Chapter Four #2
My unexpected seal bark of a laugh echoes off the walls just as everyone onstage decided on now to stop talking.
I clap my hand over my mouth and instinctively hunch over, like squeezing my shoulders down a few inches is going to hide my lanky self from the dozens of people who are all pretending not to look at me. All except one.
Ivan is dead-eyeing me from halfway across the stage, peering just over Brian’s right shoulder.
When the conversations pick back up again, I notice the staring; he doesn’t look away or even seem embarrassed that I caught him.
He actually looks delighted, and something about his smirk unlocks my terrible inner second grader. So I stick my tongue out at him.
Now it’s Ivan’s turn to bark out a laugh.
He doesn’t mind when it echoes off everything, and the sound simply lands as a brief high note before melting into the rest of the noise without notice.
After a beat he breaks eye contact with me and nods along with whatever Brian is saying, as if he’s been paying attention the whole time.
Something Brian says makes him smile, and when he flashes that bone-white grin, he catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth for the fastest of seconds.
It’s for me, or at least I think it is. And now my ears are burning hot with what I can 100 percent correctly identify as pure, unadulterated loathing.
“Cool hooks,” Cassius says, looking as impressed as he gets (not very, but we’re both the “conceal, don’t feel” type). “But, uh, I don’t think I have one.”
“Me either,” I add, happy to break Ivan’s eye contact and return to the present. “I just like GLR.”
“We all like GLR, babe,” Trieu says, not unkindly. “But what else do you do?”
That’s the worst question I’ve ever been asked. Cue internal crisis, cue five-alarm fire in my head right now. Somehow I have accidentally wandered into a place I’ve never been before and never even considered could exist: an entire roomful of GLR players who have one up on me.
“Can’t my hook just be being really frickin’ good at battle royale!” I splutter out.
“Apparently not,” Trieu says.
“I mean, hey,” Kavi says. “We all thought this was just going to be, like, a focus group combined with battle royale camp.”
“Academy,” I correct her quietly.
“But it kind of seems like Brian is looking for people to be the face of Guardians League Royale: 1v1. Well, two faces. Who doesn’t want that?”
“Me!” I respond. “Kavi, I barely want to be the face of myself.”
“It’s true,” Cass adds. “She doesn’t.”
“If I wanted an online fanbase,” I continue, “why would I have put all my skill points into being good at video games? Nothing on this earth is more invisible than a Black girl with a Steam account. Nothing.”
“Not anymore,” Trieu says. “Team Unity saw to that. It’s anyone’s game now, and I, for one, am grateful. Growing up, I never felt like I fit in with other gamers because I’m gorgeous and charismatic.”
“Don’t forget ‘humble,’” Kavi adds dryly.
“And now there’s a place for hot gamers of color right at the heart of Wizzard’s strategy,” Trieu continues, ignoring her.
I have a feeling the two of them knew each other long before this orientation.
Their rapport reminds me of me and Cassius, but considerably perkier.
“As long as we kick ass, don’t age, and work a jillion times harder to get half the recognition white boys get just by showing up. No offense,” he directs at Cassius.
“A little bit taken,” he responds. “But we’re cool.”
“And hey,” Kavi says with incredible kindness, “we already figured out something you guys can do to carve your niche. IRL besties fighting side by side …”
Trieu picks up where Kavi trails off. “Maybe there’s a little spark between you, get things going with a will they, won’t they …”
“I’m in a nightmare,” I think out loud. “I’m sleeping right now, or I’m in hell, or it’s both and I’m literally having a nightmare while taking a hell nap.”
“Come on.” Kavi yanks her sentence back like a star quarterback plucking a ball from the air. “It’ll be fun, we can help you.”
“How would you feel about a makeover?” Trieu asks.
“Terrible,” I say, too quickly to be polite.
I should try that again. My gaze sweeps over Kavi’s and Trieu’s objectively lovely faces.
They’re both the kind of cool that could easily add up to “you can’t sit with us” energy, but instead of gatekeeping they’ve patiently opened my eyes to what exactly I’ve gotten myself into.
They didn’t have to do that. “But I don’t think I’d hate hanging out with y’all, like, normally. ”
“That means she loves you,” jokes Cassius. “You kind of have to think of her like fostering a cat.”
“You sure you want to antagonize someone who knows all of your embarrassing stories?” I ask as I try to gracefully take my seat in the rolling chair beside the last empty computer.
I fail, and the chair rolls a few inches behind me.
I grab it in time before I sit, but these pro gaming chairs are way slipperier than I’m used to.
“Shit—” The backslide of my chair misses hitting someone standing behind me by a hair.
“Watch it!” a hatefully familiar voice calls out. “Caught ya.”
I turn around and see Ivan again. “Oh my god,” I say as I stomp a foot down to stop my chair from moving any farther.
It’s bad enough that Ivan’s close enough that I can smell his spicy-clean body wash and the slightest waft of citrusy conditioner again, but to have him this close while I almost slide butt-first off this chair would be too much for me for one day.
I would have to go back to sleep right now and start again tomorrow, and that would throw off my whole first week in the academy.
“What? What is it? Why are you here? What do you want?” I ask, rapid-fire. “Are you lost? Can I help you? What’s the deal, Ivan? Can you tell me now so we can end this conversation a little faster?”
It’s not very civilized of me, I know. But a girl has her limits, and he busted through the last of mine long ago.
I don’t know how much more unpleasant I have to be before Ivan takes a hint, and I’m running out of ways to escalate.
And the worst part, the part that really grinds my gears, is that none of it seems to have worked at all.
Most people, if I don’t want them around I can crack them like a nut and keep it moving.
Ivan … I can’t even tell what kind of nut he is.
It’s vibranium or something. Adamantium walnut–ass man.
Something has to get under his skin, and I will go to the ends of the earth trying to find it. Later.
“I have to tell you something, I was just about to tell you, I’m here to tell you, I very much want to tell you, no, like you care, can you wait for, like, five seconds?
and I’m trying,” Ivan spits back, smooth as if he’s reciting the stats from his favorite in-game weapon.
Even I have to think back to what I said exactly to realize that, yeah, he answered every question, in order. Color me impres—NO.
“What’s, uh, what’s going on there, friends?
” Hearing Trieu’s voice after concentrating so hard on Ivan’s brings me back to reality with a jolt.
Ivan and I both look to the side and see Cassius, Kavi, and Trieu staring at us with differing expressions of comprehension.
In their defense, we are, like, four feet away from them.
And have both been too busy fighting to remember that.
“She”—Cassius points to me—“don’t like him.” He points to Ivan.
“He doesn’t seem too thrilled with her either,” Trieu observes.
“Correct,” I say.
“Correct,” Ivan says too.
I’m not sure which of us is more upset that we’ve said the same thing at the same time, but I’ll admit my own bias and still choose me.
“Uh-huh,” Kavi says slowly, eyeing the both of us like we’re newly dressed mannequins in the window of her favorite boutique. “So what did you want to tell her?”
With one final glare in my direction, Ivan rolls his shoulders back, closes his eyes, looks up at the ceiling, and then back down at the three of us—with completely different energy.
Gone is the tension in his neck and smart-ass smirk he wore when talking to me.
He smiles, and it actually reaches his eyes, his posture straightens, and he looks …
friendlier. More open. It’s remarkable, actually.
I thought I’d have to live a lot longer before I met the One True King of Social Bullshit, but here I am, not even eighteen, refusing to be humbled by His Majesty.
“It’s actually something I have to tell him.” He gestures to Cass. “But Zora was the person to crash her chair into me and ask a bunch of mean questions, so I addressed her first.”
I keep my face perfectly still. I am a statue. Statues do not respond to provocation. But they remember.
“Well, now I’m intrigued,” Trieu says slyly. I see the way his eyes flick up and down Ivan’s admittedly buff-ish body and make a mental note to warn him that Ivan may look pretty, but he’s also the woooorst.
“You.” Ivan points to Cassius. Cass makes a silent “who, me?” face and points to himself. “Yeah, you. Your seat is over there.” Ivan points to the other end of the stage, at the other empty seat left over from the roll call.
“What?” Cass asks Ivan, but looks at me.
“There’s only a handful of lefty desks, and you’re sitting at one,” Ivan clarifies. “Are you a lefty?”
Cassius glances down at his desk and sees that, yes, the whole keyboard setup is indeed configured for a left-handed player. He shakes his head in answer.
“No,” comes out of my mouth before I mean it to. “I don’t believe you. Say something else.”
“Do I look the most thrilled about it either?” Ivan asks.
“Little bit,” Kavi mutters. She’s sitting closest to me, so only I hear her. I give her a questioning look, to which she does not respond.
“Okay,” Cassius says stiffly. He stands up and pats his pockets to see if anything fell out when he was sitting down. “Bye. I guess.”
“Cass.” I grab on to his arm. “You’re not really moving over there; he’s just messing with us. I bet he’s not even left-handed.”
“Actually, I am,” Ivan adds. “And you might want to move a little faster.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because the show’s about to start,” Ivan replies distractedly. He looks over his shoulder at Brian, who is stepping back up to his microphone for the next part of the program.
“The desk you chose today is your desk for the rest of the competition,” Brian’s voice booms from the speakers again as he swivels in place to address the full academy seated upstage. What about those of us who didn’t choose, Brian?
At that moment, without any of our input, all of the monitors switch on simultaneously and Cassius is jolted into action, crossing the stage without so much as a look back.
Ivan calmly takes the chair that Cassius just vacated and rolls himself over to his computer in one smooth, almost balletic motion.
“You know what comes next!” Brian says with another wild smile.
I thought I did, but apparently I don’t.
There are more people on the stage now, men with steady cameras mounted to their waists and technicians rushing between the rigs to make sure the webcams at the top of our monitors are turned on.
I am so not ready to stream right now. Maybe I can ask for an accommodation?
I reach down to adjust my chair and accidentally send myself plummeting to the floor butt-first. Ivan laughs. I pretend I can’t hear him through all the steam coming out of my ears.
“Battlers, get ready!” I swear the little chair-lever thing that controls the height of my seat has straight-up disappeared.
I’m feeling (okay, wildly slapping) down there to see if I can grab on to anything when Ivan leans over and holds a small button on my armrest. The seat rises.
God damn it. I refuse to look at him, or think about his finger manipulating my chair while my butt slowly ascends to an optimal gaming height.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“I didn’t need—” Ivan cuts me off by sliding the provided headphones over his ears and turning his attention to the screen, where the ten-second countdown to our GLR match is already down to five.
I trade in my annoyance for practicality and slip my headphones on as well.
The noise cancellation kicks in and trades the chaos of the stage for a thick, pressurized silence that immediately primes my brain for competition.
The countdown hits zero, and the match begins on-screen.