Scott Leddy
1
Mom always said "High school is like tetris. Once you fit in, you disappear.”
Well, she used to always say that, among other things. I assume there is some sort of class parents take, where they learn 1,001 Sayings That Are Guaranteed Not Only To Annoy Your Kids, But Prove Just How Out Of Touch You Are. And sure enough her little sayings annoyed me, and sure enough they made me feel like she just didn’t understand me or understand at all what it meant to be me. She doesn’t say things like that to me anymore. She barely talks to me at all now, actually. It’s like she barely knows I exist. When dad died it was like I lost her too. She stopped being my protector, my friend, she stopped by my mother at all. She just...drifted, burrowing herself into work, into bottles of Cabernet, into Brad’s arms.
I slam on my alarm clock to pre-empt its shrill cry. Sleep, true restful sleep, is a rare occurrence for me, and as a side effect I find myself waking up fifteen minutes before the clock buzzes, like clockwork, every day. I relish the fleeting half-moment of waking, where I am blank, where I can just be, before I remember who I am, what has happened to me, what is surely still to come. But as unrelenting and unstoppable as death and taxes, the memories reload and flood through me and relieve me of the blissful, bare numbness.
Cold light squirms its way through drawn blinds as my bare feet hit the frigid hardwood floor. The heater is too expensive to run, I’m told, yet Brad saw no problem using my dad’s health insurance money to buy himself a noisy new F-150.
I stretch and try to mentally prepare myself for the day, frowning at the carefree dust-motes dancing in the shafts of pale morning light. It’s like they’re taunting me. They live in the moments before waking while I’m shackled here with the life I had no choice in, want no part in. I look around the rest of my room, and it fills me with some small sense of pride. Despite the tumult churning around me, my room is my sanctuary and I’ve worked hard to get everything just right. Despite the rogue dust-motes, I strive hard to make sure every surface, even under the bed, is free of debris.
“Clean room, clean mind.” That was another one of mom’s. Another of her sayings, another of her lies.
My bed, too small for my rapidly growing body (almost four inches in this year alone) and a little too stiff, fits into one corner across from my closet, where my shirts are organized according to sleeve length, then color. My dresser, in excellent condition save a few drawer-tracks that stick here and there, takes up the southernmost wall. Next to that is my desk, my sanctuary. The only thing of value I really have in this world is my computer.
It may not look like much, but every penny I’ve been able to save from working at Wellson’s Deli nights and weekends has gone to outfitting it to the best possible specifications. It boasts an Azus x97 motherboard, an Intel 4790k processor, and MSI 290x graphics card and a Corsair H100i cooling fan, all tucked pristinely into an Antec 1200 case.
It’s an impressive set-up, or “rig” as it's known in the gamer community, and anyone with an interest in gaming PC’s would certainly recognize such a fact.
Unfortunately for me, my rig has earned me neither respect of adoration from my peers in the real world. What it has earned me, however, is names like “loser”, “fag”, and “pussy.” And that’s just from my stepdad Brad. The kids at school call me worse. They’re far more inventive.
I find my gaze held by the reflective black screen of the monitor. The world of possibilities it holds. In a game I don’t have to be Erik Marten anymore. I can be anyone, an adventurer, a survivor, a hero. Someone to be respected, someone to be feared, someone to be loved. I feel like I can be someone deserving of all the good things in life.
I remember a few months ago, in a fit of despair and gloom, I made a post to such an effect on a popular gaming forum. My inbox was filled with generic, insincere words of encouragement, as I might have expected. However, one message stood out from the rest. It was from a gamer who went by the user handle Surtr. It was a name I immediately recognized from the forums, and his messages were always full of the kind of insight, wit, and maturity that had been missing from the people inhabiting my daily life since before I could remember. His message was simple, if not cryptic. It read: U and I are more alike than I thought. I am here if U want to speak.
After fighting off the anxiety that comes with making a connection with someone new, and messaged him back. We’ve been messaging back and forth for a few weeks now. What he said was true, and I felt like maybe, just maybe I had found a kindred spirit. A beacon in the vast, dark daunting ocean I often felt like I was drowning in. I hesitate to say I had made a friend. Though I don’t even know his real name. I don’t need to. There was a connection there, one that didn’t need to be acknowledged to be mutually accepted.
I want to log on and check-in with him, see how he is doing, see what’s new in his world, but I realize with a start that despite my early awakening, I am running behind and if I don’t get a move on, I’ll be late for school.
High school, at least for someone like me, is more treacherous a location than any dungeon, enemy fortress, or alien planet I might come across in one of my games. There there’s no restart button, no logging off, no getting away. As much as I want to, would love to, would even kill to, at school I can’t disappear.