Rather than have to talk I squirm down into the open chair and pick up a copy of the assignment that’s on the table. I’m pretty sure everyone is staring at me because I’m still breathing hard and my forehead is damp and I wonder if I smell too.
I skim over the assignment and figure out that we have to pick a topic and do a group presentation on the Great Depression. On the plus side, presentations are usually no-brainers. Then again, you have to sit through all the others, which can be excruciating.
“Black Monday and the stock market collapse, WPA and federal job creation, Conservation Corps…” Each one sounding as bad as the previous.
I glance over at Brit and she’s concentrating on the topics, resting her chin on her hand. She’s wearing a T-shirt with these shiny things that make star patterns, including one centered perfectly on her right breast. When she looks my way I jerk my eyes back at the paper.
In the end we choose the Dust Bowl topic, even though one of the girls didn’t even know what it was. And when you think about it, it is sort of goofy name. Sounds like where Kansas U goes to play football in December when they’re 8-6. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to game this so that I can either end up doing some part of the project one-on-one with Brit or do something that only takes fifteen minutes. I end up taking on the computer stuff—setting up the PowerPoint with pictures and maybe getting some old songs to play at the beginning and the end.
When I mention I saw a whole photo exhibit on the Dust Bowl at a museum, taken by some photographer paid by the government, Brit reaches across the table and puts her hand on my arm. I’m stunned to discover just how many nerves a human has in the forearm.
“I just knew you’d be a big help,” she says. I find the courage to meet her eyes and the look she’s giving me seems pleasant enough, but it’s missing anything special. And believe me, I’m open to the smallest, subtlest sign.
7.
There’s great news one week into Mom’s trip. She wants to stay another two weeks at her “Institute.”
“I really feel like I’m close to a breakthrough,” she says when she breaks the news by phone. I have to answer a dozen questions about what I’m eating, but I lie cheerfully, thinking only how much of a win it will be for my Starfare game.
“You deserve it, Mom,” I tell her, and mean it. “It’s great that you can take time for yourself.”
Then she wishes me good luck at the tournament and I tell her I love her, which I know is kind of corny to say, but it’s true, and I know it means a lot to her.
“I love you too honey,” she says, and then we hang up.
With Mom out of the picture and Dad on the road I’m getting tons of online time. Stomp badgers me every night for a rematch, but I just ignore him. Block him from my IM, but he seems to always reappear with a different screen name. I can tell it’s him, because he’s always screaming in all-caps and calling me a putz, whatever that is.
At about midnight the day before Brit’s group meets again I spend my twenty minutes putting up some titles and pasting in photos. At our second and final meeting Brit acts like I should be nominated for a genius fellowship.
“I would have never found that music!” she gushes. “It’s perfect.” I file shared a couple of Depression era songs. “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” opens the show and this Woody Guthrie song about hobos ends it. I’m such a dork that now that I’m Brit’s Facebook friend it’s like my life is complete. I still can’t bring myself to even say hi to her in the hall.
We take the AP exam for Calc two weeks before finals week, which is a breeze, and so it’s pretty much goofing off there. History is just presentations and our group is almost last. I think my PowerPoint kills and Mr. Hobson actually says “nice job,” which is, for him, excessive praise. I love finals week—only an hour or two at school a day.
My gaming is going great. I’m playing straight through to one or two in the morning. Grab a bowl of cereal for dinner, or call in a pizza, and I’m good to go.
Two days before I’m booked to leave I get into a game with a really annoying player who is just awful. He keeps sending me idiotic messages about how lucky I am and how he’s just setting me up for a late game surprise. He’s so bad I decide to humiliate him by taking over his base with miners—which would be like winning a tank battle with Toyota pickups. One good thing about miners is that you can stack them up like Legos and I decide to try to build a bridge over his fortifications. It’s almost working when I realize that I’m giving him time to catch up. So I send some warriors after the miners and I’m amazed that they just cruise up the back of the miners and breach his fortress, destroying him in seconds. There’s no way that warriors are supposed to be able to get through these walls—it’s like the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Saruman uses gunpowder to blast a hole in the walls of Helm’s Deep.
After the game I stop and think about what I’ve just discovered. If players were unaware of this move, they’d never try to defend it and I could turn any game around in just a few minutes. It was like when the U.S. was the only country with the atomic bomb—I could rule at will.
The only person I even mention it to is DTerra, and I don’t go into the details. He’s talked his dad into letting him fly out for Nationals, getting in the night before I do to play the grinder. It will be nice to have someone to hang out with—and rooting for me.
When I finally get to bed the night before my trip I’m still wired from the frantic practice games. I stare at the ceiling, where a break in my curtains produces a little bar of light from a street lamp. It looks like an arrow, pointing towards my door, the hallway, the future.
“Hey Brit,” I whisper. She turns around in the chair in front of me, her hair spinning across her face.
“Maybe you heard—I just won this big tournament and $30,000 and need to celebrate. I’m thinking of dinner at The American Club, maybe scalp some front row seats for Lady GaGa.”
Her jaw drops and now it’s her who’s stuttering.
“I’m going to rent a stretch limo—should we get the Escalade or the Hummer?”
8.
Dad dropped me off at the airport. The whole way he was on his cell, some heated business discussion about the proper way to allocate costs to projects or something. While I’m getting my bag out of the trunk he pulls the phone from his ear and shouts, “Call me when your plane lands.”
While I’m waiting for the boarding call my cell rings. It’s Mom. She says she can’t believe I’m old enough to be jetting across the country by myself. That it was just yesterday that we were sitting at the kitchen table, playing board games.
“You remember Chutes & Ladders?” she asks. I say I do.
“I should have known, even back then, about you and games. Every day you’d beg me to get out a board game or a deck of cards. And you weren’t even in school yet. In kindergarten you could read every Monopoly Chance card. And I’d have to explain what a ‘bank error’ or ‘beauty contest’ was.”
“And then there was the time at the pediatrician’s? You’re four years old, sitting on the floor with one of those really complex wooden 3D puzzles that you have to make into a ball? So we’re sitting there, and the doctor keeps losing his place, distracted
