A New Speed of Cool

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 16]

Humans are creatures of habit. I don’t know where I heard that, but it sounded good. Like, I like to do the things I like to do when I want to do them.

It was well into Fall and I felt like I had school stuff figured out, especially since Kyle had found other friends to hang out with all the time. During the week, I went to all seven of my classes, with a little bit of time in the computer lab before the last two periods of the day. After I came home, I did any bits of homework that I had. After that was done, I turned on the computer and dialed up to the internet for Rune Quest. If you’re wondering, me and Jakey were still trying to get better gear and levels before taking on Goblin Stronghold again.

There’s one bad thing about always doing the same things every day, though. That’s when you have to change something in your schedule. Everything gets interrupted. Even if you try to pick up where you left off, everything feels wrong. You have to wait for the next day to feel like everything is right again.

I think I first realized this feeling when I had to get pulled out of school to go to the dentist a second time that semester. That time, it was to get that dang cavity drilled and filled, if you were wondering.

My sister Jess strangely didn’t seem to do the same thing every day. I always wondered how she did it. Sometimes she hung out with friends at their house, and sometimes they came over to ours. Sometimes she would come home and turn on music in her room and sing. It was whiny girl music or music with a bunch of boys singing all at once. Other times she was in her room quiet, working on homework or something.

Sometimes she had ‘extra-curricular’ activities, which meant being at school even if you didn’t have to be. That was the most confusing part. Those sorts of things were something I would never want to be a part of when I eventually went to high school. The worst part of them? Sometimes they caused me and my parents to have to be there.

That day it was a thing called a track meet. It’s a thing where people meet up at a track and run around it all afternoon. They race each other sometimes. It all seemed unnecessary, and it stole my afternoon of playing Rune Quest away from me. All me and my parents could do was watch the running and racing from the stands.

At least we went out to dinner afterward. It was at a fast food restaurant instead of a real restaurant which was kind of nice. Also, my parents focused on Jess and how fast she ran instead of trying to talk to me while I was eating.

When we finally returned home, I went straight to making up the time I had lost. That’s as far as I got, though. As soon as the dialing sound of the internet came on, I heard my mom’s voice from the next room.

“Getting on the internet at this time? Give it a rest for just today, Mike,” she called out. I think she made decisions like that randomly just to annoy me. “It’s already late. Don’t you have any homework to do?”

I thought about all the progress I could have made if I had just been home at the regular time. I was also mad at the loud computer sounds that always told my parents exactly when I was logging on. The computers at school were stealthy, like a spy in a movie, not to mention fast. A plan was hatched in my mind.

The very next day at dinner time, I asked the most important question of my life. “Dad, can we please get DSL?”

My dad swallowed his bite of food and leaned his head in thought. “DSL. DSL? I swear I’ve heard that before. But I can’t say I know what that is off the top of my head.”

“Direct… speed line,” I said. That was the definition that Kyle had said back during his visit. I knew it was probably wrong, but saying it probably sounded smart. If I sounded like I had thought about it, my parents would probably think about too. “It’s high-speed internet.”

“Ah, that’s right,” My dad nodded. He continued eating his food, ignoring my simple request. “Yeah, we have that at my work. It’s quite nice.”

My mom started talking like I imagined she would. “All the internet gets used for in this house is playing video games. Whatever we have now is working just fine for us. The internet is just one of those things that people are going to forget about in a few years anyways.”

Yes, this is something that people said back then. Plenty of people thought the internet was going to be forgotten about, like disco music or sending astronauts to the moon again. But let’s get back to the story.

“I don’t know about that,” Jess spoke up. Jess and I got along, but pretty much always did different things. The fact that she even spoke up at that moment about the topic of the internet made me think she had been replaced by a robot that looked just like her.

“Don’t forget, Jess,” my mom said. “We bought that brand new expensive computer so you can use it too for any school work. Don’t be afraid to kick Mike off his games so you can do what you need to.”

“We have computers in our classrooms now, too, that we can use,” Jess said back. “Even the library has a big area full of them. Mrs. Jackson says we can use one or two internet sources for our research project in History. Do you know how much easier it is not having to pry open one of those huge encyclopedias? No wonder people stopped buying them from you, mom.”

My mom smiled. It was a smile where she was actually upset instead of being happy. “Well, I agree, times do change.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything written on the internet,” my dad said. “It’s impossible to tell who wrote what stuff, and what they’re about.”

Jess sighed and twirled her hair with a finger. “All I’m saying is that it’s easier. And I guess they have that high-speed internet stuff at the school, too. The computers don’t make all those beeps and boops and phone-dialing sounds when you have to connect.”

My dad shrugged. He looked at me. I think he had suddenly remembered my original question. “Well, I’ll have to ask around at work to see if that DSS internet thing is worth it.”

“DSL,” I corrected. “And… Kyle has it at home, too!”

I didn’t want to bring up his name. If I mentioned him, my mom might ask about him. If she asked about him, she might find out that I stopped wanting him to be my friend. But at that moment, trying to convince my dad was the most important thing.

“I see how it is,” my dad laughed. He sat back in his chair, putting a pause on his eating. “You’ve got to have the best of the best to measure up to your new friends. I’ll tell you right now, money and fancy things aren’t the way to good friendships.”

A lot of my dad’s talks came back to talking about money. I think that was a dad thing since dads usually earned a lot of a family’s money. He didn’t know that my desire for DSL had nothing to do with making friends, but he didn’t need to.

“We already pay for that second phone line, Mark,” my mom said to my dad. “I mean, for the convenience, it’s nice, but…”

Even if Kyle wasn’t the best at being a friend, he had taught me a few things. I cleared my throat before telling my parents about the super special fact about DSL. “DSL doesn’t block up the phone lines, Kyle told me. We can get rid of that extra line or whatever.”

My dad grinned. “Seems like Kyle has a lot of information about this internet stuff. And here I thought we had the only technology expert in the world.”

“So…” I said. I said it like I really wanted an answer then and there.

My mom shook her head. That was rarely a good sign. “I feel like we had this exact talk about the computer back in the den, how it was so important for school. And now it’s just a gaming machine.”

My dad clicked his tongue and shrugged. “That’s one thing, and this is another. I’ll ask around, make some calls, and see how expensive it is. If we save money getting rid of an extra phone line, then I don’t see the reason not to take that path. How much do we pay for the dial-up already? Like ten dollars a month?”

A Dad’s Job

Dads do a lot. I think a lot of dads aren’t at home as much as moms because they’re doing all the work for their families. It wasn’t just a thing for my home, I was sure. I had only ever met Jakey’s dad once, and it seemed like he was rarely at home. At least Jakey never talked about his dad. He only talked about his mom and how she was annoying when she was at home with him.

As for Kyle, I didn’t talk much with him, but he still gave me plenty to think about. I had met his mom but obviously not his dad. All I had heard about Kyle’s dad was that he was a businessman. I never learned what business he had or what job he did. He was probably important or something.

Well, back to the topic of my dad specifically. Besides doing what he normally did, he spent the next few days asking around and making calls, just like he said he would. One day he was at home when I got home from school. That was something that rarely happened.

I thought it was something bad. I didn’t think I was in trouble because I had done nothing to get myself in trouble. I learned he was actually at home for a good reason. My dad had been at home to let the internet people inside.

DSL, the high-speed internet that I had hoped and asked for, was now being piped into our house. DSL internet came in a box. Or actually, it went through a box. One of those little computer boxes with different plugs going different places. This one had a lot of lights that told you if it was connected and if it was working or not. I learned from my dad it was called a modem.

Well, one of the wires going to that box was that old dial-up phone cord that used to go to the computer. I guess one of the jobs of the DSL box, err, modem, was to figure out what electronic signals were for the internet and what signals were for phone calls coming to our house. I only cared about the internet signals.

The internet people had made sure that the computer was ready to get on the internet. It was weird that strangers had been on my, or actually, my family’s computer. I guess that was required for them to do their job, and my dad probably trusted them.

There was a new icon on the desktop. Instead of going to one program that dialed up the internet, this new one, as my dad told me, would bring me straight there. I already knew about it from using the internet at school, but he didn’t need to know that. I think my dad was proud that he had learned something new.

Even though I knew the wonders of fast internet from school, having that same experience come to my home computer seemed like a brand new thing. I felt the same as when we had gotten the computer itself. I was at the cutting edge of technology and I could do anything. Nothing could hold me back. So I started up Rune Quest.

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A New Week

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 15]

All that week in Mrs. Carpenter’s class we were just finishing up our stories. The work meant that there wasn’t much time for Kyle to talk to me. I saw him working on his own story, even though he had said that he didn’t want to or need to do it. I felt just a tiny, little bit bad for him since he didn’t have as much time as the rest of us.

In a turn of luck, I didn’t see him on Thursday or Friday in the computer lab. Jakey didn’t ask me where I had been that Wednesday when I had been with the councilor. We just did the same things as usual as if Kyle had ceased to exist. On that following Monday, I learned why I hadn’t seen much of him.

That was the day when the final drafts of our stories were due in Literature. Mrs. Carpenter had given us the weekend to put the final touches on it. I was very happy with the conclusion, with my Squire character taking care of the Knight after he had been injured. It wrapped up the conflict by teaching the Squire that he was important, even if he wasn’t able to fight as well as the Knight. My paper was just about five pages, which is probably the most I had ever written for one paper. A lot of people’s stories weren’t even that long. I was super surprised that even Kyle had a story to hand in.

Those stories got collected right away at the beginning of class. Just after, a miracle occurred when Mrs. Carpenter turned off the lights and turned on a movie for us to watch the rest of the period. I guess she wanted to start reading through all of our stories right away. A little ways through the beginning of the film, Kyle leaned in close to me and whispered.

“Hey, want to come and play football on the field today at lunch?”

“Football?” I whispered back. It was the game we had just started playing in P.E. I knew enough about football to figure out I didn’t like it and that I didn’t know any of the rules. When I was forced to play it there at school, I just ran around and hoped the ball didn’t get thrown at me.

I pulled away a little bit and looked at him. “Uh, no thanks.”

“It’s really fun,” Kyle said back lowly. He seemed too excited about it. “Me and some guys from my math class started playing last week. We have a couple of teams going. Come on, dude.”

“No!” I said almost a bit too loud. I glanced at Mrs. Carpenter’s desk to see if she noticed. I didn’t think she did.

“You can even invite Jake,” Kyle said, poking my shoulder with his arm. “Well, only if you really want him to tackle someone and kill them,” he laughed.

“Shut up!” I definitely shouted too loud that time.

I saw Mrs. Carpenter’s eyes in the light of her little desk lamp. “Does one of you need to step outside?” She threatened.

“No!” Kyle said before me. He sighed and laid forward on his desk, resting his head on his arms. I separated myself from his seat the best I could and just focused on the movie.

Even though I tried to get out before him, Kyle caught up to me leaving the classroom. “You know I’m just messing around, right? We aren’t allowed to tackle anyone. The yard duties get mad at us. We do this thing called a one-hand touch.”

I remembered what Mr. Adams had said to me about dealing with people like Kyle. At the same time, I was still upset at what he had said. “I don’t care about football or whatever! Why do you always have to say junk like that about Jakey?” I yelled back at him.

“Whatever, dude, he’s not here,” Kyle shrugged. “And you can’t say that he isn’t fat.”

“He’s my friend!” I said louder. A few people were looking at us. “Even if he is big and fat, he’s still a nice dude. A lot nicer than you. And you’ve said plenty of bad stuff right to his face. So just stop!”

Kyle huffed at me like it had been the first time he had been told to not be so mean. “Fine. Whatever. You’re gonna make me late for my next class.”

My legs were shaking. Several people from my literature class were looking at me. I took a deep breath and went on my way, happy that he was going to leave me alone.

The Picture on the Background

Kyle didn’t talk to me those next two days in Literature. It was actually pretty nice. I trained myself to not look at him or even in his direction. I thought that if we both ignored each other, he would forget about me. Then I would eventually forget about him and the not-so-great friendship we had together.

It was Wednesday then. Lunchtime, to be exact. I went on my way to the computer lab like I usually did. This time, I spotted Jakey and all the other guests of the lab out front. Obviously, something was stopping them from going inside.

“What’s up, Jakey?” I said. He noticed me. “It’s not closed today, is it?”

I was imagining (and dreading) the thought of having to go to the cafeteria to eat. Then having to play outside under the sun.

“There’s a class in there,” Jakey said. There was a sign on the door. I don’t know how I missed the white paper held up with magnets in the corners.

“A class at lunch?” I asked. “And since when is there a class in here?”

“I just poked my head in. They’re almost out,” Jakey said, reassuring me. “Teachers can sign up for a time in here and Mr. Tate can teach them a thing on the computers. Like how to find something online. Or type an essay.”

I think I remembered something like that. Mrs. Carpenter said that we would type our stories up after they were finished being read and graded.

The door to the computer lab suddenly sprung open. There was a sudden river of kids pushing their way out, all ready to get to the outside and eat their lunches and talk and run around. They were the opposite of us.

“Finally, freedom!” I heard a familiar voice. “Oh, dang, it’s Mike!”

Kyle had come out with the class. He stopped and pulled his backpack over his shoulder. Even though Jakey was there, he only said hi and talked to me.

“Hi,” I said back. I don’t know what Kyle was waiting for.

“The usual stuff, boys?” He said with a smirk, talking about our games in the computer lab.

“Yeah, the usual stuff,” I said back in the same tone that he had used.

“Cool. Oh yeah, there’s one thing you never told me, Mike!” Kyle said, pointing at me and nearly poking me in the chest. “My friends who I play football with said the cafeteria has pizza on Wednesdays. I got my mom to give me money for it today instead of eating the gross stuff she usually packs! I could have been eating good all this time.”

I shrugged. “We don’t eat in the cafeteria. How would we know what they have there?”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, whatever. Well, good thing he doesn’t eat there, or they would run out of food. Hah!”

He was clearly talking about Jakey. I looked back at my friend. He seemed unbothered like he hadn’t even heard what was said. I had heard, though.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I wanted to punch something. I wanted to punch Kyle. I balled up my fist and held it by my side. I was ready to punch him. But I didn’t. Jakey suddenly walked between me and Kyle.

“If you don’t go now, they’ll run out of all the pizza, idiot,” Jakey said lowly.

“Shut up!” Kyle said. He began stomping down the hall. I could hear him still complaining. “Stupid Mr. Tate and keeping us in so late!”

Jakey went inside the lab without saying anything else. I wanted to say something to him, but I could barely keep up. We both sat in our same spots. We both typed in our usernames and passwords like normal. I kept looking over to Jakey.

“You should tell him you don’t like that,” I said finally. “I mean, I’ve told him that it’s rude. But you need to tell him, too.”

“I know I’m fat, Mike,” Jakey said back plainly. One of his hands was moving around in his backpack, searching for his paper lunch bag. “My dad is fat, and my mom is pretty fat too. She says it’s a disorder in my dad’s family. I don’t know what that means. But I don’t think I can do much about it. So I’ll just stay fat.”

“You’re… not fat, though,” I said as if that mattered.

“Dude,” Jakey sighed. There was almost the sound of a laugh in his voice, too. “Do you know how when you get a haircut, and everybody says ‘hey, you got a haircut!’ It’s like, yeah, I know. I went to the barbershop and had it cut. I saw in the mirror. It’s like that. Like, I don’t even care.”

I looked down at my knees. I think I was trying to find something to say to Jakey that was an actual compliment. I suddenly heard him laughing, and that laughing was getting harder.

“Dude, what the heck is on your screen?” Jakey said, his body shaking up and down while holding back his chuckling.

My eyes shot up. The computer had logged me in. The desktop background was changed from the default one. Instead, it was a horrible Paint drawing shining brightly in the dim light of the lab.

If you don’t know what Paint— the computer program— is, it’s the most basic art-making tool that every computer had back then. Anything that you made in Paint had to look terrible. I mean, there were only a few shapes and tools and colors you could use. Everything was pixilated, too. Even if you were a great artist on paper, you wouldn’t have been able to make something that looked good in Paint. Most things people created looked like you had eaten one of those colorful birthday cakes and then threw it all back up.

The picture on my computer’s background was horrible. It was horrible, first, because it was made in Paint. It was horrible, secondly, because it was made to look like a rude hand gesture.

The first time I saw this hand gesture was from the window of a car when I was out with my mom. I knew it wasn’t nice because my mom made a bunch of huffs and sighs at it. I won’t even tell you more about it so I don’t you don’t have to imagine it yourself.

I knew something had to be done about this horrible picture on my computer. I jumped up out of my chair. “Mr. Tate! Mr. Tate!”

The teacher stood up from his corner of the room. It was the first time I had ever seen him out of his seat. “What’s up?”

I was nearly jumping up and down. I suddenly realized that the picture on my screen could get me in trouble, even if I hadn’t created it. I almost turned off the monitor and ran when Mr. Tate approached my desk.

“Oh, well, look at that,” the teacher said, humming and covering his mouth. I think he was almost going to laugh like Jakey.

“I didn’t set it like that!” I said loudly.

Mr. Tate put his arms at his sides and sighed. “I get it, Mike. I know you wouldn’t do something like this. It must have been someone who was in that last class.”

I let myself flop back down in my seat. “Who was here before?”

Mr. Tate rubbed his chin in thought. “I can’t remember. But the same class is coming back tomorrow. Maybe the same person will end up in this spot. Then I can catch them in the act.”

I nodded. When I looked at the picture again, it didn’t seem as horrible as when I had first seen it. “I can change it back,” I offered.

Mr. Tate shrugged. “Eh, don’t worry about it. I don’t have any classes after lunch that will have to see it. Then all the computers get refreshed late at night, so they’re back to their original settings tomorrow.”

I nodded like I understood. I looked at all the icons on the desktop, each being a program that had to be installed. “Doesn’t that take a long time, getting all the stuff back on the computer every morning?”

Mr. Tate put his hands on his hips again. “Actually, no. It’s all automated. Something programmed into the operating system itself. Then there’s this thing called an ‘image’ that has all the settings and programs already built in. When the computer gets told to, it puts everything exactly how you want it.”

I understood most of what Mr. Tate said just then. I wanted to ask other questions before he went back to his corner. “How do you know so much about Computers, Mr. Tate?”

“Because he studied it in school,” Jakey spoke up. “College.”

“What he said,” the teacher responded. “Computers have changed a ton, especially since I was your age. They were massive things that took up whole rooms back then. They were mostly modern… mostly… about the time I chose what I wanted to study in college. If it interests you, they call it ‘Information Technology.’

“Information Technology,” I repeated.

“Or just I.T. for short,” Mr. Tate added. “But you guys will be able to follow the current technology as it keeps getting better. Soon, you’ll know more than me.”

I didn’t think I would ever know more than Mr. Tate, but I liked the idea.

<– Previous Chapter | Next Chapter –>

Adults Don’t Understand

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 14]

I almost was ready to burst out at Kyle as we went back to the computer after dinner. He had said the thing I had told him not to mention, the thing about going into the computer lab at lunch. I held back. I knew that even angry whispers would clue my mom into something going on. Kyle would have probably said something out loud, too, like how it didn’t matter. It did matter!

He decided to change over to his Rune Quest character. He showed me his armor. It was Mythril like he had said, but only the piece that went over the body. The rest of his armor was bits of iron and even leather, a lot weaker. I think he had probably sold a lot of stuff just to get the strong piece of armor so he could brag.

He was a higher level than me and Jakey, but only his fighting skills. Pretty much everything else, like the abilities to collect stuff and make stuff, was pretty low.

“How come you don’t do any mining or cooking?” I asked. I was hoping for a good answer. I didn’t get one.

“That’s boring. I just want to fight,” Kyle said with a shrug. He was already fighting something, a group of weak goblins near the starting area.

“But then you have to buy your own armor and food to heal yourself,” I said, trying to talk sense into him. I wondered if he even knew about all that stuff.

“I get money from the enemies I kill,” he said. His eyes didn’t leave the screen.

“But, like, there is so much good stuff you can craft too. I just crafted a bow so I can level up my archery and help out Jakey better.”

“Wouldn’t a sword work just as well?” he asked cluelessly.

I didn’t want to put in the effort to talk about the strategy for a three-man group that I had come up with Jakey.

I was almost relieved when the doorbell rang. It was definitely Kyle’s mom. Soon enough after the door opened, I heard our two moms talking. Kyle kept clicking away like he planned to stay the whole night in front of the computer.

He finally jumped up when his name was called from our front room, hurriedly smashing the log-out button. I followed after.

“Hey there kiddo,” his mom said. She was sitting on the couch with my mom. She was skinny, with short hair, wearing a baggy sweatshirt. “And you must be Mike.”

“Hi,” I said. I kind of nodded at her.

“These two had a lot of fun,” my mom said. “Of course, homework calls.”

Kyle’s mom pushed herself off of our couch and nodded. “Sure does. What do you say, Kyle?”

“Thank you for dinner and letting me stay,” He said. He was somewhere between his normal self and his super polite self.

My mom walked them both to the door. I waived as they walked back to their car, and my mom finally shut the door. I wondered if my mom was going to instantly ask about the computer lab, or about what we were playing.

“Okay then, that’s enough time on the computer today, Mike,” she said. Those words I was also expecting, but not what she said next. “He’s a good kid, Kyle. I’d say he’s free to come over any time he wants to… within reason, of course.”

The Longest Weekend

I didn’t immediately have a desire to have Kyle back after that, despite what my mom had said. I kept thinking about how he had gone and talked about the computer lab. I wondered if my mom didn’t hear it in the first place, or if she had forgotten to ask about it. I hoped it was the first.

I tossed about in bed that night, thinking about what could have happened if my mom was paying attention. I thought about what she would make me do at home if she thought I was messing around at school.

By morning I had forgotten all about it. Unfortunately, seeing Kyle first thing that next day at school brought it all back. My anger had been reignited. Of course, I couldn’t just let it out right there in the classroom.

“Hey Mike,” he said first thing before Mrs. Carpenter started calling roll and teaching. “That dinner last night was super good. I asked my mom to ask your mom to get the recipe for that potato thing.”

“Sure,” I said. That was all I said. Kyle tried to talk to me a few times that period, but I just mumbled back or pretended I hadn’t heard him. I even packed up early to avoid talking with him outside the classroom.

When lunchtime rolled around, it wasn’t long before I had yet another encounter. He rushed up to me on the way to the computer lab. “Hey, Mike! What’s up? You stay up late last night having to do homework? That’s almost what my mom made me do!”

“No. What the frick, man?” I shouted. I swerved into him, causing our shoulders and backpacks to ram against each other.

Kyle pulled away, rubbing at his arm before kicking at my ankle. “What the heck are you mad about? I didn’t do anything!”

I stopped and turned to face him. A few people were looking at us, but I didn’t care. “You blabbed to my mom about the computer lab! Last night at dinner.”

“What? I didn’t!”

“Yeah, you did,” I huffed, leaning into him. “You said that me, and you, and Jakey all hang out there at lunch.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You’re a liar! You did!” I yelled. My voice hurt from yelling like that for the first time probably ever.

“I didn’t, you freaking nerd! And if I did, I didn’t remember! And I didn’t hear your mom say anything about it, either. If your mom yelled at you about it, then it was your fault for bringing it up anyway!”

I stomped my foot. I felt my anger dying down. It didn’t have anything real to be mad at. “My mom didn’t say anything,” I said, my voice mostly lowered. “But you could have gotten her on my case.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Whatever! You’re wasting both of our times out here yelling at me. Dork!”

“Don’t call me a dork!” I said, almost laughing. I didn’t want to laugh. Just the way he said it was funny. I was still mad at him though, so I just turned back around, ready to finally go to the computer lab. Whether he followed me or not was up to him.

School that Friday came to a close and I found myself back at home with the whole weekend ahead of me. To my surprise, the topic of the computer lab never crossed my mom’s lips that evening. I couldn’t help thinking of the reasons I was still miffed with Kyle, though.

That weekend, I returned to my regiment of Rune Quest. I went back to my mining that Kyle had taken me away from. I was collecting materials and gaining experience just as usual until my chat flashed with a new message.

FirePlay3r has logged in.

I had forgotten I had added him to my friends’ list. My heart suddenly was beating faster than normal. If he noticed I was on too, he would want to chat and even play with me. My Kyle meter was already at max. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to log off right away.

I kept my Rune Quest hours to a minimum that weekend, avoiding a meet-up with Kyle, even if it was virtual. I did a lot of flash game playing and some browsing of the Rune Quest wiki, even if it loaded really slowly on our internet. I didn’t want to go do chores or other boring stuff that might clue my parents into thinking something was wrong. When something was wrong with me, they often blamed the computer and being on it too much. That was garbage.

That Monday came around after an extremely long-feeling weekend. Long feeling, but not in a good way. Kyle was there, in my first period, then in the computer lab, just being himself. I was able to talk to him like normal, mostly. I was kind of dreading the thought of him asking to play together online or even again at my house.

That Wednesday, one of those calls came to my science class, just before we got to go to lunch. “Mike,” said Mr. Jones said from the classroom phone. “Head to the office before you go to the cafeteria for lunch, okay?”

At the office, I had the same treatment as the time before. The lady behind the desk said hi to me. “Seems it’s Mr. Adams again. You remember where his room was, right?”

I answered that I did. I went up to his door which was held open like it was inviting me.

“There he is,” Mr. Adams twitched his head back at me from a pile of papers on his desk. “Come, sit. Oh, and the door.”

I guessed I was going to be there for a little bit. I set down my backpack and found the seat on the couch. I couldn’t remember if he told me I could eat there, but I wasn’t going to anyway.

“Now, I know I invited you here today,” the counselor began, turning his chair to face me, “but I think I completely forgot what I was going to ask.”

I didn’t fully believe that was true. “Can… I go, then?” I asked hopefully.

Mr. Adams slumped his shoulders and laughed one little laugh. “Well, I suppose I could let you go. But if I just sent you right back out, the ladies at the front desk might think I’m all harebrained and can’t do my job right. But while I’m remembering, how about you tell me what’s new with you?”

I shrugged. I was a shrug fully on purpose, not accidentally copying Kyle and the way he did it all the time. “I dunno,” I said.

“No new friends?” Mr. Adams asked. “I think I heard one of your classes got a new student.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” He repeated the same sound. His sound sounded more interested than mine.

“Yeah, actually. His name is Kyle. We sit next to each other in Mrs. Carpenter’s class.”

Mr. Adam’s eyebrows danced up and down before he responded. “Well, excellent. Make as many friends as possible, is what I say. Once you’re an adult, making new friends is harder. So the more you make now, the more likely you’ll have some sticking around when you’re all old like me.”

Despite his bald kinda head, Mr. Adams didn’t look that old. “You don’t look that old,” I said.

“Well, probably older than a lot of parents of Middle School kids,” he said with a sigh. “Now there’s no way you made friends with this Kyle right away. Tell me about it. What’s he like? Maybe I’ll run into him one of these days.”

I tilted my head in thought. “Actually, I think I talked to him first. After Mrs. Carpenter sat him by me sat him by me, of course.”

“Ah, one of those accidental friendships,” Mr. Adams hummed. “Those can be the best.”

“Yeah, and it turns out he plays the same online game as me and Jakey.”

Mr. Adams snapped his fingers like something had just popped into his head. “Ah, that’s right. You’re always heading to the computer lab at lunch. So, playing games at recess, are you?”

I looked down at my lap. I thought about what my mom would be saying if she knew that’s what I was doing. I thought about Kyle accidentally blurting out about it to my mom.

“Well, it’s your recess after all,” Mr. Adams said to end the awkward silence. “As long as you’re being safe and responsible, you’re free to do as you like. And Mr. Tate wouldn’t have his room open if he didn’t want kids in there. So, this game is online, huh? How does that work? Do you two fight each other in it?”

I sighed and began to answer. “Well, there is PVP— player versus player, where you fight other people. I like a lot of the farming and gathering and crafting parts, though.”

“I see,” Mr. Adams said, nodding.

“Kyle doesn’t like any of that stuff, though, He came over last week and we hung out. We played on his character…” I said. I leaned on my legs, looking away from the counselor. “He’s… he’s…”

I don’t know why, but I started to cry at that moment. I think it was because of Kyle. Every time I thought about him, my heart pulled itself into a tight ball— and not in the good way when you like someone. I thought about how he had broken his promise. I thought about how he had yelled at me the other week. I thought about how seeing his name in game made me want to log off.

My eyes were all blurry and my nose started to run. I couldn’t put any words together.

“Take your time,” Mr. Adams said. He scooted his chair over and put a tissue into my hand.

I sobbed for a little while, looking away from the counselor. “I don’t want to be Kyle’s friend,” I said as my tears and snot began to dry up and I was able to catch my breath.

“Let me put it together if to see if I have it right,” said Mr. Adams. He was leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other. “You thought Kyle was going to be another nice person you could hang out with. Someone who liked the same things as you. Birds of a feather. But he ended up being not the person you thought he was? How close am I?”

I wiped my eyes with my arm and nodded. “He’s not nice. He makes fun of Jakey. He says he’s fat and he smells. He always brags about his stuff being better than mine. He’s a liar, too. When he came to play… he acted all nice and stuff around my parents… but that isn’t him. And… he broke a promise and won’t apologize.”

“I see. That’s a lot,” Mr. Adams said, nodding his head up and down. “I can imagine that your parents think he’s a nice dude, though, and you can’t say otherwise. He probably got a talking-to before he came over. ‘Oh Kyle, my son, be on your best behavior when you go over there,’” he added, talking like a grumpy, old mom.

“My mom said it was fine to have him over anytime,” I said, a final sniffle coming to my nose.

“But, obviously, you don’t want that. Does Kyle know that his actions are upsetting you? It doesn’t sound like he’s intentionally being a bully, at least to you, but he deserves to know if he’s putting you down. Nobody should force you to be his friend, but if you can talk things through and make it better, wouldn’t that be the best thing?”

“I guess,” I said, slumping back in the couch seat.

“Jakey might do the same thing if he feels like he’s been put down, too,” Mr. Adams suggested. “Standing up for him never hurts, either. When someone is being a bully, or just mean, they often stop when a third person calls them out. And… if Kyle doesn’t want to change how he talks with you two, I’d say it’s fair if you don’t include him for a while. He will realize that he drove away a friend acting that way.”

I nodded. Deep in my stomach, I felt two things. First was the weight of all my worries being lifted up, even just a little bit. Second was the hunger from not having eaten lunch yet.

“You said I could eat in here, right?” I asked sheepishly. I didn’t want to head out to the computer lab where the others could see my red eyes and nose from crying.

“You may stay here in the office until the end of the day if that’s what you need,” Mr. Adams offered.

“I’ll… probably go to my next classes after lunch,” I said after a few moments of deciding. Sitting around in an adult’s office for several hours seemed a little awkward.

“Still a good student despite it all,” Mr. Adams concluded.

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Dinner with a Friend

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 13]

Just about the time I suspected, I heard my mom’s voice from the kitchen. “Dinner in ten, boys.”

My mom’s estimations were always longer than what they actually were. Kyle had been wandering around with my character in the desert for a while, seeking out any challenges that might lie there. With the announcement from my mom, he unfolded himself from the chair finally.

“Let’s stay logged in so we don’t have to wait for the dial-up to connect us again,” he said as if it were the best idea ever.

“That’s what I usually do,” I began, “if my mom doesn’t tell me to get off, anyways. She bugs me to show her all the homework I bring home.”

“That’s annoying,” Kyle said back. He stretched his feet to the ground and shoved the chair back from the desk. “But whatever she’s cooking smells good. We should hop on my character after we get back.”

“Perfect,” I said with a nod. A thought suddenly popped in my head, just in case the topic came up over dinner. “Hey, don’t tell my mom that we hang out in the computer lab at lunch. She’d be even extra annoying.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said like he was half listening.

“You promise?” I said a little louder. I tugged on his shoulder to make sure he was listening.

“What the heck dude? Yeah, okay. I promise.”

My mom looked like she had seen a ghost when we came out to the dining room early. “Well, our two little warriors have worked up an appetite, haven’t they?”

“I can help you set the table, Mrs. Patricia,” Kyle volunteered immediately.

My mom’s neck snapped back in surprise. “Well, what an offer. But Mike’s dad already got that all set for us. Here he is now.”

I didn’t even hear or notice that my dad had come home. “Ah, the guest of the evening,” he said as he entered the room.

“Hello, sir,” Kyle said, offering up a hand to shake my dad’s.

My dad hand-shaked back with a grin on his face. “Well, what a fine grip. You could teach Mike a thing or two.”

My mom interrupted the meet and greet. She had a heavy casserole dish in hand and was bringing it to the table. “Well, I’m sure that all these manly-men won’t be able to proceed with empty stomachs. Let’s all have a seat and dig in.”

Kyle was like a different person in front of my parents. He ate neatly, made eye contact, and barely gave one single shrug. The cheesy potatoes my mom made were good, but the meatloaf to go with them was just okay. Kyle ate them both down without complaint.

“May I use your restroom?” he asked midway through dinner.

“Of course,” my mom said, pointing a finger down the hall. “The door on the right, right on the way to the den with the computer.”

After the door to the bathroom closed, my dad nodded happily. “Good kid.”

My mom nodded along with him and raised an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, what a great friend. You two having fun with your game in there? You’re letting him play, right? You could also get a board game out after we clear the table here.”

“Yeah, mom,” I said with a little bit of a tone.

When Kyle came back, my mom was ready with another suggestion. “Too bad the school night has to cut this stay short, Kyle. But I’m sure we can have you over again. Maybe a sleepover, even. That sound good, Mike? Even Jakey would be welcome. You must have met Jake, right, Kyle? Especially since you rode the bus here today.”

“Ah, yeah,” he said, kind of shakily.

My mom nodded as if she understood his tone. “I get it, Jake is kind of an intimidating kid, being so big and old.”

“And smelly,” Kyle said, revealing the person I knew.

“Ah, well,” my mom said, pausing. “There is that. That’s puberty for you, though. Mike’s older sister is the super girly type with all her makeup, but there was a time before she learned about daily showers and deodorant, too. You two will also have to deal with your own bodies going through those changes.”

“Yeah, my mom tells me about that,” Kyle said, nodding.

“If you can get through to Mike, here,” my dad spoke up, holding a fork in the air, “then you could get along with anyone. Period.”

“I don’t know about that,” Kyle shrugged. “I mean, I have talked to Jakey a little bit when we’re in the computer lab at lunch.”

I nearly dropped my fork at the mention of the computer lab. I wanted to kick Kyle under the table, but I figured it might have caused too much noise, or I might end up kicking my mom accidentally. I glanced over at her to see if she had been paying attention. She seemed more focused on Kyle and her dinner to have recognized the words ‘computer’ and ‘lab.’ Kyle didn’t even look at me.

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One Password to Rule them All

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 12]

Thursday afternoon came around. The last bell of the day rang, excusing me from the endless toiling that was math class. I had reminded Kyle at lunch to find us by the bus area, even if he didn’t need reminding. The bus area wasn’t far from the parent pick-up zone, so I didn’t he would get lost.

When the bus for our route arrived, number 30, we made sure to be the first people in line so we could all sit together. Jakey went first as he always did. I allowed Kyle, my guest, in after, and I followed up last. Even though there was space, we all squeezed into one of the seats. I wasn’t quite as wide as Jakey, so it wasn’t too bad sitting out in the aisle seat and having people push past me.

“Our neighborhood isn’t too many stops in,” I explained to Kyle after the bus departed the school. “Do you have to drive far to get to school?”

Kyle was trying to look past Jakey and through the windows. He was probably trying to find out where we were in town. He probably didn’t know the area that well since he had just moved.

Even though it was getting closer to fall, the bus still got hot during the afternoon. There was no air conditioning on buses, I guessed. Having the windows down was the only choice. As the air rushed in, Kyle suddenly jerked back into me.

“Jakey, you smell,” he said stuffily, holding his nose.

“We ran in P.E. today,” Jakey said with an annoyed tone. He slumped himself further against the wall of the bus.

“You can run?” Kyle continued.

Jakey rolled his eyes and huffed. “I only run when they make me. And Mr. Birch knows not to make me run.”

“Yeah, dude, you seem like you’d have a heart attack.”

If that was Kyle’s type of joke, I didn’t really get it. I felt like pepping up Jakey in case he didn’t think it was funny either. “I should see if Mr. Birch will let me walk too. I also hate running.”

“At least you don’t hate taking a shower,” Kyle let out another one of his jokes.

Jakey let out a long sigh and leaned his head against the ripply, metal wall of the bus interior. “Whatever, dude.”

None of us talked until the bus finally pulled into our neighborhood. “Well, here we are,” I said back as I led the three of us down the aisle and off the stairs. Don’t forget to log in when you can, Jakey!”

He was already beginning his walk back to his house. Kyle pulled on my arm. “Come on, man, show me where you live. What kind of snacks does your mom buy?”

To my surprise, my mom’s car was in the driveway when we came by. I showed off my very own house key to unlock my front door, but Kyle didn’t seem terribly impressed by it. Not long after we were inside, my mom was trotting up to us with a warm welcome.

“Hey, boysss,” she said with a playful tone. “You must be Kyle.”

“Hi there, Mrs… Patricia,” he said in a voice I had never heard from him before. “Nice house. It… smells good in here.”

“Well, thank you, Kyle. Only thing you should know is that we have shoes off in the house. Other than that, make yourself at home.” My mom said back, her hands on her lap. “I just got home, too. Dinner will be at 5:30, like usual, Mike. But I imagine you two must be hungry after a long day of school, so help yourself to the stuff in the pantry.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Kyle nodded.

I had never needed permission to raid the pantry before. I think my mom was showing off, and it was a little annoying. Despite that, once our shoes were off, I led Kyle to the land of spicy chips and creme-filled cookies. I also glanced at my mom as we opened the fridge to find cans of soda, but there was no resistance in her eyes that day, even with my recently discovered cavity.

“Just don’t spoil your dinner, boys,” she called back.

Logging In

I waved a hand at Kyle to make him follow. “Come on! Let me show you the computer room. I just got this new computer at the beginning of the summer and it’s super fast.”

“Yeah, let’s hop on it.”

“Oh yeah, and just like at school,” I added, “don’t spill anything or make a mess. That really could mess things up.”

I pressed the power button on the computer tower. It made a big clunk like it did all the time. The fans on the computer spun up and were really loud, but only for a moment. The clicking of the hard drives began as it loaded into the operating system. The whole process allowed us to crack into our sodas and open a sleeve of cookies.

When the computer itself had done its thing for us, I went straight to connecting us to the internet. I wiped my hands of crumbs before I opened the browser window and told it to connect us.

The sound of the computer dialing up had become almost nice for me. It was a sweet serenade that I listened to every day before I escaped the real world and entered the realm of Rune Quest. I got up and did a little dance every time I heard the beeping sounds playing. I guess it was like a little exercise before I would just sit for hours.

“Eww, what the heck?” Kyle said like he had discovered something gross in his sandwich cookie or something.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. I saw there was nothing visibly wrong with him or any of our snacks.

“You still have dial-up?”

I shrugged. “Oh. Yeah. It’s not as fast as the school’s internet, but it works for Rune Quest.”

“Yeah, and it takes forever to load. And my mom would always make me get off so she could make a phone call. Talk about stupid.”

I raised my finger to the air like I was going to tell Kyle the news of the century. “Oh, but we have two phone lines. One for calls, and one for me just to get on the internet. It used to be my mom’s work line before she changed jobs.”

“We have DSL at my new house,” Kyle declared.

“What’s that mean?”

“High-speed internet,” he said. “It stands for… Direct Speed Line.”

I believed his definition at the time even though that was two-thirds wrong.

“There’s no dialing you have to do,” Kyle added, still proud. “The internet is just there, all the time, like at the school. And you can talk on the phone when you use the internet, too.”

“I wonder if it’s expensive.” I said, not really expecting an answer.

“My dad got it for us. You get special deals when you move into a new house. That’s the law. My dad would know, he’s a businessman. And he didn’t want us to have to use dial-up anymore.”

“Lucky,” I said. I kind of said that just to stop him from talking more about it, even if it sounded nice to have. It didn’t matter since my internet had finally connected. Leaning over the back of my desk chair, I went straight to the link to the game in my bookmarks. It didn’t take as long as other sites to load. It was probably because I went there a lot, the computer had some of it in its memory. Just when everything was almost ready, I noticed something was wrong.

“A chair!” I said loudly. There was only one spinning desk chair for the both of us, and sharing it was out of the question. Despite all my preparations, I had forgotten to get a chair for my guest. “Be right back!”

After dragging one of the dining room chairs across the carpet and into the den, I caught Jakey already settling into the first seat. The Rune Quest home page was awaiting us. Something was typed into the ‘username’ section.

I leaned across the hard dining room chair. I was close enough to read what had been typed in.

“IcyMike203, right?” Kyle said, repeating the username that had been typed in.

“Yeah, you remembered?” I asked. I was surprised that he had remembered, and that he was planning to jump right away to my account.

“What’s your password?” He asked.

“Uh, I’ll type it in,” I said quickly. I had never said my password out loud. I don’t even think my parents knew it. There was no way I was going to say it to Kyle.

“Come on, dude, what do you think I’m going to do?” Kyle whined. “It’s just a password.”

“Then tell me your password,” I said back to him.

Kyle shrugged. “Eh, whatever, you’re slowing us down.”

I leaned in his way a bit as I typed my password in. I couldn’t tell exactly if he was looking at my fingers on the keyboard, but I knew how to type it fast, faster than he could have kept track of. Finally, the game was welcoming us.

We joined exactly where I had left off- in the mining pit in the desert area. There was a collection of other players already at work, hitting the rocks with their pickaxes and getting scraps of metal.

“Ugh, this place,” Kyle said. He grabbed the mouse and keyboard and started clicking away. My character and anything that was done in game was under his control. I wanted to pull the controls away from him. I had to hold myself back and try to be a good friend who would let his guest play first.

“I hate the scorpions that pop up around here,” Kyle added. He seemed to be clicking and guiding my character to the nearest town where there were no enemies.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re awful when you’re trying to mine, too. I’ve seen people sticking around and defending the people who just want to gather, though.”

“Why would they do that?” Kyle said, glancing my way.

“I dunno. Cause they’re cool?” I said, guessing aloud. “Hey, I probably have some iron to drop off in my storage box. Can you do that before we go anywhere else?”

“Yeah,” Kyle responded. He moved like he was going to do what I asked, but he was also wandering a bit. The more he played and focused, the less he seemed like he wanted to talk to me.

“Uh,” I began to say. Trying to share one computer with one screen and one game and one set of controls was tough. “Check my friends’ list. Let’s see if Jakey is on. We can do something together.”

Kyle finally did something when I asked. My friends list only had three people on it. There was MakeMeJake88— that was Jakey. He was online. Under his username, I had the recently added FirePlay3r, Kyle, who was not online for the reason of being in person right beside me. There was also XmegakittyX, who was someone I had met like in my first week of playing. They had given me a sword. I thought they were the best person ever, so I added them as a friend. I don’t think I ever saw them online after that.

“Why don’t you have many friends?” Kyle asked. “I mean, in-game.”

“I mean, Jakey is enough,” I answered. “Message him, dude. We can find something to do. Oh, make sure you tell him it’s you.”

Kyle began typing away to Jakey. He didn’t type as well as me. I gloated silently in my head and he hunted and pecked for the letters. He said out loud what he was typing as well.

IcyMike203: het

IcyMike203: hey*

IcyMike203: its me kyle

IcyMike203: mike is here to

MakeMeJake88: o k

MakeMeJake88: u want 2 do smth?

IcyMike203: idk

IcyMike203: let me ask

I had watched the slow, text-based conversation go by. I shrugged. “I don’t know what we can do,” I said. “I actually thought we were going to jump on your character before you had to go.”

“Oh, well, your house, your character,” Kyle shrugged.

“Yeah, that’s fine. We can maybe check out your guy after dinner,” I suggested. “Have… you been to that island area before? You have to take a boat there.”

“No,” Kyle said with a shake of his head. “What’s there?”

“Uh… coconut trees. And monkeys!”

He laughed. “Monkeys? What do they drop? Bananas, right?”

I shook my head and laughed a little bit. “Well, you can’t kill them. But I’ve heard there’s one you can talk to somewhere on the island. Tell Jakey… maybe ask him if we can meet up in the first town. Then you can follow him there.”

Kyle sighed. “Sounds kind of boring. Maybe we can take on the Goblin Stronghold again?”

I shook my head. “No way! I’m still trying to get stronger armor before I go to that place again. I would need more food, too. Plus there’s no way we would have time to get to the Goblin King before dinner time.”

Kyle slumped his shoulders and leaned closer to the screen, eyes low. “Ugh, what a waste of time. I’m not that hungry with all these snacks. We can wait for dinner.”

I felt the rules of my house were on the verge of breaking thanks to my first guest in… forever. “No way, my mom doesn’t wait for people to come to the table. And she’s probably making something good, too. She’s never home this early.”

“Ugh,” Kyle sighed. “Fine. Let’s just go fight some of those desert enemies for people. Maybe they drop something good.”

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