Asking for Halo 5 for my fifteenth birthday was the biggest mistake of my adolescent life.
First of all, my mother about fainted when I did. It was hard enough to get her to even allow me to have an Xbox with a few single-player fantasy games, and that was because she thought it was a phase I would grow out of. But asking for an Xbox Live subscription and a game I could play with people around the world where our main goal was to kill each other?
My poor mother didn’t know what to do with that.
“What about cheerleading? What about hanging out with your friends, shopping at the mall, boys?” She’d asked each question more frantically than the last, all the hope dwindling in her eyes.
Fortunately, I had Dad, who I think knew from when I was a young age that I was not going to be what he and Mom pictured.
Mom wanted a cheerleader and debutante just like her. She wanted her daughter to rush the same sorority she’d been a part of in college and dreamed of planning a huge wedding day with a fluffy white dress.
Dad wanted me to be in acquisitions, just like him and my older brother, Matthew, who was in college and destined to follow in his footsteps. To be fair, I did get my sass from my dad, and my take no shit attitude. But using those skills to be ruthless in a business merger was not exactly on my radar.
No, what they got instead of all that was an emo kid with a love for doodling and a dream of being a tattoo artist.
But that’s not even why Halo 5 was the beginning of my demise. Because as much as Mom hated it, Dad encouraged her that it was fine for me to play. Good for the brain muscles, he jokingly said over dinner as Mom angrily chewed an asparagus sprig.
And so, on my fifteenth birthday, I ripped open the present shaped like a video game first and squealed with delight, abandoning all my other gifts and running back to my room to play immediately.
It took me a while to figure the game out, but not too long to realize that I was years behind most of the people I was playing live with. Not that that deterred me. I was a teenager on summer break with all the time in the world. And if there was anything I loved more than drawing or gaming, it was a challenge.
I played as much as I could those first few weeks of summer vacation, leveling up and honing my skills. It wasn’t unusual for me to still be awake when Dad’s alarm went off for him to go into the city. He’d pop his head into my room, smile, and warn me to at least pretend I was sleeping when Mom got up.
I loved that summer. I loved the feeling of a winning streak, of staying up until the sun rose, of surprising my team when I spoke into my headset and they realized I was a girl. At school, I was a nobody, a loser, just another overweight teenager with acne and bad teeth and baggy clothes who lost more and more friends as she discovered her true interests.
But online? I was a bad ass.
I was almost a god — or goddess — when I was playing Halo. I controlled what I looked like, who I played with, and what a huge part I was of our team’s victory. People wanted me on their team. They wanted to play with me. They wanted to be me.
Everything was going great.
And then, a month and a half after my birthday, when summer was in full swing but school was looming on the other side of it, I was popped into a game with the absolute last person I ever expected.
Leo Hernandez.
Anyone who went to my high school knew who Leo was. Every girl knew his messy hair, his crooked smile, his lean, muscular body, his golden skin and infectious laugh. Every boy knew his speed and agility, the ease with which he excelled on the football field and off it, too. He was a star athlete with a dad who used to play in the NFL. He was popular. He was funny. He was rich.
He was the kind of boy who could smile at you and make you feel like the only girl in the world.
Little did I know he was also the boy who would ruin my life.
I knew it was him as soon as his username popped up: leohernandez13. Sure, there had to be other Leo Hernandez’s in the world, but that 13 gave him away. It was his jersey number since he played Pee Wee, and if there was any doubt left that it was him, it was obliterated when his familiar voice rang out in the chat.
“Who’s ready to teabag some newbs?”
I stayed quiet the entire game, internally freaking out that I was playing with Leo even though I wished more than anything to be unaffected by him. I couldn’t help it. I was a teenage girl, and the first time I’d seen him rip his jersey off after a football game had been my sexual awakening.
Of course, like most of the student body, he had no idea who I was.
At the end of our game, Leo denounced everyone on our team for “sucking ass.”
Except for me.
And then he changed my world with three words.
“Octostigma, wanna squad?”
Octostigma was my username, one I’d patted myself on the back for thinking of because it was so cool and creative and elusive, and no one had even remotely the same one. It was combining two things I loved — octopus, the coolest animal on the planet, and stigma, which was the ancient Greek term for tattoo.
Hearing Leo Hernandez say that username, hearing him ask me to play with him?
Another awakening.
Everything happened fast after that. He added me as a friend, barked out a laugh of surprise when he found out I was a girl, and then we played several rounds on the same fireteam before he had to go to bed.
But the next night, when he logged on, I was immediately invited to play with him again.
It went on like this for about a week before, one night, he declared, “I’m bored with this. Do you have the new Resident Evil?”
“No.”
“Can you get it?”
“Maybe.”
“Let me know when you do.”
With that, he exited Halo, and I saw the notification pop up that told me he was playing Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
I was not above begging my mother at the breakfast table the next morning. In fact, I quite literally fell to my knees.
“Games are expensive, and you just got one for your birthday,” she said.
My dad gave her a look over his Sunday morning paper, which said without words that her telling me a game was expensive was comical considering what she spent on a pair of shoes weekly.
“Please, Mom. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” I said earnestly.
Mom looked at my dad and then back at me. “Next season, you’ll be introduced to society.”
And I shit you not, I didn’t even groan or roll my eyes. “Done.”
It was that easy. Agree to be a deb and I got the ticket to my crush. Two days later I had Resident Evil: Revelations 2, and when I signed on, Leo was already there.
“Stig! You got the game,” he announced when our headsets connected.
I tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped at the nickname he’d given me, at the fact that he seemed happy I was online. “Don’t get too excited,” I told him. “I’ve never played before, which means I’ll undoubtedly suck ass.”
He laughed at me using his verbiage. “I’ll teach you.”
And that’s all it was for a while, him teaching me the ropes of the game in Raid mode with the only conversation between us being me asking questions or him giving tips. But eventually, when I had the hang of it, the intimacy of playing a game with only Leo and not a squad full of other strangers hit me. And when we didn’t need to talk about how to play the game anymore, we started talking about other things.
“So, how old are you?” he asked me during a raid one Sunday night.
“Fifteen. You?”
“Sixteen,” he lied. I knew it was a lie because his birthday wasn’t until October, but I let him lie because I liked the idea of him lying to impress me.
“Cool.”
“So, you’re a sophomore?”
“In a few weeks when school starts,” I said, pausing when we came upon a cluster of zombies that required concentration. When we made it past, I continued. “Not really looking forward to that, to be honest.”
“Why?”
“School sucks.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.” A pause, then, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
My skin burned so fiercely I took one of my cold hands off my controller and pressed it against my cheek. “No.”
“No?” Leo laughed. “That’s insane. How do you not have a boyfriend?”
I snorted. “The boys at my school are not into girls like me.”
“Are you kidding?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Then they’re idiots. If there was a girl at my school who played video games? I’d be all over that.”
“You have no idea what I look like.”
“So?”
Heat full on invaded my body at that, like I had an inescapable fever.
“Are you hitting on me, LeoHernandez13?”
“Maybe I am, Stig.”
My stomach did a backflip. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know who I am.”
The conversation stalled as we hit the end of a raid, all focus on slaying zombies and other creatures. When we were back in the lobby, Leo said, “So what do you do when you’re not gaming?”
“Draw.”
“Draw what?”
“I don’t know. Animals, flowers, tattoo designs, just—”
“Wait. Tattoo designs?”
I bit my lip against a smile. “Yes.”
“Do you have any? Tattoos, I mean?”
“I’m fifteen.”
“Fair. I thought maybe you had cool parents.”
I snorted. “Far from it, unless you think a dad who works in acquisitions and a mom whose job is keeping up with the latest gossip at the club is cool.”
“I’ve heard worse alternatives. So, you game and you draw. What else should I know about you?” He paused. “Maybe… your name?”
I swallowed, anxiety zipping down my spine. I knew he wouldn’t know me even if I gave him my full name and a picture, because Leo was in the top two percent at our school, popularity wise, and I was at the very bottom of the barrel. But still, there was something powerful about anonymity. As Octostigma, I was cool, mysterious — the fun girl who plays video games. Maybe my voice was hot. Maybe the elusiveness was all part of it.
But as Mary Silver, I was a loser.
“You can just call me Stig.”
It went on like this for the rest of the summer. I couldn’t wait to log on, couldn’t wait to see the notification that LeoHernandez13 was inviting me to play with him. We’d kill zombies and laugh and fight over upgrades and who was better at what skill. In the lobby between raids, we’d talk, and the more we did, the deeper the conversations went.
I told him about the god-awful deal I’d made with my mom in order to get this game, and he laughed, asking what kind of dress I’d get for the debutante ball and if I was as good at dancing as I was at slaying zombies.
But his voice softened when he told me about the pressure he felt from his own parents, namely his father.
“He wants me to follow in his footsteps and go to Southern Alabama to play, but I love New England. I love Boston. I just… I can’t imagine leaving.”
“You don’t have to.”
He laughed. “You don’t know my dad. I’m his pride and joy. It’d crush him if I didn’t go to his alma mater.”
“But it’s your life,” I reminded him. “He can’t live both his and yours, too. Besides, wouldn’t he be proud of you no matter where you decided to play football?”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Years of disappointing my parents and still having them love me.”
There was a soft laugh through the headset, and then silence. “Hey… I know this is kind of against all the rules our parents set up for us when we started playing live video games but… do you think I could have your number?”
Butterflies.
Butterflies everywhere.
“Sure.”
When I gave it to him, he freaked out.
“Wait, 781… that’s Weston! That’s where I live!”
Shit.
Panic zipped through me. I hadn’t thought about him putting two and two together when I gave him my number.
I bit my lip in lieu of answering.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Well, that’s because I assumed you were in, like, I don’t know, Canada or something.”
“Canada?” I laughed.
“What school do you go to?”
That killed my laugh. “Uh… it’s a small private school, you wouldn’t know it.”
“I go to a private school, too.”
Sweat prickled the back of my neck. “I have to go. Mom is yelling at me to go to sleep. Wants me to get on schedule before school starts. Bye!”
I logged off before he could respond, my heart hammering in my chest. I flopped back on my bed and closed my eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
But then, my phone buzzed, and a text from a new number came through.
Unknown: Sweet dreams, Stig.
I thought that was it, but after I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed, there was another one waiting for me.
Leo: I’m really glad I met you.
The next morning, my phone rang at seven AM. I answered blearily without even checking who it was, because I never got phone calls, let alone that early.
“Rise and shine,” Leo said.
I bolted upright.
He called me?!
“Um… hi?”
“Figured I’d help your mom in her quest to get you ready for the school routine,” he said. His voice sounded even warmer over the phone, more crisp than over the headset I was used to hearing him in. “Plus, I have football practice, and it just feels fair that you should have to get up at the same time as me since you kept me up so late.”
“I kept you up?”
“All summer long. You really are a bad influence.”
“Says the one who asked for a stranger’s phone number online.”
“And I don’t have a single regret.”
I flushed, flopping back onto my bed and covering the phone so he wouldn’t hear my ridiculous little squeal.
“Hey, Stig?”
“Yeah?”
“Draw me something.”
“What do you want me to draw?”
“Anything,” he answered quickly. “Show me a part of who you are.”
“Why?”
A pause. “Because I like you.”
My eyes widened, heart hammering so loud I couldn’t hear myself when I responded with a weak, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he said.
And even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he was smiling.
