"Sorry, Quinn, I gotta go," Owen said. He exited the game and Light Slayer disappeared.
I stood by myself in the Pitch Forest.
"Quinn? Can you go get the pizza by yourself?" my mother asked from the top of the stairs. "Your father had to make a phone call."
He would have gone with Sienna, but I was used to being sent off on my own.
#
I got in the car, my head full of Dark Flag. It was easier than thinking about anything else.
Owen's avatar moved differently than any other player. He knew the commands and
sequences so well that his avatar moved fluidly. I was impressed – and more than flattered that he had arrived just in time to save me. The game had notifications so a message could be sent when certain players logged on. Owen must have added me. Dark Flag's first clan leader saving some novice human; there was going to be talk.
I smiled to myself. It was nice that there was a whole other world where rumors like that were thrilling instead of awkward. I was wondering if I could handle the same talk in the real world when a knock on the window made me jump.
"I could use a little fresh air," my father said, getting into the passenger seat.
That meant my mother was taking a downturn. "Fresh air" was my father's polite way of saying he could not take the brunt of her blackening mood. He clipped his seatbelt on and turned the radio off.
"Should I take the long way?" I asked.
He nodded as I realized I had no idea which way the long route was. I turned right out of our driveway. My father did not seem to notice the world outside of the car. I kept driving and he did not care. He studied his hands quietly until I wondered if he had drifted off to sleep.
"Sorry for sending you out like that. I should have just gone myself," he finally said.
"It’s no problem. I wanted the fresh air myself," I replied.
My father opened his mouth and then popped it shut. He scrubbed his chin a few times before he said anything. "Your sister always had something to say. She was easy to talk to. There was always the next step of her plan to discuss, the accomplishments she could already check off. Sienna was going up and up."
"Thinking about the future made her happy," I said. The words left a painful reverberation in the car.
Sienna was only happy when she was discussing future plans. She never stopped to concentrate on where she was – or who she was with, for that matter. She lived to become a projected version of herself. The perfect version of Sienna was always a few steps away in the certain future.
If she lost that certainty, even for a moment, a gloom fell over everything around her. When Sienna stopped to look around her, she found faults everywhere and her mood plummeted. I knew that was exactly what had happened, but I could not tell my father.
"What about your future?" my father asked. "You don't seem to spend much time thinking about it."
I gripped the steering wheel harder to keep the accusation in his tone from knocking us off course. "I have been lately," I said. "I think I should meet with my advisor again and discuss majors. There might be a better fit out there for me."
"Of course. Some people would take a tragedy like this and turn it into a reason to work hard with every breath. And some take it as an excuse to go spinning off into la-la-land," my father said.
I held on tighter. "No. It’s just I think I let Sienna influence me too much. She was always so excited about becoming a surgeon, she made us all excited about it too. I think that's why I chose nursing, not because I loved it. You have to love it to be good at it."
My father pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please, for the love of God, don't tell me this, not now. From what I see, all you love is hanging out in the basement playing video games. How are you going to turn that into any sort of respectable career?"
I turned the car, taking a shortcut through a neighborhood towards the pizza place. The drive could not be over quickly enough for either of us. "It's an entire international, multibillion-dollar industry. People have very successful and very respectable careers in it."
"People? You mean like that Owen Redd? Please, Quinn, you cannot be drawing inspiration from a guy like him."
"Owen is creating his own career, his dream job. How can I not be inspired by that?" I asked. I realized too late we were on the street where Owen lived. His apartment, the top-floor loft of a three-story 6-plex was two blocks ahead. I had driven Sienna there dozens of times.
"Turn right up here," my father said. "Looks like the police are causing some kind of detour.”
I bit my lip and turned. Two squad cars were parked outside of Owen's apartment building. One of the uniformed officers at the curb was pointing to the top-floor apartment. "I hope there wasn't an accident." My heart flopped and my ears buzzed; the memory of the last time I saw flashing emergency lights squeezed my heart.
My father ignored me. "You need to understand something about people like Owen. He's taking the easy way out. Just because he has a talent does not mean he'll make a living at it. If he's telling you that then it’s a lie."