Page 10 of How We Play the Game
Ivan laughs. That wasn’t supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be a threat.
“Besides,” I continue. If I’m going to talk to him, I may as well make it hurt a little. “You would know all about betraying someone and leaving them to die, right?”
“I—” He doesn’t know what to say to that. Point to Zora! If I give him credit for somehow getting me talking, the score is 1–1, and I can work with that.
We’ve reached the bottom of the steps. Ivan shoots a glare at me and wordlessly breaks his stride to head center stage, where Brian Juno himself greets him with a high five. I cannot ignore the stab of jealousy that shoots through my chest, but I’ll unpack that later. Here is when I get my first good look at the full roster of the academy.
Is it mostly white and Asian boys? Yes, but that’s to be expected. The next biggest demo is white girls. Also expected,girl gamers for the win, love it. The smallest group is my group: Other. Nonwhite people of all persuasions and three Black guys I spot chopping it up in the back. Honestly, it’s more diverse than I thought it was going to be. My brain attributes this to Brian being awesome, but then I remember everyone had to win to get here.
Then I double remember that’s not exactly the case. How much of this crowd did Brian engineer? How many were hand-picked instead of competitors? Come on, Zora. Enough. I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Ivan must have been a special case; there is no way Brian Juno manipulated the results for every match because that is deep, deep weirdo behavior.
“Over here!” The girl sitting a seat away from Cass waves to me. An Other, like me. She is cross-legged on the rolling chair set up at her desk. When I get closer, I can see her long black hair is tucked under her butt and she has the most perfect brown-skin contour I’ve ever seen on someone who wasn’t waltzing to a string quartet cover of a pop hit onBridgerton.
“Hi! I’m Kavi, she/her,” the girl says. I manage a wave while fighting the urge to turn around and see if Ivan is still talking to Brian. Isn’t it kind of unprofessional for Brian to single out a player like that on the first day? Most people who play favorites have the decency to hide it. But wait—instead of resenting Ivan, I should find out what he did to get in Brian’s good graces. If there’s room for one favorite, there’s room for another. I file this plan away in an accessible corner of my mind palace to visit later.
“I’m Zora,” I say. “Uh, she/her.”
“I’m Trieu,” the boy sitting next to Kavi offers. “He/him/they/whatever. You have very pretty eyes.”
I don’t know what to do with that, or any other compliment, really. Especially coming from Trieu. He is beautiful in the way the pictures people use to advertise video filters are beautiful; he is meticulous, decorated—a gold hoop through his lower lip, a barbell piercing his eyebrow, with masterful monolid eyeliner and blended streaks of starry highlighter accentuating his cheekbones. Basically he looks like he belongs in the character roster inGenshin Impact. I can’t stop looking at him. I get the feeling he knows that I can’t stop looking and is the opposite of bothered.
“And I’m Cassius,” Cass says and sarcastically holds his hand out for a shake. “Super great to meet you, and I think we should be best friends.” This time when I leave him hanging, it’s on purpose.
“Very cute, Cass,” I say, then clarify for Kavi and Trieu, “We know each other from Wizzcon.”
“That’s nice!” Kavi smiles and looks from me to Cass and back to me. “Wizzcon friends taking on the academy together. That’s a great angle!”
“Agree.” Trieu nods. “A solid hook to follow straight out the gate; I’m jelly.”
“What?” I look to Cass, who shrugs, and Kavi, who tilts her head at me like I’m a particularly challenging piece of modern art. “Who’s following what hook?”
“A hook,” Kavi reiterates. “To get people to watch you. Gotta get a gimmick.”
My blank face is all it takes to tell Kavi and Trieu they’re going to need to give me a little more detail than that.
“Like, I do makeup tutorials,” Trieu breaks through my confusion. “I do them based on the characters fromGLRor whenever new skins come out. I’ll do the look live, play as that character for the rest of the stream, and edit the tutorial into a short that I’ll post everywhere linking back to my channel. It’s going pretty good, though it sucks we have to start on new WiTch profiles. I’m gonna have to post so much to get my followers to migrate to the new handle.”
“Uh-huh.” I don’t know what else there is to say. I mean, that explains why Trieu’s makeup is on point, but also, what? He’s here because of makeup? Where’s the love of the game? The spirit of domination over one’s enemies?
“What about you?” Cass asks Kavi. “What’s your hook thing?”
Kavi looks thrilled to have been asked. She sits up straighter in her chair, her small body framed entirely by the broad back of what I now recognize as one of the most expensive gaming chairs on the market. There are buttons on the armrest, lights embedded around the edges … It has as much technology in its design as the computers themselves.
“I mostly do reviews, sometimes streaming, sometimes not. I do headsets, keyboards, mice, monitors, focus pills, smart bulbs, custom skincare, teeth-whitening blue lights, skin-firming red lights, hair and nail gummies, apps, aimbots, online therapy, alternative console controllers, and period underwear. As long as the company isn’t literally using slave labor or has one of those CEOs who gets weird about genocide on social media.”
“Or makes people hate themselves,” Trieu interjects.
“Or makes people hate themselves,” Kavi agrees.
“As far as standards go.” Cassius illustrates his thoughts with a firm thumbs-up while he spins slowly and smoothly in his chair. “Ten out of ten.”
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not,” I admit. It’s true and I can’t.
“Oh, I am.” Kavi nods solemnly. “All the money is actually from bank fraud, and I’m wanted in the state of Michigan.”
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.
