Backward Compatible: A Geek Love Story

by Sarah Daltry

  “I’m pregnant,” Vicky says. “Jay and I got married a year after high school. He finished school that year. This is our first. And Stacy and Matt are engaged, too.”

  “Congrats. Sounds like things worked out well,” I say, hoping the conversation will end. I don’t know why they make me feel pathetic, but they do. Like it matters that they’re getting married and having kids when we aren’t even old enough to be finished with college.

  “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?” Stacy asks.

  “Yeah, this is-” I turn to George to introduce him, but he’s gone. I look and he and Lanyon are teaching Heather how to do something on her DS. “Yeah, he’s over there.”

  “Oh, Katie. Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time acting the way you do and wasting your money and energy on video games and all this lame stuff, you’d actually have a boyfriend,” Vicky says. They laugh a little and walk away.

  It wasn’t even mean. It was petty and childish and high school is long over. Given the way they treated me in high school, that was actually friendly, but regardless of the logic, they make me feel like I’m flawed. They’ve always made me feel like I’m flawed.

  I watch the rest of the group. Anna and Chad are flirting, and the guys are gaming with Heather. Then, I glance down at myself. I wore Chucks, jeans, and a plain green hoodie on my date. My mother’s right. Stacy and Vicky are right. I’m an embarrassment. My own boyfriend doesn’t even want to hang out with me, unless it’s to game, or every so often to kiss me. He doesn’t think I’m attractive enough to sleep with. I know it hasn’t been that long, but Seynar wanted to sleep with me immediately. George, on the other hand, has shown no actual interest in sex, despite the constant jokes. It’s me. I’m just not girlfriend material.

  I consider rejoining everyone, but I suddenly want to be alone. I push out of the alley and find a bench against the wall of the building. It’s cold, but it’s dark enough to hide the tears as I sit there, alone, crying about the fact that I will never, ever be normal.

  George

  “Blowing into the thing is stupid. I hate the goddamn DS,” I say. I look up to see if Katie is still talking to her friends. It seemed to be one of those ‘hey, we’re best pals’ reunions and I didn’t want to get in the way. It would be weird if she had to introduce me, since I’m not sure if we are actually dating or what. Man, I am inept.

  “I like how it’s interactive,” Heather says.

  “Yeah, that would be all right if it felt authentic. I kind of feel like they jam sequences into the games just to use the DS gimmicks,” I argue.

  “I think they can be cool,” Lanyon says. I know this is bullshit and he’s just saying it to get on her good side. Which is shocking, because Lanyon usually has no sense of how to act socially. This is my cue to go.

  “You guys keep up the good work. I’m going to rejoin my…” Time to try it. “Girlfriend.” They just nod and keep on chatting.

  I can’t seem to locate Katie at first. I’m not sure, but that may have been her sneaking out the front door. Odd? Perhaps I mistook old friends for virus-infested chunks of grease. I mess that up sometimes. I head out and over to a bench located along the side of the building, just below a fire escape. Katie has her head down and it looks like she might be crying. No girlfriend or snuggle buddy or gamer pal or whatever the hell she wants to be cries on my watch.

  I survey the situation. I decide that it’s either time to succeed with amazement or fail with completeness. I head to the back of the alley and dig a bit through the dumpster. Not cool, but necessary. The gods of fate have smiled upon me again. I find exactly what I need: an old ratty garden hose.

  “Oh, sweet victory, either thou or death shall go with me.”

  The windows on the side of the building are really close together. This is crucial. I’m no Altair but I did have a brief stretch when I was obsessed with Parkour. Now, I shall test out my rusty skills. I wrap the dirty ass hose around my waist and climb up the first window. The frames are old but wide enough for me to get a decent grip. I scale the side of the building about three windows high. Then, I go sideways until I get around the corner. This is no easy feat. Luckily, a tree and a chain link fence are there to help me. I probably should’ve climbed those in the first place. But, as my grandmother says, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

  I hum the Conan the Barbarian theme music in my head as I move along the next few windows. I slip onto the fire escape; the mild clanging doesn’t seem to bother Katie. She is clearly wrapped up in some personal misery. I want to comfort her, but I feel like the slight delay could really pay off here.

  I tie part of the hose around the railing of the fire escape and check that the other part is securely around my waist. I then maneuver so that I hang off the edge. I run the hose through the cage, so that I can actually lower myself slowly by letting the hose loose a bit at a time. Or, maybe, it will just snap and I’ll die. I flip upside down so now my head is closest to the pavement. I’m maybe ten feet above Katie.

  I start to let the hose slide and I glide a foot closer. So far, the hose is holding. Fortune favors the bold, I remind myself. I look down; she still hasn’t noticed. I slide further and further.

  Now, only a yard above her head, I don’t know how the hell she hasn’t heard me. Until I see she has ear buds in. Listening to music, no doubt. Well, maybe not No Doubt, but music still. I bend my knees and place my feet along the hose in my best upside down Spiderman pose. I can’t hold this for long, so I hope she’s ready. I slide the next foot and cough. She jumps, stands, and looks at me. Her face is an inch from mine, but I’m upside down.

  “Holy fuck,” she yells and takes a step back. She’s been crying. Little grey lines mark her face. “It’s you. I thought I was under attack.”

  “Sorry to startle you, ma’am. Would you like to be my Mary Jane?”

  She’s still sad but she smiles anyway. She grabs the back of my head and kisses me. It’s a deep kiss, filled with anger and need. I give it back as best I can. But I almost fall over. She stops.

  “Is it hard to stay like that?”

  “Much harder than I anticipated,” I admit. I let the hose slide and I slowly plop to the ground in a mass of dirty hose and former spideryness. “Why are you crying? Were those girls a pair of heartless bitches?” I ask her.

  She sniffs. She doesn’t want to tell me about it. I can feel the hesitation.

  “Sorry I wasn’t there. I just thought it would be weird for you to introduce me. Since I didn’t know if you wanted to call me boyfriend or if you just, hell, I don’t know.” I shrug.

  “They were bitches I knew in high school. They always made me feel bad about myself and they still do.”

  “Why? They look like half eaten dog food. I thought one of them looked like Mr. Torgue.”

  She laughs a bit and her breath hitches from the recent tears. “They said I was ugly and then told me how their lives were great because they were getting married and one’s pregnant.”

  “Hang on. They’re proud of this? Aren’t they like twenty?” She nods. “I feel like twenty and pregnant is a loss, not something to brag about. I don’t want to make you pregnant, although I wouldn’t mind practicing the effort on you.” I pause. “Shit. Even Lanyon can do better than that.”

  “You want to get me pregnant?” she asks.

  “No. I want to do all the getting pregnant stuff, but with no kid.” She’s either not getting it or screwing with me. “Sex. As the foreigners say, I want to make the sex with you. Will you make the sex with me?”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to ask. I think it’s just supposed to happen,” she says, but she’s smiling again, so I feel like I did something right.

  “Well, my past exploits have been few and terrible. I want ours to be beautiful, so I thought I’d try something different. No good, huh?” I ask.

  “It could work.” She kisses me again. The passion is still there, but this time the anger is gone. Then, her
phone buzzes. “It’s probably Anna wondering where we are.”

  My phone buzzes next. I forget I even have one most of the time. “Nope,” I say. “It’s Seynar. Oh, shit. Danger has found the Amber Key.”

  “He told me the same thing,” Katie says. “Who the fuck is Danger?”

  “I don’t know. Must be some guy he games with.”

  Lanyon comes bursting out of the bowling alley. “Some guy named Danger found the Amber Key with Seynar.”

  “We know,” I tell him. “Go back to Heather. You can’t run out like that.”

  “Did he tell you the rest?” Lanyon asks.

  “What rest?” Katie says.

  “The two of them also found the Amethyst Key. But it seems like no character can hold more than one key. You have to go in groups of seven, at least, I guess. So it’s the two of them and they’re guarding the last key. But they can’t pick it up. They need you, you bard bitch, to go and get it since you’re the only one of us with no key yet.”

  “Wow. How come he told you and not us?” Katie asks.

  “As soon as I saw the text, I called him and he told me.” Lanyon is panting with excitement.

  “Well, this is great, but we can’t leave,” I say. “We have friends here and you’re on a date. Tell them to settle in and guard that shit for a few hours.”

  Quoth the Lanyon, “Balls.”

  Katie

  Anna looks up as I sit down next to her. “I have to pee. Katie, come with me,” she says and drags me off as soon as my ass hits the seat. The guys all roll their eyes in one big collective eye roll.

  We’re barely in the bathroom before she starts. “Did they start shit?”

  “Who?”

  “Stacy and Vicky. I saw them talking to you and then walking their skanky asses around after you left. Where’d you go?” she asks.

  “I just needed to go outside for a minute.”

  She stares at me and leans close to my face. “Do not tell me you’ve been crying.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you been?” she asks.

  “You told me not to tell you,” I say, and lean against the windowsill.

  She sighs. “Katie, it’s been three years. Look at them. They’re an embarrassment to the human race. Why do you still care what they think? They married the same douchey guys they dated in high school and they haven’t even left town. God, they’re hanging out at cosmic bowling on Saturday night.”

  I laugh despite myself. “We’re hanging out at cosmic bowling on Saturday night.”

  “Yes, but we do so ironically.”

  “We do?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “The point is, you’re at school, you’ve got a boyfriend, and life is good. You’re about twenty billion times smarter than the two of them combined. Why does it matter?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know, Anna. I feel like I’ve never been good enough. Why can’t I just be normal?”

  She stares at me. “I love you and you’re my best friend, but you’re not normal. And that’s why I still talk to your ass. You have never been the type to give a shit.”

  “That’s just it. I have always been the type to give a shit. I just hide it well, because even when I do give said shit, I fail epically.”

  She walks over, brings her hand back, and smacks me. It doesn’t hurt, but it is surprising. “Listen, bitch. You go over to that sink, splash some water on your face, do absolutely nothing to your hopeless hair, and go out there and jump on that boy who adores you. And the next time you worry about not being normal, just remember my words of wisdom.”

  “Which are?” I ask.

  “Fuck normal.”

  I laugh and do what she says, cleaning the streaks of makeup from my face and promising myself I will never bother with makeup again since it’s dumb anyway. I shake my hair out and put it back up in a ponytail. Anna stares at me in the mirror over my shoulder. She grins.

  “Perfect. It looks exactly the same. You are a master of the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ ponytail.”

  “You know, if your goal was to improve my confidence, you suck at it,” I tell her.

  “You don’t need me to improve your confidence. You already have it. You just have to be reminded that the people we went to high school with are nothing but troglodytes.”

  “Big word,” I say.

  “Hey, I go to college, too.”

  “What for again?” I tease.

  “Listen, Miss Art History Major, fashion merchandising is a growing field.”

  As much as Anna makes me crazy and is so dramatically different from me, I feel really grateful for her right now and I do the unthinkable. I hug her. Right there in the nasty ass bowling alley bathroom. She hugs me back for a few seconds, then pushes me away and tells me to go get laid.

  The guys and Heather are engaged in a heated discussion as we approach. Chad and Lanyon are only inches away from each other’s faces.

  “Uh oh,” I mutter.

  “No fucking way,” Lanyon yells. “Zerg was so much cooler in eight. Are you freaking kidding me?”

  “Eight? Eight is for pussies,” Chad argues. “Eight was all about Syntania’s stupid wedding. There was a forty minute cinematic about the goddamn thing. You cannot seriously think Zerg in a fucking tux is cooler than when he had his legs rebuilt in six. Unless you are also a pussy.”

  “Who are you calling a pussy?” Lanyon says. “That scene was epic and you know it. I am man enough to admit I shed a few tears. IGN named that the most emotional scene in the history of gaming. I don’t remember seeing leg rebuilding on that list.”

  “What are they talking about?” Anna asks.

  “Chad’s a gamer?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t listen. When he starts talking about Zergs and Dreshes, I tune him out and watch old episodes of Gossip Girl.”

  “How long have you been dating again?” I ask, even though I know.

  “Two years.”

  “And, in two years, it never once crossed your mind to mention to me that your boyfriend, the person you are literally symbiotically linked to, plays Fatal Destiny, my absolute favorite fucking game of all time?”

  She shakes her head. “I have no idea what any of you people are saying half the time.”

  “I love you, Anna. But, also, I hate you.”

  George looks up at me as I sit across from him. “This is intense,” he says. “Personally, I liked nine.”

  I nod. “Me, too. Tank’s dad… that scene. Ugh.”

  Heather stands between Chad and Lanyon. “We’re on a date,” she reminds Lanyon.

  “Your brother is a steaming wad of moron,” he says.

  “You’re sweet. Now, can we bowl or something?” she says.

  George

  As it turns out, we all suck at bowling. Lanyon sort of gets a strike when his ball bounces into, then out of the gutter and knocks all ten pins down. Technically, it’s worth nothing, but he dances so much in victory that we just give him credit for the strike.

  “That confirms it. I am the greatest bowler who has ever lived,” he decrees.

  “I’ve seen hats that were better bowlers,” I say.

  “Word play. How punny.” He sits next to Heather. I have to admit that they’ve gotten comfortable with each other very quickly. She must not have many friends.

  “These word play jokes just don’t bowl me over,” Katie adds.

  “They aren’t really up my alley, either,” I throw in.

  “You guys pulled these jokes right out of the gutter, didn’t you?” Heather this time.

  “Finger holes,” Lanyon shouts.

  “I think you sort of missed the point,” Heather tells him.

  “Yeah, you really struck out.” I pause. “Does that work? You know because of getting a strike and such. Anybody? No? Okay then.”

  The two bitchy girls from before show up and look at me and Katie. “Oh my God. Is this thing your boyfriend?” one asks.

  “Just
when I thought things couldn’t get any worse for you,” says her pal.

  “Hey,” I lean forward and start to sniff around. “Do you guys smell that? Did somebody spill a bottle of dumb, dirty skank? I swear all I can smell is dirty skank all of a sudden.”

  “It wasn’t me,” says Lanyon, as he cuts off a half syllable from bitch number one. “Maybe it was this walrus and its transvestite friend.” He addresses them. “Did either of you just walk through a puddle of rotten snatch? That could be it.”

  “Wow. You are so fucking rude.”

  “Rude like a fox.” He smiles.

  “What? What does that even mean? God.”

  “Piss off, jizz suppository,” I say. “Try not to get scared of any books that you may see on your way to the welfare office.”

  “I’m gonna tell my boyfriend and he’s gonna come and get you.”

  “Oh, shit. Some douchebag with his white hat and an IQ of five is going to come threaten us in public. The terror. Go get pregnant again. I look forward to watching your kids hate you when I go through your checkout aisle in a few years.” This comes from Heather. The girl has a mean streak I could get behind.

  The two piles of dumbassitry give us some kind of open hand palm thing, a few more “oh my Gods,” and they’re finally off.

  “So they probably were not friends of yours then?” I ask Katie.

  “I hope not. If they were, they sure as hell aren’t now,” Lanyon says.

  “Your friends are bastards,” Anna says. “I think I love them.”

  “I get that a lot,” gloats Lanyon. “Let’s continue to suck at bowling.”

  The bowling alley gets all funky with black lights and music that I wish I hated, but I have to admit is sort of catchy. After we play another string of inept ball chucking at wooden pins, my phone, Lanyon’s phone, and Katie’s phone all go off within a minute of each other. It’s Seynar and the messages are all about the same.

  We have been hiding here but some asshat Drow Elf showed up and saw the key. He went to take it so we had to kill his ass. But I know it’s only a matter of time before he comes to get it. Danger and I cannot hold on long. Get here. We need this key. It’s the last damn key. Bowl some other time. AHHHHHH.