My Life as a Gamer

by Janet Tashjian

  “You’re not a little kid anymore, Derek. When you give your word, you should mean it—not throw your principles away to brag about a high score on a video game.”

  I know Mom’s right, but her comment makes me angry. I snap my fingers for Bodi to follow me upstairs and spend the rest of the evening staring at my phone.

  But Hannah doesn’t call.

  My Own Version of Arctic Ninja

  To say I’m worried about Hannah being the leak is an understatement. I text her a million times and even check the Web site that broke the story to look for clues. My parents argue about the best course of action, while I keep my head down and stay out of their way. So when Ms. Miller gives us some free time at the end of science class on Tuesday, it’s a welcome relief.

  Matt, Umberto, and I use the time to scheme different ways to win Arctic Ninja. Because I do most of my thinking with a marker in my hand, I sketch the different characters in my notebook as we talk.

  After a ridiculous monologue about how he’s going to beat El Cid, Matt crosses over to my desk and laughs when he sees my drawings. “Narwhals don’t wear sombreros! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Not any more ridiculous than a sponge living in a pineapple.”

  “Hey,” Matt says. “You can call him Skippy Gonzales!”

  Umberto digs a marker out of his pack and starts drawing too. When he first transferred to our class, we fought over who was the best cartoonist. Now our love of cartoons is something that unites us as friends.

  Matt flips through my notebook, enjoying several of my drawings: the snowman from Arctic Ninja gnawing on a rack of ribs; Calvin, Hobbes, and Skippy holding on to a toboggan for dear life as they leap across a snowy hill; and the icicle-wielding drones writing SURRENDER DOROTHY across the sky. Matt loves how crazy the drawings are so I take photos and text them to my dad.

  I look over to see if Ms. Miller cares that we’re goofing around, but she’s helping Andy with the periodic table, so I head to the front of the room to see what Carly’s up to.

  She doesn’t hear me approach, and I’m shocked to see the doodles in the margin of the language arts notebook in front of her. I’d recognize Carly’s curlicue handwriting anywhere, but I’m shocked to see the words she’s written now.

  Derek Fallon.

  The sound of my eyes popping out of my head must startle her because Carly suddenly throws herself on the notebook as if she’s trying to extinguish a fire.

  “I always doodle. It helps me think,” Carly says.

  I’m glad Matt’s on the other side of the room because he’d be TORTURING Carly right now. Carly’s always so self-assured that it’s strange to see her this flustered.

  “I doodle all kinds of things too,” I say to make her feel better. “Look at my narwhal from Arctic Ninja.”

  Carly’s so relieved I’m not focusing on my name in her notebook that she laughs much longer than a narwhal in a sombrero deserves to be laughed at. She makes me show her the rest of the illustrations before we head to our next class.

  But just for the record: A girl doodled my name in her notebook!

  Unexpected Fun

  When I eventually swallow my pride and ask Carly to help me study later in the week, she tells me her cousin Amanda’s in town from San Diego, but she’s happy to study anyway. Here’s a riddle: What’s worse than studying with one girl? Answer: Studying with TWO.

  I ride over to Carly’s with as much enthusiasm as if I were biking to the dentist to have all my teeth pulled.

  Her cousin Amanda is much taller than Carly; she even has a few inches on me. She’s kind of shy and laughs nervously at every lame attempt I make at a joke.

  “We’re watching animal tricks on YouTube,” Carly says. “Check out this Jack Russell terrier. He can do more things around the house than Frank.”

  The video is funny, and for a minute I get geared up for an afternoon of watching one cute animal caper after another, but I should know Carly better than that. After the video, she leads me to the dining room table, which is set up like a mini library with cups full of pencils, erasers, and stacks of paper. I tell Carly she didn’t have to go to all this trouble.

  “What are you talking about? This is how I normally do homework.” Carly brushes away bits of eraser crumbs from the tabletop and offers me a seat.

  “Don’t worry,” Amanda says. “We have the same tests at my school, and I’m afraid of taking them too.”

  Amanda now seems less like Carly’s perfect cousin and a little more like me. I look at her closely. Her hair is darker than Carly’s and really long, almost to her waist. She wears tiny pearl earrings as bright as her superwhite teeth.

  “My parents keep employing tutor after tutor, but I’m not sure they’re doing any good,” Amanda continues.

  “That’s how I feel!”

  “I know they want to help, but it seems like such a waste of money.”

  “Not to mention time.”

  Carly points to the two of us. “Since you’re both my friends, I figured studying together would be fun.”

  “I thought she was your cousin?”

  “She’s one of my best friends too, okay? And just so you know—neither one of you leaves till you do okay on the practice test.”

  Amanda shoots me a little smile when Carly turns away. I feel my cheeks flush; I hadn’t expected to have so much in common with Carly’s cousin. The afternoon shifts from a medieval torture chamber to almost fun—as long as Amanda doesn’t beat me.

  But of course she does. (Neither of us did well, but her score was higher than mine.) Carly is a tyrant when it comes to practicing; she makes us take another test. After an hour, she finally lets us have a break for snacks.

  As we munch on some homemade trail mix chock-full of chocolate chips and walnuts, Carly tells her cousin about my notebooks filled with vocabulary words.

  “How many do you have?” Amanda asks.

  “Notebooks or drawings?” I ask.

  “Drawings.”

  I tell her too many to count but more than a thousand.

  “You act like you’re such a bad student,” Carly says. “But look how many words you’ve learned over the years.”

  Amanda takes a low bow. “You, Derek, are the king of vocabulary words.”

  “The sensei of vocabulary words,” Carly adds.

  For a minute, I think they’re goofing on me, then realize they’re sincere.

  “I guess I HAVE learned a lot of words,” I say.

  “Good! Then you can put them to use now.” Carly quickly clears away the trail mix and brings back the paper and pencils.

  I should’ve figured all this adulation was just a way to get me to focus on work. But I feel a bit better about studying, and I do okay on the next section. My mom texts that she and my dad are waiting so we can go to visit Mrs. Mitchell at her new home in Calabasas, so I say good-bye. Carly and Amanda both seem a little sad to see me go.

  On the drive to Calabasas, my mother gives me a pep talk about how all this studying will definitely pay off. I appreciate her positive thoughts but wonder if this is one of the rare times that she’s wrong. I stare out the window at the cars whizzing by and hope she isn’t.

  The Day of Reckoning

  Thanks to Mom, Saturday has gone from Fun Day to D-Day. She insists I tell Tom about Hannah and forces Dad to come with me to make sure I do. We drive to Global Games in silence, as if we’re both on our way to the guillotine.

  “You know confidentiality is a big thing with corporations,” he begins. “They spend billions of dollars developing these movies and video games, so they can’t afford to have any leaks—especially in these days of social media where anybody can take a picture with a phone and post it online for the world to see.”

  I can tell this is only the tip of the lecture iceberg, so I interrupt him as soon as I can.

  “I only mentioned a handful of details about the game to Hannah. How was I to know she’d turn out to b
e a spy?”

  I don’t have the nerve to tell Dad that I finally heard from Hannah yesterday. It was a one-word text—SORRY!—as if any kind of apology could make up for the tsunami of trouble she left in her wake.

  When Dad and I find Tom inside, my father nudges me forward. I wait until Tom is done talking on the phone and then clear my throat.

  “I think I have an idea who’s responsible for leaking the details of Arctic Ninja,” I say.

  Tom looks at me but addresses my father. “Jeremy, I’m surprised Derek would be involved. You know how important it is to keep this stuff confidential.”

  My father gestures for me to continue. I tell Tom the sad tale of Hannah and the game.

  “Derek,” my father interrupts. “This isn’t about Hannah; it’s about you.”

  “I know I wasn’t supposed to brag about the game to anyone. But HANNAH posted it on the Internet, not me! You can’t blame me for that.”

  Tom listens intently, then thinks for a few seconds before answering, “We at Global Games take this kind of thing very seriously, so we had a team of people on it immediately. It didn’t take our experts long to trace the posting back to the computer it came from.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “Good! Maybe you’ll have better luck tracking Hannah down than I had. She sent me only one text and hasn’t answered any of my calls.”

  “Actually,” Tom begins, “it wasn’t your friend Hannah. It was someone from the focus group … who’s just been escorted off the premises.”

  I look around the room to see who’s missing. After doing a mental head count, I realize the origami guy isn’t here. “Was it Toby?”

  “I guess he couldn’t wait to brag about his score either,” Tom says. “Unfortunately, he won’t be playing Arctic Ninja anymore.”

  It slowly dawns on me that Hannah didn’t do anything wrong after all. I turn to my dad, who doesn’t look any happier with the news.

  “You understand it was still wrong to divulge details of the game—even if Hannah didn’t post them,” he says.

  I tell him I do, but inside all I’m thinking is I’M OFF THE HOOK—until Tom brings me back to reality.

  “Just because your tutor wasn’t the leak doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed, Derek.”

  Tom waits for me to respond, but all I can do is say I’m sorry one more time.

  “Apologizing is one thing,” Tom continues, “but I hope you learned something. If you were over eighteen, there’d be legal consequences for a breach like this.”

  He and my father both look at me expectantly, and I finally get how big a deal this confidentiality thing really is. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to be older; I’m happy just to be twelve.

  When Dad pulls Tom aside for a private chat, I hurry through the room to find my friends. I might get another lecture on the drive home and I wish I hadn’t disappointed Tom, but right now I have to contain myself from shouting.

  I STILL GET TO PLAY ARCTIC NINJA!

  An Unexpected Argument

  It turns out the reason Hannah hadn’t called is because her grandfather was rushed to the hospital. She had to drive through Death Valley and Joshua Tree to see him. She said it was such a desolate part of the state that she didn’t have any reception and it was hard to get back to me. I know Mom thinks Hannah could’ve at least taken a minute at the hospital to return one of my frantic calls, but because the state tests are next week, she told Hannah she was glad her grandfather was okay and scheduled her to come this week. I decide to spare Hannah the gruesome details of the Arctic Ninja leak and concentrate on math and language arts instead.

  “I was so worried about my grandpa,” Hannah says. “And all that driving! Hours of desert and those amazing trees. It was like being on Mars.”

  When I tell Hannah there are no trees on Mars, she hits the search engine on her phone faster than Frank can swipe a half-eaten sandwich off the counter. She holds up her phone with a photo. “See? There are trees on Mars.”

  I explain that the spikes in the photo might LOOK like trees, but they’re actually plumes of carbon dioxide.

  She speed-reads the article and tells me I’m wrong, that they ARE trees, which leads to a lively discussion about believing everything you read on the Internet. I tell Hannah we examined those same photographs in Ms. Miller’s class last year and realized someone had posted the pictures with false claims on a bogus science site. It makes me happy to be smarter than a college student—at least in this particular instance. But I also think, What a horrible tutor I have!

  I hadn’t planned on it, but all this talk about Web sites leads me to tell Hannah about the Arctic Ninja scandal.

  Hannah seems crushed when I tell her I thought she was the one who posted the details online. She eases herself slowly onto the kitchen chair. “Is that why you kept texting me a million times? I thought you were worried about your tests.”

  “I AM worried about my tests. And if you thought I was worried, why didn’t you call me back?”

  She stares at the coffee cup ring that my mom’s tried to scrub out a million times but is permanently embedded in the tabletop. “You thought I leaked a secret? I’d never do that.”

  For a moment, I feel like Hannah might start crying, which comes close to throwing me into a full-blown panic attack. What am I supposed to do here? Apologize? Comfort her? Hide?

  Just as quickly, Hannah’s sadness turns to anger. “While I was visiting my grandfather, you were telling Global Games that I stole information? Did you give them my name?”

  “No! At least I don’t think so. I didn’t hear back from you. What was I supposed to think?”

  Hannah’s attention is no longer fixed on the coffee stain but on me. “Derek, you are an immature boy who will never pass those tests.”

  Her venomous words strike me like one of the icicles in Arctic Ninja. “Why are you being so mean?” I ask. “I thought you leaked the information, but I was wrong. Don’t insult me!”

  “Does that mean I shouldn’t make fun of you for reading like a little kid too? Or imitate how you still have to run your finger under every sentence?”

  I’m too dumbfounded to answer, but I don’t have to.

  “Pack up your things and go,” my father tells Hannah. “That’s not how we treat people in this house.”

  Hannah doesn’t seem embarrassed by the fact that my father has suddenly appeared in the doorway. She glares at him with the same icy stare she uses on me.

  “Good luck on your test, Derek. You’ll need it.” Hannah grabs her stuff and slams the door on her way out.

  My father shakes his head sadly. “That outburst was completely inappropriate. She’s obviously been under a lot of stress with her grandfather. Don’t believe a word she said—she’s wrong about you, and you know it.”

  The thing is I DON’T know. Hannah could be completely right about me never passing those tests.

  “I was just coming in to make a root beer float,” my father says. “You want one?”

  We both know his excuse is a total lie, but I gladly let my father steer the conversation away from Hannah. As he prepares the treats, I think about how glad I am not to be working with Hannah anymore—even if she wasn’t the person who leaked Arctic Ninja.

  HELP!

  I wake up sweating from the most vivid nightmare I’ve ever had. The setting of my dream is similar to the snowy world of Arctic Ninja, but instead of being run down by evil toboggans and snowmen, I’m being attacked by large number 2 pencils falling from the sky. I run in a serpentine pattern to escape, which doesn’t help because the pencils have a complex tracking system, and when I turn they do too. I scream for help but no one can hear me. I bolt out of bed and almost trip over Bodi sleeping on the floor.

  It takes several moments for me to calm down and throw on some clothes. After today’s session there’s only one more week of the focus group, and I’m already thinking about how much I’m going to miss it. But what I WON’T miss is having n
ightmares set in the icy world of Arctic Ninja.

  At the Global Games snack table, Umberto almost knocks me over with his wheelchair. “Today is suggestion day—we get to give our own ideas for Arctic Ninja.” He rattles off a million ideas he’s been saving up. When Matt joins us, he’s got ideas too. I, on the other hand, have been so worried about what Hannah said that I’ve barely thought of making an improvement to Arctic Ninja.

  “Don’t look now,” Matt tells Umberto, “but here comes your hero.”

  Sure enough, when we turn around, Carly’s walking toward us with none other than El Cid.

  “We thought we’d hang with you guys today,” Carly says. “Is that okay?”

  Umberto stammers out a yes, and Matt races to clear a place at the table. I ask the gaming star if he’s thought of any enhancements to the game. El Cid reaches into a pocket underneath his black cape and pulls out a piece of paper filled with a long list. Umberto cranes his neck to read it.

  “Of course!” Umberto says. “The secret code should TOTALLY be in a different language than the rest of the game.”

  “Since the Eskimos have almost two hundred different words for snow, El Cid thought the secret code should have lots of different word choices too,” Carly says.

  “People who live in the Arctic may have a lot of different words for snow,” I say, “but they have over a THOUSAND different words for reindeer.”

  When Umberto looks at me with surprise, I shrug and tell him I like watching animal shows.