In Real Life Page 7

  I want to ask her what that has to do with what she wants to do with her life. Save people maybe?

  Then she starts talking again. “Something about that painting, the way it reached out and touched me. That’s what I want to do. I want to touch people that way.”

  “So are you good at it?” I sometimes say the first thing that comes to my mind and as soon as I do I realize that I sound like an idiot. I get what Hannah is saying, about doing something great. When I was about eight or nine I got into reading these little biographies of famous people, written for kids. Each one of them starts out with the famous person’s birth and then has about a hundred pages on their growing up. Then in the last chapter they become president or invent the light bulb or whatever. I think what I liked about these books was trying to figure what happened when they were kids to make them do great things. And then to wonder if I had any of these things working for me.

  So even though the first thing that comes to mind is Hannah painting, I know she could mean a hundred other things.

  “What?” Hannah says. Looking at me now like I’ve broken some rich and delicious trance.

  “Well,” I mumble. “I was just wondering, you know, about painting. Do you paint?”

  She looks up at the tag in front of her and sees that her pizza is gone. I point at the one in front of me as I put the finishing touches on it.

  “I got it,” I say.

  “Oh thanks,” she says. “Guess I got carried away. What did you ask?”

  “Painting.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I paint. But I suck.” I wonder if it’s true or it’s like me and Starfare. Like I know I suck, but I’m still really good compared to almost anyone else.

  “You know, I saw some of your photos. They’re sort of like that.”

  Hannah actually jumps. “You saw my photos?”

  Now I’m wondering if I should have said anything at all. Like she’ll think I was spying on her or something.

  “They’re up on your Facebook page.” And before she can say anything about it I just start rambling. “You know, those color ones. I think they’re flowers. They remind me of this exhibit my mother took me to at the Art Institute. They were by this famous woman painter…”

  “Georgia O’Keefe?” Hannah asks.

  “Yeah, that’s it. I mean they reminded me a lot of her flower paintings, which when you look at them, they’re not just about flowers…”

  “Exactly,” Hannah is saying, looking at me with a sort of shocked expression, as if I were a superhero whose mild-mannered secret identity had just been inadvertently revealed.

  Then she picks up another crust and begins to work the sauce. After a minute she asks, “What would you do if your parents told you you’d have to move halfway across the country your senior year of high school?”

  So I tell her about my mom moving to California and how close I was to having to move out there. Hannah has about a hundred questions about that and I get the feeling that she might actually like living in a place like the Institute.

  “Anyway, at least you didn’t have to do it. Move, that is. Leave all your friends. I mean, it’s not like you can’t stay in touch. But I get a text from one of my old friends, and it’s all about some party some guy I don’t even know threw the night before with a bunch of new people I never met and after a while, what’s the point? And then some people you’d most expect to stay in touch with, they have no interest. Like it’s not as if you moved. It’s like you died.”

  I say, “Yeah,” wondering if she’s thinking about some guy, back in New Jersey. And then thinking about how weird it would seem to Hannah to find out that my best friends, like DT, are online. True, I do still see Eric sometimes, but last semester he started hanging out with Becca, who is actually really into gaming. She was in our World of Warcraft guild for a while and now the two of them are inseparable. So mostly I’m online with DT and other guys. Not many people seem to understand how that works.

  But that night, when I’m back at home, lying in bed, my mind still firing like a Starfare screen, I keep hearing Hannah’s voice, talking about seeing that painting and the passion for something special.

  Back when I was in grade school Mom seemed to worry a lot about my gifted program. She was always saying that everyone is special in their own way and has their own talents and that I shouldn’t think I was better than anyone just because I could do more math than them. Not that that was a problem, because no one gave a crap that you could do long division in first grade. They were more interested in how far you could throw a football or who could run the fastest.

  But when I think about it now, I’m thinking Mom was wrong. Not everyone can shoot a basketball into a tiny hoop from thirty feet, over and over like Garrett. Not everyone can paint a picture so great that it can stop a beautiful girl in her tracks. Not everyone can have the mental and physical skills it takes to absorb an entire Starfare map, assess your opponent’s strategy while tapping out commands on the keyboard faster than the hardest song ever on Guitar Hero.

  No, very few people have what it takes to be great at any particular thing. And if you find that thing and don’t go for it, that would be the ultimate fail. I try to imagine what it would be like living with that. And all I can come up with is Dad.

  21.

  The next day I get up relatively early, at least for me, with a fresh determination to make some progress. But one of the hardest things for me is to figure out what I need to do to get better. It’s not like I can simply ask someone. I’m already the best player in Kansas City. Probably by far.

  Sometimes I think about how much coaching Garrett got. From school coaches. From older players. From college coaches at sports camps. I once looked it up online. Garrett’s college basketball coach gets paid $350,000 a year. He damn well better know a thing or two about the game.

  So I never really know if I should be spending more time watching pro gamers, or reading the strategy message boards, or just playing the best competition I can find. Which is also a problem, because when you get to my level, you can’t just click on a server and expect to pick up a really good game at random. Chances are you’ll be playing someone you can beat without any real effort. And how is that supposed to make you better?

  So I do what I normally do, a little bit of everything, and then before I know it it’s time for my evening shift at Saviano’s.

  22.

  Two good things about work: Hannah, and for every four hours you work you get one ten-inch pizza. Of course there are downsides. Shifts without Hannah. Getting sent home after three hours when things are slow and not getting your ten-inch. And of course, those countless hours of lost training time.

  But to be honest, walking from my place to Saviano’s, I’m not thinking about Starfare skills or lost practice opportunity or improving my national ranking. I’m thinking about Hannah.

  Even though it’s only a few blocks and the sun is low, I can’t believe how hot it is. It’s not just that’s it hot and still. But the air is so thick and heavy you’d think that it wasn’t normal air at all, but something thicker and murkier, like a winter dream when you have twenty pounds of blankets weighing down your legs and you’re trying to run away from that monster from Alien. After half a block I can already feel the moisture beading on my forehead. It sucks to get all sweated out before you go to work. The air smells of cut grass and tilled gardens and every few seconds a cicada will scream from one of the trees above, quickly joined by dozens of others, wailing like a tornado warning.

  The tornado sirens don’t penetrate to the depths of the restaurant, through the piped in music and the rattling of plates in the dishwasher, where Hannah and I are busily assembling pizzas. I don’t know what makes me step away from the counter and down the hall. Only as I approach the back door do I hear a faint whine. When I push the door open to the back parkin
g lot the sirens aren’t nearly as troubling as the sky. A line of dark clouds with a yellow-green hue, oddly humped, are almost straight overhead. A roar from the right turns my head. I can see the massive dark funnel, like a black hand of the devil, spewing debris as it snakes ominously across the ground. Directly towards me. Not more than a mile down the road.

  I slam the door and race inside. I scream Hannah’s name and she turns from the counter. Her expression is surprise and concern. I run to her and grab her hand and pull.

  “We’ve got to get the cooler!” I yell. And because we don’t have time I half drag her towards the metal door of the walk-in refrigerator.

  “Tornado!” I yell and then we are inside and I slam the door shut and pull Hannah down. Just as I lay myself on top of her the world explodes and we can hear what it must sound like to be in the midst of a bomb attack. We can feel the entire room rotating, as if we were on a carousel and not solid ground, and then, as fast as it began, it’s completely quiet. I realize I’m still on top of Hannah and as she stirs, my head on the nape of her neck, I smell her hair and feel her from the tip of my chin all the way to my ankles.

  I roll to the side and say, “Sorry.”

  “What the hell?” Hannah says as we stand up. She’s brushing the front of her clothes with her hands, as if I had thrown her onto a dirt pile instead of a shiny, stainless steel floor. I try to open the door, and can only move it a few inches.

  “Let me help,” Hannah says, and together we push, the sound of something against the door grating. We finally get it open a few feet and step outside. We stare, stunned, at the still-dark sky which somehow glows directly overhead, tornado and emergency vehicle sirens the only sound. Nothing but broken boards and twisted roofing and mounds of debris at our feet and for hundreds of feet around us. The restaurant and the other shops are just gone.

  “Oh my God,” Hannah says as she throws her arms around me. “You saved my life!”

  The spray of an evening sprinkler hits my face and I step away from the stuttering arcing spray. The restaurant is just a half block ahead.

  Stepping into the cool restaurant is like jumping into a pool. I look down at my shirt, a few wet spots of perspiration on my chest. Hopefully not enough to raise a stink.

  Hannah and I had worked assembly the previous shift and it had been great. Sometimes she seems like she’s in a bad mood. Won’t talk, does her work robotically. She’ll ask me or Steve or one of the others if they’ll close for her. Then you turn around and she’s gone, disappeared. I figure it has to do with being so far away from all her friends and stuff.

  But on Thursday it was just the opposite. The night before she’d seen this Netflix movie called Fur and all she could do was go on and on about it. It was apparently about some famous photographer named Diane something.

  All evening it was like, “And then she did this just amazing series of photos of these circus performers who were like deformed and tattooed and grotesque, but not in her photos. It was as if she could see past all that ugliness and find their souls. Seth, you just have to see her work.” She says she’ll text me the link and pulls out her phone and I give her my number.

  I didn’t really follow a lot of what she was saying, but it was impossible not to get caught up in her enthusiasm. So that night when I got home I looked at trailers of the movie and read a little about Diane Arbus, the photographer, and looked at some of her pictures.

  So after a quick stop in the restroom to mop up a bit I’m ready to pick up where we left off. Because I think Hannah’s going to be impressed that I did all this research and I’ve even got some questions for her, because some of the photos were pretty weird.

  So as soon as I get to the back room, Jake, this college guy who is one of the night managers, he tells me to get an apron and start making pizzas. I barely have time to acknowledge Hannah, who’s working up front. We get really busy and I don’t even see her for most of the night. Instead I’m shoulder to shoulder with this new guy who is working to buy mods for his Honda. So all night it’s a monologue about whether a Borla exhaust system is better than a Bosch, whether twenty-inch rims are worth it and whether I think the black ones would look too dark on his black car and how much money he needs to save to lower the suspension. He has absolutely no clue that I couldn’t give a damn.

  So as we clean up, I’m thinking that an entire evening is an awful thing to waste. I’m bent over the counter, trying to wipe down the stainless so it doesn’t streak, which is impossible, when someone grabs me from behind.

  Hannah has wrapped her arms around me and has a chin on my shoulder. She’s whispering something into my ear.

  I can’t hear her, because my blood is pounding like Niagara Falls. I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t let go. But she does.

  “Well,” she says, “can you?”

  I turn around and shake my head and try to indicate that I don’t know what she’s talking about without appearing to be an idiot.

  “Couldn’t hear you,” I say.

  “Oh,” Hannah says. “Steve and me and a couple of friends are going downtown to watch a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at UMKC. I’ve got the rice.”

  She’s sort of bouncing up and down, singing something about a time warp dance. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Rice?” I say.

  Hannah yells out to Steve and he comes over, a mop in his hand.

  “Looks like we got a Rocky Horror virgin! Seth, you’ve got to go with us!”

  I say sure. Dad’s out of town and I’m going to be up for another four or five hours anyway.

  After we wrap up the cleaning we follow Steve out to his car, a little Nissan. The night air is still hot and heavy, but not as unbearable as it had been on the way to work. Hannah insists I ride up front but when we stop to pick up Steve’s friends she says, “Hop back here—back seat for the short-legged.”

  I come around the back and slide in. When a guy and a girl come running out the guy jumps in the front and the girl hops into the back, so that I’m in the middle of this tiny back seat, thigh to thigh with Hannah and the new girl, who has long dark hair and looks, in the thin light, like she might be at least part Asian or Hispanic.

  Steve twists around and says, “That’s Steph.” He nods towards the front seat and says, “And this is Gunda Din.”

  The guy in the front seat, dark bangs almost over his eyes, looks back and says, “You can just call me Gunnar.”

  Steve cranks the car and shouts back, “Everyone got their seatbelts on?”

  I don’t. I watch Hannah grab a belt and clip it in and hear another click from Steph’s side.

  I realize my belt must be stuck under us somewhere.

  “I think it’s under us,” I say stupidly to Hannah.

  She just grins and says, “So get it!”

  My first try, directly behind me is fruitless so I have to start digging in the area between us.

  “Oh,” Hannah says, with mock drama. “That was so not the seatbelt you just grabbed.”

  Everyone is laughing except me. She makes me keep hunting and if we weren’t in a crowded car with strangers I would have been having the best time of my life. My hand is directly under her ass and she’s wiggling like she likes it. Even in the crowd, I’m getting plenty worked up.

  Finally Hannah has pity on me, lifts herself up and grabs the wayward belt for me. As I drag it across my lap I’m not only in heaven, being crushed on both sides by two hot girls, one of whom is, beyond my dreams, Hannah, but incredibly relieved to be able to strap everything down in place.

  Just like in the car, I get to sit between the two girls at the theater. If I sit kind of bowlegged my knee rests against Hannah’s. She doesn’t seem to mind. Mostly I’m thinking about that point of electric contact, and my arm on the armrest. Which Hannah sometim
es shares. So my movie review is a little thin: Weird costumes, press my knee a little against Hannah’s, listen to people yell out the lines, weird songs, listen to Hannah sing along, something about a guy dressed up like a girl, wedding, throw the rice all over the theater, hope that Hannah puts her arm back on the armrest. movie over, lights go up.

  “So what did you think?” Hannah asks.

  “Amazing,” I say. Especially the part where you put your hand on my arm. But not as good as the drive back. We stop at my place first and before Hannah lets me out she puts a hand on my thigh and squeezes. I just about pass out from happiness.

  “Thanks for coming along,” Hannah says as she jumps out. I mumble thanks for inviting me and then she’s back inside, the car door slams and I’m standing alone.

  When I get inside I check a few things on the computer and then go to bed, still buzzing from the evening, the car ride, my hand underneath Hannah, her hand on my arm during the movie and best of all, that squeeze of my thigh. So my mind is about as far from Starfare as it could be, as I imagine what it would be like, if she were here, lying there, right next to me.

  23.

  You know those suspense movies and TV shows, where a bomb is set to go off and the timer keeps ticking down and there’s always something getting between the hero and the bomb? That’s my life. I read a few years ago online about a study done on Korean gaming pros. They’re usually world class when they are fifteen or sixteen and join a pro team as soon as they get out of high school. They peak at nineteen or twenty. By twenty-four or twenty-five most of them are out of the game, burned out or forced out by hotter, younger players.

  That means kids younger than me are already making a dent on the pro circuit. And every day they get better and better. Summer is my big chance to make up ground. Normally, I could game all day. But this work thing is really cutting into my training time and not only that, but sometimes, instead of getting inside a game I find myself drifting, thinking about something Hannah said to me at work. Or the way she had her hair loose that night, instead of tied back, her hand brushing a strand back behind her ear.