Page 41 of The Mayor and the Mystery Man

“Yeah, I know. You can get around him by going through this shortcut.” He pressed away on his controller, sliding his avatar down a hole in the ground to a new level. My eyes jolted open, like seeing the Matrix for the very first time. My roommates never found this secret passageway, nor did they navigate the world with such dexterity.

“Go left,” I said, backseat driving.

But it was too late. Ari’s avatar bit the dust.

“I told you so,” I said into my coffee.

He spun his head around and shot me a glare. “You play?”

“I could.” I’d watched my roommates play endlessly.

Ari nudged the second controller in my direction and set up a two-player game. “I have no mercy when I play.”

Like father, like son.

The game started, and we tore through the course. Ari played with definite skill, but I was no slouch. I was not one of those adults who let kids win to bolster their self-confidence. Our two avatars engaged in combat, scrambling through the course. Ultimately, it was no contest. Ari left me in the dust; his skill on the controller was undeniable.

“I’m a little rusty,” I said. “Wanna go again?”

We went again. He kicked my butt again. And again. We kept playing until my fingers cramped, but I pushed through the pain, my competitiveness overcoming discomfort. The only sounds in the house were the clicking and clacking of controllers.

“That move you did to leap over the drawbridge was awesome,” I said. “My roommates played this game every day, and they could never master that jump.”

“They’re probably tapping one second too late. Try doing this move.” Ari demonstrated, though there was no way I could mimic correctly.

His face was bright with excitement. “Thanks for not…”

“Not what?”

He struggled to get out the words, looking at the screen. “My dad always has this look on his face when he sees me playing like he’s watching my brain rot in real-time.”

“He sees a lot of potential in you. He doesn’t want it to go to waste.”

“He sees a lot of potential in Lucy. The brainiac.” Ari rolled his eyes, but I saw how much it dinged him. It must’ve been difficult to have a twin who was so smart. It lent itself to a lot of comparisons.

“Your dad loves you. He wants you to have a great life when you get older. And frankly, nobody makes a living off playing video games.”

“Yeah, they do.”

I whipped my head to look at him. “Say what now?”

He proceeded to pull up an app called Twitch on his phone, which had livestreams where people watched other people play video games. Ari explained that those video game players got paid, sometimes six figures or more, based on the number of people watching. It seemed that the warning to us when we were kids that video games led nowhere belonged in the graveyard next to doctors doing cigarette commercials.

I officially felt like an old man.

“Oh.”

“Really good players can go on tour, win money in tournaments, create branded merchandise,” he said.

“Man. Let’s go in the backyard and burn all of your textbooks in a bonfire.” I was maybe half-joking.

Ari inched closer, a secret on his lips. “Can I show you something?”

“Of course, bud.” I laughed to myself. I pounded his fist. “No limits here.”

When I’d visit in the past, Ari and I would talk about all random things. Kids loved to blabber on, I’d learned, and it was our job as adults to listen. We didn’t need to chime in with our thoughts or make this into a conversation. They wanted to be heard.

I followed Ari up to his room, cluttered with lots of boy things and clothes on the floor. He opened a program on his laptop. It was a computer game calledForest Quest.

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