Page 35 of Don't Hate the Player
“Your internet friends?” Jake’s dad had perked up for a moment when he imagined his son hanging out with “real” people, but hearing that Jake had instead been palling around with a group of weirdos from the world wide web deflated him once again.
“Yup.” Jake noted the change in his dad’s voice and responded as dispassionately as possible. He concentrated on the microwave buttons and punched them in one by one to stay calm. “The internet friends. We actually—”
That niggling feeling that he should tell the truth crawled up Jake’s spine again. Just because he was good at secrets didn’t mean he liked them. “We had a tournament. The game we play is doing a thing at that new arena. My team got past the first round. If we w—”
The sound of a fork dropping onto an empty plate stopped Jake from saying anything else. When he was younger, knowing his dad was angry with him made him want to crawl somewhere and hide, but after what happened last year, Jake found he could bear his father’s toothless disappointment better. What was he going to do, honestly? Blind Jake with his own projected expectations?
“So you played video games. You snuck out all Saturday and didn’t tell me where you were going because you went to play video games.”
Something Emilia said echoed in Jake’s head. “That’s the vibe.”
“When I was your age, I snuck out too, you know.”
There was no way to avoid the rest of the conversation, so Jake pulled his dinner out of the microwave and sat down across from his dad.Lay it on me, he thought.Nothing I haven’t heard before.
“We’d get into trouble. We’d hang out in someone’s backyard. This time of year, there were bonfires and girls. We playedrealsports.”
“Girls play video games too,” Jake said quietly. No way was he going to say anything else, though. Not about that girl.
“Those two on your ‘team’ you used to talk about? One of them isn—”
“Don’t. Stop it. You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jake was surprised by the ferocity in his own voice. He’d spent enough time talking to Kiki today to want to punch the next person who misgendered her, but he’d never raised his voice to his dad about it before.
Jake wasn’t the kind of person who defended himself even when he knew in the back of his mind he was right. There was always that voice telling him that he might be wrong or was too stuttery to say what he was thinking and should probably shut up for the sake of everyone who had to listen to him. It was the voice that made him preemptively call himself stupid before anyone else had the chance to lob it at him as an insult. When someone called him dumb, Jake had long ago realized it was easier to say “I know” than “I’m not.”
Emilia didn’t let him say that last night. She would have kicked him out of the car the next time he said he was stupid; he got that sort of energy from her. Maybe that was why he felt okay telling his dad to stand down.
After a tense silence, his dad spoke up again. “Fine. I’m . . . ? Two years ago h–she was different, right? I can’t keep up with all that.”
Jake had touched the metaphorical stove once and wondered what would happen if he tried it again.
“Try,” he said simply.
“Try a sport,” his dad replied, half joking. Jake did not get his tension-diffusing skills from that side of the family. “I would be more comfortable with this game thing if you were also putting yourself out there more. You can’t spend the rest of your life stuck behind a desk pressing buttons.”
Mr. Hooper’s job was literally sitting behind a desk pressing buttons. Jake was feeling brave tonight. Bringing that up was a level beyond brave. He decided, however, to avoid that option on the conversation tree.
“It’s different now, Dad,” he said. He could tell he was getting whiny, which his father never tolerated. “Lots of people playGLO. This tournament is a really big deal.”
“Will it bring your grades up? Will it get you into college so you can do something with your life? Jesus, will it get you a girl’s phone number so you can take her out?”
“Honestly, debatable.”
“What’s gotten into you?” his dad asked. He rose from the table to rinse his plate, not even looking at his son. “I’m just telling you the facts. Last year was hard. We both had to adjust. By now you should be . . .”
Jake got up then and dropped his plate in the sink. He knew what his dad was going to say, and it would be the end of the conversation. Be normal. Be a man. Be the kind of guy who crushed beer cans against his head at bonfires and married his high school sweetheart, only to have that marriage end in fire and flames when—
“. . . happier.”
Unexpected. Jake stood by the kitchen door quietly, still hoping he had time to slip away if this whole situation got any weirder. It didn’t seem like his dad had anything else to say. He was standing over the sink rinsing plates to put in the dishwasher. He looked the same as he’d looked ever since they moved to the apartment, since he started sleeping all weekend and relying on Jake to batch-cook meals for the week. Jake’s dad looked defeated. Checkmate: life.
“Okay, I’m gonna go,” Jake said.Be happy in my roomwas the unspoken retort he decided to keep to himself.
Jake tiptoed around the corner and down the hallway toward his room, not relaxing until the door was shut behind him and he settled back into his squeaky, creaky desk chair.
So that was terrible, he thought.What else did you expect?
Being an all-powerful healer inGLOwas Jake’s dearest fantasy. Pythia was venomous, sure, but when Jake played her character, he could fix anything. He could make people stronger whenever he wanted, and his friends depended on him to do just that. He was good at it. Jake could do that math. Whenever he unplugged his brain from the game, the reality of his tiny bedroom in the apartment he had no choice in moving to washed over him in a lukewarm wave that felt like absolutely nothing. His dad was depressed. His mom was far away. This was his life. He was an idiot.
