Chapter 18
I’m still sleeping. I must be.
“Ash.” My voice is too soft. He doesn’t stir. His arms are flung out to either side, his face peaceful. He can explain this situation. He’ll wake up and say everything is okay. I grab him, shake him. “Ash!”
He groans. His eyes crack open. “We fall asleep?”
I don’t know what to say. He looks at the clock. Blinks. “Oh, shit.”
It’s Saturday. It’s 5:14.
I launch myself off the bed and wake my computer. Open Discord and CoH Online. Log in. Notifications overrun my messages. There are hundreds of unread posts in clan chat. When the server queue clears and I get in, I immediately open the clan screen to see where everyone is.
Zoo and seven others are near the top of the members list. Beside their names is the location VAN DER GELT TOWER. Five of the names—Healzzzorz, lumberjacked, Leelea, Redderfedder, HundredKnives—were on the raid list. Two are new.
Ash and I were replaced.
“Open the stream,” Ash says.
I switch to a browser. Zoo streams our raids on world first day.
There are four thousand people watching his channel; he and the rest of the party are somewhere deep in the tower, running through a twisted office building.
Their voices come through clear as they talk, giving each other heads up and calling out game state.
They sound tired. It’s been two hours.
The game chimes. I switch screens and check clan chat.
[fireballboy]: yo raven wtf
[fireballboy]: you were supposed to be in the raid
[Mox]: Kind of late for that now. What happened?
[Ravenweal]: I’m sorry, I’m here now, I can sub in
[Mox]: You can’t once the raid has started
[VegaV]: Yeah they’d be wasting time to leave and go back in with you
[VegaV]: Did you know Faust skipped out too?
[Mox]: We’re fucked with this expansion. Maybe with the whole group we might’ve done it but there’s no way now
[fireballboy]: i checked the Azuregames stream. the harbingers figured out a puzzle it took us almost an hour to do. There’s no way we’re coming back.
[VegaV]: Maybe we can take third or second, but Harbingers would have to really fuck up for us to take first
[Mox]: Zoo’s pissed
[Mox]: He won’t see this cause he’s in the raid but don’t be surprised if you get booted. We’re behind because our DPS isn’t good enough.
[Ravenweal]: It was an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose.
[Mox]: So it wasn’t even a family emergency or something?
[Mox]: Damn, you could have at least lied.
I slide away from the computer. What was once a doorway is now a locked window.
I see the raid, I need to be there, but I can’t reach it.
There’s nothing I can do except scream from this side of the glass.
Weeks, weeks of preparation, late nights, struggle, learning, and I screw it up with half an edible?
So easily it crumbles to dust in my hands?
And it’s my fault.
“Evie, hey. Calm down.” Ash kneels next to me. I realize I’m wringing my hands and rocking back and forth. I make myself stop. “It’ll be okay. There’ll be another expansion. Another world first.”
“They’re right, Zoo is gonna be angry,” I say, voice wavering. “I won’t get another shot, not with Ikelos Lair. Maybe not with any clan. He’s going to kick us out.”
“I’ll talk to him. Explain what happened.”
“He won’t care. The game matters more to him than anything.
” Like it should have mattered to me, but I needed comfort instead.
I’ve turned down the computer volume, but I can still hear the voices of the raid party—and they are struggling.
Because of me. My fault. It’s like I worked that hard to get a spot only to abandon them when raid day came.
I was sent by one of the other big clans to sabotage them. That’s what they’ll think.
“If he kicks us out, then he’s garbage,” Ash says. He tries to put his arms around me, but I pull away. My skin is crawling. I don’t want to be touched.
“Evie, it’s not that big a deal. It’s a game. We took a nap because we got too high. This is ridiculous.”
I’m ridiculous, is what he’s saying. Because I cared too much. I always care too much.
More messages appear in clan chat. Deep and vicious fear strikes, like those messages are spiders jumping at me, and I close out of the game.
The voices from the stream are still going, though, an attack from a second direction, and I hurry to close that window too.
Then there are the pings of messages in Discord, and I cannot do it, I cannot be available anymore, I need to hide.
I yank the power cord from the back of my computer. The monitors lose signal. The fans stop.
I feel like I’ve hung up the phone on a great dark being that is going to find me anyway. It knows where I am, where I live. I’ve shut off its means of communicating with me, but it can still find me, and it will. It is inevitable.
“I should go home,” I say.
“Are you okay?” Ash follows me as I stand up. “I’m sorry I said it was ridiculous. But it’s not as important as it seems.”
“Whatever,” I say. I don’t make a move to collect any part of my computer. I don’t want to touch it. “Is it okay if I leave this here for now?”
“Sure . . . why?”
I shake my head. I can’t say the words.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“It’s not that far. Let me drive you back. We’ll take your car, I’ll walk home.”
I don’t argue. I grab my phone and bag, but not my computer. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Whitaker calls from the den, “You’ve been pretty quiet up there.”
“Focusing on the game,” Ash replies. I doubt she believes him. “I’ll be right back,” Ash continues. “Evie realized once she got here that she forgot her license, so I’m going to drive her home and walk back.”
“Okay. Be safe.”
She doesn’t know what has happened. That’s how she can be so calm.
The car ride home doesn’t register. Ash walks me to the front door.
The familiar crunch of gravel underfoot brings me back to my senses in a strange, stark world.
Everything is wrong, but nothing is happening.
The doorknob squeaks the same way it always has.
The house smells like late-afternoon sunshine.
Mom must in the backyard, because she doesn’t come to meet us.
“I’ll see you later,” I say to Ash.
“Wait, I meant what I said,” he says. “It was one raid, there’ll be more. And Zoo always has backups. He’s not stupid enough to think no one will ever get sick or have an emergency. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“But it is a big deal,” I snap. “It’s not about the next raid, it’s about this one.
It wasn’t just one raid, it was the one.
We were going to win. I put everything into that.
Zoo and everyone else were counting on me.
I said I’d do it, and I just—I just didn’t.
” It feels like barbed wire is being fed through my guts.
Ash still doesn’t look as upset as he should.
He isn’t panicking like I am. He isn’t sorry that he slept through it.
“I thought you understood,” I say, “but you don’t. ”
He makes a face. “What are you talking about?”
“Why this was important! Why it meant something to me! But you don’t—you’d rather get high, no matter what problems it causes.”
“Oh fuck off, Evie,” he snarls. “What is this, some puritanical bullshit? Like you didn’t do the exact same thing.
It was your idea to take another edible—and they’re just edibles!
People get high all the time. I don’t give a shit that we missed the raid.
I wasn’t the one who thought it would make a difference.
Alissa’s still dead. We could win world first in every raid for the rest of time, and she’d still be dead.
” He turns away from me. “Call me when you decide to live in reality again.”
He slams the door behind him.
I’m left alone with the silence of the house and the chaos churning inside me.