by Walter Jury
I have to enjoy it now, because she’s graduating in a few weeks.
When the bell rings and we all jump from our seats to get to our next classes, Christina turns to me with a tight, anxious expression. “I’m so glad you’re going to help me study for this final,” she says quietly as she slips her book into her backpack. “I’d like to escape this place with my GPA intact.”
My heart clenches like a fist in my chest as she runs her hand down my arm and heads for the door. I completely forgot. Chicão. The extra training sessions. I should stop her. I should explain what’s happened, that it’s already set up. But the look on her face was so grateful just now, like she thinks I’m her hero, and I can’t let that go quite yet. I’ll tell her at lunch. Maybe I can figure out a way to weasel out of training with Chicão before then. Maybe this is fixable.
My fourth-period class, Game Theory, had serious potential for awesome, which was why I signed up for it in the first place instead of going for an easy free period. But . . . Mr. Lamb is the teacher. And there is just something about the guy that I cannot like.
Maybe it’s the way he always seems more interested in my dad than in me.
There are few things I hate more than that.
Sure enough, as soon as I take my seat in the front row and pull out my notebook, Mr. Lamb is standing in front of my desk. He’s weirdly tall, with a hooked nose and thinning hair. Like some sort of human-vulture hybrid. “How was your weekend, Tate?”
He’s got a stain on the front of his dark tan pants, right next to his fly. I raise my head to see him grinning down at me. There’s a full millimeter of space between his two front teeth, and I find myself wanting to mash them together. “Uneventful, Mr. Lamb.”
He pushes his glasses up with a grimy fingernail as his smile twists from friendly to skeptical. “No way. I know you had that tournament! Will mentioned it last week. Did your dad go with you?”
I’ll have to thank Will for that when I see him at lunch. Maybe with a wristlock or a palm strike. I love the guy. He’s been my best friend since we were in kindergarten. But he never knows when to keep his mouth shut.
“No, my dad was working.” I look over at the clock, willing the bell to ring and save me from the slow agony of small talk.
And because it is my lucky day, it does exactly that, right as Mr. Lamb is opening his mouth to ask another question. He pauses, his lips reshaping around his next words. “Tate, can you go up and write the equations for weak and strict dominance on the whiteboard?”
Yes, yes, I can. I’d love to, actually. Mr. Lamb is a sycophantic tool, but he knows his game theory—probably because it’s not about actual fun. It’s about mathematical equations that model real-life conflict and cooperation, but that’s fine with me. I lose myself in iterated elimination of dominated strategies for the next forty minutes. I reach a Nash equilibrium just as my stomach growls, breaking my concentration.
As soon as the bell rings for lunch, the memory of what I have to tell Christina hits me in the center of the chest like one of Chicão’s wicked elbow strikes. I’m a dead man walking as I trudge toward the cafeteria. In fact, I don’t even see her as she comes out of the bathroom with her best friend, Lisa, and a bunch of her soccer teammates, not until she threads her arm through mine and squeezes. It’s like a little miracle, this touch, like a jolt of pure euphoria straight through my nervous system. She looks up at me with a sweet smile on her face, and I immediately decide I can’t have this conversation with her until later. We’re with our friends, after all, and lunch is like this oasis for all of us in the desert wasteland of school. Thirty minutes of laughing and flirting, half an hour of escape.
Lisa and the others spend a few minutes buying tickets for prom while Christina and I scoot through the lunch line before it gets jammed up. I bought our tickets last Friday, the moment she said she’d go with me.
We claim our usual long table. Even though we’re the first ones there, we scoot so close that her chest brushes my arm when she turns to me and asks, “How’s your day been so far?”
I grin. “Nothing compared with right now.”
I’m leaning forward to sneak a lightning-fast kiss when someone taps my arm. The kid pulls his hand back quickly, like it took all his courage to reach out and get my attention. He looks ten years old. Freshman, for sure. He’s got a moon-shaped face and a stubby, almost upturned nose, and is looking at me like I’m a rock star.
“Hey,” I say.
“Um, hi,” he replies, turning to look over his shoulder at a group of similarly shrimpy kids, half who are staring at me the same way he is . . . and half who are staring at Christina in an entirely different kind of way.
“Can I help you, bud?” I ask, wanting badly to turn back to Christina and finish what I started before our other friends get here.
“Are you the guy who made those firecrackers out of Red Bull and chopsticks?” he blurts.
It was just a little prank, a concoction I whipped up to celebrate the first day of my junior year by creating a few lasting memories—and a lot of chaos. Now it’s been elevated to the status of legend and I’m being credited with creating explosives out of completely un-explosive materials, which is pretty cool, but not something I can brag about publicly. “Dude. I will neither confirm nor deny involvement in that incident.” I wink at him.
His face lights up like a sodium nitrate flame, and his voice squeaks as he says, “I heard you’re, like, some kind of modern-day MacGyver. You did the thing with the jet-propelled silly string in Ms. Ganswick’s office, too, didn’t you?”
Yeah, I did. Mix acrylic resin with sorbitan trifoliate and a shitload of propellant like dichlorodifluoromethane—all conveniently heisted from my dad’s lab—and you have an excellent way to exact revenge on a teacher who gives you a C just because she doesn’t like your views on nuclear energy or whatnot.
Christina nudges my arm. She told me this story would get around, and she was right.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, but I can’t keep from smiling. That was one badass prank, if I do say so myself.
Apparently Moonface thinks so, too. “Can you teach me?”
I get this question at least once every few weeks. Usually from geeky little freshmen like him. “I’m sorry,” I say, keeping my voice regretful, which is hard now that Christina’s hand is squeezing my thigh under the table. “I’m all booked up at the moment.”
The eager spark in his eyes dies, and as he turns away, I can’t stop myself from grabbing his arm and whispering, “Powdered sugar and stump remover. Mix and light. Have fun.”
He skitters off to share his new and forbidden knowledge with his friends. They are about to get themselves in untold amounts of trouble—I’ve given them a harmless little recipe for a quick and dirty smoke bomb.
Just as I’m slipping my arm around Christina, Will sits down across from us, behind a tray piled high with french fries smothered in ketchup. His eyes meet mine, and his look is all expectation. A fraction of a second later, I notice his new hairdo. His pecan-brown scalp is smooth and shining, save for the two-inch-wide runway of short black hair right down the center.
“Holy shit. You got the Mohawk.” I reach over to pat the top of his head. “Your mom must have had a seizure when she saw it.”
He laughs, running his hand over the thing. “She might have said a few choice words. Especially when I told her I did it for a girl.”
I squint at him. “You did?”
“Nah, man,” he says, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Then he glances at the table next to ours—which is full of freshmen and sophomore girls—and raises and lowers his eyebrows a few times. “But I would, for the right one!”
Christina snorts, but a bunch of the girls giggle. Several of them look like they might want to be that girl. Even though he’s an asshat half the time, everybody likes Will.
He lifts his chin in my direction and waves a red-tipped fry at me. “Has your dad calmed down about Saturday or is he still busting on you?”
“There’s never a time when he’s not busting on me. But that’s okay. We always play this game. Check out my latest move.”
I pull the scanner from my backpack and feel a surge of satisfaction as Will’s face breaks into a huge smile. That feeling subsides quickly as Christina’s face does the opposite.
“I can’t believe you brought it to school,” she says, shifting away from me. “Won’t your dad be pissed?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m past caring what he thinks.”
“What is that thing?” Will asks.
“Some type of scanner,” Christina says. “It shows the different genders . . . or so Tate thinks.”
As soon as Christina says it, I understand how ridiculous that sounds. My father never develops something that simple. Ever.
Will drops his fry. “A boy-girl thing? Oh, gimme that.”
His hand shoots across the table and his fingers close around the handle, hitting the switch that turns the scanner on. As he snatches it from me, it flashes red in front of Christina’s frowning face.
“Hey,” he says. “Red for girl, huh?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
Will gives her a little bow and waves the wand at me, sending blue light reflecting back at him. “Ah, I get it. Blue for boy.”
He slides it over his head.
And it reflects red.
“Uh-oh,” he says, getting up from the table. “Either I’ve misplaced my boobs or you’re wrong about this scanner, T-boy.”
Which I already knew. “I’ve always thought you were a little girl,” I say, rising from the table, too, intending to grab the scanner back. For all I know, the thing’s a weapon. I was an idiot to bring it to school.
Will’s eyes light with the challenge, and he takes off, using the benefit of years of soccer training to weave in and out of the human traffic now clogging the cafeteria as B-lunch gets into full swing. I’m right behind him, doing some weaving of my own and already wishing I’d taken another few Advil before leaving for school.
Will circles by the lunch line, running the scanner along the bodies of most of the cheerleading squad, all but two of whom reflect cherry red. At the end of the line, back by the lunch trays, Miranda Hopkins bends over to pick up the cell phone she’s just dropped. Will is behind her in a second, sliding the scanner up her legs—and then up her skirt. The light blue material can’t hide the red light from the scanner as he runs it over her ass. She shrieks and then starts to laugh when she sees the hilariously worshipful look on his face as they both straighten up.
He flips the scanner into the air and catches it, sending my heart into my throat in the moments before he gets a firm grip on it again. I jog a few tables closer, but then Miranda’s boyfriend, a thug named Kyle Greer who happens to be captain of the wrestling team, shoves Will to the side with a murderous expression on his face. Will stumbles, his arms flailing in this overly dramatic way—right in front of Kyle’s face. The scanner reflects red off him, too.
As Will sprints away from the couple, he shoots me a smart-ass look. The boy-girl thing is shot completely—Kyle Greer has more testosterone than the rest of the senior class guys combined.
Will runs back along the line, holding the scanner over his head now, and it flashes blue off the gray-haired lunch lady standing by the taco salad. She gives him a baleful look that says she’s counting the seconds until she can retire to Florida and never have to look at another teenager again.
My now-former best friend continues his campaign of chaos for a few more minutes before I finally corner him by the salad bar.
“Time for a new theory, T,” he says.
“No shit. Now hand it over before you get us both suspended.” I give him a look that says I’m perfectly willing to hurt him if that’s what it takes. He rolls his eyes and gives me the scanner. Nearly all of B-lunch is staring at me as I stalk back to my table, but I’m staring right back. Will just scanned nearly all the few hundred people in this lunchroom.
Besides me, the lunch lady, and a handful of others, everybody scanned red. And it’s clearly not boy-girl or black-white or young-old or anything like that. Maybe it’s a biological marker? A genetic thing? Probably even that is too simple. My dad’s inventions are ruthlessly complicated. Sometimes it takes me days of dismantling them and running through his encrypted computer files to unlock their secrets. But as I look at Christina and wonder what makes her—and almost everyone else—different from me, I know I won’t stop until I figure it out.
As soon as I get through this day—preferably without drawing any more attention to myself . . . and the scanner.
I’M IN THE PROCESS OF MOOCHING A FRY FROM WILL when I hear a voice that makes me cringe inside.
“That’s a cool-looking toy.” Mr. Lamb and his stained pants are right next to our table, shattering my hope of keeping a low profile. He must have lunch duty today. “Looks like a security wand.”
My eyes dart up to Will’s as he sits down, and I see an apology there. Christina’s fingers find mine, and I hold on tight. She could totally take an I-told-you-so attitude about this, but instead, she’s right here with me.
Mr. Lamb looks at us expectantly. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s the new wand controller for my gaming system,” I say. “I brought it in to show my friends.”
Will gives me an almost imperceptible nod. He’ll go down for this with me if he has to. I just pray he doesn’t say anything wild or give too much away.
One of Mr. Lamb’s eyebrows rises, bringing it close to his receding blond hairline. Game on. “Really? I’ve never seen one like this.” Before I can stop him, he picks up the scanner and examines it. “I’m not that into video games, though, believe it or not.” He reveals that gap between his teeth again.
“Really, Mr. Lamb?” Will asks with overly innocent, wide eyes. “I had you pegged as a total ninja gamer.”
Mr. Lamb’s smile turns indulgent. “Well, maybe I’ve played a few games. Enough to know this must be brand new!”
He brandishes the scanner like a light saber. Christina bows her head and her shoulders shake with silent laughter, because he looks like a grade-A tool. I wish I found it as funny, but right now all I want him to do is put my dad’s invention down and get the hell away.
“So what system is this thing for?” Mr. Lamb asks. “It doesn’t look like Nintendo or any of the others.”
“It’s a limited edition PlayStation accessory,” Christina says. “For a new game.”
Mr. Lamb’s eyes glint with something I can’t read as he looks down at her. “Is there some kind of real-life tie-in, then, Ms. Scolina? I mean, this reacts to its environment even when it’s not connected to a system.”
He switches it on and waves it over my head, sending blue light cascading over the table. And then over his own chest.
Red.
My brain is whirling. “It’s just your standard console-based MMORPG, Mr. Lamb.” I wave my hand at the scanner, resisting my impulse to snatch it from him and run. “You . . . upload results to the system and . . . rack up points for your character . . .”
Shit. I should have let Christina run with this one—she was doing just fine, and I sound like a fucking idiot.
“These things are going to be everywhere by summer,” says Will, so loudly that kids at the table behind him all turn to look.
I want to shove my gym socks down his throat to shut him up. Will has a gift for taking things a step too far.
“Yeah? This is the next big thing?” Mr. Lamb gives my best friend a fake wide-eyed look that’s strikingly similar to the one Will gave him a second ago. I’m pretty sure he knows we’re full of shit,
but he’s trying to be clever about it. “What’s this game called? Maybe I should check it out.”
“Wand of the Cyclops,” Christina says solemnly, with only the slightest tremor in her bottom lip.
Mr. Lamb waves the scanner in front of Christina’s face, making her blink as the bright light shines in her eyes. He purses his lips and nods. “I’ll definitely be looking it up. While I have you here, give me some pointers.” He tilts his head in my direction. “Is it a dominant strategy game? I’ve read that a lot of these MMORPGs are your standard rock-paper-scissors design, like every class of character is strictly weaker than at least one other class, and stronger than at least one other.”
Ah, Christ, now he’s asking me to apply game theory to a video game that doesn’t freaking exist. Pure hatred for this man flows through my veins, nearly—but not quite—overwhelming the panic. Because the longer we sit here talking to him, the more we risk defeat.
As in, he might confiscate the scanner, and then I. Am. Doomed.
“It’s more of a dynamic Bayesian signaling game at its heart,” I babble.
Mr. Lamb’s mud-colored gaze bores into mine. Then he hands the scanner back to me. “Hmm. Fascinating. You should do your semester project on this game, Tate. You have an excellent grasp of the concepts.” He gives me his gap-toothed smile. “You can bring the wand back and give the class a demonstration!”
“Um.” I swallow hard and clutch the scanner, trying to find the escape hatch in this conversation. “I was actually thinking of doing my project on game theory applications to violent conflicts—”
Mr. Lamb frowns, and Christina leans close to me, lending me her warmth as shards of ice fill my stomach. I quickly say, “But I’ll think about it.”
