A high-pitched, “Hey!” escaped my mouth. She caught me off guard, and I didn’t have time to think up anything clever to say.
“Where are you heading looking so low?” she asked.
“Oh, um, I’m heading over to say hi to the new kid that moved in on Spiral.”
“Gee, Chris, I think that’s way cool. Who knows, maybe you’ll make a new friend.”
My moronic smile widened. She said what I was doing was cool. “Yeah, well, it’s important to make friends. I have a lot of friends.” Good Lord. I have a lot of friends. More like, I’m a complete spaz.
“Well, that’s great. Tell him hey for me. I have to go now—already running late. Smell ya later!”
With that, she disappeared in her house, leaving me with a stomach full of butterflies and a face the color of a baboon’s butt. In a goofy voice, I mumbled, “I’m Chris, and I got lots of friends. Adurrrr.”
I walked the rest of the way in embarrassed silence. When I arrived at the new kid’s house, I hesitated before knocking, dreading what was sure to be a waste of the next several hours of my life.
The door opened. A boy my height with sandy blond hair parted down the middle flashed a metallic smile and said, “Hey.”
“Hey, I’m Chris Dwyer. I live over on Spindle.”
The glint from the new kid’s braces caught my eyes, causing me to blink. “I’m Kevin. You wanna come in?”
“Sure,” I shrugged.
I followed him from the front hall through the kitchen to a huge addition built on the back of the house. A monster television sat in front of a pair of leather upholstered couches on the opposite side of the room, and a full-sized pool table occupied its center. To my left was a dartboard and to my right a pair of crossed swords, both mounted on the wood-paneled walls.
“Wow! This is the coolest room I’ve ever seen. Is that TV twenty-five inches? It’s huge,” I exclaimed with my mouth open.
“It’s twenty-five all right. You play pool?”
“Nah.”
“I could teach you if you want. It’s not that hard.”
“Eh, maybe.” I pointed to a framed poster of a man in a football uniform. “Who’s that?”
“Seriously? You don’t know who Terry Bradshaw is? He’s the quarterback for the Pittsburg Steelers. Don’t you watch football? My dad and I do all the time.”
I had the sinking feeling it was going to be a long afternoon. “Sometimes. The Redskins are okay I guess.”
“Yeah, they’re not bad,” Kevin said as he moved to the corner of the room and opened a large walk-in closet. In it were soccer balls, basketballs, footballs, bats, gloves, and shelves of board games. “I played some football at my old school. Don’t know if I will here. If you’re not into that type of stuff, I got –”
“What’s that?” I asked pointing to a book tucked between Life and Operation.
Kevin pulled it out and handed it to me. “That’s my Monster Manual.”
“You play D and D?”
“Used to before we moved. It’s kind of hard playing the game by yourself.”
New kid just earned himself twenty bonus points. “No doubt! I’m trying to get my friend Paul into it, but he’s just not having it.”
“If you like the Manual, you’ll really dig this.”
A shiny smile broke on Kevin’s face as he pulled another book from the shelf and handed it to me.
“You got the Player’s Handbook? Man, I didn’t think those were out yet.”
“Just came out. I got it yesterday. You can borrow it if you want.”
“Really? Sweet! I mean, after you’re done with it.”
“It’s no biggie really. We’ll both have to study it if we’re gonna do some gaming.”
I started flipping through the pages. “This is outta sight. I hear they have more character classes.”
“They do. There are paladins and rangers now and other cool stuff.”
Now knowing I was in the presence of a fellow gamer, I decided to let my guard down and allow the inner dorkiness to spill out. “Cool. I have a cleric and fighter that I made up a couple months ago. They’re okay, but I’ve been wanting to mix it up a little.”
Kevin rummaged through the section of shelf he had pulled the two books from. When he turned back to me, he was holding some paper and a couple pencils in his left hand and a set of dice in the other. “No time like the present.”
“What, you mean now?”
“Why not? You just said you’ve been wanting to create a new character. Besides,” Kevin pointed out the window, “it’s raining. What do you say? We can try out some of these new classes and see if they’re any good. You like pretzels and Mr. Pibb?”
For the rest of the afternoon, we battled troglodytes and drow in the Underdark, gathered gold and experience points, and ate our weight in pretzels, chips, and cheese puffs. Somehow I still found room for a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza when Mrs. McNamara brought us dinner. Before wobbling my way home, Kevin and I agreed to meet tomorrow to continue our epic campaign. Life is strange. I was sure the day was going to be a flat out bust when I was ordered over to Kevin’s, but it turned out to be the most fun I’d had in recent memory. It was well past nine when I left, and the murky night sky was gray and starless.
Buzzed on Mr. Pibb and visions of minotaurs and vorpal swords, I stumbled down Spiral tightly gripping Kevin’s copy of the Player’s Handbook. Kevin was the first person I’d met with an interest in gaming, and his collection of guides and adventure modules was most impressive and would no doubt make for some serious adventuring. Now if I could just get Paul on board.
I froze in my tracks.
Up ahead, in the washed-out glow of the streetlight at the corner of Sexton and Spindle, something sat. I say it was a something rather than a someone because although it looked human in shape, it was easily as wide as a Volkswagen and had a freaky melon-shaped head with spikes protruding from it on both sides. My buzz evaporated. The thing had its back to me and was hunched over with its attention focused on the ground. I fought the urge to go screaming back to Kevin’s and, instead, came up with a brilliant plan.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Its melon head shot up, but the thing didn’t turn and look at me. Before I could say another word, it stood, stretching up to half the height of the streetlight. I took a step back and was a split second away from setting a new land speed record to Kevin’s when the creature darted out of the light and into the Colberts’ junipers.
I was alone and shaking uncontrollably as Perry’s voice popped in my head uttering two words. The Goatman. Ignoring all common sense, I found myself approaching where the thing had been sitting moments earlier. Beneath the light was a pile of bloodied bones and matted fur. The creature had been feeding on something and for whatever reason placed the remains in a neatly stacked mound. The idea seemed a little crazy, but a part of me felt as though the creature left them for me to discover. Under the nasty mess of furry death, I saw something scrawled in red on the pavement. It was a letter, the letter Y to be exact. My stomach bubbled and churned as if it knew something I didn’t. Mustering up the