“That sucks,” I say, which feels wholly inadequate.
“You got that right.” She frowns at the screen for a moment longer, then sits up and scrolls away from the skin color options. “All right,” she says, voice cheery again, as if shaking off systemic racism is something she’s practiced so often that she’s already an expert. “If I can’t make me, let’s go fantasy. Can’t I just—yes, here.” She clicks the randomize button in the bottom right corner over and over, and her character morphs from a blue dragonlord to a brown elf and everything in between. Then she stops abruptly. A squat dwarf knight with purple skin and bright-green hair glares out at us. “Perfect!”
I point toward the screen. “Okay, so if you want to customize—”
“Nah. Look how badass she is!”
She does look pretty fierce. “Well, you should at least—” But she hits the start button before I can suggest she choose a non-randomized starting ability or try out the different cloaks.
I sigh and Meg grins; then we play musical chairs again as I set up the speed run. It’s easier to go onto a public server that has speed runs set up server-side than to download the mod and set it up client-side like I’ve got at home, and Meg is hovering way too close, ready to take over the instant I’ve got a speed run started, so I log her on to one of the popular servers.
Legs has it set up client-side, too, but I’ve seen other You-Tubers go onto this server. Being on it myself feels way more hectic than in their videos, though, with elves and dragonlords and dwarves scurrying past me and the chat log flying by so fast I can’t even read it and walk at the same time.
“You’re too slow. I’ve got this,” Meg says, and I have to leap out of the seat to avoid her sitting down right in my lap. By the time I’ve settled back on the bed, she’s already found the server’s speed-run menu.
“I think they’re divided by—” I break off as she clicks on one in the middle. And then she’s in a speed run. The lava bubbles up around her, and the first platform is just a sprint-jump away. “It’s w for forward,” I say. “Space to jump.”
Her character lunges forward, and she slams the space bar, leaping over the fiery gap. Almost over. Not really over at all. Her dwarf erupts into flames, and the screen reports, “You died,” in case that’s not obvious from the cartoony, charred body the camera pans out to show. Meg jabs the respawn button, and she’s back at the beginning.
“You have to—” I start to say, but she’s already off again. This time she tries to move slower, taps the space bar way too late, and walks right off the platform into the lava.
I laugh. I can’t help it.
“It’s not funny,” she says. She grimaces, and then her shoulders slump. “Apparently I’m crap at this. Like everything.”
I shake my head, and my cheeks flush hot at the words I know I’m about to say. “Epic fail,” I practically whisper, because quoting LumberLegs videos is a thing I usually do only in my head or online, not out loud.
The words hover between us, as if the heavy air has trapped them and refuses to send them on their way. Meg stares at her dwarf’s scorched corpse. I can’t see her face. Maybe I’ve gone too far.
But then she straightens and turns to me with a grin. “Epic fail!” she shouts, in a surprisingly good impression of Legs’s deep announcer voice.
I stifle the idiotic grin that’s trying to push its way onto my face. “Your timer is still running,” I say, pointing at the screen, and she swivels back around. And dies again. I could suggest she switch over to a much easier run, but I don’t. She could pout again, but she doesn’t. Instead, we both giggle.
Many deaths and cries of “epic fail” later, the screen reports her final time—forty-one minutes, eighteen seconds—and my stomach hurts from laughing.
MEG
DESPITE MY PROTESTS THAT NONINTERESTING HOMEWORK SHOULD NEVER BE done at lunchtime, Kat and I banter all week about our science project, as Kat continually insists on some boring grass thing, ignoring all my much flashier—and much better—suggestions. At last, in the middle of Thursday night, a new idea comes to me in a swirl of brilliance. I dream of my speed run. I become my purple dwarf self and try to run it, but I keep missing the final step and plunging into the lava below, and my armor gets heavier and heavier as it gets coated with more and more soot and ash, and when I finally land the jump, my eyes fly open and I know exactly what we should do for our science project. I flick on the light, grab my cell, and tap out a series of texts.
We shld do speed runs in LotS
Use them to test reaction times
Maybe after eating sugar? And before the sugar? And a little while later?
Or maybe coffee?
It’s perfect cuz the computer will time it for us
And we can use the same map every time
An easier one than the one I did
What do u think?
This idea is awesome. Kat can’t possibly shut it down like she did with all my others, which admittedly were nowhere near as good as this one. I cup the phone in my hand, staring at the screen, waiting for it to roar with a response. I’ve got Kat’s ringtone currently set to Chewbacca’s cry from Star Wars.
“Come on, Kat,” I whisper. “Wake up.” I don’t know how she can be sleeping when I’m having an Aristotle-apple moment! Or was it Einstein? Newton? Hercules? It can’t be Hercules, because there was that Disney movie about him and I don’t think there was an apple falling in it. If the apple guy was Canadian, I’d probably know. I should get a book about him, and one about Hercules, too.
I crinkle my nose in disgust at the silent phone, set it on my side table, and flick out the light. In the distance, a car alarm blares. The window by my bed breathes frosty air into the room, like Kenzie’s favorite Disney princess, Elsa, is turning the world to ice. Winter is coming. I wrap the covers tight around my shoulders.
I have just found a comfortable resting place on my lumpy pillow, preparing to drift back into the imaginary land of sleep, when the Wookiee roar comes. I snatch up my phone, counter-arguments ready to fly off my tongue—or out my fingers—then let my battle-ready face dissolve into a grin as I read her text.
I wish I’d thought of that.
CHAPTER 5
MEG
I MUST HAVE ACCIDENTALLY TURNED OFF MY ALARM DURING MY middle-of-the-night texting, because I wake up late Friday morning, which makes me miss my usual bus, which makes me late for math class, which makes my math teacher, Mrs. Brown, decide that I need to spend my lunch hour in her office going over problems that make less than zero sense. Which means I don’t get to talk to Kat in person until science class, when I slip into the seat in front of her and beam. “It’s perfect, right? You think it’s perfect?”
She clicks her pen over and over like she’s anxious or maybe just thinking, but she nods. “It’s definitely better than helium balloons.”