by T L Costa
Is that Christy doing shots? At least she doesn’t stop and stare at me when I walk in the room like everyone else does. It takes all of three seconds before they give me the collective sweep, assess and dismiss. “Christy!” I call out and she tips her head back in unison with two other girls. The floor seems to pulse along to the death metal blasting from the sound dock as I shuffle through the crowd. The boys move out of my way, like if they even accidentally bump into me they’ll be jailed for statutory rape or something. The girls are just as bad: standing around all perfectly preppy and pretending that I’m not even there. Even the other power nerds ignore me.
I push to the table with the drinks, but Christy has disappeared. I need her; I somehow managed to lock myself out of our room. Hordes of sweaty jocks talking finance and beer pong are in one corner, arms wrapped tightly around smart girls wearing very flimsy, very expensive clothes.
Have I been having fun at college so far? Not so much. It’s different and filled with unexpected problems. A last-minute party on my floor on a school night? Didn’t really see this coming. Keeping track of my keys? Not so good at that, apparently. I mean, keys. Who even uses keys anymore? Even Mom changed the house over to a keypad. And then there are the more disgusting problems, too, like finding a used condom in my slipper this morning.
“Hey, you, kid.” A guy, tall, skinny, preppy-ish and really drunk, by the looks of him, calls to me from the frame of an open door. “You’re like that super-genius girl, right? The one who’s like ten?”
I sigh, my hands wrapping around my soda. “Sixteen,” I say.
“Right, cool. Come on in here.” He giggles, cheeks red and his eyes clouding over as they move up and down my body. I shiver. So does he, oddly enough. “Yeah, you should like totally come in here.”
I take a step back, but his hands wrap around my waist and he’s pulling me into his room.
“We need someone for our friend, Frank, here.” I look over to Frank. I assume he’s the really skinny guy over in the corner with the thick black glasses and bag of pork rinds.
“Someone to do what with Frank, exactly?” I ask, missing Julie, my sister, who is really, really good with situations like this. Mainly by helping me not get into them.
“You know.” He leers. Leers at me. Frank smiles a smile that only the truly stoned can give while waving around a PS3 controller.
“I can show you the secret level.” Frank giggles. Holding onto the word level like it’s a new vocabulary word.
“Level for what? Age of the Demigods? No such thing.” The first guy pulls me into him, reeking of pot and man-fumed body wash. “Let go.”
“Please, like you could possibly know more about Age of the Demigods than our Frank, here. He’s the best in the dorm.”
“I doubt it,” I say, shoulders tightening, voice falling.
“Why don’t you go over there and prove it?” They laugh.
Cheeks burning, I need to get out of here. “Get off!” I push him away. The other guys in the room laugh as their friend hits drywall.
He smiles at me. Smiles! Then says, “Relax, babydoll, I was just playing with you.”
Idiots. Drunk, stupid, horny idiots. I grit my teeth, eyeing the other guys in the corner as they giggle.
“Oh, wait, you’re that, like, super-gamer, right?” Frank dissolves into a puddle of laugher. “What was your handle, again? SexKitten20? Jailbait15? Damn, you gotta come over here and play. Show me how it’s done.”
I walk out of the room, not wanting to hear him, not wanting to be here. I push past the mobs of kids laughing and making friends and enjoying themselves, flying down the cramped old stairwell and burst out of the front door and into the night. I put my hands on my knees and breathe, hoping no one sees me.
Wiping my eyes with the bottom of my sleeve, I stand up and look around campus. It’s not such a bad night for a walk, really, it’s warm, with a nice breeze. It’s definitely better than being back in there. I do a few laps around campus, hoping to run myself clean.
CHAPTER 3
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
TYLER
Rick’s here. We’re watching the movers. You can totally tell that Rick used to be in the military. Looks like one of my old GI Joes. Standing in the kitchen. Wearing jeans.
Think I still have some of my old GI Joes in the basement. Bet I could sell them on eBay. Or give them to some kid.
The men come in carrying all sorts of boxes into my room. Good thing Mom’s not here. She’d freak.
They pile in, the men. They don’t look like movers, not really. But they’re loaded down with boxes. Men in khaki pants and white polos carrying box after box into my room. Some of the boxes are damn big, too.
Two guys come in, each holding one end of some oblong black package covered in plastic wrap. “Good thing you have a ranch,” Rick mutters, checking the time as he takes a bite out of the Pizza Pocket I gave him. Watching me, he asks, “Something wrong?”
I shrug. “Went to see Brandon. No big deal.” Another guy walks in carrying a long, skinny box that is almost as tall as I am.
Rick puts his hand on my shoulder, like he wants to comfort me but he doesn’t really know what to say that will make it better. Or maybe it’s just that he knows that there isn’t really anything he can say that will make it better. But he tries. “You’re doing everything that you can for him, Ty. No one can ask more than that.”
I let the heavy feel of his hand on my shoulder give what comfort it can, then wipe my hands on a napkin I grab from the countertop. Motioning to the boxes, I say, “Looks expensive.”
He meets my eyes for a minute, sighs and says, “There’s no shame in loving your brother, you know.”
I look down at the tile floor. Damn, I need something to drink. Where’d I put that bottle of Mountain Dew?
“A brother is definitely worth the concern. Now, if you had a rotten ex-wife like mine, well, somebody like that sure isn’t worth all the time or the pain… and definitely not worth all the damn money.”
Finding the extra bottle at the back of the fridge, I pour a glass of Dew. “How much are they spending giving me this thing?”
“As a rough guess I would say a hell of a lot. Did you know that you’re one of only five people in the country to qualify for it?” His thin lips pull into a genuine smile and he shakes my shoulder a little before letting go. Like he’s proud. Of what? Of me? Well, at least somebody is.
“Out of how many kids?” I ask. I shouldn’t ask. I know it’s not really important.
“Thousands.” He stands and grabs his briefcase, digging out a file and glancing at his watch.
“Why do you keep looking at your watch?” I ask as I open the freezer and dig out another Pizza Pocket. “They not moving the stuff in fast enough for you?”
His eyes are bright, sharp, like an owl’s… only not as yellow. Rick’s are more of a green, but still, owl-like. Maybe it’s his hair, sort of shapes his head in an owl-like way. “No, they are doing a fine job. I’m just waiting for our installer, the person that designed the unit. She goes to Yale, her classes ended over an hour ago and she should be here by now.”
“Unit?” I shake my leg as I wait for the ding of the microwave and the next round of Pizza Pockets.
“Yes, unit. It’s smaller and hopefully more user-friendly than the flight simulators we’ve used in the past. We’re hoping that your feedback will help us figure out how to make the design better, find any kind of bugs, that sort of thing before we put the unit into production.”
“Hope it’s more exciting than the PC game you gave me.”
“Maybe. The game that you’ve been playing is a flight-simulation game. We’ve integrated a gaming platform with a system known as the USC, the Universal Control System. Whereas before you were flying a computer-generated combat theater, the UCS uses satellite maps of approximately seventy-five thousand miles of South Asian airspace.”
“So you’ve written a game into Google Earth?”
“Cool.”
He smiles. “It’s a great game, Tyler, you’ll love it. Just write down any problems you find with it.”
I grab the Pizza Pocket. Damn, it’s hot. Now the whole kitchen smells like cardboard pizza.
“How high do I have to score on this sim to qualify for your flight school?” I don’t want to be stuck. I want to go to that flight school. It’s right down the road. I could stay close to Brandon.
He smiles, a good, open smile. “Just play it, Tyler.” He winks. “And who knows? The Air Force is like anything else.”
I raise my eyebrow.
“Sometimes you get to sneak in the back door.”
The doorbell rings. It’s one of those modern bells in a long case next to the door, manufactured special so that it sounds old. Sounds like you’re hearing an actual bell. I hacked its code so that it rang “Happy Birthday” on Mom’s birthday once. She laughed. That was a long time ago. I don’t think she’d laugh now.
I shuffle on the shag as I reach the paneled doors. I open the door.
Holy shit. The cold air slaps me in the face like a sock full of quarters and my mouth goes dry. It’s her.
“Hi. I’m here to set up your system.”
My tongue goes numb. Freaking numb. Can’t move it. Shit. It’s SlayerGrrl! Designer of World Of Fire, three-time ILG champion. Until she stopped playing. Why did she stop playing? The International League Gaming championship is the biggest competition around. Her nose is smaller than it looks in the picture. Terrible picture. She’s totally hot. Say something, Ty. Something witty. Something smart. She looks around the porch. I’m losing her, say something quick. Witty, clever… Now, Tyler, now. Speak.
“Hey,” I say.
She nods and twists her awesome lips into a tight smile…
Dammit! That was so not suave. Tell her you know who she is. That you’ve always wanted to meet her, a girl who games to game, not to impress a boyfriend or because it sounds like something fun to do when stoned. A girl who designed a game so badass that supposedly people have actually died while playing it because they didn’t want to walk away from the console. Quick. Now, Ty, witty, clever. “Your nose doesn’t look so big in real life.” Shit. Her eyes widen in surprise. Her cheeks turn bright red. Like neon red. Shit! “I mean, your profile picture is just awful.”
Her eyes narrow and her shoulders square.
I so suck at this.
Rick smiles slightly as he opens the door. “Miss Jones, please come in.”
“Hi, Mr Anderson, sorry if I’m a little late,” she says.
“Not at all.” He shoots me a sly look. “Miss Jones, this is Tyler, the young man you will be assisting with the simulator.”
She looks like she’s not really happy to be here, and as she comes into the house she trips, stumbles.
“I know who she is.” Stop talking, Ty. Just stop. “She had the highest scores ever in a few combat games.” She looks up at me, like I might be saying something right. Wow. She is so pretty, face even looks like a heart. Lips that dark pink. “Till I beat them.”
Now her look is closed again. What? Girls make no sense sometimes.
“Miss Jones here is a student at Yale. She works in our UCS design department.”
Yale. No wonder she hasn’t been online in a while. She’s so cute. Standing in my house. Dressed nice. I mean, her jeans sorta hug her hips a little, and cling in all the right places, but she’s wearing an old Akira T-shirt, like she knows she doesn’t have to dress up to look good. She does look good, though. Real good.
“Now, Tyler.” Rick walks across the shag. I like her hair. Dark brown except for one streak near the front bleached blond. “Tyler!” Rick says. I jump. He laughs, leading SlayerGrrl past me and into the house. Just wait till I tell the clan. Peanut and Alpha will never believe that I met SlayerGrrl. Rick’s phone buzzes and he reads a text. “Dammit. I have to run. Tyler, can you go with Miss Jones and let her give you the rundown on the unit? I’ll call and check in with you later.”
Hell yeah, I’ll go with SlayerGrrl. I’d follow her anywhere.
The upgrade is sweet. Not as sweet as SlayerGrrl, though. She sits in the console chair and looks like a goddess. The chair itself is pretty impressive. Like an office chair, only it’s specially designed to mold to your ass or something.
The whole contraption’s shaped like a big half-shell. You sit facing a high-def screen in five panels, stretching up and a little over where your head goes when you’re sitting in the thing. She’s in front of the central keyboard, and there are two controllers. One for the altitude and angle of the flight, and the other is this big ball that sits under your palm. It has little touch pads around it for finger commands.
The top part of the screen has a panoramic setting in crazy-high definition. You can pull any of the simulated drones’ cameras up on any screen except for the one that sits just above the keyboard. The screen over the keyboard is like a standard gaming map-panel. Only here it’s a GPS-specified map of your waypoints and target locations and some info on weather, wind speed and direction and other basic flight data.
The game looks about the same in its most basic components as the PC version, only where the original game had pixelated terrain, like an Xbox game or something, this one looks more like a movie. Graphics are epic.
“Tyler.” SlayerGrrl looks me in the eye. My heart jumps. “Are you listening?”
“No.” I look at the screens. “I just want to try it.”
“Yeah.” She purses her lips. Like she’s not used to telling people what to do. Or telling people anything, for that matter. “Please listen to what I’m trying to tell you, OK?”
She doesn’t look too happy with me. Her nose, which is sort of cute even though it might be considered a little big, is all wrinkled up like she’s frustrated. It’s really cute, actually. Except it means that she’s pissed, probably. Focus. I look down at her shirt. “You know that they’re playing Akira down at Criterion in a few weeks. Midnight movie. Wanna go?”
“Yes, no, I mean, yes, I know that it’s playing and no, I’m not going with you. Can you just listen?”
“Sure.” That. Sucks. She doesn’t move, though, doesn’t get further away. Maybe I should start slow, like with her phone number.
“When you sit down, make sure to put on the cuff first.” She holds out a floppy circle of blue Velcro. “Just roll up your sleeve.”
She slides the cuff up my arm. Damn, her hands are soft. Like, I don’t know, something nice. Something I want to feel more of. She hits a few keys and the cuff tightens. “It’s measuring my blood pressure?”
“You have to be wearing the cuff to log on.” She looks at the screen on the bottom right that has all the flight stats, and a small icon for my blood pressure readout pops up onto the screen. “The joystick will also be measuring your pulse as you go.”
I frown. She stands and gets out of the chair. “Please sit,” she says.
I do. The chair is nice, big, like an armchair, except for the stupid cuff around my arm. “OK, well, what’s the sign-in procedure? Do I get to enter a gamertag or something?”
She looks at me like I just shit myself. “This isn’t Call of Duty.”
I look at the setup around me: multiple screens controlling multiple drones, fancy chair, me, Tyler MacCandless, beta testing equipment that’s probably going to be sold to the Air Force. “Yeah, well, no, actually,” I look her in the eyes, “It kinda is.”
I move over in the seat. She should si
t. Doesn’t need a lot of room. She’s tiny. And if she sits she’ll be close. I tilt my head to point out the empty space next to me in the chair. “Wanna play?”
Ani
Did it have to be him? Tyler MacCandless, the boy who beat my record? It had to be him? It’s not like we actually played against each other that year, so he didn’t technically beat me, just my record, but still. Seeing him makes me miss gaming even more.
I just have to take a deep breath and plow through this demo. The way he looks at me makes my heart beat in a new, quick little rhythm. No boy has ever looked at me that way, like I’m just a girl, not some genetic aberration.
In fact, he’s looking at me like I’m actually worth seeing and I’m not so certain that I like it. He is cute, though. Most gamer boys are either gangly or, well, large-ish. But Tyler’s built, not too big, but he has great arms and has deer-like eyes that are focused entirely on me.
And he wants me to play?
Part of me still can’t believe I stopped competing; that science fair project sort of eclipsed everything. But competing was all I used to live for, giving me a break from Mom, keeping my mind off of Dad back when he was deployed.
I look at the empty space. Should I do it? Is it like, unprofessional or something? I played the thing for hours and hours every day in between classes after meeting Mr Anderson in that restaurant last week. I wish Mr Anderson had let me make the game more exciting; I don’t know if I really want Tyler to play. If he’s expecting it to be as cool as World of Fire then he’s going to be disappointed.
Tyler’s eyes are dark and sweet and desperate and I sit, trying to rub away the warmth that’s rushing to my cheeks before he notices.
Tyler
“I shouldn’t. Check your login one more time, make sure that you hit the code in the right sequence so you can get onto the system after I leave.” SlayerGrrl points as she leans in over my shoulder. I like her here. Next to me. Her hair sorta skims over my shoulder. She smells like, I don’t know, flowers and things. Good things. Girly things.
