“Any threats that have been more direct? From what I gathered, that pizza-place incident was more happenstance than planned,” Detective Watts says, arching an eyebrow. “Anyone coming here, to your apartment? Any doxing, is basically what I’m asking here. People pushing your address, your personal information, out into public forums?”
The email and the photo of my apartment flash into my mind again, and my heart pounds. The coldness of it all.
Leave. You aren’t welcome here.
It would be easy to say “yes.” To show her the photo. The anonymous email address it came from, that maybe she and her team could trace.
But that would mean more news articles. More people knowing who I am, and likely finding out where I live. We’d have to move, just when Mom is almost done with her classes. Plus, Rebekah and my few friends are here, even though it’s the summer and I’m not really seeing most of them right now. I want to hit reset at the community college, and help my mom start a better life. One without my father. A life that belongs to her for once. To us.
I can’t let some anonymous troll on the Internet rip all that away from me. And it’s not really doxing yet—is it? It was just a photo. They didn’t post it anywhere.
But even as these thoughts run through my mind, as I try to rationalize them in some way, I know I’m just lying to myself. There’s this voice telling me to just let it all out, to not be that person who hides and is afraid, but it’s hard to be brave when there’s so much at stake.
“No,” I lie, the word feeling foul and wrong in my mouth. “We get a lot of awful messages on social media, and sometimes through email, but that’s really it. I know there are some bloggers writing things and YouTubers making videos, but I avoid them if I can help it. And that guy who recognized me at Quarter Slice, of course.”
“Okay, okay,” the detective says, writing something down in her little notepad. She looks up at me and back down at the pad, then at me again. “Are you sure there have been no threats made to you here at home? With the incident at the pizza place, and the news articles... I worry that people will have an easier time triangulating where you live.”
“I’m sure,” I insist, trying to look right at her. Maintain eye contact. Don’t dart around the room. I feel my hands getting sweaty against my legs.
“And this is the first time you’ve been caught on camera, in person?” she presses. “Outside of your videos, I mean.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I say. “We’ve never done any events or anything. We were hoping to make an appearance at GamesCon later in the summer, but... I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
“GamesCon?” she asks.
“It’s like Comic-Con, or those book conventions, but just for video games. They go on all around the country, and the New York City event is just a few weeks away.” I sigh, remembering Rebekah’s excitement when she talked about those pins and patches. “We’re supposed to set up a table, and I’m gonna do this panel...” I shake my head in frustration.
“Hey.” Detective Watts reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, her grip strong and sure. “It’s going to be okay. We’re not going to let them win. You’ll be able to do your panel. We’ll think of something.”
She exhales sharply and stands up, pulling her badge back out, revealing some business cards tucked away inside the folds of the wallet-like flap. “If anything—and I mean anything—else happens,” she says, handing me a card, “you call me, you hear me? Like I said, a lot of the harassment in this region seems to be coming from the campus and the surrounding area. And those boys at the pizza place, when we find them, are potentially facing criminal charges for what they did to you and Rebekah, if I have my way—”
“Wait,” I say, the image of that Brian guy flashing into my mind, with his burger T-shirt. “There was this one guy—”
“Brian?” Detective Watts asks, pulling out her notebook again. “Yes, the precinct told me about him, from your statements. He’ll be fine, I suppose.”
She shrugs and makes her way toward the door. I follow her down the stairs of my apartment building to the outside, where she stops for a moment and turns around, sliding on a pair of sunglasses like a badass cop in a movie.
“In my opinion, if you associate with trash, you should get thrown out with the rest of the garbage.”
Reclaim the Sun: Chat Application
AARON: Hey! How’s it going over there?
AARON: D1V?
AARON: Hey I know things are rough, but I’m around if you want to chat.
AARON: Or blow up some things in the game.
AARON: Or both!
AARON: Just saying.
9
AARON
The calendar in the kitchen feels like it’s glaring at me. There, with a Post-it note on today’s date, written in my mom’s messy doctor handwriting, is a message that seals my fate for the day.
Aaron, Office, Morning–Afternoon.
Today’s the day we’re supposed to be meeting across town, at that pretentious café Laura picked, to really dig into the illustrations with Jason. I need to be there for Ryan, and my mom knows this. She has to—this video game gig is literally the only thing of note that I’ve been doing this summer, besides playing games with D1V in Reclaim the Sun, which I’ve neglected to mention to my parents. Mom doesn’t even get why I want to make games, so she’s certainly not going to understand the thrill of playing them with a famous streaming star.
And yet, here we are.
“Goddamn it,” I grumble, snatching the Post-it off the calendar. I hustle my way around to the side entrance that leads into the practice and swing the door open, only to catch my dad hurriedly trying to cover something up on the computer.
“Aar-Aaron!” he stammers, making quick work of something on the screen. I walk toward him, trying to get a glimpse of whatever he’s fussing with. “I didn’t know you were on the schedule.”
“Yeah, I was surprised, too...” I trail off, gesturing to the computer. “What’s, um, what’s going on over there?”
“Oh nothing,” he says brightly, shaking the mouse, the screen black. “Trying to get this darn thing to unfreeze.” He laughs nervously, in a way that makes him sound decades younger. He manually shuts the computer off. “Maybe that’ll do it. Reset the beast. Your mother really needs to replace this thing, am I right?”
“Dad, why are you acting so weird?” I ask, reaching over the desk and turning the PC on again, the old switch making a snapping noise as it clicks back. “Does it have to do with that...that medieval game?”