In Real Life

by Lawrence Tabak

  “Now,” he says. “You try to do it better.”

  He points to the chair on the other side of the table and I step around, light up the laptop and follow his directions to get to a one-on-one with Yeong on the Gondwanaland map.

  I try to remember everything he told me, but each game in Starfare is like chess. The openings are similar, but they quickly diverge into an infinite number of possible moves. Maybe I’m a little self-conscious about not making the same mistakes, because I don’t quite get into that zone where it’s all flow and no effort. Yeong is clearly very good, although I don’t think he’s as flawlessly fast as the guys on the team that I played earlier. Because the game is close right until the end, when we trade forces down until he’s up by just a few troops for the win.

  Yeong stands up and bows and says, “Good game.”

  I stand and try to bow like he did.

  “We have early airplane in morning. So now it is good night.” Then he walks me to the door and as I stand in the doorway I can’t resist asking.

  “So, like, when will I hear back from you?”

  “In time, Mr. Seth Gordon. We call in time.”

  And then I’m out in the hall and wondering what the hell had just happened. If I had blown it completely. Or not. As I take the elevator down to my floor I go round and round with the possibilities.

  To top it off, my key won’t open the door. I try about ten times, but my swipe just lights up the red button. I’m about to go get help when the door opens a crack.

  “Seth?” In a whisper.

  Garrrett’s nose in the doorway, the security chain pulled taut.

  “Expecting someone else?”

  “Look,” Garrett still whispering. “I’m going to need a few more minutes here. So how about you just wait in the lobby. I’ll be down in a bit.”

  “Fine.”

  More like an hour. I see the girl from the front desk, the one with the accent, bouncing across the lobby in a tight skirt and black heels like some sort of runway model. And a few minutes later Garrett is waving me over from the elevator banks.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “No problem. You have a nice date?”

  Garrett looks at me, eyebrows arched. “The best,” he says with a giant grin. “Anytime you need a chaperone in Chicago, I’m your man.”

  “You are the man,” I mumble. “Like always.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So give me the dope. How’d you do with your tryouts? You going to be the first Gordon in the family to turn pro?”

  I tell him I doubt it, that I lost all three games I played.

  “But you’re, like, playing the best guys in the world, right?

  “I guess.”

  “So you’re not supposed to win. Not yet. It’s all about potential. They like your potential?”

  “Maybe.” I say. “But maybe not.”

  38.

  The next morning, when we land in Kansas City I turn on my cell and there’s a text from DT wanting to know every detail and one from Hannah. Saying that she hoped I had a good tryout and that I should call her when I get back.

  So I’m in a much better mood immediately. Even though I’ve only got a couple more weeks of summer vacation, which means my practice time will soon take a steep dive. On the bright side, I’ve got my driver’s test scheduled for the day after I turn sixteen, in ten days.

  About twenty times a day I’m checking my email, expecting to hear something from Coach Yeong. Then I’m flipping open my phone compulsively, looking for a text from the Koreans or Hannah. I text Hannah on the way home and over the next couple days we trade messages a couple of times. But for the first few days I’m back she’s always got something going. She’s just heading out with her mother shopping for school clothes or babysitting her brother or getting ready for work. Our shifts don’t overlap at Saviano’s and even though we’re texting a lot I wonder if she’s still interested. The way she was, that afternoon up in her studio.

  Plus I almost screw up and miss this mandatory orientation for high school students at UMKC. If Mom was around, she would have been all over it. Half of me says, blow it off, you’re going to be training with Team Anaconda, while the other half is saying, quit dreaming, you idiot, and don’t screw this up. Because taking a college course, you get double high school credit, which means I cut my time at school pretty drastically.

  Luckily they send out an email reminder the day before and I’m panicking about how to get there. It’s a two hour meeting in the afternoon. Dad is on the road. I can’t find Garrett but I text him and he says he’s going to be doing an all-day basketball clinic at UK with his old high school coach. At first I try to figure out the bus routes on the Internet, but it looks like it’s going to take me all day to get there, if I don’t screw up the transfer. So I text Hannah and ask for a big favor. And I’m so desperate I actually tell her it will be interesting. Sort of like a preview of going to college.

  She says she has to check. A few minutes later she texts me back saying that she can get the car, and what time should she pick me up.

  This time I’m standing at the window, waiting a half hour. I’m out the door before the van is even stopped.

  “Hey,” I say, climbing in.

  “Hey to you,” Hannah says, and it’s like she’s uttered some magic invocation that sends something like a shiver straight through me. I try not to stare. She’s got her hair tied back into some sort of pile in the back, forehead bare, a few strands across her cheek. The big sunglasses.

  I wonder if you’re supposed to lean across the seat and do that little cheek kiss that I see couples do. Not like we’re a couple. But I haven’t seen her for almost a week and it feels like we should be celebrating some sort of reunion. So of course I just sit there and click the seatbelt on. We sit like that for a moment until Hannah reaches out. Touches me on the thigh and says, “I’m really glad you asked me to come along.” My leg feels like it’s connected to an electrical outlet.

  “Look,” she says, lifting her hand off of me and pointing at the dash. “I thought this would, like, keep us from ending up in the wrong state.”

  It’s a GPS mounted on the front dash.

  “Excellent,” I say. “Although we are in the wrong state.”

  “Exactly,” Hannah says as she reaches over, grabs the GPS and hands it to me.

  “You’re Mr. Tech Smarts,” she says. “How ‘bout you program it for wherever we’re going?”

  “Right. I know we have to get on the Interstate so you can head that way.”

  “Which way?”

  “OK, hang on,” I say, because I get confused about which ramp is best. “Just have to…” I click through the menus, find places of interest, colleges and punch it up. As I snap it back into the holder the GPS is telling us to drive two hundred feet and turn right.

  As we head out, Hannah says, “So how does it feel to be starting college?”

  “I don’t know. Weird. I mean, it’s not like I’m really going to college.”

  “Well, when I told my parents about it, they were pretty impressed.”

  “I don’t know. A lot of people at North take college courses.”

  Hannah seems to be mulling this over. “I wonder what they have in photography.”

  “You should check it out. For next semester. If you run out of courses in high school, they actually pay your tuition. It’s a pretty sweet deal.”

  The GPS gets us to campus and we drive around a bit until we find a visitor’s lot.

  The orientation turns out to be really boring. We sit in the last row and after about five minutes Hannah pulls out her phone, reads some texts, and starts typing. She’s at it for about half an hour when I lean over and peek.

  “Just some peopl
e back in New Jersey,” she whispers. “No one you know.”

  On the way back home I mention that I’m going to have a mini-van of my own, if I pass the test.

  “When was the last time you failed a test? Like, never?”

  “It’s not the written part, it’s the driving part.”

  “Just don’t run into anyone.”

  “But I’m worried about the parallel parking. I suck at parallel parking.”

  Hannah laughs. “You know how many times I’ve had to parallel park since I got my license?”

  I guess zero. And am right.

  When we get back to my place I ask Hannah if she wants to come in.

  She takes off her sunglasses and arches her eyebrows. “Just what do you have in mind, young man?”

  I stutter for a moment and then say that we’ve got some ice cream.

  “And just what do you propose we do with that?”

  I know she’s just trying to get me flustered and the fact that it’s working only makes it worse.

  “Hey,” Hannah finally says. “I’m just, like, kidding. I promised Mom I’d go straight home because she has to run some errands.”

  She pulls out her cell and dials. “Thanks for the reminder. She told me to call when I dropped you off.”

  “OK,” I say. “No big deal.” Although it was a big deal. It took me the whole ride back to get up the nerve to ask her in.

  “But let’s do something before school starts,” Hannah says. “Because I know it’s actually going to get crazy busy.” Then she’s talking to her Mom.

  “OK,” I say as I shut the car door and then watch her drive away. My heart sinking at the sight. While hanging onto the promise of seeing her soon. Then I race up the stairs to check my email and see if Team Anaconda has made its decision.

  39.

  The worst part of waiting is handling all the messages I’m getting from my online friends. It seems like every minute I’m online someone is asking if I’ve heard back yet. Finally I just start telling everyone to check my Facebook. That I’ll post news as soon as I get any.

  But a funny thing is happening with my games after just hanging around with the Koreans for a day and getting those pointers. Every person I play, even ones with really high ratings, now seems a couple of levels slower. I’m winning every game, and they’re not even close. Like I’ve broken through to a higher stage, and maybe I have.

  Hannah and I have a shift together the last Saturday night before school starts and the first thing she asks is if I’m packing for Korea. It’s still early and we’re both working the front of the store. Folding take-out boxes.

  I try to explain that it’s still way up in the air.

  “But you’ll go if they ask, right?” She doesn’t look up from her boxes.

  And I realize that I’ve spent so much time worrying about getting asked that I haven’t put any thought into what would happen if they did. What that would mean. Like not being able to see Hannah anymore.

  So I say, “I don’t know.” I flip a box onto the pile and watch Hannah’s hands fly through two boxes in the time it takes me to do one. “What would you do?”

  Hannah stops and looks at me. With such intensity that I’m immediately nervous. She has the most amazing eyes. In the restaurant light, dark green. I can’t hold the look and I reach out for another cardboard flat.

  Hannah is talking now, and when I glance at her she’s looking right through me, as if I was just the foreground in front of some awesome landscape, like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite Falls. “If I’d been dreaming of doing something, something special, for my whole life? And someone comes along and says, ‘Here you go, we’re going to give you every opportunity in the world. And pay you?’ Are you kidding? Sign me up!”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” And I know she’s right. I could be ready to go tomorrow. “But there’s stuff I’d miss.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Oh you know.” And I pick up another square of cardboard because I want to say her name but for some reason I can’t.

  Then the phone rings and Hannah’s taking an order and a family with two little kids comes in and I go over to the cash register and ask them if I can help.

  After I take their order there’s another little lull. I feel like I need to say something to Hannah. To tell her that the worst thing I can think of is having to say goodbye to her.

  But she talks first. “A year ago, I thought I had it all laid out. I’d have a great senior year, hanging with the friends I’d had since first grade, taking every art class at Princeton High. Build a really amazing portfolio and get into one of the big art schools, Parsons or RISD. Maybe get discovered by some gallery. Or not. But it all seemed pretty clear. I had my friends and even this special one. At least I thought he was special…and then, bang, my parents drop the big one. And a couple of months later I’m in Kansas. Which as far as I know is just a flat, scary place from The Wizard of Oz. I know no one. I have no idea what kind of art department there is, if there are any cool teachers like we had back home. Just like that, my life is completely changed.”

  I’m trying to translate what she’s saying. To me. And what she means by a special guy. I just get this picture in my mind of a really handsome jocky guy. Probably rich and sophisticated too, like those prep school kids in movies.

  “So Seth. What I’m saying is, be ready. Ready to get the most out of what you have. And ready for whatever happens. Be ready to make the most of it all.”

  I nod, although I’m not catching everything.

  “And when we get off work tonight? Let’s go out and celebrate.”

  “Celebrate?”

  “Yeah. We’ll celebrate. The great unknown. You. Me. Korea. A new school where I don’t know a person.”

  “Not true.”

  “OK, where I know one person.”

  “But not just any person.”

  Hannah smiles with a far-away look. “No, not just any person. Some person who I will never, ever…” Of course, I’m thinking the worst as she breaks into a big smile. “…take a math class with.”

  “OK,” I say. “It’s a date.”

  40.

  By the time we get done putting everything away and mopping it’s well after midnight and there’s really no where to go. We sit outside in the van for a few minutes, complaining about how busy we were and what a mess it was.

  “You still got some ice cream?” Hannah finally says.

  “Probably not. Garrett eats everything in sight.”

  “Your older brother, right? You didn’t say he was back home.”

  “Yeah, for another few days. He’s got practices starting soon.”

  “Well, I say we go check the freezer,” Hannah says. “Just in case.”

  The house is dark when we get there and we park out front. As we walk up the front door, I wonder if the old lady down the street is peering out her window, trying to make us out.

  As the door closes I’m not sure who makes the first move. It just happens. I’m holding her and we’re kissing. There in the dark. And I know why people prefer kissing lying down because something crazy in going on in my head and I can’t really stand straight and when I stumble we almost both end up on the carpet. Hannah is laughing and I’m laughing. Hannah says we should go upstairs. I’ve actually been picking up the dirty clothes in my room, hoping that Hannah might, someday, make a reappearance. I lead her up the darkened stairs, the skylight shaping the outline of the steps.

  Hannah holds my hand as I lead her to my door. My computer is on and the case casts a blue light across the room. Hannah and I sit on the bed and kiss again and it takes all my willpower to stop from falling backwards, down into the beckoning blankets and sheets.

  “You know,” Hannah says. “I’m not sure this is right.”

&nb
sp; “You mean being over here? Alone?”

  “Not that. I don’t care about that. It just feels like I’ve been here before.”

  “In my room? You have been here before.”

  Hannah laughs and shakes her head. “No. Not that. It’s just that when I was back in New Jersey. And I knew we were going to be leaving. This guy I mentioned?”

  I really didn’t want to talk about her old boyfriend.

  “Everybody said he was great. My friends thought he was great. His coaches thought he was great. Even my parents liked him. OK, so he was great. But when he found out I was leaving, it was all of sudden we should get really serious. Like we had to make up for lost time. Like I was going off to war or something. And when I had second thoughts, he said fine. But it turns out it wasn’t fine. Sure, there were all these promises about keeping in touch and visiting. That I’d be back East for college. But then we move and I hear nothing from him. Nothing. And then I hear he’s going out with Allison, who I thought was a friend. And then my other friends, they let it slip that, actually, they started going out before I had even left. So I have a pretty good idea where long-distance relationships end up.”

  Hannah is staring at the floor, like there might be an answer there. Then she looks right into my eyes. “In the sewer.”

  No one says anything for a minute. Finally I say, “So you think I’m like that guy?”

  It’s dark in the room. But I can see Hannah’s hand and I reach out and hold it with both of mine.

  “It’s not that you’re like that jerk. My leaving, it was as traumatic to him as, well, watching some neighbor you never met pack a moving van. But, Seth, for me. Getting that close to someone and then having it disappear. And seeing all of your old friends just sort of drift away. No, it’s not that you’re like that guy. It’s that you’re like me.”

  I put my arm around her. I’m literally shaking. I don’t know if it’s from what she said or the fact that Hannah is here, next to me, in my room, on my bed.