Page 2 of Don't Hate the Player
Right. Pizza. Eating food with the other kids, including Emmett and Connor and Matt. Jake looked over at the party tables covered in plastic tablecloths and hoped that he would find somewhere to eat where no one would bug him. Probably by the time he finished eating, the girl would forget she’d ever talked to him and he’d never learn that shield combo or see her ever again.
“Are you coming?”
The girl was ahead of him, gunning for the pizza table, which was already crowded with the kids from Jake’s class. She’d stopped and was waiting for him to join her. Huh. People never waited on Jake to do anything. This girl was actually kind of nice. After they got their slices, she even sat next to him while they ate.
Her name was Emilia Romero, her friends called her Em, and she was Emmett’s new next-door neighbor. She went to the Monteronni elementary school, which explained why she wasn’t in Jake and Emmett’s class. She likedKnights of Darknessand a few other games but didn’t have a console at home. She had poofy hair because her parents were from Puerto Rico, and she had a pet bird named Cloud, and she talked alot, which was great because Jake wasn’t sure what he’d even want to say back to her. He liked her immediately and very, very much. It felt impossible not to.
After the pizza, Jake and Emilia did play co-op onKnights of Darknessand she taught him how to do the shield combo. He told her how to press the side buttons in the right order to unlock the secret black armor; she screamed and played as the unlockable dark knight for the rest of the day. Each time they lost, they put their heads together to strategize how to get further next time and took turns feeding the machine until they snagged the second-place high score and were down to one last token.
The party ended before they could get the top spot. Well, to be fair, the party ended sometime after they got the third-place score, but when Jake’s mom arrived to pick him up, he begged her to let them try for second. Their partnership ended when Emilia’s dad came and motioned for her to leaveKnights of Darknessalone. Jake was left to tap their initials—ENJ for Em ’n’ Jake—in second place.
“Can we try again soon?” Jake asked as they split the contents of the party’s last, lonely goody bag (some jerk must have taken two).
Emilia looked back at her dad and shrugged. “I don’t get to play a lot, but I hope when I do, you’re here,” she answered. Then she left.
Jake still had one token and looked back atKnights of Darkness. He was probably warmed up enough to get the solo high score, but getting home late would make his dad angry. The last coin went into his pocket.
He saw Emilia again the next year at Emmett’s eleventh birthday party, which was at the Franklins’ house and not the arcade. They snuck onto the swinging bench on the back deck and playedPokémon Blackon Jake’s 3DS. In seventh grade, Jake’s friend Todd knew Emilia from Monteronni and had her over for Halloween, where Emilia and Jake coincidentally dressed as Iron (Wo)man and Captain America. The two of them faced off onGuitar Hero Livein the basement while Todd, who was fun but a little perverted, tried to organize his first game of spin the bottle.
Every time Jake ran into Emilia, he liked her more. She never treated him like he was weird or made fun of his glasses. They might have been friends if Jake had just asked for her Snapchat or something. He never did. Stuff always got in the way, and the older they got, the more there was for him to think about.
By the time Jake’s mom left and he moved with his dad to the apartment on the other side of town, it was almost too overwhelming to think about anything. He couldn’t bring himself to care that moving meant he had to go to a new school for tenth grade, or that his mom hadn’t asked for custody, or how crummy he was doing in school. He did play more games, though. And he got really, really good.
For some reason, Jake always held on to that Hillbrook Mall Arcade token. He hadn’t seen Emilia in years, but there was always a chance they’d make it to the top of the leaderboard.
CHAPTER ONE
Emilia, Monday, Week 1
I’M JUST SAYINGthat the worst thing to ever happen to me wasGuardians League Onlinechanging their meta to make my main completely useless in competition. I played as Condor, poison damage MVP ofGLO’s entire character lineup, for years—literal, actual years—and now there isn’t a single respectable team using him in their comp. And yes, I checked the character compositions of every other top-tier team. They’re a Condor-free zone and have been since Wizzard “updated” the game with a new patch, new math, and an all-new meta.
I should have expected something like this would happen. The second anyone gets comfortable with the way damage, defense, and magic works in any Wizzard game, the studio goes back to the drawing board for some big surprise release that, to be fair, usually makes the game more fun. It’s just this time the sea change is rocking the hell out of my boat.
Before Wizzard introduced the new meta in their September patch, I was unstoppable. Condor was my main character, and I got so high on the leaderboard for the Philadelphia server that Byunki asked me to start practicing with Team Fury, the group he’s shuffled and reshuffled a dozen times before settling on a winning lineup for online competition.TheByunki. Server legend, ruthless captain, and, judging by the Team Fury smackdown compilations on YouTube, one of the best playing tanks in all ofGLO. He’s played with some of the best damage-dealing DPS players in the game and picked out the fastest, most brilliant healers to shore up his defense.
Fury is so good that I’ve gotten better just from playing alongside them for a few months.GLO’s competition mode is like capture the flag on steroids, with five players on each team whaling on one another to capture a payload of treasure. When I played Condor, my job as a DPS was to cram enough poison damage on our enemies. Now that Condor’s damage is garbage, I have to relearn how to get good on Pharaoh, a magic character whose skills and cooldowns are so much harder to nail than Condor’s ever were.
I also had something of a handle on my junior year at Hillford West even with my parents reminding me every day of summer vacation that this year was “the big one” and “the one that counts.” I’d done the math and balanced it all out perfectly: school, field hockey, college visitation spreadsheets, keeping up appearances with Penny and the rest of my friends, sort of (maybe) starting to date Connor Dimeo, which is wild, all while making sure nothing from the real, 3D part of my life ever touched the part where I spend every night playing a team-based, multiplayer shooter with a bunch of people I’ve never met. Team Fury doesn’t know who I am in real life. And if anyone who actually knows me found out aboutGLO. . .
It’s going to be okay. It has to be, so it’s going to be. I’m only jumbled up because it’s Monday, I was up way too late getting my butt kicked in practice matches with Fury, and I haven’t shaken the jittery feeling that comes when I play too long and start seeing hit counts and usernames floating around whenever I close my eyes. I was so off my game last night that Byunki sent me a DM asking if I’d been practicing with Pharaoh outside of team scrimmages, which I absolutely have been but not as much as I have in previous weeks. He could tell, and he told me to shape the hell up via DM:
Fury isn’t about excuses. Fury is about winning. If you’re not going to win, you don’t belong on Fury.
“Yes, sir. Loud and clear, sir. Let me just go scream into a pillow real quick, and I’ll be back with those insanely difficult crossbow ranged kills you requested, sir.”
I did not say that in response to Byunki’s DM. I am saying it now, out loud to myself while finishing my makeup in the mirror of my car. Not while I’m driving. I don’t have a death wish; I just need a few minutes to get my face and/or life together before I have to endure another day at school. The student parking lot is good for that. Everyone’s already inside, and I have first period free today. No one’s going to bug me here. I breathe in. I breathe out. I scratch a tiny crumb of mascara off my eyelid with the tip of my fingernail. Everyone has a process.
Looking at my reflection, I can see my concealer is doing god’s work on the dark circles under my eyes. By god, I mean Rihanna. The Fenty was a gift from my mom, who handed it to me before I left for school this morning. She didn’t have to tell me why. I looked tired and have been looking tired since I joined Fury.
“Just a tap; blend it over your cheekbone so they don’t see the work,” she said twenty minutes ago or every day of my sixteen years on Earth. “They only get to see the results.”
“Only the results,” I agree quietly in my car as I stare at those results in the mirror. Cat eye, thickened lashes, everything on my exhausted brown face cranked a notch and a half above normal. Hiding the struggle is what I do best. “Come on, Emilia,” I mutter when I finally feel ready to face the day, “let’s get this bread.”
“Who ya talking to?” Sweet Christmas, I was so in my head that I didn’t even notice Connor pulling into the parking space behind me. His windows are rolled down, and he’s using his soccer captain voice to project through the glass of my very closed door.
Conner used to park a lot farther away. He bribed another junior to switch spots with him and acts like he made a great sacrifice, saying nothing of the part where I didn’t ask him to do that for me. It’s clear that his love language is being directly in my face as much as possible, whereas mine is something I’ve yet to discover.
“Hey! No one!” I shout back. The curtain rises on today’s performance. I get out of the car and meet him out in the lot.
