Not by a long shot. Sure it’s a world with all of these strange creatures and complicated rules, but it has dimensions and textures and players who become friends and geography you have to learn the way you know your neighborhood and the way to and from school. And if you’re good, like I am, then you move through this world with the kind of confidence that Kobe Bryant shows when he cuts to the basket, or when Payton Manning goes back to pass from his five-yard-line with ten seconds on the clock. That’s why it’s simply not acceptable for someone to start knocking on my bedroom door when I’m into a tough game, any more than you’d expect Kobe or Payton to stop, right at that critical moment, and chat up a couple of spectators. I know it might sound conceited, when I talk about these sports superstars, but that’s the way it is.
So naturally Mom pounds on my door at the worst possible time.
“Seth! Seth!”
Out of the corner of my eye I see something unexpected on the northeast corner of the map. Crap, crap crap! Somehow he’s got three cruisers completely armed and moving in formation and that just seems impossible. I had a spybot up there just minutes ago. Unless he had them cloaked. But how?
“Seth! Why didn’t you pick up the phone?”
This comes at me like a voice shouted from a distant mountain across miles of canyons on a foggy morning.
Then I see movement on the opposite corner and OMG it’s another three cruisers that come out of nowhere and I’m thinking, maybe this is one of the Korean pros slumming on an American server. Playing under a pseudonym just to yank someone’s chain. Like mine, because I’ve never, ever seen anyone develop that much firepower that quickly and I realize I am totally screwed.
“Seth, it’s someone from your school.”
Maybe I could distract him with a direct attack right at his home base, but that would be suicidal.
“It’s a girl.”
It’s like the screen blinks and when I look at it for a second it’s not a 3D world but just a flat screen with a dozen blinking blips. I suddenly hear the game’s sounds, which are usually lost in the background, like the computer’s fan. First the crunching sound when one of my land fighters gets crushed. Then the clattering of an army marching on pavement, sounding like hail on a roof.
“What did you say?” I shout.
“Seth, open the door. You know I hate talking through a closed door! It’s a girl from your school. Her name is Bret or Brit, I couldn’t really tell.”
I was going to lose the game anyway.
5.
The only reason Mom isn’t freaking over a call from a girl is my older brother Garrett. I once did a count of his Facebook friends: 298 girls and 87 boys. Garrett Gordon, high school jock exemplar. Minor: tennis doubles, third round state. Major: shooting guard, 19.6 point average. Hobby: going steady with beautiful girls.
Garrett’s been hanging out with a series of girls since eighth grade. So many I gave up trying to keep them straight years ago and just call them all Kimberly. That makes me right about half the time. Kimberly is always pretty and perky and active in school—she’s got the lead in the school play, or is a varsity cheerleader, or has a room full of tennis trophies. And naturally, my brother is always there to give me advice about how to hook up with a Kimberly of my own. And to say I have no interest in the Kimberlys would be a lie. Kimberly looks amazing, I can vouch for this, even when she’s flat on her back on my dad’s sofa, with her hair and makeup mussed, popping up with a gasp when I burst through the door and turn on the light at 2 a.m. back from a night of gaming over at Eric’s.
“Crap,” I said simultaneously with my brother, who was cursing me, and I’m fast enough on the light switch to be unsure if what I saw was a naked torso or a near-naked torso or a semi-naked torso. The image was stuck on my eyes like when you shoot a flash photo in a dark room, and I was happy to have it there, because I would want to examine it carefully, as soon as I got through the living room and into my bedroom.
“Sorry,” I muttered, as I shuffled through the now darkened room, knowing the way by feel.
“Jesus,” I heard Kimberly sigh. “Garrett, I really, really have to go. I had no idea it was this late and if I get caught sneaking in I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
By then I was down the hallway to my bedroom door and I could hear my brother in the background as I locked it, making the kind of soothing sounds people make to calm a fidgeting horse. I just slipped out of my clothes and into bed and closed my eyes really tight, making that picture come back, the shock of blond hair flying into the air and Kimberly’s arms pushing Garrett away. She looked just awesome and I’d give just about anything to be Garrett for just that minute, or better yet, the minute before I burst in, as long as I didn’t have to stay Garrett forever. The last thing I want to be is Dad’s favorite sports star.
So to put it mildly, I don’t have the kind of practice Garrett does at these sorts of things, and when I pick up the phone I’m kind of stuttering so that Brit has to say, “Seth? Is that you?”
“Yah, no nah,” is what I actually spit out.
“Seth?
Finally I manage to say yeah.
“Oh great. Hey, the reason I’m calling your house is that I don’t have your cell and if you check Facebook I’ve friended you. Anyway, you know that final group project thing that we have to do for history?”
Brit Leigh’s Facebook friend? After an entire year of trying to get up the nerve. Just like that? As far as a history project, I’m thinking, but blanking.
“Anyway, Ben and Katie and I wanted to know if you’d be in our group?”
Something about this project thing is in the back of my mind. Maybe a handout we got a few weeks ago?
“We’re going to meet at the library tomorrow afternoon at four, you know the branch over by Panera?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, will you?”
“What?” I muttered.
“You know, be in our group…”
“Ha, yah,” I mutter, thinking, what a moron.
“Seth?”
Finally I managed to say, “Yeah, sure, I guess…” and then, before I can stop it from actually being uttered I add, inanely, “but why…”
There was a pause, and she said, “Seth, you’re kidding right?”
I shake my head before I realize that she can’t see me and say “no.” And I’m not kidding.
“Seth, everyone knows you’re like the smartest kid in class. Like when Mr. Hobson asked about that strategy thing during the Battle of Gettysburg and no one knew a thing about it and you finally raised your hand and explained it like you had just spent a week preparing a report on it?”
“Oh, that thing.” Mr. Hobson asked if anyone could give an example of a critical tactical maneuver in the Battle of Gettysburg. There was a long silence. Since I knew a little bit about the Twentieth Maine’s famous bayonet charge on Little Round Top I finally raised my hand and blabbered on about it for a while.
A couple summer back my mom had decided it would be good for Garrett and me and her to have one last vacation together before he left for college. Since money is always an issue, she got my Uncle Andy to lend her his lake house in Northern Wisconsin. So it takes us almost two days to drive there, which is pretty awful to contemplate in itself, and then we’re stuck in this little house without any Internet connection and a TV that gets three stations.
Uncle Andy has a job with some big corporation in Minneapolis, but his hobby is the Civil War. So I’m stuck