Life is Not a Game
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Kara Verbeek
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Boys Will Be Boys
CHARLOTTE (CHARLIE)
I stepped into the arena, a seven-foot orc clad in full battle armor, ready to blast away my opponents with the help of my three trusted compatriots.
Weâd fought together for years now, clawing our way to the top together. I would trust any of them with my life. I did trust them with my life. Theyâd saved me more times than I could count, just as Iâd saved them.
Well, I would have been ready to cut down my opponents if the other three would log on.
âI am so sorry, Mars. Iâm logging on now. Coach ran practice long,â my best friend, Jupiter, or Jup for short, told me over our voice chat.
âNice of you to finally joinâWhat are you wearing?â
In the place of my best friend, who normally played as a dark elven character, was a four-foot-tall, bright-blue bunny, and not even a muscular, scary bunnyâa straight-up fluffy Easter bunny.
âAh, shoot. My sister must have been screwing with my settings. Be right back.â
He quickly logged off before logging back on in his standard elf attire.
âDonât mention this to the other guys,â Jup pleaded, but I was too busy cracking up to even give him an answer.
It took another few minutes before Pluto, our third teammate, logged in. He usually played a female character, a voluptuous human with long red hair who, today, was wearing a glittery red dress. I normally didnât think anything was odd about his character, but the dress and hair combination had me cracking up even harder.
âHey, Jessica, you just missed Roger,â I barely managed to get out between laughing fits.
âWhat?â Plut asked, confused.
âDonât even go there,â Jupiter replied with a scowl, and I just continued to laugh.
âHey, whatâs so funny, guys?â Neptune, the final member of the team, asked. I didnât even notice him logging on.
I turned to wave him off, knowing my best friend might actually murder me if I ratted him out, but was stopped in my tracks by his character. Like Plut, he played a well-endowed female, but his was blondeâand currently not wearing clothes.
âUm, how did you manage to strip your character down to very skimpy lingerie?â I asked.
âWhere there is a will, there is a way, good sir,â he replied with a smirk.
âAnyway, now that we are all here, are you guys ready to start the battle?â Jup asked.
The game we were currently hooked on, Strike from Above, was a first-person shooter, or FPS, with an added RPG, or role-playing game, aspect. It was a four-player team game, so the four of us teamed up to form The Romans, a nod to our Roman-god-inspired names.
Weâd started out by playing the RPG side, but quickly maxed out our characters and weapons. With nothing left to complete on the RPG side, weâd switched to the PVP, or player versus player, mode. We now competed in PVP e-sports tournaments.
We did pretty well. Currently, we were ranked fifth in the country, but that was mainly because weâd only competed in the online side of the game. We hadnât been able to participate in the in-person tournaments, mainly because my parents were busy and didnât want me traveling alone.
Our sponsor was trying to arrange for us to attend an upcoming one, since they really wanted us in it. I thought there was one next year near where Pluto lived. I was hoping Mom would let me go, since his parents had offered to host me.
The biggest issue was we would have to compete in a regional tournament first to qualify, and none of us were in the same area geographically.
Mom knew the parents of all three of my teammates, since she was a lawyer and reviewed our contracts before we signed with our current sponsor and agent. I made sure to tell Mom not to reveal my secret when talking to them.
The guys didnât actually know that I was a girl.
It was a bit strange, considering Jupiter and I had been best friends for seven years, but gender never really came up in our conversations. They all just assumed I was a guy, and I didnât contradict them. I really didnât want them to treat me differently.
These days, I used a voice modulator when we chatted, so my voice sounded deeper. That wasnât necessary when we were ten, but I definitely sounded more like a seventeen-year-old girl than a boy now.
So, in our team, Jupiterâor Tonyâwas the leader. I was the strategist and best sniper. The guys all called me Charlie, if they used my real name. In real life, Iâd stopped going by Charlie a few years ago. These days, I was known as Charlotte, but of course I never told them about the change.
Neptune, a.k.a. Cory, and Pluto, a.k.a. Frank, were the other two members of the team. They were better at mid-range and close combat, which was good since we couldnât all be snipers.
Despite knowing the guysâ real names, while playing the game we only used our gamer tags. We rarely used real names, except when talking with our parents.
I didnât talk to Neptune or Pluto much outside the game, other than to coordinate practice. Jupiter, howeverâI talked to him almost all the time. He was probably the sweetest guy I knew, but he seemed to be the opposite of me. From his texts, I gathered that he was super popular and played football.
Me, I still couldnât talk to people in real life. And by this, I mean I literally couldnât open my mouth and make sound when I was with strangers. So I spent most of my time studying.
âCharlotte, dinnerâs ready,â I heard Margot call from downstairs. Sheâd been my nanny for as long as I could remember. I kept asking Mom why I still had a nanny, given I was seventeen, but she seemed to feel that Margot was family now and didnât want to let her go.
âIâll be right there!â I called back.
âDude! Mute your mic before you yell in our ears!â Nep scolded me.
âSorry, guys. I forgot. But I gotta go eat,â I said.
âSee, thatâs why I always keep my mic muted. Iâd hate for you to accidentally hear the moaning coming from my room as we play,â Nep replied.
âThatâs gross and not something I wanted to imagine,â I retorted.
âLots of late nights with your hand?â Jup teased.
âVery funny. For your information, my handâs feeling a little neglected, with all the hot girls throwing themselves at me,â Nep bragged.
So, Neptune was a bit of aâwell, a massive player. Like Jup, he played sports, but he let the popularity thing go to his head. He claimed he kept himself muted, but he seemed to âaccidentally unmuteâ a lot. I thought he wanted us to hear what he was doing. Gross.
âSo, whatâs for dinner, rich kid?â Jup teased.
Yeah, he was my best friend, but he loved to tease people whenever he got the chance.
âIâm not sure, but it smells like some sort of pasta,â I replied.
âI am so jealous. My momâs been so busy lately that she hasnât cooked in ages. What I wouldnât do for some Italian,â Pluto lamented.
âSorry, Plut. Anyway, bye, guys. Iâll be back on in an hour and a half or so,â I told them before signing off the chat and going AFK, or away from keyboard.
When I got downstairs, I noticed that Margot had left a plate of lasagna for me but had put the rest into the fridge and already cleaned up. I grabbed the plate and went to the kitchen table to sit and eatâalone, like always.
The fridge started to hum quietly. âHey, Fridge, how was your day? Same old same old?â
On cue, the ice maker rattled, and I said, âOh, thatâs too bad. Yeah, my day at school kind of sucked too.â
My voice sounded weird in the quiet kitchen, so I stopped talking.
Besides, I was a little ashamed to admit, even to the fridge, how bad it felt sometimes to see other kids whispering and pointing at me when they thought I wasnât looking. It happened once or twice almost every single day. I told myself I was used to it, but I didnât see how you ever got used to something like that.
Maybe I was so socially awkward because Iâd never had any real social interactionâbut practicing on the appliances wasnât going to help.
Having Margot around didnât help much, either. Margot acted more like a servant. She didnât actually communicate with me person to person. Mom and Dad thought we sat down together and played board games and cards. That was part of Margotâs job description originally, after all. But Margot had given up on all that years ago.
Iâd never told Mom and Dad how Margot went straight into her room and closed the door the minute she was done with her chores. I didnât want to make them feel badâor get Margot in trouble.
I barely saw my parents. I loved them, and I loved how successful they were, but I would rather them be home more than be the best in their fields.
Really, the only social interaction I had at all was over video game chat or text messaging with Jup.
Thank goodness I had him, or Iâd be completely alone.
