TMI

by Patty Blount

  Meg was seriously pissed.

  Bailey shrugged. It didn’t take much to piss Meg off, and whatever it was, she was sure she would quickly get over it because for Meg, anger was a lot like a sugar high—it peaked fast, burned off, and then she’d crash. If she needed to talk, she’d text, but right now, she’d focus on her work because Meg always gave things 100 percent. Bailey, however, was between jobs. For her, jobs were like boys. She couldn’t seem to hold on to either for very long.

  With a mental kick, Bailey snapped herself out of her pity party and slowed up her steps when Chase grabbed Meg’s elbow and spun her around. Wow. That was so romantic, and Meg didn’t have a clue. She waited—neither of them had noticed her yet, and she wouldn’t have said a word, not one peep, if she hadn’t seen Meg’s face.

  Meg was on the edge of a complete blurt.

  Oh, God! What should she do? Meg hated the Blurt—she called it verbal diarrhea—with the same level of intensity she usually saved for a bad grade. But this was Chase, the boy next door with the fairy-tale eyes who adored her and needed just one opportunity to show how her much. She could duck between cars or maybe dive behind those shrubs or—damn it! She could see Meg take a deep breath. Blurt was imminent, so Bailey did what friendship demanded.

  “Meg! Chase! Hey, guys!” she shouted and hoped nobody noticed how shrill her voice was.

  They spun around. She heard Chase curse but saw the relief that flashed across Meg’s face, and then Meg was gone, practically running down the street. You’re welcome, she thought.

  Bailey turned to Chase with an overbright smile. She’d really wanted to see him, not Meg. Her smile faded when she got a good look at his face. “Hey. You okay?”

  Chase’s worried green eyes rolled skyward and he shook his head once. “Not even close.”

  “What did she do now?” Bailey asked, already aching on his behalf. He was a good guy and Meg needed to start appreciating that instead of pushing him away.

  Chase raked both hands through his hair. “Bailey, what the hell did her dad do to her?”

  Bailey’s eyes popped. Meg didn’t talk about her dad, not with anybody, and that included her.

  Bailey twisted a curl and considered Chase for a moment. She decided it was best to stick to the obvious. “Um…he died.”

  Chase spun around, muttered something she didn’t catch, and then spun back. “Yeah, I got that part. Why the hell is she mad enough to stab pictures of him?”

  Her mouth fell open. Stabbing pictures? There were no pictures of Meg’s dad in her house that she had ever seen, so she didn’t know anything about why Meg would be stabbing them.

  Chase made a choking sound and bent over to grab his knees. Bailey stepped closer and patted him on the back because it was the only thing she could think to do. Then again, she didn’t really know why he was so upset.

  “Oh, God. Oh, my God, Bailey. Did he…did he, you know…hurt Meg?”

  Of course he’d hurt Meg. She was only six or seven years old when he died, and Meg missed him. Bailey looked closer at the sick expression on Chase’s face, and her eyes popped in understanding. “Oh! You mean—no. Eww. No.” She shook her head. “No, it was nothing like that. She’s just mad at him for dying, you know?”

  Chase shook his head. “I’ve seen her mad lots of times—well, pretty much all the time—but not like this. She was—it was like she was burning with it. I mean, off the charts with mad.”

  Bailey smiled once. “Yeah, that’s how she gets. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, Chase.”

  “Nothing serious?” Chase stared at her like she’d sprouted a huge zit between her eyes. “Bailey, no offense, but this is like the most serious shit I’ve ever seen. I was about to pick up a flowerpot and heave it through the glass door.”

  Okay, this had gone far enough. If there was one thing Bailey knew, it was how to handle Megan Farrell, and Chase needed to understand he was doing it all wrong. “Chase, you need to back off. Meg hates people getting all up in her face when something’s bothering her. She’ll get over it on her own. The more you nag her, the more you try to ‘be there for her,’ the madder she’ll get,” Bailey said, making air quotes. “By the time she gets home from work, she’ll be back to normal. Trust me.”

  Chase continued to stare at Bailey. She rubbed her forehead. Definitely no zit.

  “What?”

  “Bailey, you know what’s up, don’t you?” He folded his arms and frowned. “The anxiety attacks, the mood swings—you know.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Bailey, tell me.” He stepped closer.

  Bailey shook her curls.

  “I need to know.” He grabbed her arms.

  She shook her head again. “No, Chase. She doesn’t talk about it. She doesn’t want anyone to know. I don’t even know all of it.” There was only one thing she could say that he’d really hear. “You want to impress her? You want her to love you back? Let Meg keep her secrets.” She smiled brightly at his look of confusion and barreled ahead. “I was heading to your place to see you anyway. Are you busy tonight? I want to talk to you about a video game.”

  Chase blinked and then lifted his brows. “A video game or your video game?”

  “Um…yeah, my video game. I was hoping you could help me actually build it.”

  His eyebrows pinched together. “Right. Your famous video game. I’ve heard you and Megan talking about it. So you really want to build it?”

  Bailey’s face split into a wide grin. “Yeah, I love video games. It’s like Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Halo, and Dance Party Central all combined into one. I have character histories, settings, rules of engagement, levels—all of it.”

  “Um, Dance Party?” Chase repeated. “Um…it sounds, uh…great.”

  Bailey rolled her eyes. “Yes, controller-less play. I want a gesture interface.”

  Chase’s eyebrows leaped into his hairline, and she beamed. When his mouth fell open, she laughed. “I want to tell you what I have so far. Wanna grab a burger?” Bailey knew a lot about gaming but only a little about computer programming. She just liked playing video games and figured designing one couldn’t be much harder than writing down all the outcomes and handing it all off to a programmer to code. Chase was a member of the computer club at school. Who better to take her baby from idea to reality?

  Chase’s teeth snapped shut, and she was sure he’d rolled those emerald eyes of his behind their lids. She shrugged. He wasn’t saying no, so Bailey counted it as a win.

  “The McDonald’s next to the theater okay with you?” he asked.

  Bailey’s lips twitched. That was right where Meg worked. This couldn’t be more perfect. She wanted Meg to see her with Chase. It was time Meg realized that Chase Gallagher was a total hottie and wasn’t going to wait forever for her to get her head out of her butt.

  Ten minutes later, they were eating burgers and fries at a table near the window. Meg would be sure to see them if she was working the ticket counter. Bailey told him all about her game, but Chase was brooding.

  “Chase?”

  He shook his head once like he was knocking loose a blockage. “Uh, sorry, Bay. What were you saying?”

  “Okay. It’s based on our history class from last year. I was having trouble passing, so Meg helped me come up with a way to remember all those facts and places and dates and people and stuff and so—” she said and splayed out her hands with a flourish, “video game!”

  “Uh-huh.” Chase just looked more confused, so Bailey started over.

  “Okay, it’s pretty simple actually.” She bit into her burger and talked with her mouth full. “Players move from level to level by figuring out what really led to the major historical incidents of a particular time period, like the Renaissance or the Crusades or World War I.”

  Chase’s eyebrows rose as he sipped his Coke. “What do you mean…what r
eally happened?”

  Bailey bounced in her seat. “Well, it started when Meg told me that there isn’t just one thing that led to the major incidents throughout history. Usually, it was a combination of things, a buildup, a chain reaction. Our history books just scratch the surface. There are dozens of things that never make it into the books, like the Civil War wasn’t only about slavery and World War I wasn’t only about Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Well, the Civil War was also about money.”

  “Money?”

  “Yeah.” She emptied her fries into a pool of ketchup. “Slave labor was free except for…you know, buying the slaves and having to feed them and take care of them and stuff. But that was still cheaper than running a big Southern cotton plantation with paid labor. And then there was the imbalance between the heavily industrialized North and plantation South.”

  “Imbalance?”

  “In the electoral college.”

  Chase blinked at her. “Right. The electoral college.”

  Bailey rubbed her lips. No ketchup. She angled her head at Chase, but he just kept looking at her. “Um, yeah…so the country was already pretty much divided politically before the slavery issue heated up.”

  She paused to pop a French fry in her mouth. Chase scratched his head and narrowed his eyes.

  “So what caused World War I?”

  “World War I was really caused by the sinking of the Lusitania, but even that was a conspiracy designed by—what?” Bailey grabbed a napkin and rubbed her forehead when Chase looked at her funny again.

  Chase shook his head. “Um…nothing. I’m just impressed.”

  Bailey’s face split into a wide grin. “Really? You are?”

  “Yeah, but there’s one problem. The Crusades? Renaissance? Assassin’s Creed already did that.”

  Bailey shook her head. “Yeah, I know. That’s why there’s more.”

  “More?”

  “Yeah. Time travel, you know, like Halo’s slipspace or maybe campaigns like in Call of Duty. I’m not really sure yet. But players are chasing these bad guys who are really aliens through time—kind of like Lavos in Chrono Trigger, only a lot more—before they can change history.

  “Um. Aliens. Right.”

  “No, seriously. It starts off with a mission, you know, like a ‘Should you choose to accept it’ thing.” Bailey made air quotes. “You travel back in time to figure out what set off that moment in history and discover it’s nothing like what the textbooks told you. It’s an alien invasion. You battle the aliens and then rewrite the history books so that the truth is hidden.”

  “Why do you have to hide the truth?”

  “Because the MIBs work without glory, without fame.”

  “MIB? Like the movie?” Chase blinked at her and finally smiled. “Okay. What the hell? Tell me more.”

  Bailey squealed. “Yay! Okay. It’s called Lost Time.” Bailey told him how she envisioned playing the game, describing the various levels and achievements as well as characters and their backstories.

  “How long have you been working on this?”

  “Since sophomore year.”

  “What about wire frames for the landscapes or maps of the time periods?”

  Bailey frowned and shook her head. “I…well, I’m not a great programmer.”

  “Can you program at all?” He finished his burger and licked ketchup from his fingers.

  She shrugged. “I mess around in Java, but I suck.” She slurped the bottom of her Coke. Simon had promised to buy her the software she needed to build her video game. They’d spent hours talking about it, arguing over the points system and leveling up, how the environment would look. He’d said he was impressed too. Her eyes misted and she blinked the tears away.

  “It’s not hard if you know the basics. I can get you a game library. Know what that is?”

  Bailey nodded. That was the software Simon had promised her. “Sure. It lets you use precoded objects for common functions.”

  “Right. I’ll get you one and you can—”

  Bailey stopped him with a raised hand. “Yeah, I know what it is, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ve got a few game engines we can try out.”

  That term was new. “What’s that?”

  “It’s software that helps you rapidly develop video games. It does the heavy lifting, like rendering graphics—”

  Bailey held up a hand again. “Yeah, and that’s when you lose me.”

  Chase grinned. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, I have to learn all this.” She didn’t mention that learning how to use all this software would help her stop obsessing over Simon.

  “So what do you have so far?”

  “Nothing digital. I have notebooks filled with sketches Meg did and notes I’ve been making on the rules, the maps, and stuff.”

  Chase’s face tightened when she mentioned Meg. Bailey squeezed his hand. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but trust me, she likes you too.”

  His eyes slipped shut. “I wish.”

  “I know her, Chase. Better than she knows herself. She’s nuts about you. She paints you.”

  Chase’s face lit up like a five-year-old’s at a playground. “Me? She paints me?”

  “Yep. Like every day. And she’d kill me if she knew I told you that, so that stays between us, okay?” She stood up and piled their trash on the tray.

  Chase stood and grabbed her in a hug.

  “Oh! Um…it’s okay, Chase. She’ll come around.”

  “Thanks, Bay.” He grinned and took the tray.

  Bailey glanced toward the theater and smiled. Please tell me Meg saw that! She prayed.

  Chapter 5

  Meg

  Meg sat at the ticket counter gleaming brightly under the harsh lights. She’d cleaned it about six times so far. And refilled the machines with paper. And reorganized the gift card supply. And even brought her homework to do during her break. She stared out the window, her fingers itching for a paintbrush, a sketchbook, something—anything that would occupy her mind for more than a minute.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! Losing her cool over a stupid picture…in front of Chase. She shut her eyes and groaned. He’d looked at her with horror. But he hadn’t run. He never judged. Well, okay, he was shocked, but still, the only thing she saw in those potent eyes was worry, and that made her feel kind of warm and fuzzy. She scrubbed at another spot on the counter and felt sick. He shouldn’t worry about her. She shouldn’t like that he did. They weren’t dating. They weren’t even friends—at least not like she and Bailey were. How had this happened? Despite all her efforts, despite The Plan, Chase was sneaking under her carefully drawn lines, and damn it, she wanted more.

  The research project they’d been partnered up on last semester had been a lesson in more ways than one. She wasn’t sure how it had happened. They’d visited the Museum of Modern Art on their own because Bailey had some family commitment and couldn’t make it. Chase wasn’t the least bit saddened by that news. He’d bought her train ticket, pulled her out of the path of a taxi that jumped the light, and let her push him from floor to floor to stare at exhibits. At some point during all that, the echoes of her dad’s voice died away. She never protested when he dragged her to Rockefeller Center, pointed to a spot, and said, “This is where the tree goes every year. Close your eyes and imagine it’s Christmas.” She did, and he kissed her, and it was like all the colors in the world exploded.

  They’d had a great day and finished all the research they’d had to do. On the train ride home, she’d even let Chase make plans—movies, the school dance. He even said something about taking her to his prom. They’d “worked” for hours after they’d gotten home, talking, laughing, sharing, and eventually typing up their paper. Long after the sky had darken
ed, Chase stood up, said he was going on a food run, came back, and served her.

  Her cold little heart thawed and then melted for him and then refroze when they’d gotten their grades.

  C-.

  She’d never gotten such a low grade before. She hadn’t really talked to him about it. She’d just…stayed away. It hurt. But it got easier every day. She was over it. Mostly.

  The next movie would start in less than an hour. She would soon be busy again. She tossed the rag on the shelf under the counter and looked out through the glass doors and—bam! Her gaze locked on him like a guided missile. Her belly did that slow roll it always did when she saw him, and she knew she had that stupid smile on her face.

  And then he grabbed Bailey in a hug.

  The earth tilted on its axis. Her stomach pitched. Her smile burned—oh, how it burned. Her fingers curled with the need to tear Bailey’s highlighted curls out by their roots. When she found herself at the door with no memory of giving her legs the command to walk, she forced air into her paralyzed lungs.

  In.

  Out.

  Damn it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d taken every precaution—stayed distant, apart, aloof. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. It wasn’t supposed to matter.

  No. Fight it. She forced herself to see through the green mist of jealousy. Green Envy, she’d call this color if she were painting this scene. Or maybe Jade Avarice. Calmer, she recited her list of reasons. She had to focus on school. She had to graduate. She had to find scholarship money and get a degree. It didn’t matter what field. Any degree. Something that would help her find a good job. A job with benefits. A future. The Future. Her future. She had to be able to take care of herself. She’d promised her dad she would not waver. This hurt would stop soon as long as she was smart and stayed on course.

  The other hurt never would.

  Chapter 6

  Bailey

  Bailey figured that ordering burgers for two parents and four brothers would take a long time, so she decided to visit Meg while Chase fed the Gallagher army.