Glitch (Next Level #1)(3)

“She’s not wrong, Carson.” Trey laughs. “You suck at this game.”

I listen while they go on and on, slinging insults and racking up points. I always carry the team when I’m on, so while they run around and do what they can, I do my thing.

“Suck my dick!” Ara squeals as she wipes out a bunch of zombies at once. Then she assassinates both Trey and Carson, because this is a one-player-takes all game.

Everyone starts shooting off at the mouth, screaming and calling her all kinds of names.

Everyone but me.

I want to tear them limb-from-limb for talking shit to her. That includes my best friend, Trey. My hands grip the controller so hard, the case cracks. But it’s her laugh that stops me from following through with the threats racing around in my mind. I loosen my grip on the controller. My heart still races as I ease back in my chair, but I’m no longer seeing red.

If she’s okay with them talking trash, then I’ll try my best to suck it up too. She’s a grown ass woman. If she didn’t like it, she’d shut them up herself. Or leave the game.

“When are you going to marry me, Arabella?” Trey’s register drops when he asks. He always asks her this. It always pisses me off.

“I’d rather suck on a dead pig’s foot than be your wife.”

Fuck. What a woman.

We play until there’s one of us left alive. It’s her. Usually is. Without a word, we start another game. This goes on for another hour—the bantering, me getting mad; me staying quiet. Ara winning. Another game starts up and I keep my eyes on Ara666. Even her name on the side of the screen is pretty.

Jesus, I’ve got it bad.

My cell vibrates my ass cheek, and I reach into my back pocket to snag it. Shit. Knocking my headphones off, I answer my phone and pinch it between my ear and shoulder so I can keep playing. “Hey little dude. What’s up?”

“Can you play Minecraft with me?”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, hang on.” Listen, when my nine-year-old nephew asks me to play a game, I play. Doesn’t matter that I can’t stand the games he’s into. I will jump in and play until his mother tells him he has to shut down his console and go to bed. “Can you give me five minutes?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, Beetle.”

“Don’t hang up with me,” he says in a hurry.

Uh oh. When he says shit like that it means he’s having a bad day and is clingy. “Not going anywhere.” I finish up the game in silence and sign off, because dropping out mid-game is a dick move and I wouldn’t do that to Ara. The others? Yes. I’d drop them in a heartbeat, but not her.

“Okay, I’m all yours.” I move to play Minecraft in the living room. Listen, building a world with a nine-year old takes forever. The least I can do for myself is get comfortable while I make castles and kill ender dragons. “How was your day?”

Non-Parent Parent Tip: Some kids have trouble sharing their feelings. Give them a controller and a screen, and they’ll usually open up. I’ve seen it a million times over the years. Adults are no different. It’s easier to vent when you aren’t staring someone in the face so they can see your emotions.

And getting kids to open up is important.

Trust me, I know.

Refusing to let my nephew suffer any of the trauma I dealt with growing up, I vowed the day my sister told me she was pregnant that I’d never let him feel alone.

“I got an infraction at school.”

“For what?”

“Hitting a kid.”

“Mmmph.” I drop it for now because I need to tread carefully about subjects like this. I’ll get to the bottom of it, because he shouldn’t be fighting, period. But I also know my nephew wouldn’t do something like that without good reason. “Which realm are we going into?”

“SeaMonster Superdemon.”

That’s the newest one we’ve made with two kids from his school who trash talk worse than Carson. I click on it and wait for instructions. Beetle usually has a plan on what he wants to build next. When he doesn’t say anything, I pipe up with, “Waiting on you, dude.”

Silence.

“Beetle?” I look at my phone and see we’ve been disconnected. Shit. I call back and he picks up on the fourth ring.

“Dude, the f—” Don’t cuss. “You okay?” I can hear him breathing into the phone. These short, angry spurts of air funnel into my ears and I go on high alert. “Beetle, what’s wrong?”

“THEY STOLE OUR STUUUUUFFFF!”

It takes me a few seconds to realize he’s not talking about being robbed in real life but in the game. Awww shit. I look at our world, where our towers use to be, the treasure chests hidden underground.

“They took everything, Uncle Glitch!”

Yes. They. Did.

I want to tell him it’s fine. That it’s just a game. That it doesn’t really matter because we can make a new world. But that’s not true. It’s not just a game, it’s his outlet. It matters to him. He’s spent all his allotted screen time building this world with his brilliant little mind, and I refuse to downplay this catastrophe.

Those two classmates he invited to play and create in his world have destroyed it instead.