“Why not?”
“Because it’s all you do. You spent all the money you made last summer on a new computer. If your grades were good and you weren’tgetting into fights, I wouldn’t be so concerned about it. But you’re too focused. This isn’t good for you.”
“Whatever.” I turn away. What’s she going to do, cancel my account? She doesn’t have the information to log into it. Is she going to cut off internet access entirely? I need it for my homework. I hear her footsteps behind me, so I close the door to my room and throw the lock.
“Evie,” she says.
I sit down at my computer and hit the mouse. The monitors don’t turn on. The room is strangely quiet. The computer tower is off, but I don’t remember turning it off when I stopped playing last night. I hit the power button. Nothing happens. I shove away from the desk, drop down, and crawl under to check the outlets.
The power cord is gone.
I scramble up and open the door. Mom is standing right outside, her mouth set in a firm line but fear flashing in her eyes.
“You took my power cord?” I say.
“One week,” she says. “I want you to go without playing for one week. If you can do that, I’ll give you the cord back. Okay?”
One week is the Dreambreaker expansion.
“One week is too long,” I bite out. “Ihaveto play—I can’t just go AWOL on the clan.”
She throws her hands up. “This is what I’m talking about!”
I slam the door closed and lock it again. Mom obviously doesn’t know that the power cords are universal, so she only took the one from the tower. I unplug one of my monitors and jack that into the computer tower instead. I’ll be a monitor short, but I can still play. I’ll stay off voice chat and just type in-game so she can’t hear me through the door, and I’ll make sure I switch the power cord back to my monitor before I leave in the morning so it seems like I haven’t used it. One week? I can pretend not to play for one week.
It’s not about the power cord. It’s about the audacity to take Children of Hypnos away from me. She wants me to get better, so she takes the only thing I care about. She didn’t evenask. She doesn’t care why it’s so important to me, or why I’m playing it all the time, or why it suddenly means more than school or sports.
I turn on music to drown out the computer fans when I boot up.
“Evie,” Mom calls again, “can we talk about this?”
It’s still early. I got sent home because of the fight, so I have a lot of time to play. I don’t plan on leaving my room except to use the bathroom, and I’ll put that off as long as possible. I don’t want to talk.
Still, I feel that ping deep in my chest, behind my heart, that twinge of guilt. I know she’s trying to help. I know she’s worried. But I don’t want what she’s trying to give me.
“I don’t want to talk right now,” I yell.
There’s a pause, and then her footsteps move away.
I’m glad I said something, but it still feels like it was the wrong thing to say.
By late in the day, guilt has eaten a hole in my stomach. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad. I shouldn’t have lost control. It wasn’t a rational response. But I couldn’t stop it. Both times, it happened instantly, overwhelmingly, like a flash flood. Playing helps me forget, but every twenty minutes or so I remember what I said and did, and the guilt worsens.
Ash gets online later that day, and heseemsfine, but I know something is up with him. When I ask him again why he was so weird, why he didn’t meet me for lunch, he avoids the questions.
[Faustus]:I heard you gouged up Aiden’s face pretty good.
[Ravenweal]:Yeah, I went kinda feral
[Ravenweal]:I’ve never gotten like that before
[Ravenweal]:It was scary
[Faustus]:I heard about what he said. I would’ve done the same thing.
[Ravenweal]:I wish no one had told you
[Faustus]:People say stupid shit all the time.
