Cure for the Common Universe (9 page)

Scarecrow passed our table, his arm around a girl who giggled and playfully pushed him away.

“He's such a douche bag,” Meeki said.

Aurora nodded.

“Language, Meeki,” Fezzik said.

“Sorry,” Meeki said. “He's a device that cleans out vaginas.”

Fezzik didn't argue with that.

The tension in my chest uncoiled a bit. It's not so bad when the person who mysteriously hates you is widely considered a douche bag.

“I don't know what Dorothy sees in him,” Aurora said, looking after Scarecrow and the girl.

“Their player names are Scarecrow and
Dorothy
?” I asked.

“The other two Cheefs call themselves Lion and Tin Man,”
Fezzik said, pointing toward the bigger guys, who'd lapped me on the racetrack—twice. “They changed their player names together last week.”

Great. My mysterious archnemesis was the leader of a Yellow Brick Road gang.

Someone sat and collapsed onto the table next to me.

“How's the dream world, Zxzord?” Fezzik asked.

Zxzord kept his head hidden in his arms. “I've been shitting the La Brea Tar Pits all morning.”

Fezzik made his uncomfortable Wookiee sound.

Aurora reached under her tongue and inexplicably offered Zxzord a pearl.

•  •  •

“Paint what inspires you in the real world,” the Sefiroths' silver-haired guild leader said in the paintbrush room. The walls were covered with hideous watercolors.

Meeki painted armor. Aurora painted stars. Soup sat too close, as usual, and painted what looked like a chubby kid trapped in a Pokéball.

“That better not be me,” I told him.

He slowly slid it off the table and crumpled it.

By the end of class, there was a hideous watercolor portrait on the wall—a dripping, smiling, black-haired stick figure, standing at what might have been a car wash.

I
have been a hero.

I have hefted my axe and climbed the jagged mountaintop. A blizzard lashed my armor as I approached a behemoth that vomited venomous lava onto any who tried to steal its treasure. I have stared that demon in its eyes of chaos as it howled for my death. And I was not half so terrified as when I went to play some casual sports with a few video game addicts.

My heart was practically hammering out my brains as the Fury Burds trudged the sandy path to the Coliseum. It was the kind of terror I'd felt a thousand times at my high school. Like my body was about to be assaulted—by health.

In the high desert sky, clouds drifted across the sun, making the sand dull gray one moment, flashing gold the next.
Oh God, please let me win that gold.

“Okay, Miles,” Soup said as we walked. “Remember,
breathe in harder than you breathe out, solid arms, and keep your chin down.”

I ignored him and just focused on not throwing up again. Then he tapped me on the shoulder.

Soup pointed. “The Coliseum.”

A chain-link fence wrapped around a flat stretch of compact sand holding a few courts and an Astroturf field. It was like a tornado had swept up my least favorite things in the world and dumped them into the middle of the desert.

God I needed a Red Bull.

“Go warm up, Fury Burds!” Fezzik called.

Meeki, Aurora, and Soup went off while I tried to get a sense of my surroundings. The Sefiroths were on one half of the basketball court, looking awkward. They slapped at balls, tripped over absolutely nothing, or tried to touch their toes and fell short by a foot or two.

The Master Cheefs were on the other half of the court, looking valiant. Scarecrow dodged and shimmied around Dorothy with her big shoulders, and around Lion with his swaying mane. He dribbled the ball between Tin Man's tall legs before performing a perfect layup, as easy as pushing a button.

In order not to aggro any of the Cheefs, I took the long way around the courts and found the muscly coach and his nipples.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Yeah?” he said, not looking at me.

“Um, could we play something easy today?”

Now he turned. He glanced at me over the top of his sunglasses, like even in a video game recovery center, this was the most pathetic question I could ask.

“I, uh, need to get a lot of points.”

He turned his back to me. “Basketball tournament today.”

Shit. Scarecrow was going to wipe the concrete with me.

I searched the courts, feeling helpless. Lots of video games have hint systems. Right then I needed a little Navi fairy floating around my head like in
Zelda
. A winged bouncy orb of light that could flutter to objects and give me clues about what I needed to do next.

Didiling-ding-ding-ding-ding!

I imagined my own Navi painting the Coliseum with shiny fairy dust. Which sport would ensure my blistering success? The fairy lit the peeling white paint of a square cross-sectioned with two lines.

Four Square.

I may not have been able to throw a ball, but I was pretty confident I could block one with my body.

“Can I play Four Square instead?” I asked the coach.

“No, you cannot. That's for players with health troubles.”

Navi sailed back and twinkled above my shoulder.

Didiling-ding-ding-ding-ding! Feign an illness, Miles!

“Oh, um, I have asthma.”

“That so?” the coach said, pinching some snot out of his nose.

I made my breath ragged, so that it had a slight whistle to it. “Yeah. My dad thinks there's something seriously wrong with me, but he's a Christian Scientist so he doesn't believe in medicine. That's why I couldn't get a doctor's note for G-man.”

The coach stared me down. I could feel his nipples burrowing into my soul. “That true?”

Half true.
I nodded.

“This facility isn't about winning, y'know,” the coach said.

Didiling-ding-ding-ding-ding! Try threatening him!

“I know it isn't about winning,” I said. “I just don't want to have an attack all of a sudden and flop around on the court and then for Video Horizons to have a lawsuit on its hands.”

The coach glared at me. He pinched more snot from his nose, shrugged, and pointed to the Four Square court. “Go fill a square.”

I nodded like that was exactly what I'd expected would happen. I went to the ball rack, and grabbed what I hoped was a Four Square ball. It was raspberry-red, pocked with little star-shaped indents, and had a peeling logo of a place called Happy Sun Summer Camp.

I bounced it a few times. It felt . . . unnatural. Video games, for all of their hand-eye coordination, do not prepare you for sports. Pushing a button on a controller is a far cry from hurling a weighted sphere through the atmosphere while accounting for gravity, distance, and my damned fingers that never seemed to want to let go of the ball at the right moment.

My recovery might have been set up like a video game, but
I did not have the luxury of reloading so I could try it over and over again. I had to do this perfectly the first time.

I brought the ball close to my lips and smelled the sweet rubber.
“Okay, ball,”
I whispered.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully. My entire romantic life hangs on this game. So when you come at me, I want you to be as light and easy to predict as a bit of dandelion fluff. But when I hit you, I want you to leave my fist like a meteorite.”

“Who you talking to?”

I turned and found Soup, right in my shadow again.

“Okay, new rule,” I said. “If I can feel you breathing, then you're standing too cl—” Something dawned on me. “Do you have any undeclared health issues?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Wanna play Four Square?”

“If you're playing!”

“Great.”
I squeezed his little shoulder. “Listen, buddy, pal, friend, ace. I need you to throw this game for me.”

His nose crinkled. “Like, don't win but let you win instead?”

“Yep.”

“Okay!” He leapt onto the Four Square court.

“Thank you so mu— Okay,
oops
. Stay behind your line. You don't have to stand so close.”

“We need two more,” Soup said, looking at the empty squares.

I searched the Coliseum.

“Go ask that kid,” I said, pointing to a Sefiroth who walked without swinging his arms. “And
that
one.” I pointed to another, lying on the asphalt, belly hanging out of the bottom of his shirt.

Soup fetched them.

“Miles,” I said to the new players, trying to sound intimidating.

“Devastator,” the kid with the stuck arms said in a pinched voice.

“Sir Arturius,” the chubby one said, nervously squeezing his hands together. “Even
Final Fantasy
has its blitzball, right?”

They were perfect.

“Can I be commentator?” Soup asked.

“If you do it under your breath,” I said.

I got
real
low, filling my square. I was a wall. I was a
Halo
shield. I was the little rocket ship in
Galaga
. I could stop an asteroid field.

The game began.

Every time Devastator or Sir Arturius sent the ball in my direction, I hammered it at Soup, who let it pass.

“Point!” I called.

Soup didn't even have to help much. Devastator kept missing the ball with his awkward arms, while Sir Arturius tried to hit the ball back with so much force that it threw him forward in his square, leaving the back wide open for me to fill with rocketing raspberry red.

“Point!”

On my date I'd be able to tell Gravity how I had heroically won a sporting competition since we'd last met. I'd just be vague about the circumstances.

“Point!”

Devastator fumbled. Sir Arturius sweated. Soup didn't try. And I kept winning.

Until the whistle blared.

“All players to the Four Square court!” the coach called.

I froze as the Cheefs, Sefs, and Burds gathered around us like an impending storm.

Keeping one foot in my square, I leaned in to the coach. “Uh, I thought you said this was just for kids with health troubles.”

The coach shrugged. “Maybe they all have asthma too.”

I looked at the Cheefs, sweaty from the basketball court. Dorothy spit, Tin Man cracked his knuckles, Lion tied his locks into a ponytail, and Scarecrow blew me a kiss. My confidence evaporated into the summer sky.

The coach patted my back and whispered
, “You think I'm gonna give you points without you working for it?”
His whistle screeched into my ear. “We're changing today's tournament because one of our players has asthma.”

“Lame,”
Lion said.

Soup touched my love handle. “Miles? Do you have asthma? Do you need me to get you water?”

“No.”

“Okay, if you pass out, I can do mouth-to—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Soup.”

“Okay.”

Scarecrow stepped up to Sir Arturius. “Get out of there for a second.”

The kid happily obeyed, and Scarecrow moved into his square.

“Mind if I step in?” Dorothy asked Devastator, squeezing his arm.

“Okay,” he said, and exited, arms fixed to his sides.

Tin Man slapped the back of my arm. “Move.”

I gazed up at all six foot three of him. “No.”

Tin Man seemed confused. Like no one had ever said no to him before. He looked at the coach, then back at me, huffed, and then rejoined the line.

“
My
square,” Lion growled at Soup.

Soup hugged the ball to his chest. He looked at me, then back at Lion's red face. “No,” he said.

I smiled and decided to let Soup sit next to me during the next assembly.

The coach put his whistle to his lips. “The tournament will begin—”

“Actually?” I put my hand into the air. “We already started. I have eleven points.”

He snorted. “There are no points in Four Square.” And he blew the whistle.

“What we playing?” Scarecrow asked, punching the ball
out of Soup's hands and spinning it between his own. “Bus Stop? Tea Party? Around the World? Shark Attack? I say Shark Attack.”

Shark Attack implied blood. Tea Party didn't sound too bad. I was about to say so when Scarecrow lifted the ball into the air, his other fist behind it. “No fake-outs. No cherry bombs. We good?”

My stomach nose-dived right to my feet. No, we weren't good. I needed sports experience. I needed to have joined the basketball team instead of the AV club. I needed a Red Bull. I needed to
win
.

Soup raised his hand. “How do you play?”

Scarecrow sighed and dropped the ball to his side. “Four squares.” He pointed to the roman numeral in the corner of each of our respective spaces. “If someone's eliminated, everyone else cycles toward the one square. Winner is whoever spends the most time in this square. Don't know why you guys didn't take it, but too late now.”