Tutorial Level

I grabbed a new game off of the shelves and showed it to Zack. It was called Magical Monkeys 2 and it had a colorful box art to match its name. He took one look at it and pretended to barf. He reminded me that we were here to find a game that was ‘T for teen,’ not ‘L for lame.’ He held up a game case that was shrouded in chainsaws. I couldn’t even make out the title because of them. If I wanted chainsaws, I’d sneak into an R-rated horror movie. Not that I enjoyed movies in the first place. I preferred games.

Zack shared my love of games, which was how we became friends. We spent most of our days in the GameCruise store near our elementary school. We always went straight there after class was over.

We didn’t have enough money to buy anything half of the time. Allowances only happened once a week, and we visited the store every day. That’s why we made a habit out of browsing box art. Each one offered something unique. Unless the game was a movie tie-in. Those were always garbage.

My phone vibrated about half an hour into browsing the art gallery. A text message from my mom instructed me to get home soon; lunch was ready. That was the quickest way to get me home. I told Zack that I had to go, which of course prompted me to invite him over. He was so close to me and my family that he was the unofficial fourth member of it.

We crammed peanut and jelly sandwiches down our throats as we played games on my console. My controller’s buttons kept sticking up because of my jelly-covered fingers, but I’d worry about that later. I was having too much fun beating Zack at his favorite fighting game. The look of defeat on his face was sweeter than any PB&J.

When I wasn’t tackling the mountain of homework that Mr. Ledenhower burdened us with, I was playing games and hanging with my best friend. What more could a child ask for? It was a perfect life.

That was until the demon known as "middle school" scrambled up my life. School got harder and my mountain of homework grew by the day. Although, that was nothing compared to what was going on with Zack.

His family moved before the school year began, so he went to a different middle school than I did. It felt like he and I were on opposite sides of a vast ocean. I couldn’t go through a day of school without wondering about how Zack’s day was going. 

We talked on the phone as often as we could. I used to look forward to playing video games when the school day ended, but now I looked forward to phone calls with Zack. My ringtone became my favorite sound.

We’d even get together on the weekends and hang out at GameCruise. We had to be driven there because Zack no longer lived near it. I loved that place, but it’d committed a heinous crime in the years between elementary and middle school: it’d changed.

Every game used to be a glowing beacon of potential. Now, only every three out of ten games shone with the same light. The consoles were evolving, but their games weren’t. It was like a greedy billionaire had bought the gaming industry and ran it into the ground. Visiting GameCruise was less done out of passion, and more out of tradition.

High school wasted no time with widening the divide between us. Zack’s calls decreased in quantity and quality. He told me that he’d joined the basketball team at his new high school, so most of his time was spent with his teammates. I’d never tell him how disappointed that made me. I had to be supportive, even if it meant seeing each other even less.

I decided to make new friends at my high school. I avoided that in middle school because I still had Zack, but now it seemed like I had no choice. I met some guys who liked video games as much as I did. They even got together to play them and duel each other with trading cards during lunchtime. One of the teachers let them use their classroom. A whole hour of nerding out at school every day. It was exactly what ten-year-old me had hoped high school would be like.

The only problem was that the more time I spent in that classroom—that “club,” the more alienated I felt. It wasn’t my fellow clubmates rejecting me. It was me. I felt like I’d had stumbled in on something that I wasn’t invited to. The way those guys talked about games showed that they had real passion for them. Passion that I could no longer muster. I was an impostor.

I stopped going to that classroom.

High school was such a blur. Not because it went by too fast, but because I was lost for all four years of it. The person I used to be had ceased to exist. I felt like I was being held captive by thick fog. It was impossible to see where I was headed. My interests had changed, my best friend was barely around anymore, and I didn’t know how to fill in the gaps that those absences created. That conundrum gave me an idea. It was a desperate one, which meant that it suited me.

I asked Zack if he wanted to catch up at the GameCruise. I basically asked him if he wanted to relieve our middle school days. We hadn’t seen the place since the first week of freshman year. Revisiting it could restore my love for games and repair my and Zack’s strained relationship at the same time. It took a few hours for him to text back, but he agreed to do it. Even though his reply contained none of the enthusiasm that elementary school Zack would have used.

Zack’s new car smelled like it’d existed for longer than I’d been alive. He murmured that he got a great deal on it because it was used. I didn’t even know that he’d started driving. That seemed…wrong. I knew that we were seniors but I couldn’t help wondering if he was old enough to do it.

I smiled when I saw the old GameCruise in the distance. My smile dropped when I noticed the “Store closing - everything must go” banner hung up over the store’s name. It was a horrible stain on our beloved sanctuary. Zack raised an eyebrow as if this were a minor inconvenience. My brain must have been casting an illusion on me. GameCruise couldn’t be going out of business. It was packed when we were kids. What happened?

The store was littered with the heinous banners. They hung over my head like a death flag. Empty boxes that once held games took up space all over the room. The shelves were so barren that it was hard to believe that they’d ever been full.

Zack sucked in air through his teeth as he looked around. He had to realize that this wasn’t what I had planned. He rubbed the back of his neck and asked me if I’d rather see Blades of Horror instead. I wanted to remind him that I didn’t like movies, but I was unable to. The words refused to come out. Had my opinion changed without me noticing?

During my struggle, he added that he was going to see it with a group of his friends in about thirty minutes. A group? That meant being introduced to strangers. That scenario should have been terrifying, but in reality, it excited me. I accepted the invitation, despite not understanding why

I watched the GameCruise shrink in Zack’s wing mirror. It panged my heart to know that my beloved childhood home was dying and that I couldn’t save it. At least I got to see it off. Without that store, I’d have to buy games online. Wait, I had just been surrounded by games that were 80% off and I hadn’t purchased a single one. Whatever path I was taking, life made it clear that gaming wasn’t part of it. Not anymore.

A group of five were waiting outside the theater. Zack hurried toward them with the confidence of a sixth member. Did they even have room for a seventh? While Zack chatted up two of the members, the other three introduced themselves to me. Their friendliness caught me off-guard. They weren’t questioning my presence? One of them even complimented the blue shirt I’d picked out on a whim. Their acceptance was unnerving, but it also made me safe. They didn’t even play games so I felt like I had nothing to prove.

My plan had failed on all fronts. Zack was paying these strangers more attention than me, and I’d never see the GameCruise again. I should have been crying at the destruction of my former life. Instead, relief occupied my mind.

The fog had thinned out a little. I could see the beginnings of a new path to walk down. Was the fog leaving, or had that path always been there? Maybe I’ve never seen it before because I was blinded by the past. Now I was forced to face the truth. The reality that I had outgrown myself; the person that I used to be when I was young. If only there was a term for that.

I followed the group into the theater. The buttery scent of popcorn wafted into my nose, reassuring me that everything would be fine. Maybe I did like movies.