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LEVEL 50
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 40
LESH TUNGSTEN
Greg shows up at our house the day after the WDW show. It’s after noon, and Mom is at work and Dad is watching football. The Vikings are playing who the hell cares, so I bring Greg upstairs and let him have the seat at the desk. Then I fall face-first onto my bed.
“What’s your problem?” he says. I hear my mouse clicking, but I don’t have the energy to give a crap or even check what he’s doing.
“I blew it with Jelly last night,” I admit. On the ride home last night, I said nothing—not to Greg, not to Jelly, not to anyone. When Weiner dropped us at the corner, I didn’t say good night or good-bye. I didn’t glance at Jelly, and I didn’t even slap five to Greg. I just hurried up the path and went inside, up the steps, and into bed. I’ve hardly moved since.
He lets out a low whistle, like it’s big news, but the mouse is clicking, and now he’s typing something. “What’s your password?”
“What?”
“I’m logging you in,” he says, and I finally lift my head. “That game card hasn’t expired yet.”
“Oh,” I say, and I drop my head again, then mumble my password into the mattress. I hear the keys clacking away, and then I realize. “Wait!”
But it’s too late.
“Whoa,” he says. “What the hell?” I’m off the bed and trying to shove him out of the desk chair so I can hit escape before he jumps to any accurate conclusions. I’m way too late, and he shoves back, and he knocks my arms away. He slaps the enter key, and the load screen comes up.
I drop onto the bed and swear.
“A secret toon?” he says. Svvetlana appears, bouncing in the wild. The pink and green text scrolls up the chat window almost immediately. It’s no surprise; none of them have seen me since they started talking about heroic gear, raiding, and Vent. “She’s level fifty.”
He leans in and slaps the C key. “And she’s decked in epic gear. My god. She’s better geared than your orc.”
“Yup,” I say, and I lean forward and try to reach the keyboard. “And now you know, so just log and get over it.”
“An elf,” he says, blocking my hand. “A freaking elf. And a priest? This is the gayest thing I’ve see—” He stops, his mouth still open.
“What?”
“Her name is Svvetlana?”
“So?”
“Isn’t that the girl you’ve been having lunch with every day?” Greg says. He doesn’t know I’ve hardly seen her all week. He also doesn’t know that after last night, I’ll keep avoiding her next week, too. “The girl who got you to join the D and D club?”
“It’s not the D and D club,” I point out, like it’s relevant. Things are starting to come out now, and my stomach is flipping around like I’ve had to too much vodka and banh mi.
“Okay, so you named your toon after her,” he says, and I can’t argue.
“Fine,” I say, throwing up my arms like it’s no big thing, and kind of hoping he’ll let his guard down on blocking me from reaching the keyboard. It doesn’t work. I lean back on the bed again. “So I have a crush on Svetlana. Big deal. She’s hot.” She is. It’s true. And she’s the reason I started playing. Sure, I was grounded, too, but it’s not like I’ve never had time on my hands before. Her drawings, her name, her body—that’s what I was after in Greg’s world.
“Well … ,” says Greg, leaning in even closer, peering at the tiny green and pink text scrolling up the chat box in the corner, “some dude Stebbins says he’s been wondering what happened to you.”
“Please log right now.”
“He missed you.”
“Deel, just log. Trust me and log.”
“Tung,” he says, and he finally looks away from the screen of my laptop and back at me, “this dude thinks you’re a girl.”
Sigh. I let myself fall back all the way and stare at the ceiling. My feet are still hanging off the edge of my bed, though, so Greg kicks my foot. Hard.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to answer me?”
“Probably not.”
He hits a few keys—not enough that he could be replying to Stebbins, but enough that he’s at least logging out. Finally. The laptop slams closed.
“It’s not a big deal,” I start.
“You’re a G.I.R.L., Lesh,” he says. “A guy in real life. It’s a very big deal.”
“It’s not like that,” I say, but I’m still not even sitting up. I don’t want to look at him.
“Stebbins thinks it’s like that,” Greg says. “Jesus, from the crap he was typing, it sounds like you’ve cybered with him.”
I lift my head. “What?”
“Cybersexed,” he says, utterly exasperated.
“Oh, come on!” I say, throwing my head hard against the bed. “Fine, I pretended to be a girl. These guys gave me tons of free gear, free dungeon runs, free gold. And yeah, they treated me nice too, and sometimes talked to me like I was really a girl. So what?”
Greg is sighing and rubbing his face and sighing again. My whole body is tingling, and I can’t tell if I’m thrilled this is finally out in the open, or if I’m scared out of my mind because maybe it’s a bigger deal than I thought—maybe I’m one of those guys who starts dressing up in women’s clothes or gets breast implants or something. I mean, I expected Greg to laugh. I expected him to call me a fag. I thought he might even go in-game and out me as a fake and a perv, right then and there.
But none of that happens. Instead I get: “Are you serious?”
So I have to say yes, I am serious. And then I just get a head shake, and a very pale face—paler than usual—from Greg.
“I don’t even know how to respond to this,” he says. He’s using a gentle voice, one I hardly even recognize. This is barely Greg. He gets up from the bed and moves to the door. It’s an awkward dance, without eye contact, and he’s extra careful to avoid brushing his jeans against my knees as he passes me, sitting on the edge of the bed. He opens the door and stands in the doorway, his backpack hanging from one hand. He looks like a little kid dragging a well-loved teddy bear.
“Why did you want to be a girl?” he says. At the last word, he screws up his face like he might puke.
I could say that I didn’t want to, not really—that it had all been a slow-motion accident, gotten out of hand. But I don’t say that. I just shrug.
“I don’t really know.”
So he pulls his hand down his face, turns around, and leaves. The sound of the Vikings game cheers up the steps and past Greg, into my room. I listen to his footsteps on the stairs. I hear the front door try to close. It always sticks.
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CHAPTER 41
SVETLANA ALLEGHENY
I think everyone’s avoiding me.
That’s not entirely true. Roan makes herself available when she can, and she talks to me on the phone when she can. But I’ve been having lunch on my own—yes, in the library to work on the campaign. On Tuesday at ten forty-five, though, I showed up at the cafeteria, hoping to run into my favorite boy in black, but his seat at the Table of the Damned was empty. His brief club membership gave him and me a good excuse to exchange phone numbers, at least, so I feebly text him before unchaining my bike after school.
Me: <
(There is no way he would get that pun. Texts need an unsend function.)
Lesh (an achingly long time later, and believe that repeatedly checking one’s phone for new texts is not among recommended behavior for a safe cyclist commute): <
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Lesh has been avoiding me. I suppose I’m also trying to say that I might miss him. But if I’m honest with myself, maybe I’ve been avoiding him, for reasons entirely of my own making. And now it’s Tuesday and school’s over and I have to go to work..
The polo shirt is orange, emblazoned across the chest with a tiny logo of Mr. Hermann’s juice shop. The bigger version is on the back, which means I don’t have to see it, so I can at least pretend that this shirt is something approaching tasteful.
I’m sounding like a snob again, aren’t I? Would it help if I admitted to driving to work on my first day because I didn’t want to show up covered in sweat? I suppose I decided the brown behemoth was a better option than stinky Svetlana. As it turns out, I didn’t think that through, because my shift started at four, and by six I’m so covered in all variety of fruity and powdery and active-culture gook that the natural smell of my postbike pits would be a welcome addition to my stench.
“Okay, Lana,” Mr. Hermann says. “You seem to be getting settled in here.” He’s not in a polo shirt. He’s in a pair of khakis and a tasteful, albeit pedestrian, blue collared shirt, much like my dad wears to his job at Target—the corporate building in Minneapolis, not one of the stores. At the stores, the employees wear outfits similar to the crisis I have on, except their polos are red.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m getting the hang of it.” As I say this, I’m scooping two balls of frozen yogurt into a giant blender, followed by three scoops of powder, a shot of apple juice, one cup of chopped frozen strawberries, and half a banana. I drop the blender top into its base, lower the splash guard, and flick the on switch. “That is one StrawNana Protein Blast.”
“Excellent,” says Mr. Hermann. He offers and I begrudgingly accept a high five. “And now I am going to leave you to it. If I’m not home in a few minutes, my wife will kill me.” A wink.
“Okay,” I say. “Sounds good. And we close at …”
“Nine on the dot,” says Mr. Hermann. He’s already got one hand on the door pull. “And you’ll be in Kyle’s capable hands for closing.”
“Not literally,” says Kyle, peeking in from the back room. He’s the night manager—he’s a short guy in his midtwenties with a shaved head and ears so full of piercings that I’m surprised he can keep a job in retail. I guess Scott Hermann isn’t as bad a guy as I thought.
Mr. Hermann laughs and pulls open the door. “Okay, good luck, you two. Don’t burn the place down.” The door swings closed, and Kyle comes up from the back.
“It’s a cold night,” he says, and he comes up next to me at the front counter to lean on his elbows. “We won’t be busy.”
I nod slowly. “C’est du gâteau.” He looks at me sideways, so I translate, “Piece of cake,” and he smiles, but it’s not a friendly smile. It’s a Svetlana-is-a-crazy-person smile. I’ve seen it before, like in Dr. Serrano’s class, or flashed across the face of the littler boy in black—even on my mom now and then. I’ve stopped showing her my embroidery projects.
“Dishes,” I say, good and quiet and very much in English, and I vanish into the back room to tackle a sink full of blender pieces. Here’s hoping it takes all night.
We get most of the cleanup done before the door is even locked, so once nine rolls around, it’s a simple matter of closing out the register—actually not that simple, but believe me when I say it is a process not worth chronicling—and wiping down the counter. Kyle bags up the money, drops it into a slot in the back room, and then—and only then—unlocks the door so we can go home. It’s nearly nine thirty when I park the monstrosity in the garage next to my mom’s little Fiat, which I coveteth in a deeply sinful manner.
When I slip in through the kitchen door, Dad hurries out of the living room. He’s got a glass of white wine, and a record’s on. He’s also beaming at me like I’m back from accepting my Nobel Prize in Embroidery.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my manner as flat as I can.
“So?” he says, putting down his glass on the kitchen island. “How’d it go?”
I shrug: C’est du gâteau. “Fine. I’m pretty exhausted.”
“I bet,” he says, leaning on the counter. He’s settling in for a chat, and in my mind I’m already standing under the high-pressure showerhead upstairs. “Was Scott there tonight to show you the ropes?”
I nod, slipping past Dad toward the steps. “Yup. Him and the night manager. It was a real thrill. I’m going to get cleaned up. I stink.”
The shower, though desperately needed, proves a bad idea. By the time I step out and pull on my thick and wonderful robe, I’m practically asleep. I never thought blending yogurt drinks for a few hours could put a girl into a semicomatose state, but there it is. I consider sleeping in the spare bedroom if only to avoid climbing the steep steps to my room.
I suppose I’m not that tired, and I manage the trip. I step inside and there, on my bed, sitting on my folded pile of jammies, is a little box wrapped in brown paper and addressed to me. There is no return address. I scrape at the seams of tape and paper with my fingernail. Finally it comes off, and I flip open the box and slide out a small silver box. I actually gasp, because this is a little box of jewelry, and I have never been sent jewelry before, aside from the bracelet my grandmother in Reno sent up for my thirteenth birthday, and that doesn’t count because it is the opposite of romantic, and if jewelry isn’t romantic, then what is it?
I pull off the top, and sitting on the little square of cotton is a silver charm in the shape of a teardrop, and in its middle is a dark blue stone. When I pick it up—very gently, with the tips of my thumb and first finger—it’s followed by a long whisper-thin silver chain, and I hold the charm up between my eyes and the lamp on my desk. “Wow.”
Is it Fry? If so, he’s got much better taste than I would’ve guessed—or else he’s got an assistant with a very keen eye, like the gift-giver version of Cyrano de Bergerac. And if it’s not Fry?
If it’s not Fry, then my world has just become a whirling dervish of confusion, because if the necklace isn’t from Fry, then were the flowers?
“Roan,” I say aloud, and I grab my phone and dial, but Roan doesn’t answer; Reggie does.
“Lana,” he says. “Talk to me.”
I close my fist over the charm, as if he might see it through the phone, or in the tone of my voice, and drop my fist to my lap. “How are you, Reggie?”
“I’m surviving,” he says.
“Are you at the Garnets’,” I say, “or is Roan at your place?”
“Ha, please,” he says. “I’d not subject her to that miserable pit, particularly on a school night.” The clock next to my bed says it’s nearly ten.
“It’s late,” I say. “Ish. For a school night. For Roan.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sleeping here. Slumber party in the basement! Woo-woo.” His siren impersonation is flaccid and sad.
“Aw, Reggie,” I say, and I settle back on the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not being around much,” I say. “I mean, since Cole. I should be.”
“It’s cool,” he says. His voice is muffled, like he’s in a tiny room, or even under a blanket. “You got your own stuff.”
“You’re my stuff too,” I say.
“Darn right,” he says, so I can smile, and then adds, “But I’m okay.”
“Good.” And I lean forward and drop the necklace into its box, close the lid, and knock it into my desk drawer. I flick off the lamp and Reggie talks about himself, and I close my eyes to listen, wishing I was across town with my friends on the floor in the Garnets’ basement, and kick the drawer closed with my foot.
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CHAPTER 42
LESH TUNGSTEN
It’s Wednesday night. The self-imposed grounding is getting to me. Heck, it’s gotten to me. And what’s worse, with Greg having discovered Svvetlana and learned about that whole crisis, I’m not exactly amped to see him or any of the crew even at school. That leaves Svetlana herself, and thanks to my hormonal explosion on Saturday night with Jelly, I can hardly look at her without feeling like I’ve been cheating on her. How ridiculous is that? I’ve skipped lunch since Monday, offering excuses by text message when she’s asked where I’ve been, just so I won’t have to sit across from her in the cafeteria, wondering how much she can see on my face: Can she see my girl half? Can she see Jelly’s lip prints, and the humiliation that followed?
Not literally, of course. But like I said, she’s magical, and if anyone can see the aura of guilt and shame I’m exuding, I’d bet it’s her. She even invited me to an unofficial meeting of the Gaming Club tomorrow, so I had to make up something about plans I already had. On a Thursday evening. Right. Not that I imagined for a second I’d be missed. And I’d once thought I’d be seen as the club savior. Even before Abraham’s sudden departure, I didn’t get quite the warm welcome I expected.
So I’m lonely, is what I’m getting at, and I’m even missing Stebbins and Dewey. But I know the instant I show up in the game, they’ll bombard me with whispers, urging me to finally download and install Vent so we can raid—become a guild of note on the server, get our gear as good as it can be, and beat the bosses we’ve only watched YouTube videos of.
“Fine,” I say, getting up from my bed, where I’ve spent the last twenty minutes—since dinner—staring at the darkening sky through the skylight over the bed. “Then I’ll get Vent.” I wake up the computer—which is a useless pile of junk when I’m not talking to my best friend and not gaming and can’t concentrate on homework long enough to actually get it done. But instead of going right to the Vent download page, I make a quick detour at Google.
Guy in Real Life Page 20
