It takes a while to get everything set up as I want, or as close as I can get it. I’ve got my mic and headphones on. I’ve got Vent running. I’ve got the game open—not logged in as Svvetlana yet. And I’ve got one more important bit of software too: a voice changer.
Apparently it’s a difficult trick to pull off. Any of the programs that seemed any good were all kinds of expensive, and the one I downloaded—free, of course—has a funny delay. I’ve tested it out, and whenever I say anything, it takes a second or so to hear through my headset. I can’t even be sure it sounds anything like a girl. But it must be worth a try, because as it is I might as well never run my priestess again anyway.
I log in and check my friends list. It must be my lucky day: Stebbins and Dewey are both offline right now, so it’s the perfect time to test this out. I find the guild’s Vent room, go inside, and there are only two guys in there. I don’t even know either of them, so they must be new members. I know Dewey has been spamming Trade chat lately, trying to recruit new members at any cost.
I can hear them in my headphones. They’re talking about low-level gear: the best dagger set for a rogue in a PvP battleground at level nineteen. It’s an unusually common conversation; I’ve seen it on Trade chat many times. I’ve seen it enough times, even, that I can add to the conversation somewhat intelligently. I decide it’s now or never.
“Hello,” I say into my mic. An instant later, I hear the modified voice in my ears. It’s a little too muddy, like my throat is full of phlegm. But it could pass for a girl.
“What?” one of them says.
“The Dagger of Jil’Kallaer,” I say. “Great agility.” I can hardly get the words out; the echo at my ear makes me seasick, it’s so off-kilter.
Silence.
“Hello?” I say. It’s all wrong. It’s so obvious now. The boys don’t respond. But on the screen, the green guild text scrolls up from the bottom:
<
<
I throw off my headset like it burns. Then I log my toon, quit Vent, and kick over my chair, mortified.
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CHAPTER 43
KUGNAR
The hulking warrior sits atop his canine mount as it tears across the red-dust fields of the orc homelands. He is in pursuit: an elf woman on a blue-and-gray-striped cat has been here. He can still smell her on the air as he makes chase. Her scent is life: it is cool like spearmint leaves, and humid like the air after a rain, and sweet like the honey he has licked from his hands after pulling it from a hive. When he catches her, he will tear her head from her body and spit down her throat.
But she is swift, and she is heading for a neutral town, where any belligerent behavior will not be tolerated by the guards. He must stop her and kill her before she gets there or his bloodlust will go unsatisfied.
Kugnar digs his heels into the wolf’s haunches, and it howls and barks, increasing its speed. It’s not enough. She is too far. He cannot charge from this distance, and he cannot slow her down. The neutral town is not far off now. She has escaped.
A new scent strikes his nose, and Kugnar looks to his right: he is not alone. It is a troll, a longtime ally of Kugnar’s people. The troll is young and inexperienced, but it has an advantage that Kugnar does not: a long range. For this troll is a young mage.
“Stop her!” Kugnar shouts over the wind and the thundering paws of their mounts.
The troll cackles and raises his staff. A ball of ice shoots from its end, and it collapses over the elf woman. She falls to the dusty earth, frozen—helpless.
“Now she is mine,” Kugnar says as he leaps from the hairy back of his mount. The troll stands back to watch; though he had one advantage, he has now used it, and this elf woman—as experienced as she is—will make short work of him if he gets too close.
The warrior, though, is without fear and without remorse and without mercy. He charges the elf woman, still slowed with cold, as she climbs to her feet. His shield connects with her weak body, sending her to the ground, stunned and dazed. Then he raises his powerful club, which gives him the strength of several oxen, and brings it down on her prone form.
“Now I will taste your blood, foul she-elf!”
But she is not without her own tricks, for she is close to the earth and its might—and she is a druid. And before the orc’s club connects, she has become a cat. She darts off a short distance, and Kugnar finds himself bound by her power: the earth itself has climbed over and around him, locking him in a mound of clay and earth and the thickest roots of trees. He is immobile.
She is in her elf form again, and she is laughing. She calls upon the power of the natural world, and with two great bursts of sunlight sends the troll mage to his maker.
“And now, my noble adversary,” she says, and her voice is like a melody; Kugnar almost doesn’t mind his impending death, for he goes to his grave having heard her speak, “may you return to this plane someday so that you might see the evil in your ways and repent.”
With her hands clasped and her eyes closed, she prays silently to her elf goddess. Kugnar’s constraints are weakening, though, and he shrugs them and prepares to charge again.
His shield up, he rears back and attacks—but he is too late. The power of the sun and moon and the stars in the sky falls upon his head like cosmic bricks. He collapses. His health is low—too low. One blow will mean defeat.
The elf walks toward him, slowly, confidently. She is strong and beautiful, and he was a fool to chase her. He realizes now she was not running from him. She did not fear him. She only ran so that she might spare him this fate, this unnecessary death.
But now, with his health low, she does not leave him here to recuperate. She stands over him, so her face and front are shrouded in shadow, and she says a short prayer—one of respect for life and battle and the honor of Kugnar’s race—and then brings down her staff. The world is black, and the orc is returned to the earth.
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CHAPTER 44
SVETLANA ALLEGHENY
On Thursday morning, after working two closing shifts at the juice shop, my legs are sore and my hair, despite extra-long showers, smells vaguely of active cultures and banana. I’m cursing my father’s name for making me take this job, and Mr. Hermann for offering it up so easily, as I pull up to the bike rack at Central, only a few steps from the wall of shame. This is what I call the short brick wall along the steps to the pool entrance—the wall where a particularly sullen Lesh talked to me like I had the plague while sitting with the girl I now know to be the scariest of my gender in all of the Twin Cities, grades K through twelve.
I’m pulling my chain from the bike basket when I spot a lanky figure, his black trench coat fluttering behind him like a superhero’s cape, but his gait is less like Batman’s and more like the Penguin’s. I’ve hardly caught a glimpse of him since the Gaming Club meeting last week, so he’s obviously avoiding me. But he’s walking toward the big front steps alone—no little boy in black at his side. Is he avoiding everyone?
Quickly, I wrap the frame and wheels with the bike chain in a complex weave, click the padlock closed, and grab my tote. As I’m running for the steps to catch Lesh, though, a Volvo sedan chugs and coughs and screeches to the curb out front, and my favorite eleventh grader practically leaps from the thing before it even comes to a complete stop. She’s in front of me, between me and the steps and the boy in black. “Svet,” she says, hooking her hand into my elbow and leading me toward the steps, far too slowly.
“Hello,” I say, but my eyes are on the steps far above us and the heavy black-and-glass doors at the top as Lesh pulls one open and slips insi
de.
“Was that Lesh?” Roan says.
“I think so,” I say. “I haven’t seen him in a week.”
Roan’s face, normally the most vivacious I know, falls, and she looks at her green tennies. I put my arm around her as we reach the doors and usher her inside, into the maelstrom of shouting and pushing and rushing to lockers and classrooms.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, and she shrugs. “It’s really not.” At least I don’t think it is. I haven’t been angry at her or Reggie at all since then. They gave Lesh a hard time, sure, but a little good-natured initiation is the norm in any small and exclusive group. Abraham, on the other hand, obviously had other resentment issues he was working out. “Maybe it’s Abraham’s.”
Roan rolls her eyes at the very mention of his name. “He’s on my list too,” she says as she pulls away from my one-armed hug to head to her first class. “What about you? Are you working tonight?”
I shake my head. “We’re still on,” I say, forcing a smile. “The three-member Gaming Club shall meet in the Garnet Dungeon in”—I check my watch—“ten hours.” I don’t know what we’ll do, though. I haven’t reshaped my campaign—yet again—for a party of two. I’ve only just finished working Lesh’s new PC in, which was apparently a complete waste of my time.
Roan smiles back and disappears into the sea of bodies.
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CHAPTER 45
LESH TUNGSTEN
On Saturday, late afternoon, I’m enjoying my self-imposed grounding. That’s a total lie, but I am belly-down on my bed with Red Chord on the speakers, and I’m not actively wailing in agony. My door’s been closed since after lunch, and I’ve been in and out of consciousness. When awake, my mind is on Svetlana—except when it wanders off to Jellytown. Both paths make my stomach twist in ways I can’t begin to interpret, so I reach for my phone and stare at texts from Svetlana. I can’t think of a thing to say.
That’s not true. I can think of many things to say:
<
<
<
<>
# # #
But I’m a big wuss, so I toss the phone on the floor and go back to dozing till I’m woken by the banging and showering of Dad getting home from a job. I listen to him and Mom shout through the house about what movie they should watch for their stay-home-on-Saturday date night. I should have no problem enjoying my solitude for the rest of the weekend. The knock on my door before six, therefore, is a surprise.
“Yeah,” I call out, and the door swings open. Standing in the doorway is my trench-coated friend, who I haven’t spoken a word to since he left this bedroom last Sunday, head shaking and utterly disgusted by yours truly. I stand up.
“Okay,” I say, arms crossed. “So what do you want?”
“I’ve decided to help you.”
“Help me?”
He nods.
“I don’t need help.” Unless I need therapy. It’s a distinct possibility I need therapy. But trust me when I say that will not be coming from Greg. An image flashes across my mind of Greg’s psychotherapy office, with a shingle outside the door:
GREG DEEL, MSW
“JUST DEEL WITH IT”
“You need help, Tung old man, because you have a well-geared, fully leveled healing machine in that silver-haired beauty of yours.” He sidles past me into my room and makes himself at home in front of the computer.
“So?”
“So it’s a huge waste of spent time to let her wallow because you’re such a huge freak and can no longer face the genuine and good people who helped get you this far.” He clicks open the web browser and types in the address for the public database of every toon in the game. Then he enters her name. There are about ninety Svetlanas.
“Two V’s,” I say, leaning over him.
He makes the correction, and up she pops, all alone, the only one with two v’s. She’s breathtaking. Even Greg says in a sacred whisper, “Wow.”
“I know,” I say back. “Isn’t she amazing?” I’m looking at my priestess—and make no mistake, she’s amazing—but I’m not thinking about her.
Greg gives me a look like I’m crazy, which like I said, I am. “Her gear,” he says. “You’ll be in full heroic epics if you deal with this problem.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right. But I can’t get on Vent.” I guess it’s an unspoken understanding that admitting my lies to the guild is not an option I can live with. “And you need Vent to get the top gear. So I’m not getting the best gear. It’s over.” I drop onto the bed, pick up Decibel, and toss it across the room. “I’ll roll a new one. I’ll call her …”
“Him.”
“… Jelly.”
That gets a laugh from the therapist. “Seriously, though,” he says, closing the browser. “You’re friends with Svetlana now, like, in real life, right?”
“Kind of,” I say, or admit, or something. We haven’t discussed my expanding and contracting social circle before, but I guess he’s noticed. He’s probably even mad about it, or hurt, or something. “Sure.”
“So ask her to help.”
Do I even need to respond to this? I try not responding.
“I’m serious,” he goes on, and he swivels the desk chair to face me, leans way back, and crosses his legs. “Ask her to help. All she’d have to do is turn up on Vent one or two times. Hell, I bet she’d love this game anyway.”
“I doubt it.”
“I don’t,” he says. “It’s not like I haven’t seen what she’s into, Tung. The girl has a sweater with a goddamn dragon stitched into the back.”
I smile and he rolls his eyes.
“The point is, tell her. Ask her to help. She’d be psyched.”
“About the game? Maybe,” I say, leaning back to pick at a spot of dried poster putty on the wall next to the bed. “But you’re skipping over the part where I admit to her that I’m so deeply obsessed with her that I’ve been pretending to freaking be her on the freaking internet.”
He chews the inside of his cheek. “She might be flattered.”
“She might.”
“She might never speak to you again,” he adds.
“Two in two weeks,” I say, thinking of Jelly. My whole body tingles with the physical memory of her body on top of mine in the backseat of Weiner’s car.
“Ah, Jelly will come around,” Greg says. “Just be cool. I bet she’ll give you another shot the next time she’s rocking her hip flask.”
I shrug, mainly because I don’t believe him, but also because I’m not sure I want another shot. Do I want a shot with Svetlana? I can’t even tell anymore which I want: to be with her, or to be her.
But he’s right about one thing, even if he doesn’t know it.
“Just talk to her,” Greg says. He gets up, and the desk chair bounces and spins. “Feel out the situation. Don’t spill everything at once.”
“All right,” I say, and I stand up, edging him out of the room. I think I’m just shutting him up and getting him out of my face. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Really?” he says, pulling his face in like a turtle. “Huh.” He nods in approval. “I didn’t think you’d have the stones for it, dude.”
“Just get out,” I say, this time physically shoving him.
“Hey, hey,” he says, but he’s grinning. “Just because you’re a girl now doesn’t mean you get to get bitchy with me.”
“Get out!”
“I’m going,” he says when he’s got one foot out the door. “But show a little respect, huh? I think it was pretty big of me to even come over here and work on this problem with you.”
“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” I say, and he’s in the hal
l now, so I shut the door in his face. And now I’m alone with my useless two-v’s toon, self-imposed grounding, and the sickening urge to talk to Svetlana. I miss her, so it’s been bubbling for days now, and with Greg’s idea as a good excuse to get in touch, it’s starting to erupt.
I grab my phone and start a new text, and then drop into my desk chair, staring at the blank screen, my fingers over the tiny keyboard, struggling for how to start this. I obviously can’t explain the whole background to this catastrophe over a hundred text messages. It would take all night. Plus, I can’t see how she’s reacting. What if the moment I spill the major beans, she gets all disgusted with me physically? I’ll want to know, so rather than wondering if she even got my texts or she got called to supper or went to the bathroom or something, I can just immediately cut off all contact with her. Imagine that. I might disturb the two most amazing girls I know, both of whom I’ve fantasized about in varying degrees of perversion, all in the space of about a fortnight.
I am just overflowing with these Sv(v)etlana words, aren’t I?
Me: <
It wasn’t on the list, but it works.
She: <
Anyone else says that, I assume sarcasm.
Me: <
Very dramatic, and predictably the text is followed by a nearly eternal silence, maybe three minutes.
She: <
Now it’s my turn to let the silence drag a little. I didn’t expect such a quick appointment, so now I’m in full-on panic mode. I’m really about to confess to Svetlana that I’ve created an alternative fantasy eight-foot-tall alabaster version of her in an imaginary pixelated world?
Me: <
Guy in Real Life Page 21
