by Lev AC Rosen
“You want this one?” Dad asks. Nick nods. He sits down at the kitchen table and eats the sandwich while his father makes another. “I used to make these in college. I thought I would have forgotten how, but I still got it. First thing I ever made for your mother.”
“It’s good,” Nick says. He can tell his voice is toneless, robotic, but he’s not entirely sure how to fix it.
Dad sits down opposite him and takes a bite of his grilled cheese. “You okay?” he asks. Nick is tired of people asking him that. “I mean, I know you’re not. But I guess what I’m asking is if you’ve started to process what I told you this morning?”
You told me Mom has early-onset Alzheimer’s, Nick thinks. The same thing you’ve been telling me for over a year. “Yeah,” Nick says.
“Do you want to go over her file? I can just talk you through it, if you want.”
Nick shakes his head. “I don’t need that,” he says. “I get it.”
“All right,” Dad says. “Want a Coke or something?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. Dad pours him a glass and sets it down in front of him. Nick takes a long sip. The bubbles are ice-cold and stab at his throat in a way he likes. Dad eats his grilled cheese silently. “Did you know?” Nick asks.
“Know what?” Dad says through his chewing.
“When you married her. When you had me. Did you know what would happen to Mom?”
Dad puts his sandwich down and swallows. “I knew it was a possibility, yes. Your mom told me.”
Nick is silent. He stares down at his own grilled cheese, with two bites taken out of it, and lifts it to his mouth again. “That was really unfair of you,” he says. His voice is still toneless. “To have a kid anyway.” He takes a bite. For a while, all he can hear is his own chewing and the fizz of the Coke in his glass, like something breaking.
“You’re right,” Dad says after a while. “It was. But I’m not sorry.”
The soda-fizz sound grows louder for a moment, and Nick looks at his glass, at the beige fuzz on the surface. “Me neither,” he says.
Dad stands and runs his hand over Nick’s head like Mom does, then gets himself out a beer and opens it.
“How did Grandpa die?” Nick asks, and starts to eat his sandwich again. His fingers feel more alive now, and the smell of the cheese suddenly hits him and makes his mouth water.
His father leans back against the counter and takes a long drink of his beer. “I don’t really know,” he says. “Your mom wouldn’t talk about it, and I never pushed. I just know that he died sometime soon after…what I told you about. And then she left.”
“Was she scared? When Grandpa got sick?”
Dad nods. “Yeah. Are you scared? ’Cause I’m terrified.”
Nick nods. His sandwich is finished, so he drinks the rest of his Coke.
“Can we watch a movie?” Nick asks.
“Sure,” Dad says. “What do you want?”
“You pick,” Nick says, standing up. “But not a documentary. I have to go text Nat about tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Dad says. Nick goes upstairs and picks up his phone. He types out the text message and whispers it aloud when it’s done. Then he takes a deep breath and hits Send, then runs back downstairs to watch a movie with Dad.
Reunne killed us. Reunne is not my mom. My mom has Alzheimer’s.
• • •
Nick doesn’t sleep well. He has the nightmare again, but there’s no Reunne tearing off a Mom mask this time. His classmates and teachers just laugh, and then they stop, and Nick feels that dread in his stomach again, the heavy, unbalancing sensation of something being wrong with the world, like there’s an earthquake going on that no one else seems to notice. He wakes up in the middle of the night badly needing to pee and then can’t get back to sleep for what seems like hours. His room’s not that warm, but his body feels damp with some sort of heat, and the sheets stick to him like webbed fingers.
When his alarm goes off, he’s not sure if he ever made it back to sleep or if he just closed his eyes and went brainless for hours. His eyes feel hot.
He rolls out of bed and takes a long, cool shower, hoping to wake himself up, and it helps a little. Downstairs, Dad is drinking coffee, and Nick pours himself a cup, even though he doesn’t like it, and then pours as much sugar into it as he can before Dad gives him a disapproving look.
“I didn’t sleep great,” Nick says, sitting down. “I want to be awake for the GamesCon today.”
“Sorry you didn’t sleep well,” Dad says, frowning. “Was it because of what we talked about?”
Nick shrugs and drinks the coffee. It tastes like hot ice cream.
“You should eat something, too, or else Jenny will think I’m a bad dad. Maybe some toast?”
“I’ll make it,” Nick says, and finds some bread in the fridge and puts it in the toaster. He watches the toaster, afraid that if he ignores it, he might burn something. Then Dad reads the paper and Nick quickly finishes his coffee and toast, staring out the window, willing Nat and Jenny to show up. He wants to throw himself into GamesCon. He wants to forget about Mom, just for a day, and focus on the game and the things he loves. And maybe seeing the game laid out, dissected by its creators, will make him realize how stupid he was to hope it was more than just a game.
A blue station wagon pulls up and honks once, and Nick stands so quickly his chair skids back.
Dad laughs. “You have everything you need? You want some cash?” he asks.
Nick shrugs, not willing to turn down money but too proud to actually ask for it.
Dad hands him a few twenties. “I’ll walk out with you.”
At the car, Nat opens a door in the back for him and Nick hops in while Dad and Jenny talk through the window.
“You okay?” Nat asks.
Nick nods without looking at her. “I really want to have a good time today.”
“Okay,” Nat says brightly. “Let’s do that, then.”
“Bye, Nicky!” Dad calls, waving through the window. Nick waves back, and then Jenny pulls away.
“Thank you so much for this,” Nick says to Jenny and Nat.
“My pleasure,” Jenny says. “Just no getting in trouble. Don’t want to upset your dad. Sounds like you two have enough on your plate as is.”
Nick takes a deep breath. He doesn’t want to talk about it.
“So I have a map,” Nat says, pulling out a floor plan. “It says what booths are where, and this list says what events will happen when.”
Jenny drives to the train station, and they take the train into New York. Nick has been here before, for Dad’s lectures, for trips, for lots of stuff, and so, apparently, has Nat, since they both know the way to the subway from the train, even when Jenny forgets it. They all take the subway across town, and then they get out and Nat leads them on a long walk to the edge of the island. The whole time, Nick and Nat plan their day. Nick knows it’s not going to be E3—he’s not old enough for that—but from the booths and events, it looks like it’s going to be even better than he thought.
It’s happening in a big convention center next to the river, two stories, high ceilings. They show their tickets and get laminated badges on lanyards to wear around their necks. Outside, people are milling around handing out leaflets, dressed in costume. Some people don’t even seem to be affiliated with the convention—they must have just seen other people wearing costumes and run home to put on their own, happy to have found a place to wear them. There are superheroes and villains, robots, people from every video game Nick has played and from hundreds he hasn’t.
“This is so cool,” Nat says once they’re inside. There are fewer costumes here, but more people.
“Don’t let me lose sight of you,” Jenny says. “If we get separated, text me right away.”
“Okay, Mom,” Nat says, and runs into the crowd. Nick chases after her. “First,” she says, “we wanted to see the demo for the new Wellhall DLC. That’ll be over there.” She points just as Jenny catches up, then le
ads them across the arena that is the convention center. Nat ducks and weaves through the swells of people, like a huge ocean. People of all ages, in costume or not, are staring at the bright lights and TV monitors showing off games all around them. They go through a section devoted to farming games, where giant cow statues wink at them, and then past a sci-fi racer area, where the sound of hover-thrusters powering up is so loud Nick has to cover his ears. With his ears muffled, the sound effects and noise of the crowd fade to a series of murmurs and pulses, like the sound of rushing blood and a beating heart. He pushes through the crowd, trying to keep Nat in sight, and for a moment the world slows, and the thought comes to him that he can’t wait to tell his mother about this. And then the thought comes to him that there would be no point.
He shakes his head, takes his hands off his ears so that the boom of the sound effects can sonically disintegrate his thoughts. When he looks up, he thinks for a second that he’s lost Nat in the crowd, but she emerges from between two tall men like curtains and grabs his hand, pulling him after her, and she’s smiling so widely that he can forget—and not worry about what forgetting means.
They find the line for the Wellhall DLC demo, and Jenny catches up to them, shaking her head at her daughter, who shrugs apologetically. As they wait in line, they can see the people ahead of them playing the game on the big screen, so big the characters are larger than life, the swords and arrows that fly around violently oversize. The demo of the DLC has them hacking through a jungle on an island south of Wellhall. The dwarves here have been separated from their kin for so long that they’ve developed their own language and have an entirely different culture, where their ancestors are depicted as roots and mushrooms and worshipped as gods. Nick and Nat play for a while, but they have to use pre-generated characters made to show off the demo, and without Severkin and Elkana, it’s just not the same. Still, the change from the mountains and caves of Wellhall is a good one, and Nick is excited to explore it further when it’s finally released. They’re only allowed ten minutes of play time, though. Then it’s the next person’s turn.
Nick and Nat leave the demo booth and wander over to where Jenny is leaning against a wall, reading a book with apples on the cover.
“So where to next?” Nat asks, taking out her map again. “I think maybe the presentation of the new Farmland game?” She bites her lower lip. “Don’t laugh, but I really like them. The cows are so cute.”
Nick tries hard not to laugh but fails. “We can go see it, sure,” he says.
They find the hall the presentation will take place in, and there’s a big line in. The doors haven’t opened yet. Jenny stands with them, still reading her book, and Nat starts talking to Nick in a soft voice.
“So…do you want to talk about last night? Reunne?”
Nick shrugs, and memories come flooding back. Mom is sick; he was crazy to think she was in the game. Probably should check all the check boxes for himself. Mom might forget him altogether, and then at some point, he might forget himself.
“I…,” he says. The people in front of them are in costumes—giant overalls with big shiny yellow buttons and hats that look like cow heads, googly-eyed and ridiculous. But they look happy. “My mom is sick,” he says, looking down. The people in front of them are wearing shoes made to look like cow hooves. “I should have accepted that…but instead I came up with a whole other story. I’m crazy, like she is.”
“It’s not crazy to want your mom to be well,” Nat says softly. “And it’s not even crazy to get so caught up in imagining a world where she’s okay that you start to think it’s real. I did that all the time. I lied to people. I told them my dad was off on a business trip instead of in rehab, even though everybody knew. I told them he’d gotten a new job, that he was buying me presents….I invented this entire story. This alternate universe where my dad wasn’t sick—he was a total mensch and everything was great.” She turns away from Nick and looks at a cow-hatted person. “I like that hat,” she says. She turns back to Nick. “You just invented a better story. You mixed it up with the story of Wellhall. Way cooler than mine, where he was going to bring me back snow globes from his business trips.”
“Snow globes?” Nick asks.
Nat is staring at the ground. She shrugs. “I don’t even like snow globes,” she says. “I think I had one once, but I broke it. But it seemed like something a good dad would do. Your version of a mom who wasn’t sick fought giants. Way cooler than snow globes.”
“Yeah,” Nick says, and laughs a little. What he doesn’t say, what he thinks would probably be mean to say, is that Nat’s dad always had the possibility of getting better. Mom doesn’t.
“So, you okay?” Nat asks, looking up at him. Her freckles are like seeds.
“Not really,” Nick says. He doesn’t want to lie right now. “I’m losing my mom. But I’m…figuring it out.”
“Well,” Nat says, her voice more cheerful, “that’s something.” She reaches out and lays a hand on Nick’s arm and then immediately drops it when Jenny glances up from her book and tries to pretend she didn’t notice.
The presentation of the new Farmland game is so cute, Nick feels a little ridiculous being in the audience, but Nat seems to really love it, her feet tapping on the ground every time a new giant-eyed animal is revealed onscreen. Nick tries to pay attention, but he finds himself with his eyes glazed over and suddenly remembering something his mother once told him about ancient Egyptian or modern Japanese culture. Sometimes he looks up very quickly, thinking an image on the screen is his mother, or Reunne, but it’s always just a farmer taking care of the large-headed animals. He wonders if he should feel sadder. He thinks he should. But somehow it’s as though the sadness is all just outside him, and he’s in a small green bubble, curled and fetal, and the sadness is dripping into the bubble through a small hole at the top, like red tears. He absorbs one tear, and then another falls. A small, ever-present sadness, like walking in wet socks.
He doesn’t know if it would be better to feel all the sadness at once in a great flood. He doesn’t know if he’d survive that. Which might be why the bubble formed in the first place, and he just lies in it, listening to the drip-drip-drip, like a leaky faucet that can never be fixed.
When the Farmland presentation is over, the organizers invite people to the booth down the hall to play the demo. Nick and Nat wait in line, planning the rest of the things they want to see, and when Nat gets to the front of the line to play, Nick goes around to the front of the booth and buys a cow hat for five dollars and puts it on Nat’s head while she’s playing. She laughs, and Nick realizes that the good thing about the bubble is that it’s not just sadness in there. There are other things, too.
They run around the rest of the Con, playing demos of games they haven’t heard of that look cool on the giant overhead screens. They take photos of people in costume. At one point, they spot a man dressed like Rorth, and they ask if they can have their picture taken with him. He says “Sure,” and Nat hands her phone to her mom, and they pose for the photo on either side of Rorth, looking as much like Severkin and Elkana as they can without makeup. It’s not a bad photo, even if Nat forgot to take her cow hat off. Nat emails the photo to Nick right away, and then it’s time for the Wellhall Creator Panel.
The line to get into it is long by the time they get there, which is forty minutes before it starts. They look at each other anxiously, both afraid to voice the possibility that they might not get in. The line is filled with people dressed like they come from the world of Wellhall. Trolls and orcs, elves of all kinds. One woman even looks like Reunne, and Nick can’t stop staring at her, until he notices she has a huge sword instead of a spear.
When the doors open, the line instantly starts pushing forward, and Nick and Nat push with it. Luckily, the auditorium is huge, and they get seats—to the side and in the middle, but decent seats in what quickly becomes a completely full auditorium. The presentation starts twenty minutes later than it’s supposed to, but eve
ntually a blogger from a games magazine gets up to the podium and starts introducing the makers of Wellhall: the producers, designer, lead writer, and art director. Nick is disappointed by how regular they look. Just guys in polo shirts and jeans, thinning hairlines, glasses. The lead writer isn’t white, and one of the producers is a woman, but the other three could practically be clones with different hair colors and waist sizes. Still, they created Wellhall, a world so real that Nick thought it was….He hears a drip in his mind as another splash of sadness fills his bubble. He focuses all his attention on the people on stage.
There’s a lot of applause, and then the blogger starts asking them questions. The first one is about where the ideas came from, and the first thing one of the producers says is “East Berlin.” Nick feels Nat’s hand clamp down on his knee. She’s worried for him, but actually, he feels relieved. There was a reason he saw it all in the game. It was in the game. It just wasn’t Mom.
“We started out thinking about divided cities,” the producer says, his hand cycling in front of him. “Because we knew that was what we wanted. It was time to bring dwarves back. We knew we couldn’t have a game in Wellhall without dwarves, not after all the history we’d built up. So the dwarves are allies now, but shaky ones. And they live in the same city. Where else was like that? Berlin. It was the obvious one. There were others, too, of course. Beirut, Frankfurt, Padang Besar, even Rome and Vatican City. We ended up using all of them, but Berlin—maybe because there was more recorded history to pull from—ended up being the focal point. That’s where we started with Wellhall. Plus, it’s in Germany, where they have all these great myths with elves and dwarves already. So we brought in giants, too.”
“Actually, it ended up being more Norse than Germanic, in that respect,” the lead writer says, pushing up his glasses. “There’s a lot of crossover, but Germanic mythology is so varied, it was hard to pull from.”
