Interlude: Outside
The other three players arrived together, keeping oddly silent, as if they could all feel the tension, too. David stared at Melanie, Scott, and Tyrone as they entered in one group; the back of his mind kept imagining ways that they had banded together against him. Gamearth had forced them into it. He narrowed his eyes, but Tyrone stepped into the front hallway, grinning as he shucked his damp jacket and laid it on the bench.
“I got it! I passed.”
David looked back at him, completely confused. “What are you talking about?”
“My driver’s license! I passed, just on Friday. I borrowed my dad’s car and picked up Scott and Mel.”
Melanie stood beside Scott. In her hands she held the large wooden map of Gamearth, wrapped in plastic to protect it from the drizzle. Her knuckles were white from her tight grip, as if she thought the map might be in danger.
“Good for you,” David said to him.
“Tyrone kept babbling about it all the way over here,” Scott said. He used the corner of his shirt to wipe the raindrops from his glasses. Melanie mumbled something and went straight into the family room, where she laid the map on the carpet. Her eyes were bright as she unwrapped the wet plastic and stared at the colorful patterns of Gamearth.
It looked as if a truck had run over it. Black stains showed the explosions of the great battle from the previous week, when Melanie’s golem-weapon named Journeyman, as well as Gamearth’s own Earthspirits and Deathspirits, had destroyed David’s greatest creation, Scartaris. Gamearth’s destructive power was plain for anyone to see, its ability to strike back at the outside world.
But the map also showed cracks and splits, jagged splinters at the edges. A few of the hexagonal segments of terrain split loose, like tiles in a mosaic—which was impossible, since they were merely a pattern painted on a smooth surface of wood.
David stood over the map, and Melanie pointedly refused to look at him. He felt sullen, afraid to wait and afraid to move on. As if mechanically, he went into the kitchen and brought out the bags of chips he had opened. Standing beside the stove island, he poured glasses of soda without asking what anyone wanted.
All their conversation felt forced. Everybody seemed as uneasy as he was, except for Tyrone.
Tyrone went back outside to his car, leaving the front door open. David felt a cold gust of wind and stared, annoyed. But Tyrone reappeared, holding a foil-wrapped platter.
“Wait until you guys taste this one! My masterpiece, I think. It’s got that imitation crab stuff, hot mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and sour cream. Goes great on those wheat crackers.”
“You sound like a commercial, Tyrone,” Scott muttered.
Tyrone didn’t seem to know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, so he changed the subject. “Okay, here’s the joke for this week. What goes ‘Ha! Ha! Ha … Thump!’?”
David set down another bowl of chips.
“Oh, brother, Tyrone—”
He grinned. “A man laughing his head off!”
Melanie sat cross-legged on the carpet beside her map, holding her soda in one hand. The firelight danced across the room. David left the lights on in the kitchen, but the fire was the only illumination in the family room. It seemed appropriate to play in the firelight.
Melanie tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and drew a deep breath. She looked at David with a petulant expression. “We all dreamed again this week, David. We talked about it in the car. You must have, too.”
“Every night,” Tyrone said. “Better than watching movies.”
“Tyrone, you’re such a dweeb,” Scott said, scowling. “This is real! Start taking it seriously. Even I remembered the dreams this time, and I never have dreams.”
David bristled. He spoke in a low and serious voice. “No, Scott, this is not real. All of you, can’t you understand? It’s just a game—we made it up! It’s not supposed to be real! And when a game goes beyond that, it gets dangerous. It’s time to stop.” He stifled an exasperated laugh. “You should look at yourselves. You guys are like puppets, pawns!”
Tyrone squatted on the floor and dumped their dice out of the suede pouch. Glittering different colors, they fell to the carpet, showing various numbers. Two of them fell next to the wooden game map.
“Well, I’m anxious to see how it all turns out,” Tyrone said. “This has been the absolute most intense game I ever imagined! My parents sure yelled at me for what happened to the kitchen table last week, though. They still can’t figure out what we did.”
David scowled; he could have guessed how Tyrone would react. In fact, after their years of playing together, the four of them had grown so close that they all knew how each other would react. They all knew the world of Gamearth and its characters and the rules of the Game inside and out. That was how they could continue playing with their own unorthodox methods, enjoying their adventures without any godlike game-master arbitrating their moves. Each of them watched over certain sections of the map. It was a strange system, developed for their own group … for a very unusual fantasy world.
A fantasy world that was coming alive.
David decided to remain silent, instead of voicing the same old arguments, the same objections. Gamearth had too great a hold on the others, and David would never convince them. Not by arguing.
He would have to use the same tricks Melanie used. He could come up with his own twists in the rules. It was time to play dirty.
He would win the Game in his own way.
***