Playing Tyler (11 page)

No. Don't think so. I'm the only one standing outside the EMPLOYEES ONLY door in the long hall with the red carpet and the stupid bags of fake popcorn hanging from the walls. Shit. Well, alright.

Deep breath. Count to ten. I force my feet to move… slowly… across the carpet… slowly… one foot in front of the other… left… right… slowly… calmly… and then I open the door to theater number six.

The ad loop is up. Is she here? Can't see in the dark. Shit. Should have thought of that. How will she know where I am? Will she even want to?

Scanning the crowd. Damn there are a lot of goths here. Them and nerds. Well, I guess that's who comes to the midnight showing of anime flicks. Where is SlayerGrrl, though? Where is Ani?

I can't decide which name I like better. SlayerGrrl makes her sound invincible, like some force of nature that can blow you over and just carry you off. I like that. I like everything about that.

Ani sounds like something, sweet, something breakable, something precious. Something you want to hold and protect and whisper things to. Something to take care of and worship all at once. I like that, too.

My foot sticks and I pull it up. Stupid gum. Where is she? My eyes go back to the crowd. Goth, loser, nerd, nerd, fat guy, girl, bad hair.

Bad hair? That's the guy she was with. Next to him is the girl and next to her… SlayerGrrl. She's sitting two rows up from the center divide, talking to the girl with the long frizzy hair.

Steady. Now where do I sit? Behind her, in front? I didn't think about this part. Someplace close to the door, probably. In case I have to make a quick exit.

OK, well, next to the door. Pulling the hood up over my head, I try and hear, try and listen in to her conversation. I get nothing. Nothing at all. I press my back into the chair, hard, trying to feel, digging my feet hard into the cement floor. Shaking. Have to move, have to hear, have to wait.

First there's an ad for some car dealership. A photo of some guy in a nice shirt and pants standing in a parking lot full of nice cars, smiling. With balloons. There are always balloons in those ads. Wonder why that is. Then a picture of a local restaurant, trying to sell me steak. Does look good, though. Damn, I'm hungry, should have eaten something. Should have waited in line for that popcorn, at least.

What the hell is taking so long? Heart nipping at my ears. Shake shake shake, my foot can't go fast enough. I grip the armrests. What if they don't have time before the movie? What if they don't show it? Shake, shake, shake.

Then there it is. A big white screen. Big plain black letters:

SLAYERGRRL: WILL YOU SIT WITHE M? –TY

Shit! Fucking typos are you serious?! I am such a freaking loser. My foot goes ballistic and I stomp it into the floor. This is totally embarrassing. Now she's gonna laugh, gonna leave and I'm gonna get caught on some surveillance camera and have to have Mom bail me out of jail and I couldn't even spell the damn thing right this is such a freaking nightmare.

I can't stay. I grind my boots into the floor and leap out of my chair. I walk. Quickly. Out of the theater. People could be talking, they could be totally silent and I wouldn't know I just have to leave just have to go have to get out of here I never should have come this was a terrible idea.

I don't look at the red carpet, I don't look at the ticket guy pulling the sack of trash out of the can, I don't look at the big annoying bag of fake popcorn glued to the wall; I just look at the sign over the big double doors at the end of the hall that says EXIT. Throwing my shoulder into the door, I push my way through, feeling the cold air hit me like an aluminum bat in the face.

Doubling over, I wait. Wait until my stomach unclenches, until I can breathe again.

“Tyler?”

Great, now I'm hallucinating. The voice is gentle and sweet and edgy and
hers
.

“Tyler,” she says again, and I feel pressure on my shoulder, I look up. Up into her sweet heart-like face and those pouty lips curving upward and her eyes, her eyes are like a whole other world. I stand up straighter. I should look at the ground or something, keep my cool, but I can't break myself away from those eyes. “How am I supposed to sit with you if you run out of the theater?”

I open my mouth. Words should come out of it. But they don't. My head races. She left. She's here. With me. Now. There is no re-entry once you leave. And now she's in the alley. The alley that's cold and full of boxes and overflowing dumpsters that smell like trash and old popcorn. What do I do? I should say something, at least. I lick my lips. Brain just not connecting with my mouth. Think, think, think. I shove my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt, hard. Still, nothing. She's waiting. The curiosity in her eyes dimming… shit… I have to do something…

Her face sinks. She turns, she's gonna walk back into the theater.

“No!” I get out. Somehow. She can't leave. I grab her hand. It's soft and warm and… tiny. Delicate. Hot, hot, hot. Say something smart, Ty, smooth. “I'm hungry.”

I
suck
at this.

She just stares. One eyebrow raises slightly, making the eyeshadow she's wearing catch the exit lights and sparkle. She's so pretty. She's standing there, but she's not leaving, which is good. I hope.

“Wanna get something to eat, maybe?” My words have a hell of a time getting out of my pinched throat. Please say yes please say yes ditch your friends and come with me and just eat just talk just sit…

She shrugs her shoulders, her breath frosting in the air, sparkling like glass. She looks like something magical. Like an angel. “OK.”

 

It's after midnight and Books & Brew smells like people and coffee and dust, sounds like electronic jazz and hipsters pulling their cooler-than-thous, and looks like rows and rows of used books in lots of different languages polka-dotted with clusters of small tables and folding chairs. Tons and tons and tons of people. Only late-night café around. Don't freak, Ty. Relax, you can do this. She's here, right? But the noise and the pictures of old writers and musicians and three billion bulletin boards and the noise hit me old-school information-overload style and I look over at her. Her dark brown eyes roll over the three hundred names for caffeine and sugar scrawled in chalk on the board behind the counter. What does she drink? Is she old enough to like coffee? That's stupid. She's in college. I hope she doesn't see any friends here and ditch me.

My eyes run over the people at the tables. Yalies, a lot of them, I bet. Pulling that cooler and smarter and richer routine on the older after-theater crowd.

I swipe the sweat off the top of my forehead. I don't belong here. I can't freaking pass Math and if she sees somebody she knows and talks to them they are going to know that I'm a–

“So, what do you want?” Her eyes are wide and her brow is raised and this is probably not the first time she's asked me.

My eyes rise to the board. “A large caramel macchiato.”

Her brown eyes get even wider, and her sweet cherry of a mouth twists up at the corner. “That's like…”

Oh shit. Girly. It's girly, isn't it? That much sugar, that much milk. Shit. I should have asked for just a black coffee. Black coffee is plain, manly. Tastes like piss. But manly.

“That…” She pauses again and my throat clenches, waiting. “That sounds good, you know? I haven't had a caramel macchiato in a while.”

Thank you, God. “Why?”

She looks at her feet, then over at the board again, not at me, not at my eyes, back down at her feet. “Julie… my sister… she's really weight-conscious. We always get iced skim lattes.”

“She fat?” I ask. She's so close, next to me in line. She smells sweet and spicy, like not hippie spicy, but something darker, something different.

“No.”

“Then why does she care?” My fingers ache. Reaching a little, wanting to hold her hand, to run my fingers up her arm and wrap around the back of her shoulders and hold her.

“I don't know, it's easy to gain weight and…” Her voice drifts off, like she's hearing herself and not liking the sound. “We're from California.”

Like that explains everything. Girls are weird. I look down her body, fitted jacket, tight jeans, she's real thin. Not like scary thin, but thin. I say, “You should try one, you'd look good with a few extra pounds.”

Her face looks like I stung her. Shit. My face heats up, burns. So many books. Can't one just like fall on my head and put me out of my misery? Please? Her hand is so close, hanging by her side.

“Two large caramel macchiatos, please.” Her voice sounds strong. Lifted. Like a rocket. Strong and excited and makes my stomach challenge gravity.

“And a piece of cake,” I add. Just for good measure. I grab her hand, and pull her over to the other side of the bar.

She feels great. Soft and small and strong and absolutely perfect.

 

 

Ani

Is this good? He's holding my hand and my heart is out of control. This is bad, I mean good. I don't know. It feels good, but Mr Anderson. What if I'm wrong? What if Mr Anderson will care and will turn me in?

But here we are, here I am. With a boy. A real boy who is cute and actually isn't afraid to be seen with me, a boy who
wants
to be here with me. This is crazy. Julie will never, ever believe me when I tell her. My heart jumps just thinking about it. Even though I know that I shouldn't care, should just leave, I can't. He looks at me like I am someone worth being seen. And that's something worth hanging around for, even if Rick doesn't like it. It deserves a coffee and a chance, anyway.

“Wanna sit?” he asks as he drops my hand to grab the coffees and cake. We weave our way through the crowds to a table sandwiched between the brick wall punctured by pots full of ferns and a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. The glass picks up Tyler's reflection as we sit, and I accidentally hit the guy behind me when I pull out my chair.

Tyler sits, his muscular legs stretched out beneath the table. He's so hot; long, light brown hair hanging down to the base of his chin, and his features look like he might be part-Cherokee or something. He's certainly built more like a warrior than a gamer. I could just sit here and stare at him. He doesn't even have to talk, really. And wouldn't that be an easy way to avoid running into trouble with Mr Anderson? Just sit here and admire the boy who thinks I'm not fat enough of all things.

His eyes are everywhere at once, like he's scanning for signals, patterns. “So, Ani…” he starts, voice breaking, knee bobbing up and down, making the table shake. “Tell me what it was like to school ILG.”

His smile is slight, addictive, heat slides from my head down… lower and my shoulders relax. Well, isn't he just the smartest boy ever? Going right for my sweet spot. How does he do that? See right through the things that no one else can manage to get past. I sigh, take a sip of my drink, enjoying the decadence of it, wondering if this is why Julie was always telling me to date, to take one of those geeks from programming and drag him out to dances, to the prom. I look into his dark eyes and my heart short-circuits. “Great, I guess, the same that it did for you the year after I did it.”

“Nah, it's not the same, you were the first to do it solo, and you're a girl.”

“What does being a girl have to do with anything?”

“Everything. Guys can be dicks, you know, I know the way they talked to you. You knew the shit the crowd was saying, and you just kept winning, like you didn't even hear.”

“I didn't hear.” I knew, of course. “My sister would tell me what the crowd would say when I was plugged in, but I had them all tuned out. I just wanted to play, you know?”

“You were amazing.” He sips his coffee and stares at me, smile reaching his eyes and lingering there. “Still are, and now you're designing the games. It's unbelievable, I mean, most people will complain when they play games and all, this should be faster or the graphics should be sharper, but most of them have no idea how to make them faster, clearer, much less design
World of Fire
. Now a whole sim program? It's crazy.”

“Not so crazy.”

“It is, though, it's awesome.” He drops his gaze back to the table, which is moving a little bit because his legs are shaking beneath it. “How did you get started designing the games?”

“My Math teacher, Ms Bellerwin.” My throat feels heavy as I think of her. “She was the best. She went to MIT, and she ran the computer lab in my middle school. I'd hang out there after school to get my homework done, and after a while she started showing me how to do things. It was great, she was always taking the things apart and rebuilding them, plugging in and typing code. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, you know? Whenever she would put something back together, or spend a few hours working, you could see the improvements right away, she'd have made something new, or something old better. It was like magic. So I started helping her out. When I went over to the high school, I used to go back and help her run the computer club.”

“She must be really proud now, with Yale and all.” His leg is moving and he leans back in his chair, like he's trying to keep his leg under control by pushing it into the floor for leverage. “Not to mention your parents. They must be telling all their friends about their kid in the Ivy League.”

“I guess.” It hurts to fill my lungs, but I try. “My mom's not happy with anything I do. She's not really happy with anyone. Dad was deployed, sent to Afghanistan, now he's in jail for assault. He got pulled over for a seatbelt check one night, he” – the words are like lead leaving my tongue, falling into the unknown – “got confused, flashed back or something and he attacked the officers. Mom had thrown him out two nights before, so he was really upset.” My eyes sting and before I know it the pools of tears weigh down my lashes. It's not Dad's fault; he's sick, he came back from Afghanistan sick and they don't help him. He spent two years away from his family to serve in the war and nobody cares, they just leave him in jail to rot.