rung everything is going to seem simpler and slower and I will be able to move through the game the way Keanu Reeves moves through the Matrix once he discovers he’s The One.

I play a one-on-one game of Starfare while DTerra finishes up his game and then we get in a queue to play some two-on-twos. We’re deep into our third game when, somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear Dad slamming the door. After we win I tell DT I’ve got to go and I head downstairs to tell Dad about my job.

I find him in his study, watching a golf tournament.

“Hey,” he says, as I step through the open door. “Catch this.”

I walk around and stand next to him while we watch a replay of a chip shot from some guy in checkered pants that bounces on the green and works its way to within a few inches of the hole.

“Jesus, I could die and go to heaven happy if I hit just one shot like that in my life.”

As far as I could figure, Dad only plays golf about once a month. I have no idea how he thinks he could get any good at it, playing that much. If I played Starfare once a month I’d be a total noob in no time, and that’s starting out good.

“Dad,” I say, “I got a job.”

He looks away from the TV, at me, looking surprised.

“That was quick work.”

“Yeah, I’m starting over at Saviano’s on Monday.”

“Saviano’s? Think you’ll be able to get us some free pizza?”

I tell him I don’t know. Then he fires off about a dozen questions, about how much I’m making, how many hours I got guaranteed, whether I get overtime. Each one I answer by saying I don’t know yet, that I haven’t even started. Each time I say that he looks more disgusted.

“Sounds a little shaky to me,” he finally says. “But don’t worry. I’ll pump it up when I talk to your mom. You at least bought yourself some time.”

Before I go to bed I send out an email to Mom and Garrett telling them about my new career in the food services industry. Mom says she checks her email a couple of times a week, so I don’t expect any immediate response. But Garrett is right on top of it and IMs me.

3-PointShooter: Hey nice job with the job…bet dad is in shock

ActionSeth: not really

3-PointShooter: man I miss those Saviano pies. Tell Saviano he opens a store up here he’d make a killing

ActionSeth: there’s no Saviano—guy’s name is O’Neill

3-PointShooter: who cares as long as it tastes good

ActionSeth: exactly

3-PointShooter: how many hours?

ActionSeth: not sure yet, maybe 20 or so

3-PointShooter: cool u get free pizza right?

I’m not sure if I should say anything but I figure if anyone has good advice in this department it’s Garrett.

ActionSeth: 1 10-inch with every shift. And there’s this girl who works there

3-PointShooter: alright little bro! Now you’re talking, hot right?

ActionSeth: well, yeah, but it’s more than that

3-PointShooter: better yet. if you look in the back of dad’s bottom dresser drawer he has about 10 boxes of condoms…

ActionSeth: I know. But I’ve hardly talked 2 her yet…

3-PointShooter: Just show that ur interested in whatever she’s interested in man. Good things will happen. I promise.

I sign off with a sigh. Maybe it’s that easy for Garrett.

19.

On Monday I wake up late, get some Lucky Charms and spend some time watching some new Korean tournament Starfare games that have just been posted. Every time I think I’ve stepped up my game I watch these guys play and realize that I’m slipping further behind. It’s just seems that they’re able to make every move faster and with fewer steps, like when you solve a math problem in nine steps and then the teacher shows you how to do it in five. But then again, once the teacher shows the shortcuts they’re immediately obvious. I’m thinking that if I were training with other pros and we were all trading shortcuts and strategies, it would probably be the same.

In the back of my mind I’m trying to figure out whether I should get to Saviano’s early, to show how eager I am, or right on time, to show that I can follow directions. I finally decide that it would be best to be a little early so I head over to the store, but when I get to the door I change my mind and just hang outside, checking my cell phone until it says 3:59.

Once inside I see the girl who gave me the application standing behind the register. When I get near I start to tell her that I’m here to work but she shushes me and I see she’s counting change. She’s got her hair tied back again, green Saviano’s Pizza baseball hat on. Her lips are moving with the count, and I can’t take my eyes off of them. I’m trying to read what number she’s on, but I can’t read lips and in my mind she’s whispering, “Seth, Seth, Seth.” This makes my face feel hot so I decide to memorize the menu. I figure that will come in handy.

I’m all the way to the subs when she startles me and says, “The old man docks us if we’re short.” She’s wiping her hands on her apron, like the money was filthy, which is what my mom is always saying. “So I always count it out, start of my shift. Supposed to be $50, and about half the time it’s off. About a hundred percent of that time it’s short.”

I nod.

“Anyway,” she says. “It’s right today. Hey, I saw you waiting outside. If the place is open you can come in.”

I’m thinking of how stupid I looked standing out there, not knowing she could see me the whole time. Just kind of walking around, looking at my phone every so often.

“You’re Hannah, right?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. You’re Seth.”

Mr. O’Neill must have told her.

“I read your application, Mr. Seth Gordon.” She gives me a grin, like she’d actually been looking through a family photo album, with pictures of naked babies. “What can I say. It was sitting on the counter and I got here early. Sounds like you’re some sort of math brain.”

You had to put down the courses you had taken the previous year.

“Not really.”

“Well you are compared to me. My goal is to take as little as possible.”

She waves me around the counter. “Come on, I’ll show you what you’re going to be doing.”

I follow her into the back room, watching the way the two pale, faded spots on the back of her jeans move with each step, like the worn denim was alive and an extension of her skin and I can’t help imagining what that might feel like if I just reached out…

As we walk through how to use the ovens, how to work the assembly area, she tells me a little bit about herself. Like how much it sucks when your parents make you move halfway across the country the summer before your senior year. Hannah had lived most of her life in New Jersey. But she didn’t really have an accent, like those kids on the Jersey Shore show.

When I ask she says, “Where I lived people don’t have Jersey accents. It’s not a plus when you interview at Ivies.”

At around five a couple of more guys show up for work, and for the next couple of hours I just sort of follow them around and watch. Hannah is working the front of the store and when it slows down at around ten I punch out. Before I head out the back door I pick up Hannah’s time card and check out her last name. When I get home I light up my monitor. It takes about two minutes to find her Facebook page.

She’s got hundreds of friends, but the only one I recognize is a guy from my school, Steve, who works with us at Saviano’s. Probably the rest are from New Jersey.

But I find out all kinds of stuff about her. Like one of her favorite quotes: “You have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive.” Which comes from someone named Annie Dillard. So now I have to wiki Annie Dillard and Google the quote. It comes from An American Life and I make a mental note to grab a copy from the library.

And then I stare at her picture. It’s a weird photo of Hannah—at first I didn’t even recognize her. She’s done something with her eyebrows to make them huge and dark. They look the way painters draw seagulls from a distance—black wings. And there’s a stuffed monkey over her right shoulder, palm leaves behind her and a shell necklace around her neck. Her hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, tight. I spend a long time trying to figure it out.

And then her photo gallery. She’s got a couple dozen photos that she’s taken and they’re really interesting. Not a bunch of goofy snapshots or anything like that. They’re really complicated photos. Some of the color ones, you can’t even tell what she was taking a picture of, because it’s all sort of blurry and abstract like a painting. I stare at these for a long time too.

Then as long as I’m on Facebook I check out Brit’s page. She’s got a new photo up mugging with the same senior guy I used to see her with in the halls. Some guys, like Garrett, they must just be born with a gift. They just understand girls the way I understand numbers. Flipping back and forth between Hannah’s and Brit’s pictures, I’m thinking I got screwed in the gift department.

But all of these distractions, plus work. It’s killing my training time. And in the back of my mind, the clock is always ticking, ticking down.

20.

Next night, I just go to work like I’ve been doing it for years. And actually, after a couple of hours, I could do it without thinking. So I end up standing there elbow to elbow with Steve or one of the other guys, and you’d get to talking. Maybe that’s what Mom was saying when she said work would be good for me, because usually I’m not much of a talker. But I can listen.

My third shift I get lucky and it’s just me and Hannah working on the pizza assembly line. At first it’s really busy and we just are working and talking about the orders and how it would be nice to get a break.

Then around eight o’clock the orders slow down. We’re straightening things up, getting the pepperonis out of the olives, wiping down the stainless steel when suddenly Hannah stops and looks right at me.

“If you could do anything you wanted with your life, what would it be?”

Of course, the answer is obvious. But I can’t just blurt out that I want to play computer games for a living without revealing myself as a mega-nerd. So I just sort of shrug and grunt which Hannah takes as a cue to answer her own question.

“I want to do something that makes a difference, you know?” An order flashes up on the monitor and I pull a large tin off the rack, the ones with the crusts already on.

“Back when we lived in New Jersey, Mom and Dad would drag me and my brother to New York on weekends. Usually to a museum. Which I hated, for no other reason than I had no choice and I’d rather hang out with my friends. Anyway, one day, about a year ago, we go to this big art museum downtown. And I’m grumping about it in the car and my little brother is being a total pain in the ass, poking me and pulling my hair and whatever. So when we get to the museum I tell them that I’m going to go check out the fourth floor and I’ll meet them in the lobby in an hour. You know, just to get away from them.”

While she’s talking another order comes up and Hannah stops to grab an extra-large tin. I finish my mushrooms and see that she’s starting to work on hers, spreading out the sauce, but in slow motion, like she’s painting a picture with the ladle.

“So anyway, I’m just wandering around aimlessly and I find myself standing in front of this huge painting. It’s what they call surreal. Everything is painted realistically in detail, but the stuff doesn’t make any sense. Like a dream. There’s this giant plaza-like area in the foreground, kind of like a chessboard, and these ugly decomposing animal-like creatures are standing around, like chess pieces, I guess. But one side of the plaza is eroded away, like the way the coastline is after a big storm, when chunks fall into the ocean…”

She glances over to see if I’m following her and I look up and nod. She’s got a strange, intense look on her face and I just want to stare at her, but I start on the green peppers instead.

“Anyway, your eyes follow the lines of this plaza and there, on the edge, there’s a young girl, painted perfectly, like a photograph. And she’s hanging onto the edge of the plaza and dangling there by her hands, naked above this bottomless canyon. And there’s no one there to help her, just these creatures who look like wax statutes of weird mythical creatures who have been half melted. And I just stared at that painting for like an hour and it seemed to me that it was speaking right to me, that I was that girl, or that I was supposed to save that girl. I’m not sure…”

She seems lost in that thought and I finish my pizza, slide it down the line and take over on hers, rearranging the pepperonis so that they meet O’Neill’s specs—not quite touching, but covering the whole pizza.

I want to ask her what that has to do with what she wants to do with her life. Save people maybe?

Then she starts talking again. “Something about that painting, the way it reached out and touched me. That’s what I want to do. I want to touch people that way.”

“So are you good at it?” I sometimes say the first thing that comes to my mind and as soon as I do I realize that I sound like an idiot. I get what Hannah is saying, about doing something great. When I was about eight or nine I got into reading these little biographies of famous people, written for kids. Each one of them starts out with the famous person’s birth and then has about a hundred pages on their growing up. Then in the last chapter they become president or invent the light bulb or whatever. I think what I liked about these books was trying to figure what happened when they were kids to make them do great things. And then to wonder if I had any of these things working for me.

So even though the first thing that comes to mind is Hannah painting, I know she could mean a hundred other things.

“What?” Hannah says. Looking at me now like I’ve broken some rich and delicious trance.

“Well,” I mumble. “I was just wondering, you know, about painting. Do you paint?”

She looks up at the tag in front of her and sees that her pizza is gone. I point at the one in front of me as I put the finishing touches on it.

“I got it,” I say.

“Oh thanks,” she says. “Guess I got carried away. What did you ask?”

“Painting.”

“Oh yeah, sure. I paint. But I suck.” I wonder if it’s true or it’s like me and Starfare. Like I know I suck, but I’m still really good compared to almost anyone else.

“You know, I saw some of your photos. They’re sort of like that.”

Hannah actually jumps. “You saw my photos?”

Now I’m wondering if I should have said anything at all. Like she’ll think I was spying on her or something.

“They’re up on your Facebook page.” And before she can say anything about it I just start rambling. “You know, those color ones. I think they’re flowers. They remind me of this exhibit my mother took me to at the Art Institute. They were by this famous woman painter…”

“Georgia O’Keefe?” Hannah asks.

“Yeah, that’s it. I mean they reminded me a lot of her flower paintings, which when you look at them, they’re not just about flowers…”

“Exactly,” Hannah is saying, looking at me with a sort of shocked expression, as if I were a superhero whose mild-mannered secret identity had just been inadvertently revealed.

Then she picks up another crust and begins to work the sauce. After a minute she asks, “What would you do if your parents told you you’d have to move halfway across the country your senior year of high school?”

So I tell her about my mom moving to California and how close I was to having to move out there. Hannah has about a hundred questions about that and I get the feeling that she might actually like living in a place like the Institute.

“Anyway, at least you didn’t have to do it. Move, that is. Leave all your friends. I mean, it’s not like you can’t stay in touch. But I get a text from one of my old friends, and it’s all about some party some guy I don’t even know threw the night before with a bunch of new people I never met and after a while, what’s the point? And then some people you’d most expect to stay in touch with, they have no interest. Like it’s not as if you moved. It’s like you died.”

I say, “Yeah,” wondering if she’s thinking about some guy, back in New Jersey. And then thinking about how weird it would seem to Hannah to find out that my best friends, like DT, are online. True, I do still see Eric sometimes, but last semester he started hanging out with Becca, who is actually really into gaming. She was in our World of Warcraft guild for a while and now the two of them are inseparable. So mostly I’m online with DT and other guys. Not many people seem to understand how that works.

But that night, when I’m back at home, lying in bed, my mind still firing like a Starfare screen, I keep hearing Hannah’s voice, talking about seeing that painting and the passion for something special.

Back when I was in grade school Mom seemed to worry a lot about my gifted program. She was always saying that everyone is special in their own way and has their own talents and that I shouldn’t think I was better than anyone just because I could do more math than them. Not that that was a problem, because no one gave a crap that you could do long division in first grade. They were more interested in how far you could throw a football or who could run the fastest.

But when I think about it now, I’m thinking Mom was wrong. Not everyone can shoot a basketball into a tiny hoop from thirty feet, over and over like Garrett. Not everyone can paint a picture so great that it can stop a beautiful girl in her tracks. Not everyone can have the mental and physical skills it takes to absorb an entire Starfare map, assess your opponent’s strategy while tapping out commands on the keyboard faster than the hardest song ever on Guitar Hero.

No, very few people have what it takes to be great at any particular thing. And if you find that thing and don’t go for it, that would be the ultimate fail. I try to imagine what it would be like living with that. And all I can come up with is Dad.

21.

The next day I get up relatively early, at least for me, with a fresh determination to make some progress. But one of the hardest things for me is to figure out what I need to do to get better. It’s not like I can simply ask someone. I’m already the best player in Kansas City. Probably by far.

Sometimes I think about how much coaching Garrett got. From school coaches. From older players. From college coaches at sports camps. I once looked it up online. Garrett’s college basketball coach gets paid $350,000 a year. He damn well better know a thing or two about the game.

So I never really know if I should be spending more time watching pro gamers, or reading the strategy message boards, or just playing the best competition I can find. Which is also a problem, because when you get to my level, you can’t just click on a server and expect to pick up a really good game at random. Chances are you’ll be playing someone you can beat without any real effort. And how is that supposed to make you better?

So I do what I normally do, a little bit of everything, and then before I know it it’s time for my evening shift at Saviano’s.

22.

Two good things about work: Hannah, and for every four hours you work you get one ten-inch pizza. Of course there are downsides. Shifts without Hannah. Getting sent home after three hours when things are slow and not getting your ten-inch. And of course, those countless hours of lost training time.

But to be honest, walking from my place to Saviano’s, I’m not thinking about Starfare skills or lost practice opportunity or improving my national ranking. I’m thinking about Hannah.

Even though it’s only a few blocks and the sun is low, I can’t believe how hot it is. It’s not just that’s it hot and still. But the air is so thick and heavy you’d think that it wasn’t normal air at all, but something thicker and murkier, like a winter dream when you have twenty pounds of blankets weighing down your legs and you’re trying to run away from that monster from Alien. After half a block I can already feel the moisture beading on my forehead. It sucks to get all sweated out before you go to work. The air smells of cut grass and tilled gardens and every few seconds a cicada will scream from one of the trees above, quickly joined by dozens of others, wailing like a tornado warning.

The tornado sirens don’t penetrate to the depths of the restaurant, through the piped in music and the rattling of plates in the dishwasher, where Hannah and I are busily assembling pizzas. I don’t know what makes me step away from the counter and down the hall. Only as I approach the back door do I hear a faint whine. When I push the door open to the back parking lot the sirens aren’t nearly as troubling as the sky. A line of dark clouds with a yellow-green hue, oddly humped, are almost straight overhead. A roar from the right turns my head. I can see the massive dark funnel, like a black hand of the devil, spewing debris as it snakes ominously across the ground. Directly towards me. Not more than a mile down the road.

I slam the door and race inside. I scream Hannah’s name and she turns from the counter. Her expression is surprise and concern. I run to her and grab her hand and pull.

“We’ve got to get the cooler!” I yell. And because we don’t have time I half drag her towards the metal door of the walk-in refrigerator.

“Tornado!” I yell and then we are inside and I slam the door shut and pull Hannah down. Just as I lay myself on top of her the world explodes and we can hear what it must sound like to be in the midst of a bomb attack. We can feel the entire room rotating, as if we were on a carousel and not solid ground, and then, as fast as it began, it’s completely quiet. I realize I’m still on top of Hannah and as she stirs, my head on the nape of her neck, I smell her hair and feel her from the tip of my chin all the way to my ankles.

I roll to the side and say, “Sorry.”

“What the hell?” Hannah says as we stand up. She’s brushing the front of her clothes with her hands, as if I had thrown her onto a dirt pile instead of a shiny, stainless steel floor. I try to open the door, and can only move it a few inches.

“Let me help,” Hannah says, and together we push, the sound of something against the door grating. We finally get it open a few feet and step outside. We stare, stunned, at the still-dark sky which somehow glows directly overhead, tornado and emergency vehicle sirens the only sound. Nothing but broken boards and twisted roofing and mounds of debris at our feet and for hundreds of feet around us. The restaurant and the other shops are just gone.

“Oh my God,” Hannah says as she throws her arms around me. “You saved my life!”

The spray of an evening sprinkler hits my face and I step away from the stuttering arcing spray. The restaurant is just a half block ahead.

Stepping into the cool restaurant is like jumping into a pool. I look down at my shirt, a few wet spots of perspiration on my chest. Hopefully not enough to raise a stink.

Hannah and I had worked assembly the previous shift and it had been great. Sometimes she seems like she’s in a bad mood. Won’t talk, does her work robotically. She’ll ask me or Steve or one of the others if they’ll close for her. Then you turn around and she’s gone, disappeared. I figure it has to do with being so far away from all her friends and stuff.

But on Thursday it was just the opposite. The night before she’d seen this Netflix movie called Fur and all she could do was go on and on about it. It was apparently about some famous photographer named Diane something.

All evening it was like, “And then she did this just amazing series of photos of these circus performers who were like deformed and tattooed and grotesque, but not in her photos. It was as if she could see past all that ugliness and find their souls. Seth, you just have to see her work.” She says she’ll text me the link and pulls out her phone and I give her my number.

I didn’t really follow a lot of what she was saying, but it was impossible not to get caught up in her enthusiasm. So that night when I got home I looked at trailers of the movie and read a little about Diane Arbus, the photographer, and looked at some of her pictures.

So after a quick stop in the restroom to mop up a bit I’m ready to pick up where we left off. Because I think Hannah’s going to be impressed that I did all this research and I’ve even got some questions for her, because some of the photos were pretty weird.

So as soon as I get to the back room, Jake, this college guy who is one of the night managers, he tells me to get an apron and start making pizzas. I barely have time to acknowledge Hannah, who’s working up front. We get really busy and I don’t even see her for most of the night. Instead I’m shoulder to shoulder with this new guy who is working to buy mods for his Honda. So all night it’s a monologue about whether a Borla exhaust system is better than a Bosch, whether twenty-inch rims are worth it and whether I think the black ones would look too dark on his black car and how much money he needs to save to lower the suspension. He has absolutely no clue that I couldn’t give a damn.

So as we clean up, I’m thinking that an entire evening is an awful thing to waste. I’m bent over the counter, trying to wipe down the stainless so it doesn’t streak, which is impossible, when someone grabs me from behind.

Hannah has wrapped her arms around me and has a chin on my shoulder. She’s whispering something into my ear.

I can’t hear her, because my blood is pounding like Niagara Falls. I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t let go. But she does.

“Well,” she says, “can you?”

I turn around and shake my head and try to indicate that I don’t know what she’s talking about without appearing to be an idiot.

“Couldn’t hear you,” I say.

“Oh,” Hannah says. “Steve and me and a couple of friends are going downtown to watch a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at UMKC. I’ve got the rice.”

She’s sort of bouncing up and down, singing something about a time warp dance. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Rice?” I say.

Hannah yells out to Steve and he comes over, a mop in his hand.

“Looks like we got a Rocky Horror virgin! Seth, you’ve got to go with us!”

I say sure. Dad’s out of town and I’m going to be up for another four or five hours anyway.

After we wrap up the cleaning we follow Steve out to his car, a little Nissan. The night air is still hot and heavy, but not as unbearable as it had been on the way to work. Hannah insists I ride up front but when we stop to pick up Steve’s friends she says, “Hop back here—back seat for the short-legged.”

I come around the back and slide in. When a guy and a girl come running out the guy jumps in the front and the girl hops into the back, so that I’m in the middle of this tiny back seat, thigh to thigh with Hannah and the new girl, who has long dark hair and looks, in the thin light, like she might be at least part Asian or Hispanic.

Steve twists around and says, “That’s Steph.” He nods towards the front seat and says, “And this is Gunda Din.”

The guy in the front seat, dark bangs almost over his eyes, looks back and says, “You can just call me Gunnar.”

Steve cranks the car and shouts back, “Everyone got their seatbelts on?”

I don’t. I watch Hannah grab a belt and clip it in and hear another click from Steph’s side.

I realize my belt must be stuck under us somewhere.