Page 43 of Don't Hate the Player
“I am, Mom.” My grades aren’t dipping any, thanks to my one-woman summer school program, but I’d be lying if the pressure from the tournament hasn’t been throwing me off with school, Connor, and my upcoming extracurriculars.
“What’s the rest of your week look like?” she asks. This is more than a check-in; this is a full status report. I clear my throat.
“Bio quiz tomorrow, and we’re wrappingGatsbyin English, so the test on that is next week. Calc is still basically going over precalc since it’s early. AP US History is still precolonial.”
Mom nods. “You have field hockey tomorrow too. And how’s the campaign going? I talked to Dad, and he said he’d be happy to make you two a website.”
“That’s okay,” I say too quickly. “Uh, Penny has our socials covered. Websites are a little millennial, you know? We’re doing a lot to keep the support up.”
“Sometimes a lot isn’t enough, Emilia,” Mom says. “You need to be the best, not just better if you’re going to stand out.” She pauses. “I don’t mind you dating Connor Dimeo as long as he doesn’t distract you from what’s important.”
“Oh, he won’t,” I snort before I remember who I’m talking to. “I mean, he gets it. He’s in most of my classes, so he knows the workload.”
“Are you still going to Penny’s for the campaign meeting on Saturday? Will he be there?”
Right, that’s this week’s excuse for the tournament. “I don’t think so. It’s kind of a whole-day thing, and he has other stuff to do.”
“Next week you should have Penny over here and invite Connor. I think your father wants to meet him.”
God, that would be a scene. I don’t think my dad ever needs to meet Connor for any reason. I may have told Connor I’d be his girlfriend to checkmate Audra, but I’ve been trying to backtrack on that since the ice cream incident on Monday. Just thinking about Jake’s face, knowing he heard me call Connor my boyfriend right after he humiliated him . . . ?it makes my chest clench up badly.
“Maybe!” I reply. “I should get back to my bio, though. Once I finish that and my position paper, I’ll head to bed.”
“Stay up as late as you need,” Mom agrees. “It’s a big year for you.”
I know. I know, I know, I know. “’Night, Mom.”
“Good night, Emilia.”
No rhythm is more familiar to me than the sound of my mom walking from my bedroom to hers at night. Down the hallway, up a small landing, the sound of the door to the master suite opening, a pause, and the same door closing with a muffled knocking noise. It’s the rhythm of my parents fully retreating into their world and leaving me a scant few hours to spend some time in mine.
The bio can wait, the position paper is basically done, and it’s not even midnight yet. I wait another few minutes to make sure neither of my parents feel like emerging for a glass of water and hold my pose next to my bed in case they do. It takes another few minutes until I’m fully in the clear.
Florence is still on in her cabinet, so all I have to do is switch the monitor cords and theGLOmain screen appears again. A green dot by my recent contacts list indicates that someone on my contacts is online. Is Ivan still practicing after Byunki let us go for the night? If he was, I can’t blame him. I’m about to do the same thing.
I click the list to see if he wants to play together but see his username logged off. The only person on my list currently playing is Jake. JHoops. Maybe, if I was careful . . .
Nah. Don’t do it. He probably thinks I’m a monster for the ice cream thing.
This is useless, I think to myself as I hover over his name in myGLOmailbox.I told him to leave me alone, and now I’m bothering him.The way he looked at me doesn’t matter. What he thinks of me is irrelevant.
He didn’t leave me any more notes after lunch on Monday. He didn’t have to, since his recon mission was complete, but I had sort of hoped that he might keep it up through the week. The surprise of it all made for a very exciting morning. I liked the idea that he was trying something fun for me. It’s exactly something I would like, and I didn’t even have to tell him that. He just did it.
That day was a lot more fun than the others in this week. On Tuesday I found a bunch of floppy rose petals crammed in my locker courtesy of Connor, and they stained one of my notebooks. Today it was confetti. Now that I’m thinking about Connor, I check my phone to see if he’s left me any texts while I was playing. Oh, yup. Five new messages, none of which I will check tonight. He can live with assuming I’m asleep. Or terrible. God, it would be nice if he just realized I’m the worst.
Now you sound like Jake, I think. It’s something he would say. I don’t want him to think he’s the worst. I should talk to him, get in quick and apologize before dipping out of his life forever.
When I click on Jake’s player profile I can see his most played characters (Pythia, two other healers, a DPS that got nerfed quickly after launch), his win/loss ratio, his ranking, guild association, and achievements. It’s a gold mine of information on Jake the player that fits perfectly with what I know about Jake the person.
I have to stop myself from scrolling down to look at more of his stats. After Unity’s healer-heavy performance in the first round, I know Byunki would kill to get a look at these numbers, but I’d have to be a jerk of titanic proportions to bring Jake into my inner circle one moment and betray him to Fury in the next.
Not handing it over is technically betraying Fury, I think. For the moment, Fury can suffer.
Hey, it’s Em, I tap into a DM.
A long pause from Jake’s side of the screen.
I wishGLOchat did the three-dot text thing. I never feel more alive than I do when those ellipses appear, then disappear, then appear again. It’s watching someone else’s mind work in real time. This message window gives me no such pleasure. After a minute, I peek up at Jake’s name on the profile window to make sure the green dot hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s there, just out of reach.
