by Gavin Brown
I gulp. I’m going to have a writing tutor? And worse, one in the same grade as me?
I want to argue, but then I glance over at Maya. She’s looking at me hopefully, expectantly. And yeah, maybe there’s a little pity in there, too. That part burns.
But saying no would make it seem like I want to avoid her. This is the first time since my first day when I locked my stuff in her locker that she doesn’t look vaguely annoyed with me. And at this point I’ve made more than enough enemies.
“That, uh, sounds really great,” I say.
And instantly regret it. All of my ninja strategies have landed me here: getting assigned a writing tutor, which will only mean more work. And humiliation.
The Enchantress seems to have put a curse on me. And it follows me through the rest of the week until Friday, when they send progress reports home.
“Josh,” Mom says when I emerge from my room and collapse on the couch. “Do you have something for me?”
Everyone in our school district, whether they are in the middle school or high school, gets their progress reports on the same day. And of course Princess Perfect, the model student, went and showed hers off the moment Mom walked through the door.
“Yeah,” I say reluctantly. There’s no point in lying to Mom. She knows.
A moment passes in silence. I’m not going to make it easy.
“Could I see it, please?” she says. She won’t be deterred from torturing me.
I shrug and hand it over. I doubt any training from ninja school covers how to neutralize your mom when she’s about to chew you out. Blow darts, nunchucks, and throwing stars just won’t cut it against this foe.
Mom takes one look at the report and sits down in the kitchen chair, shaking her head. Three times she almost starts to say something, then stops herself. Lindsay and I stand there, rooted to our spots.
“Josh, I’m sorry I can’t be around as much to help you with your homework or to make sure you study. But this can’t happen.”
“I’ll study more,” I offer. “Really.” And I mean it. Seeing her so stern makes me feel like a tiny person a couple of pixels tall.
She shakes her head. “No, we need to fix this. I’m going to check every night that all your homework is done.”
Then she drop-kicks my entire life.
“And no video games or computer until the end of the quarter. You don’t need any distractions. Those things are rotting your brain.”
“WHAT?” I stare at her, frozen like she’s hit me with a stun spell. No video games? At all?
“I’ll lock up your consoles,” she says. “You’ll get them back when you get your report card for this quarter. If the grades have improved.”
I shoot her a look of utter horror.
Mom shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Josh, I have to do this. Be glad I’m not telling you that you can’t hang out with your friends.”
Yeah, as if I have lots of friends at this new school. Or any friends, for that matter. I didn’t have time to make any at the last two she pushed me into. And somehow the idea that she assumes I do, and the reality that I don’t, makes it ten times worse. Doesn’t she realize that none of this would have happened if we hadn’t moved? Of course, she thinks it’s all my fault.
I stand there silently as Mom goes up the stairs, heading straight to my room. Or at least, the place that we call “my room.” It’s another in the series of spaces that my stuff’s been shoved in. It certainly isn’t my home. And without my games, how can it ever really be called “my room”?
A poisonous cloud of red rage swirls around my head. How am I going to survive this?
“If you’d put the effort you put into your games into the rest of your life, you’d do fine,” Lindsay says.
I glare at her. What does she know? Princess Perfect, with her great grades, sports team, and cool friends.
“Shut up, Linds!” I yell.
She looks at me for a second, her face screwed-up all funny. “I was trying to help,” she says in a strained voice, and storms off.
When Mom comes down with her arms full of my games, I stumble upstairs and collapse onto my bed. I thought I had a great plan with my ninja strategy, but it’s backfired in epic fashion. I can feel another life draining out of me. Which, according to the Ancient Unchanging Laws of the Gaming Universe, means I have just one left.
It’s much tougher than I imagined it would be to go without games, or even TV. It’s not just having nothing to do—it’s not having anything to think about, nothing to look forward to. At first I distract myself by rereading a few of my favorite science fiction books, but reality starts to set in by Sunday night. With no computer, I put up a sheet of paper to mark time with a tally on the wall. The end of the quarter is in four weeks. That means four weeks with no electronics.
My wall is covered with all the pictures I’ve been drawing at school, stuff like Mario sparring with the Prince of Persia, Professor Layton saving Princess Zelda, and Minecraft Guy and Sora from Kingdom Hearts riding a rollercoaster at Disney World.
I pull out a notepad and sit there drawing Luigi punching his way through a brick building that looks a lot like my school, when suddenly I have a brainstorm.
I’m furious with my mom, with my teachers, with my life. Dad always told me, when I got mad at a video game, “Turn your anger into resolve to level up. Make it your need to increase your skills and win.” And then, when I would tell him how I was going to do better tomorrow, he’d bring out his favorite saying. In happier times it only applied to little things like cleaning my room or taking out the trash. “If you have something hard to do, the best time to start is now.”
A lot of the people in my real life seem almost like characters from a game. Ms. Pritchard is an enchantress; that one is easy. Mr. Ramirez is the owner of a Pokémon Gym, who only speaks in numbers and equations. Mr. Barrington is a dragon who spews out flames with every shout. And of course there’s the Mitten Monster, the giant mitten-shaped beast, throwing deadly explosive mittens at anyone who approaches. I sketch them out on several pages of graph paper and pin them to my wall.
I try drawing myself as a silent but deadly ninja, but that doesn’t feel right. Hiding and pretending there’s nothing wrong has only made everything worse.
At this point I’m starting to hallucinate, stuck there in my prison cell in the high tower of Queen Mom’s castle. Have I been doing everything wrong? What sort of game is this?
It certainly isn’t like a ninja game, where you start out able to sneak, jump from rooftop to rooftop, and fling throwing stars at your enemies. No, it’s more like an adventure game. One of the ones where you start out with three hit points, armor made out of old potato sacks, and a balsa-wood sword.
In every adventure game the character starts out at the bottom. A level-one scrub. No skills, powers, or magic items. And if I want to reach the top, to become the hero who could get the grades, beat the bullies, and maybe even impress a princess, there’s only one way. I have to grind my way through the levels. I need to learn the rulebook, earn the experience points, max out my stats, and level up.
I’ve been playing not to lose. It’s time to play to win.
Monday, after school, I get out my biggest sketchpad and make a chart for my wall. It will track all the things I do, from homework to studying to trying to make friends. For each accomplishment I’ll mark down experience points. I add in levels, spots for new skills, the whole deal. The goal will have to be to earn experience every day and get a steady chain going, with a mess of boxes filled in every week. I want to be able to look back and see it covered in green ink.
The first stop on any heroic journey is always the same. You need a wise sorcerer to guide your hand. Sometimes you get a prophecy, sometimes you get a totally sweet magic sword, sometimes you get a firm push forward. I don’t have Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Obi-Wan Kenobi in my contacts, so I’m going to have to go with my local enchantress: Ms. Pritchard.
The next day I sit through cl
ass in her enchanting studio, watching the shadows cast by other kids’ heads and the lamps around the room. At the end I gather my books up slowly and wait for everyone to leave. Then I take a deep breath and walk up to her altar of power, strewn with student papers from the past week.
I’m sure, given her mystical powers, that she knows what I’m here for. But she just looks up and says, “Hi, Josh, what can I do for you?”
“I, uh …” I’ve been thinking about this all morning, and still I somehow don’t know what to say. She looks back, waiting expectantly. I guess they must teach patience in enchanting school.
“I need to get better grades,” I blurt out. Adventurers like me, we’re not known for fancy talk.
Ms. Pritchard smiles and nods. “Josh, if you want better grades, make sure to do all your assignments. But is that what you really want?”
“… Yes?” I venture. This is a trap. I know it’s a trap. Wise sorcerers never give you a straight answer.
She shakes her head. “Grades aren’t what’s important. I’m not here to help you get good grades. I’m here to give you the freedom to express yourself with beautiful words.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. Do I believe it? No. But sometimes you have to trust that your wise sorceress knows what she’s talking about. After all, she’s the one with the crystal ball.
I can’t tell if Ms. Pritchard is gullible or just going along with it, but she gives me a bunch of advice on how to relax, listen to my muse, and let my brilliance flow out onto the page. It involves tea, meditation, and connecting with your inner Shakespeare.
I resolve to finish all my writing assignments. If you don’t do the work, you don’t get the experience—and you can’t level up.
Her methods seem kooky, but that night I actually give it a try. I have something hard to do. I get Mom’s tea down from the high shelf in the pantry and brew a pot. I would do it fancy like in the old British World War II movies Dad used to watch, but I don’t know how that works, with the leaves and the little metal thing. So I nuke a mug of hot water and toss in a tea bag and about a quart of honey.
I flop onto the couch with my laptop, which Mom made me promise to use only on schoolwork, and only in the living room. It’s like she doesn’t trust me not to play video games when no one is looking. She can be a pretty smart lady.
I pop in some headphones and pull up a station of classic rock. Ms. Pritchard said classical music, but it’s basically the same thing, right?
I close my eyes for a moment, focusing in on my blissful spot like Ms. Pritchard suggested. Maybe if I tap into some deep reserve of Zen, I’ll be able to learn metalbending or something.
Moments later, I can feel the power coursing through me. My eyes shoot open. My hands fly over the keyboard. A tale appears on the page, a short story about a lovesick robot who saves the president from time-traveling mutant assassins.
Not having video games is making me a bit loopy.
The other subject I really need to get on track is math, so the next day I venture into Mr. Ramirez’s math Gym. Now, I know there’s no chance of ever beating the Gym Leader. Mr. Ramirez is a former math prodigy and I’m just a kid. But if I can at least evolve my skills and have a belt of math Poké Balls, filled with Percentitar, Fractionite, and Geomitrosaur, I’ll be all set.
I approach Mr. Ramirez after class. I want to apply the knowledge I’ve learned from Ms. Prichard, so I start with “I want to learn to express myself better through math.”
Mr. Ramirez raises an eyebrow, like he does when a student forgets to reduce a fraction properly. I guess he and Ms. Pritchard have different styles.
“I want to get better grades,” I say. “I, uh, want to evolve my Percentitar for this next test.” I shake my head. “Sorry, that’s weird, what I mean is—”
He laughs. And then he reaches into his coat pocket and lays a handheld on the table. He flicks it on. It’s paused on a portrait of Charizard about to use Blaze.
“You like Pokémon?” he asks.
“Yeah, totally!”
Mr. Ramirez smiles. “I don’t tell students this normally. It gives them the wrong idea. I was about your age when Pokémon was first released. I have played every game, from Red and Blue, which were in black and white, to Black and White … which were actually my first color games. I’ve been playing in the morning on the bus every day since the new one came out last month.”
I’m shocked. I’d always thought of our teachers as relics of an ancient era, dinosaurs who somehow wore khakis and ties and stood in front of the classroom lecturing us about the difference between radius and diameter.
“So, Josh, how do you get your Pokémon to evolve?”
“Um … battling other Pokémon?”
Mr. Ramirez leans forward in his chair. “Right. But more generally, through practice. You have to battle the math problems. You are a smart guy—but you’ve got to do your homework. And scribbles before class don’t cut it. Each time you skip an assignment, the one after gets harder.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. Just doing all my homework … I was really hoping for some kind of hack or trick. But I guess he has a point. I’ve never really tried doing a hundred percent of the homework. Thinking about it, it does seem kind of obvious.
“I’m sure you can do it,” Mr. Ramirez says. “If you can understand the strategy of Pokémon, you can understand the mysteries of algebra. And if you can get an A in the class this year, I’ll let you challenge me in Pokémon.”
That thought carries me through the next few days. I’ve collected hundreds of Pokémon, and my combos are sick. I just need to do the same for math class.
Doing my math homework is a lot less fun than writing stories for English, but I don’t have anything better to do, with my video games gone. And there’s that chart on the wall, staring at me every day. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to fill up my Wall of Heroes. So I resolve to battle the math problems and get ready to take on my Gym Leader. (Okay, realistically, taking on former-child-prodigy Mr. Ramirez isn’t very likely. But an adventurer has to dream big.)
Talking to my teachers is actually the easy part. The really intimidating part is on Friday. My first writing tutor session with Maya.
We meet in the cafeteria, which feels weird because it’s so empty at the end of the day. The main lights are off and there’s no one but Ms. Pritchard, a couple other tutoring sessions, and the staff closing up for the day.
I’ve been nervous all week. I turned my story in on Wednesday, and the instant I handed it to the Enchantress I wondered if I should have done something a little more traditional. Guys and girls in olden times who won’t admit they love each other, old men talking about how hard life is—you know, the sort of thing they make you read in English class. I wrote it in one night, and only really thought about the fact that Maya was going to read it once it was turned in. If I’d paid more attention to that, I might have done something a little less weird.
Maya sits down across from me. I glance down at the paper she set on the table. It’s marked up in purple pen, covered with notes and corrections. I instantly feel a lump in the pit of my stomach. She must think I’m a complete weirdo.
“Hi, Josh,” she says.
“Hi,” I answer, swallowing hard.
She spreads out the papers in front of her. The purple carnage stretches across all of them, and there’s a paragraph of writing on the last page. I wish I had Link’s power from A Link Between Worlds, where he can turn into a painting on the wall and scoot off.
She looks up at me and smiles.
“Okay, Josh,” she starts. “First off, your story is a lot of fun!”
“Really?” I ask, a bit shocked. Maybe she’s being nice to cushion the blow of having to tell me how messed up it was.
“Yeah, I liked it. I love anything with time travel and lasers. And Commander Toughcookies is such a wild character.” She smiles again, and it really feels sincere. Maybe she actually liked it?
“Wow, thanks,” I say. I’ve started to notice that every time she smiles, her nose crinkles up in a way that I find really cute. It’s kind of a big contrast to her clothes, which always have an unexpected zipper or swoop to the cut—strange in a kind of cool way. Definitely not “cute.” I do my best to ignore both things and focus on the story.
“Don’t worry about all these marks,” she says, gesturing to the papers. “We’ll go over them, but they’re just little tweaks. It will only take a few minutes to put them in. There are a couple big-picture questions I wanted to talk about.”
I nod, having to fight not to crane my head over to read her comments early.
“When Commander Toughcookies grabs on to Emotionbot and they travel through the temporal vortex to the Jurassic era, shouldn’t that reverse the entire Invisible Assassins timeline?”
I rock back in my chair and stare at her with my mouth open. Not because she’s right (though she totally is) but because she’s taken the time to read the story so closely.
We spend fifteen minutes talking about my story, getting into the details and the characters. Then Ms. Pritchard walks over, peering down at us over her glasses.
“How are you feeling about the work, Josh?”
“This is … actually kind of fun,” I say. “Maya’s got some really cool ideas.”
“I thought you might get along,” Ms. Pritchard says. Enchantresses have pretty good intuition about these things, I guess. “So, Josh, would you characterize your story as person vs. self, person vs. person, person vs. nature, or person vs. society?” She has been teaching us about the different types of narratives for the past week.
“I guess person vs. person. Commander Toughcookies has to defeat all kinds of bad guys.”
Maya smiles. “But it’s also a bit of person vs. self. Toughcookies does have to face his internal demons in order to save the day.”
