Falling Through the World
We snuck away under sparkling twilight and ran down the dune back to Video Horizons. We crept past Command, who was pacing the building’s perimeter, slipped through the open door, and tiptoed down the dark, green corridor.
I followed Gravity to G-man’s office. She opened the desk drawer and rustled through it. “Sweeeeeet.” She jangled a set of keys.
“Wait,” I said. “Are we—”
“Stealing a car? Yep!”
“O”—I swallowed my terror—“kay!”
She sifted through another drawer. “Aha!” She held up a twenty and then ran down the staircase.
I waited for my heart to catch up. “Cool,” I said. “Awesome. This is awesome.” I took a deep breath, and then followed. Gravity didn’t so much as flinch at Conquer’s squeaking shoes echoing down the hallway, as if we couldn’t possibly be caught. She made me feel kinda invincible.
We passed the Hub.
We passed the Feed.
We passed the grate where Soup and I had discovered the side quest.
We stepped out into the parking lot with the Oldsmobile that had brought me and Zxzord four days earlier. Beside it was a brown Acura.
“Get in!” Gravity said, unlocking the door and hopping into the driver’s seat.
I climbed into the passenger seat and pinched my hands between my knees to keep them from trembling. The stale coffee smell didn’t help my anxiety.
“This is so exciting,” Gravity said, sliding the keys into the ignition.
“Yes,” I said, trying to feel as electric as she was. “It is.”
“Ugh, cheapo is almost out of gas,” she said, reading the meter.
“Well, he probably didn’t know we were gonna steal it,” I said.
Gravity gave me a cold look, and I tried to pretend like it had been a joke.
“Ha-ha,” I said.
“Oop!” Gravity ducked, and pulled me down by my sleeve just as I caught a glimpse of Command stepping into the light of the parking lot. His shadow passed across the speckled dust of the windshield. The parking brake jabbed into my ribs. I’m cool, I thought. I’m cool. I am a . . . cool guy who does cool things like steal cars.
Gravity peeked over the steering wheel. “Clear!”
She sat up and turned the ignition, and I tried not to panic as the engine struggled to life.
It finally turned over, and something awoke in me.
Adventure . . .
Maybe.
She put the car into gear and lightly accelerated out of the parking lot.
“Where are we going?” I asked, checking the side mirror for any sign of Command.
“We can crash at my aunt’s,” Gravity said, eyes on the road. “She’s the best. She’ll let us stay in her guest room for a while.”
Guest room. Singular. The thought calmed my anxiety.
Once we got onto the open road, Gravity stepped on the gas, rocketing us through the night, and sang in a spot-on Amy Winehouse impression. “They tried to make us go to V-hab, but we said, NO, NO, NO.”
“Ha-ha,” I said.
She swiveled the steering wheel, and we wiggled all over the road. I tried to rub the feeling back into my legs as I glanced out the back window, fully expecting to see swirling red-and-blue lights.
Gravity honked the horn, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do that,” I said. “Ha-ha.”
“Do you think this is the car that hit G-man?” she asked.
“What?” I said.
“You don’t know?” she said, wide-eyed. “G-man’s the dad who got run over by his son after he took his copy of Halo away. That’s why he started a facility for e-tards.”
Headlines flashed through my head. Moments of G-man adjusting his hip or discouraging violence in our activities or getting teary-eyed when talking about trying to improve the lives of players . . .
The images vanished as two cars came down the opposite side of the road. Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I knew it. They were cop cars. I almost had a heart attack as they passed us.
“Calm down, dude,” Gravity said, noticing my tension. “They’re going to look for that missing kid.” She swiveled the steering wheel some more. “Do you think this is the car, though? Oh my God, that would be hilarious.”
“Ha-ha. Would it?”
She clicked buttons on her door, and both of our windows rolled down. Wind whipped my hair.
What was this life I was beginning? A stolen car. The smell of desert night air. A beautiful girl in the driver’s seat. Everything was so alien. At least with Video Horizons, there were rules and guards and my dad knew exactly where I was. Now I truly was falling through the world. Which was great. Right? What did I have waiting for me at home besides a pissed-off dad, an exercise-obsessed stepmom, and an empty computer desk?
This was great.
We sailed through the night down the open highway.
“Farewell, e-tards!” Gravity called out the window.
Good-bye, Zxzord, I thought. Good-bye, Meeki. Good-bye, G-man. Good-bye, Soup. Good-bye, Silver Lady. Good-bye, Fezzik. Good-bye, Aurora.
Good riddance.
• • •
A fingernail ran up my arm.
“Wakey-wakey, hands off snakey,” Gravity sang.
The rushing road started to slow. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at thousands of colorful lights filling the sky. The car stopped and the engine cut.
“Where are we?” I said, yawning.
“Heaven,” Gravity said. “Just kidding. We’re at a casino.” She got out of the car.
I opened my door and stepped into a dusty parking lot. Towering above us was a giant cowgirl creakily kicking her neon boot. We were in the small gambling town Command and Conquer had driven me through on the way to Video Horizons. The night air was dry and cold. The stars were barely visible behind the casino lights. I felt lost.
Gravity looked bored or annoyed or something.
“Hey,” I said. “How about that hug?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh, at the car wash you said we could hug maybe.”
“Um, okay, sure,” Gravity said. She threw her arms around my neck and squeezed. There was a brief moment of her softness against my softness, but then she let go and skipped toward the kicking cowgirl. “Come on!”
“Where are we going?” I asked, stumbling after her.
She flapped G-man’s twenty back at me. “I’m gonna double this.”
“Gambling?” I said.
I wanted to ask if maybe possibly we needed that twenty for gas money. But I also only wanted to be awesome and hilarious on what seemed to be my first date.
“Don’t worry,” Gravity called back. “I’m real good.”
I knew enough about gambling to know being “real good” didn’t matter. It didn’t work like video games, based on skill level.
“What if you lose it all?”
She spun around and walked backward, giving me that delightful Gravity grin. “I won’t.”
“Oh, okay. Good.” I jogged and caught up to her. “Um, don’t you have to be twenty-one to gamble?”
She twirled forward and skipped away from me. “They only ID you if you win a whole bunch of money.”
“Isn’t that . . . kind of the idea?” I asked.
But she was already through the casino’s automatic doors, my voice drowned out by the dings and whoops of a thousand slot machines.
• • •
I found Gravity sitting at a blackjack table, feet giddily tapping the little stool. She already had gambling chips in front of her. I felt queasy. I ignored it. I’d been waiting for this moment for four days. I had beat V-hab and left all of those losers behind. This was going to be awesome.
The card dealer had a shimmery vest. I tried to look casual as I took the stool next to Gravity.
“This is exciting,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I’ve never actually—”
“Don’t sit next to me,” she whispered. “You have a baby face. Might give away the game.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” I got up and stood behind her.
I had a baby face? Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Gravity slid a red chip across the green felt into a yellow rectangle. Her hair smelled so good. Her neck looked so pretty. I really wanted to put my hand on her shoulder. But I wasn’t sure if that was part of the “game” or not. I really wasn’t sure about anything except that I was happy to finally be on my date. It wasn’t Mandrake’s, but it was still pretty romantic . . . if I ignored the smell of cigarettes and squinted until the nauseating twirly lights were all a blur.
The dealer dealt two cards to each player. Gravity made a little cave with her hand and peeked at her cards. I tried to see but couldn’t. She tapped the table. The dealer dealt her a card, faceup. A queen. Gravity looked at me and smiled.
“Yay!” I said, guessing a queen was a good thing. I squeezed her shoulder, then immediately let go.
I have to admit, I was surprised by Gravity’s skill. I watched her quadruple her money, schooling the blackjack table while sipping three free Long Island iced teas, which the waitress did not ID her for.
“Maybe we should stop now?” I said.
“How about I stop . . . ,” Gravity said as she pushed all her chips forward, “now?”
She won again.
“Yay,” I said.
Yep, I was surprised by Gravity’s skill. Almost as surprised as she was when all her chips were gone ten minutes later.
She downed the last of her fourth Long Island, and then I helped her stumble to a chair beneath a giant blue screen with big yellow numbers. Nearby, elderly people fished quarters out of plastic buckets and plunked them into whirling slot machines.
Lights swam across Gravity’s eyes. “Pretty.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.” I nodded approvingly at the hideous carpet, warbled dings, and dehydrated elderly smokers. “So, um . . . why don’t you tell me about yourself? Uh, what do you like to do when you’re not at video game rehab? Ha.”
“Drink,” she said.
“I see that,” I said. “Anything else?”
She gave an exaggerated shrug. “Sure!”
“O . . . kay.”
It was hard keeping a girl entertained on a date. She wasn’t laughing at anything I said like she had at the car wash. Was this how she really was? Or was it just the alcohol? I’d never so much as sipped a beer, so I wasn’t sure how to tell.
“It’s so funny that we both got committed to V-hab,” I said. “Not in, like, a universe way or anything.”
Gravity didn’t respond. Her head rocked slowly back and forth as if she could hear music that I could not. Oh God, what if she was realizing that I was as pathetic as Meeki and everyone at my high school thought I was? The longer Gravity didn’t laugh, the more my shoulders tensed.
“Oh, right, um,” I said. “Earlier in the Hub you were going to tell me why your parents sent you to Video Horizons.”
She rubbed her face, then let her arms flop into her lap. “Remember how I don’t have a phone?”
“Yeah!” I said. “I thought you were a Luddite! Ha-ha.”
“My parents took it away because I maxed out my mom’s credit card playing Candy Crush.” She threw her arms wide. “Whoopsy!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Whoopsy.”
My smile faded. My cheeks were sore from holding it so long. Not only was Candy Crush Casey’s favorite game, but my dad would have murdered me if I’d used his credit card without asking. Also, didn’t paying to win make gaming completely pointless?
Gravity tugged my collar down so hard, I thought she was going to rip it. “I. Want. Coooooofffffffeeeeeeeeeeee. Will you buy me Starbucks?” She kissed my cheek. “Please?” Kiss. “Please?” Kiss. “Please?”
I touched my cheek and took a moment to let those kisses sink in.
“Uh, I can’t. We don’t have any money. Remember?”
“Muh.” She pushed me away, disappointed.
“Sorry,” I said, even though I was thinking, Weren’t you the one who gambled it all away?
I scanned the casino. My head felt heavy. My stomach was in knots. Maybe I was hungry. I saw a big white banner that read BUFFET $12.99.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’m gonna try to score us a buffet.”
Gravity rubbed her face. “That’s not Starbucks.”
“Well, no . . . but they have bottomless coffee.”
She stuck out her tongue and let her head flop to the side.
“Don’t worry,” I said, leaping to my feet. “This is gonna be awesome. I got this.”
I strode down an aisle of slot machines, searching for kind faces. This was going to be awesome. This would be a story Gravity and I would tell for years to come. The night we went on our first date, and I dashingly got her a buffet with bottomless coffee.
I approached a woman at a lucky-three slot machine. Her plastic bucket was half-full of coins.
“Excuse me,” I said, clasping my hands together. “Could I possibly borrow a few quarters from you?”
She took a long drag of her cigarette and considered me. Then, exhaling smoke, she shook her head and pulled the slot machine’s handle.
Most of my encounters went something like that.
After approaching nearly every person in the casino before getting eyed by a security guard, I returned to Gravity, whose head had slumped to the side.
I counted my coins. “I didn’t get nearly enough.”
“Booooooo,” Gravity said into the armrest.
“Ha-ha.” I sat next to her.
Why was it so hard for me to have fun right then? Where was charming, sexy, hilarious, relaxed, car wash Jaxon? Man, casino chairs were hard and scratchy. My eyes were watering from all the cigarette smoke. I needed to get us out of there so we could go on a real date. But how? This dungeon was too high-level for me.
“We have no gas and no money,” I said. “What are we gonna do?”
“Maybe throw up?”
I helped Gravity outside for some fresh air. She collapsed onto the curb and let her head hang over the gutter. I stepped back, just in case she started puking.
“Seriously,” I said. “How are we supposed to get home?”
“You sound like my parents,” she said, cheek on the pavement. “They’re tight asses.”
I sat next to her head on the curb and pulled the coins out of my pocket. Four dollars and fifty cents. “This might be enough to get gas back to the city. Where does your aunt live? In the city?”
“She doesn’t,” she said.
“No, where does she live?”
No response. I cleared some hair that had found its way into her mouth. Was this how my mom had acted when she’d been drunk in front of my dad? Had I just taken Gravity away from exactly where she needed to be?
She rolled onto her back, so she was on the edge of the curb. She closed one eye and traced her finger across the starless sky. “I like people when they’re meteorites. It’s like they’re so pretty leaving their shiny dust across the sky. But then they land in front of you, and they’re not glowing anymore. They’re just rocks, and it’s, like, BLUHH.”
“Are you talking about me?” I asked.
From her horizontal position she grabbed my arm and shook it. “You were so much fun at the car wash. What happened?”
What had happened? I was on an adventure. A real adventure in a casino town, as brightly lit as Midgar, with a beautiful girl and barely any money. Hell, this was as exciting as it got.
And I was hating every second of it.
I jangled the handful of coins. “Maybe this is enough to get us back to V-hab.”
“No! No!”
Gravity pushed her feet against the concrete, forcing her head into my side.
“Ow!”
I stood up. She just lay there, eyes fluttering to a close.
I squatted in the gutter. “Come on. Let’s get you into the car.”
The second I touched her arm, she lashed out and pushed me away by the face. I fell backward, and sat hard on my ass.
“If you try to take me back there,” she yelled, “I’ll tear out your trachea!”
I sat on the asphalt, in shock. She was talking to me like I was . . . like I was Soup or something.
“You’ll tear out my trachea?” I said. “That’s extreme.”
“I am . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and made two tight fists. “Extreme.”
“Gravity, I’m not leaving a drunk girl at a casino.”
She lifted her head and scowled at me with one eye shut. “What the fuck did you just call me?”
“Uh . . .” Oh God, what had I just called her? “I just said, ‘Serena, I’m not going to leave—’ ”
“Why . . . are you . . . trying . . . to control me?” she screamed, banging her fists and feet on the concrete.
This drew a few looks from a couple entering the casino.
“I—I’m not,” I whispered. “You’re just really drunk.”
“No!” she screamed. “You think I’m gonna be all perfect . . . and then . . . and then fuck you!”
I deflated. This was not how my first date was supposed to go.
“I’m sorry, Serena,” I said.
“Bleeehhhhggggg.” She made that pukey sound again, and I took another step back. She scrunched her shirt in her fists. “You’re giving me a gross feeling in my stomach. That Asian chick was right. You suck. Suck my dick, dude.”
I stood up. I turned in a circle, searching the parking lot. It felt like the end of the world.
No. I could save this. I could still be the hero. Through the casino window I saw a glowing green-and-white sign with a double-tailed mermaid.
“How about Starbucks?” I said.
Serena stuck her fist into the air, triumphant. “Yessssssss!”
“Will you be okay here for a minute?”
She gurgled. “Someone’s gonna take advantage of me.”
“Um . . . okay.”
I bent over, threw her arm around my shoulder, and hauled her to her feet. The casino’s automatic doors whooshed open in a rush of dings and air-conditioning. I set her in a chair where I could keep an eye on her, then jogged to Starbucks and tried to make sense of their huge menu. I only ever drank energy drinks.
“Um, I’ll take a . . . just a coffee, I guess? With milk and sugar?” I looked back at Serena, eyes closed, chin resting on her chest. “Will that make you sick if you’re drunk?”
The barista chewed her gum. “Not me.”
“Um, okay, yeah, I’ll take that. These waters too.”
“That’ll be five fifty-eight.”
“Oh.” I shook my coins, hoping more would magically appear. “Just one water, then.”
I poured the coins into the barista’s open hands, grabbed the coffee and the water, turned around . . . and froze. Three cops stood around Serena.
I quickly ducked behind a support pole. Why were they here? Stolen car? Reckless driving? Underage drinking? Were we about to go to jail? I peered around the pole and watched Serena wipe sweaty hair off her forehead and blink at the cops. They took her arms, trying to get her to stand, but she became a rag doll. They practically had to pick her up and carry her.
I watched the cops lead Serena to the exit. When I’d met her, she had been this beautiful, interesting girl who had actually seemed interested in me. She was still beautiful now, but something had changed. She looked . . . young. She looked like a kid. Like me. Where was the girl I’d been dreaming about for four days? Where was the badass at the blackjack table who didn’t get ID’d? What had made me care about this girl so intensely so quickly?
When the cops reached the automatic doors, Serena took one glance back toward Starbucks, but only for a moment, like she wanted the cops to take her before I got back.
I winced, waiting for my heart to break.
It didn’t.
She didn’t want me. She didn’t need me. What the hell was I doing?
The coffee steamed in my hand. I tossed it into a trash can, stuck the water bottle into my pocket, and went out a different exit, into the night. The casino lights glimmered on G-man’s Acura.
Dammit. Serena had the keys.
Oh well.
I definitely felt that Gravitational pull as I walked out of the parking lot, under the cowgirl’s neon boot, and out of the gambling town, down the open road.
I just barely managed to break free.