Speaking of things I’ve neglected, there’s the whole mystery here of my dad and this ancient video game. I’ve been so invested in everything going on with D1V that I completely forgot about...well, whatever this is.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, his eyes widening.
“The computer was frozen the other day when I was in here,” I tell him. “The screen was locked on some old-looking fantasy game. Looked kind of like Diablo, only older. Are you...are you playing something?”
“Me? What? No,” he insists. “Come on, this thing can barely run Microsoft Word, never mind a video game. Maybe Solitaire.”
“Hmm.” I eye him suspiciously, totally not believing him. I make a mental note to check the computer later, maybe when I get back from the ManaPunk meeting. If he’s playing something, I want to know what it is. And why he’d hide it.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask.
“Seeing a patient.” He glances back toward the exam rooms and catches sight of the Post-it in my hand. “When does she have you on for?”
“Ugh,” I groan. “Morning through the afternoon. I’m supposed to—”
“I’ll cover for you. I’ve got this,” he interrupts before I can launch into what the ManaPunk meeting is about today.
I blink in surprise. “Are you sure? Mom might get mad.”
“She won’t. I’ll talk to her.”
A grin spreads across my face. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime.” He smiles back, but his eyes keep flitting to the computer. “You can go. It’s okay.”
“Alright, alright, I’m going.” I try not to laugh as I walk back into the house. It’s got to be that old game, but why hide it? Especially from me? Seriously, I don’t see the point. I wonder if Mom knows he’s playing some archaic RPG on the office computer, and the thought of her reaction makes me chuckle.
As I make my way back upstairs to grab my pack and laptop, my phone starts buzzing. It’s Ryan calling, which is odd—he usually just texts me.
I answer it. “Hey,” Ryan says, hanging on the vowel. “You coming to the meeting?”
“Yeah, of course, just getting ready to leave now.”
“Did you, um...read the blogs at all today?”
“No, why?” I ask curiously. “What’s up?”
“You might want to get caught up on the way here.”
* * *
“It’s all so terrible,” Ryan says, staring at his phone.
“Have you ever been to Quarter Slice Crisis?” I ask, looking down at mine. I find that I’m straining to hear him over the morning rush at Autofocus Café. I still can’t believe Laura picked this damn place—the line to order is so long that I’m convinced the meeting will be over before we can get any caffeine.
“A few times. The pizza there is garbage.” Ryan sticks his tongue out and makes a disgusted noise. “Alberto took me there on a date once, when we hopped a BoltBus out of town for the day. ‘He likes video games, he’ll like this!’ So sweet.”
The news article I’m reading on Kotaku is like something out of a nightmare, and so is the piece Ryan found on Giant Bomb, both complete with a video that I can’t believe anyone would think is a good idea to share. There’s D1V, the first time I’ve seen her in an actual, physical space and not just on a stream or as a thumbnail on social media. It’s also the first time I’ve realized that her profile photos are super photoshopped, in a way that would make it hard to recognize her, though I suppose if you watch her videos, it doesn’t really matter. This is her, in real life. Moving and talking and being a person.
And it’s devastating.
It’s her and Rebekah, the girl who does the live streams with her, trying to get away from some guy by an arcade machine. The guy grabs D1V, she slaps him, and then she bolts out the door with Rebekah. The dudes pursue, the person holding the camera running down the street behind the guys, the footage jostling about, like something out of one of those found-footage horror movies. But it’s so much worse than watching a movie like Cloverfield or Chronicle. Because it’s real.
There’s a bit more in the article about the campus police getting involved, at some college in Hoboken, and how Rebekah had been the subject of an assault a year ago, with a ton of links branching out to other stories. Stories about the boys on campus still being there, Rebekah moving away, lawsuits that are pending. I open a few and then quickly shut them, feeling like I’m invading her privacy. I only know Rebekah from the Internet—as an avatar on social media, barely recognizable. It feels wrong to know so much about her personal life in just a few clicks, with the big takeaway being the lack of consequences for those involved.
Like I said, a nightmare.
I tap away from the news on my phone and load up the game’s chat app, checking out my friends list to see if D1V is signed on. She’s there, currently exploring in Reclaim the Sun.
“Should I message her?” I ask Ryan, staring at my phone. “She...hasn’t been answering me lately.”
“Can you blame her? Come on, man, she probably needs space,” he says. I glance at him, and he’s staring down at my phone, a quizzical look on his face. We take a few steps forward in the line, the cashier looming. “I mean, what are you going to say?” He looks up at me. “What can you even do right now?”
“Try to be a friend, you know?” I shrug. “If something awful like that happened to me, I’d want to hear from people who care about me. I think?”
“Sooo, you care about her?” Ryan asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Well, I mean, we’ve gamed together a few times now. Chatted a bit,” I say, feeling a little heat flush to my cheeks. “I like to think we’re becoming friends.”
“Alright,” he says. “Just...just don’t do that thing.”
“What thing?” I ask.
“That thing,” he presses. “The whole ‘I’m going to be the nice guy who swoops in and saves the day, maybe then she’ll like me later!’ thing.”
“Oh, come on, you know me better than that!” I exclaim. “That’s exactly what happened at that arcade. That guy gave her a quarter and then expected her to go out with him or something. That’s not my style.”
“Okay, okay,” Ryan says, raising his hands in surrender. “I just had to make sure.”
My eyes drift back to my friends list, to her icon there in the app, the green dot telling me that she’s online.