NICK WAKES up reaching out into the air. He’d been dreaming of Mom making bacon at the stove. She’d looked like that old ivory cameo of hers, pale, posed, and delicate, and the kitchen had smelled like home again. There’s no smell in his room but the one coming from his dirty laundry in a pile in the corner. He dresses and goes downstairs.
Dad is reading the newspaper and eating cold cereal. Nick goes over to the stove, where he’d dreamed the phantom of his mother, where he sometimes sees her shadow even when he’s awake. He doesn’t use the stove himself, never really looks at it, but now he studies it. It’s simple, white, clean of food stains, but a thin stubble of dust has begun to crop up on the sides. Behind it, the wall is painted white, except that there’s a blackened column, like rising smoke. He notices the range hood is blackened as well, shadowy claw marks on the metal. He tries to think of the last time he actually looked at the stove. Has it been like this for a while? He leans forward—the paint in the center of the black smoke on the wall is chipping away in a vertical line. Nick reaches out and pushes a flake of it away with his fingernail. It crumbles and falls behind the stove, leaving a small white triangle along the crack.
“What are you doing?” Dad asks from behind him.
“How long has this been like this?” Nick asks.
“What?” Dad asks. Nick looks behind him. Dad is still staring at the paper.
“This burn,” Nick says, and turns around and flicks another piece of paint out from around the crack.
“That’s old,” Dad says. Nick goes to the cupboard, takes out a bowl and pours cereal and milk into it, then sits down across from Dad.
“I don’t remember any fires,” Nick says.
“You must not have been here,” Dad says, and flips a page of the newspaper. Nick notices how his father raises it to cover his face slightly, like a mask. Severkin would think he was hiding something. So does Nick.
“You’re the only one who would burn anything,” Nick says, taking a spoonful of cereal, “and I’m always here when you’re cooking.”
His father lowers the top half of the paper and stares at Nick through his glasses. “Maybe you were upstairs, playing your game, or sleeping, or possibly studying, though I know that’s a long shot.”
Nick feels the prick of the ragebrew, coursing up his arms, making him hold the spoon so tightly it starts to burn his hand.
“It’s not fair, the way you and Mom don’t tell me things,” Nick says. “You make all these choices that change my life and you don’t tell me why. It’s like…” Nick searches his cereal bowl for a weapon to hurl at his father. “It’s like I’m a slave,” he says. It’s crude, disrespectful to his ancestry and the ancestry of thousands of others, but it’ll hurt Dad. And that’s what he wants.
Dad looks down, contemplating the last few pieces of cereal floating in his bowl. It becomes quiet. Nick expected anger, yelling, one of the various lectures he’s heard before, but there’s just silence. Finally Dad takes a deep breath. He looks up.
“You’re right,” he says. Nick feels his skin cool and his hairs stand on end, all reaching out for something. “It’s not fair,” his father says. “And it’s not what all the books and counselors say to do. They say to be open and honest. But your mother…she loves you so much, you know that, right?”
Nick nods.
“The burn marks are from a fire your mother accidentally set about a week before she left. She was cooking…something, I don’t remember. Got confused, added something, and whatever was in the pan went up in flames.” His father puts the newspaper down on the table, irons it with his arm. “She panicked; I grabbed the fire extinguisher. You were upstairs, the music on, reading some magazine about your game. When you came down for dinner, you asked about the smoke and Mom said she’d burned something.” He tilts his head to the side and smiles a little. “Which wasn’t a lie.”
Nick takes a deep breath. He looks down at his cereal, which has grown soggy, and mashes it with his spoon. What box on the checklist is for setting fires? 1, 2, 3, and probably 8, too. Does he have to check them all, or can he just pick one, he wonders. But no, the ragebrew in his blood tells him, that’s not enough. Not enough to leave her family. It was just a fire so small he hadn’t even noticed the damage until now.
“So she went away,” he says, “ ’cause, what? Because she had a cooking accident? Then you should have been locked up a long time ago.”
“She’s not locked up, Nick!” Dad says.
Nick gets up and empties his cereal bowl into the trash. “I’m going to be late for school,” he says, and heads back upstairs. Dad doesn’t follow.
When he comes back downstairs, his father isn’t around, so Nick leaves for the bus and then for school. But his frustration continues throughout the day. He can feel himself unfocusing in class, can feel the late summer air coating his body like cotton balls, softening everything outside him, making it fuzzy and distant. The only time things come back into focus is at lunch.
“So I’m going to send you a playlist,” Nat says, taking out her phone. It has a bright purple case. “I wanted to tell you in person, though, so you didn’t think I was just sending you some random link.” He takes out his phone and looks at the link she’s sent him, to a playlist called “Nick.” He clicks the Save button. He’s unsure of what to say. It’s all gotten so confusing, and he keeps thinking about the crack running up the burned paint in the kitchen.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s the music I listened to when my dad was in rehab,” she says, putting her phone away. It’s not, like, super sad or anything. It’s like power music. Music that makes you want to punch things. It’s stupid, I know, but I just thought maybe you could use it.”
“It’s not stupid,” Nick says. He forces his best smile for her. He puts his phone away and looks back up at her and opens his mouth to tell Nat about the crack in the wall, but then stops. He doesn’t want to share it. “I’ll know more after I talk to Jess on Friday,” he says instead. “She can tell me if it’s Ms. Knight or not.”
Nat smiles, but her eyes flicker down for a moment, like she’s disappointed. “What are you going to ask her?”
“What her character looks like. That seems like something Jess would know, even if she only sees Ms. Knight playing.”
“Cool,” Nat says. She looks down at the remnants of her food and the plastic table. “You okay? You seem kinda weird today.”
Nick looks up at her and studies the blue streaks in her hair. They’re growing out and start a few inches down, just showing up out of the black like the aurora borealis. “I had a fight with my dad this morning. It’s not important.”
Nat starts packing up the remnants of her lunch, piling the trash like a hill on her tray. “My folks made me go to a shrink when my dad went into rehab,” she says, taking Nick’s crumpled brown lunch bag. “I hated it. Didn’t help, except for one thing: the shrink said it was good to say things aloud. Makes you confront them. I spent hours in my room saying ‘My dad is an alcoholic. My dad is sick.’ Sounds creepy, but it helped.”
“Like when you listed all that stuff yesterday?” Nick asks, thinking of her chanting her father’s drinking habits.
“Yeah.” Nat nods. She gets up and takes the tray over to a trash bin. Nick watches her sweep all the trash away and put the tray on top of the others. She comes back over, and Nick stands and they walk out together. “Sometimes it just helps to say a thing,” Nat says. “When you’re ready.”
“Thanks,” Nick says. But he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t say My mother lit the stove on fire.
Nat shrugs and then reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “See you in history,” she says.
The rest of the day and the next go quickly. School is driving relentlessly forward, and as his teachers are fond of saying, this is junior high now, things are tougher. Nick can’t even go near the game for the rest of the week; he has math quizzes and papers, and what Dad said about his not studying sort of stung. He’d always been a good student. A-minuses, mostly, not those pure, diamond A’s, but good. Mom had always praised him for that, helped him study. It’s harder on his own. He locks himself in his room, where the air seems thick and hot and salted with some sort of sleeping gas. He tells himself that Severkin studied—Severkin knows all the ancient languages, the ancient cultures. If Nick wants to be anything like that, he needs to study, too. He listens to Nat’s playlist, and he likes it, though it’s usually not what he listens to. It’s loud and angry and feels like a lightning storm over the ocean. After a few songs, though, it calms down. It’s just rain.
Dad isn’t exactly pretending that they didn’t fight, but he’s not talking about it, either. Nick doesn’t say anything to him, and Dad doesn’t say anything to Nick besides “What do you want on the pizza?” and “I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow so we can go see Mom.” Otherwise, they’re strangers haunting the same empty house.
Nick gets in the car Friday after school after waving goodbye to Nat. He thinks he did okay on the math quiz, and his paper on East Berlin is going well. But today is more important than school. Today he has to find out more about Reunne—from Jess, and from his mother. If Reunne is trying to tell him something, he needs a clue from outside the game.
“I’m going to talk to your mom today,” Dad says when they’ve been driving for a few minutes. “About telling you more about why she’s in the home. Okay?”
“Sure,” Nick says after a moment. He doesn’t know what else to say. He thinks he should be happy—Dad is finally listening to him—but instead it’s like his stomach is so heavy, it’s pulling the rest of his body down. He slouches back into the chair, scooting down so the seat belt pushes into his chin. It doesn’t help.
“I don’t know if she’ll be okay with it, though. It’s really her story. It’s not even much of a story. But she has her reasons. She loves you and wants to protect you.”
“How can she protect me?” Nick asks. “And from what? Alzheimer’s? If she’s sick, I’m going to get sick. If she’s not sick, I’m not. All she has to do is admit she’s not sick.” The heaviness in his stomach starts to roil, and he remembers being Severkin on the ship at the beginning of the game: the shuddering underfoot, the huge rolling wave that pushed him away.
“She’s sick,” Dad says, voice like a hammer. “You have to accept that, Nick.” He looks over at Nick, then his eyes dart back to the road. “But it doesn’t mean you’ll get sick. We don’t know that for sure. There’s just a chance.”
“Yeah, a big chance,” Nick says, folding his arms. Dad is silent.
They pull into the white gravel parking lot without either of them saying anything else. The crackling of the gravel under the car sounds like crumbling rock.
Nick opens the door before the car is even parked and walks quickly toward the porch so Dad can’t catch up. A nurse swipes him through with a nod and he runs upstairs to Mom’s room, but she’s not there. He walks back downstairs to the desk, where his father is standing.
“She’s painting out back,” he says. They walk outside and around the back, the old people staring at them, one asking his father to get them more iced tea. Nick and Dad ignore them. Out back, in the grass, Mom has an easel set up. The grass is almost as high as her knees and seems to fade into her. Or she into it. She doesn’t see them at first and instead focuses on her easel and the palette of paints in her hand. Her back is straight and her hair is loose, occasionally flying out in the breeze. She wears a white skirt and sweater. She looks like she’s painting the back of the home, but as Nick gets closer he can see her easel, and the painting on it is of him. At least, he thinks it’s him. The eyebrows are too thick, and the skin isn’t brown but gray. The whole painting is gray, except for his eyes, which are brown. That part she got right.
“Hi, Mom,” Nick says when they’re close enough for her to hear them.
She turns and smiles. “Nicky,” she says. “I’m trying to paint you. It’s hard from memory….Come here and stand over there so I can fix it.” Nick walks around to stand in the grass in front of his mother. She’s blocked by the canvas except for her legs and one elbow. Dad goes and stands behind her, watching her paint. “No need to look so worried, Nicky,” Mom says, poking her head out around the side of the easel. “Relax.” Nick tries to relax but is suddenly very aware of his arms and how they hang wrong, and his posture, which has never been good. “Don’t think about it,” she says. “Why don’t you tell me about school. How is your paper on me coming?”
“It’s not really on you,” Nick says, trying putting his hands in his pockets. That feels weird, though, so he folds them over his chest. “It’s about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’ve been doing lots of research. I know how it was sort of a mistake that they opened it, but then everyone gathered at the gate and it came down.”
“Arms down,” Mom says. “Yes, I remember that. So many people.”
“You were there?” Nick asks.
“Oh yes,” she says, her face obscured by the canvas and her voice like a strong breeze, or a heavy sigh. “It wasn’t intentional. I was out walking.” She sounds as if she’s going to say more but then pauses for a long time. Her arm stops moving. “Can you turn a little to your left, Nicky?” Nick turns obediently. “Good, thank you. But yes, I saw the crowds. I’d been walking for hours, so I hadn’t heard anything on the radio. I had to ask someone what was happening. I stopped a young man on the street and asked him, and he said, ‘They’re opening the wall, sister.’ I remember that. I wasn’t a revolutionary before, but that night anyone young, anyone who had been raised under the shadow of the wall, we were brothers and sisters. It was almost a new word, not the old brother, sister, comrade. It was something else. So I followed the crowd and I watched from a distance—I didn’t want to be arrested, they would have taken away my chance at a good job, and after all the work I’d done getting so far in school, I couldn’t risk it. So I watched. And then, suddenly, the wall was open. I wish I could say it was like light flooded in or something romantic, but it was like…like when your ears pop on a plane. Noises become louder and clearer, but they’re still the same noises. That’s what it was like that night. Of course, over the next few weeks and months it all started to change. But that night, it was like having your ears pop.” She leans out from behind the canvas and looks him in the eye, then makes a popping noise with her lips. Nick smiles.
“Finally, a smile,” Mom says. “Now hold it so I can paint it.”
Nick tries to hold the smile but it becomes strained, then painful. “I can’t hold it anymore,” he says.
“That’s all right, I got it, I think. Come see.” Nick walks around to look at the painting. Not much has changed—it’s still grayscale except for his eyes. But it looks more like him now, he thinks. Except maybe the expression. The expression is too hard. Even with the smile, he looks like a wall. He turns away and looks at Mom instead.
“It’s nice, Mom. But tell me more about the wall. Where were you?”
“Oh, I don’t remember exactly,” she says, looking up at the sky. “I was a long way from home, I remember that. But I wasn’t so close to the wall that I could hear the crowds.” She shakes her head. “Sorry. I just followed the others. I don’t remember where I was.”
“Where were you going?”
“I was just out walking, Nicky.” Her voice lowers slightly. “I don’t want to talk about that. That night was very good for a lot of people, including me. But it wasn’t all good. Now tell me what you really think of the painting.”
Nick looks back at the painting. “I think I look angry,” he says. “But otherwise it’s really good.”
“You don’t look angry,” Dad says. “You look worried. Paint him so he looks more relaxed, Sophie.”
“No, I like it this way. I think he looks like he cares. That is the face I want to see on my wall—my son, caring.”
“I do care, Mom,” Nick says, taking Mom’s hand.
“Why don’t we take the painting up to your room,” Dad says. “We can hang it there. Then I need to talk to your mom alone for a little while, okay?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “But the paint is still wet.”
“Oh, right,” Dad says. Nick wonders if he should make a checklist for Dad. Check off box 8—“Decreased or poor judgment.” “Well, maybe you can go find a nurse to let them know it’s done? While I talk to your mother?”
“Sure,” Nick says. He’ll find Jess. He needs to talk to her anyway, and alone is better. His parents walk over to the bench they were sitting on the other day, and Nick walks away, trying not to look too purposeful. He checks the media room first, but Jess isn’t there, so he asks at the desk and they direct him to a room down the hall.
The door is open, and Nick walks in slowly. Jess is sitting by a patient’s bedside, checking a tube that goes into the patient’s nose. This room is one of the more hospital-like ones, with floors that glare under bright lights.
“Your hair is so pretty,” the old woman in bed says to Jess. “You people have the best hair.” She reaches out and strokes one of Jess’s braids as Jess reaches over her.
“Thank you,” Jess says in a tone Nick has heard before. Has used before. “Looks like you’re all set here. Want me to turn on the TV?”
“Oh yes,” the woman says. Jess turns it on and walks out of the room, nodding at Nick as she does so. Nick follows her.
“Did you want to talk to me?” Jess asks.
“Do you get questions about your hair a lot?” Nick asks. They’re walking to the media room.
“Old white people. Yeah. Sometimes I try telling them it’s not okay, but they forget, or pretend to. Part of the life.”
“Yeah,” Nick says.
Jess stops in the media room and starts collecting stray DVDs and matching them to their cases. “Did you want to ask me about my hair, too?”
“Oh, no,” Nick says rubbing his hand over his own buzzed hair. “I wanted to ask if you knew what character Ms. Knight plays—in Wellhall.”
Jess looks up at him, an eyebrow raised. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t know?” Nick asks, suddenly wondering if Nat was right. His heart speeds up a little.
“I get that she’s a cool, young teacher and all, but she’s still your teacher. You can’t hang out with her in the game to get better grades.” Jess stands, no longer focused on cleaning up, just focused on Nick. “She likes you—don’t worry about being a suck-up. That’ll freak her out.”
“No, no…,” Nick says, putting up his hand. “The opposite. We know she’d be uncomfortable, so we just want to make sure if we see her in-game, we can stay away. It’d be weird if she found out she was playing with her students.”
Jess nods. “Okay. That’s really mature of you. But I don’t know how helpful I can be. I mean, I watch her play, but usually I’m in bed, and it’s just sort of happening. I don’t pay much attention.”
“Do you know what her character looks like? Or what weapon she uses?”
“Yeah…” Jess looks down at the DVDs in her hand. “I think she uses a spear—or a staff. Something like that.” Nick swallows.
Maybe Nat was right. “Anything else?”
“It’s a female character. Red hair, like hers. I think she wears a red-and-white dress or robe—but that changes, right?”
“Yeah,” Nick says, exhaling. Reunne does not have red hair. Ms. Knight isn’t Reunne. Nat was wrong. Nick cracks a grin. He knew she was wrong. She should have believed him from the start. He knows his own mother. He feels a laugh start to bubble up inside him but pushes it back down.
“And I think she’s a priest, or a warrior priest or something. Is that specific enough?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Is that the only character she plays?”
“Oh yeah. She loves that character. Besides, she only has time for one.” Jess puts all the DVDs back on the shelves and walks out of the media room, and Nick follows.
“Thanks,” Nick says. He uses all his energy to keep his body still, not jump up in the air and holler so loud Nat can hear it that he was right. His mom is playing the game. His mom is trying to tell him something. She’s trying to tell him something and he has no idea what.
“No problem,” Jess says. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s really good,” Nick says. “I’m thinking of springing her out of here.”
Jess laughs, but seeing Nick’s face, the laugh fades. She stops in the hall and looks at him. “You’re not serious, right?”
Nick shrugs. “I just don’t think she’s as sick as everyone says.”
Jess puts a hand on Nick’s shoulder and leaves it there. “They haven’t really told you anything, have they?”
Nick shakes his head. But he knows enough. He knows his mom is Reunne, and that means something. He just has to figure out what.
“That’s not fair,” she says. “Not fair to anyone.” She kneels slightly so she’s at eye level with Nick. “Your mom is great. She’s one of my favorites. She’s funny, doesn’t do any of that little micro-aggressive racist crap—sometimes even calls other patients out on it—and she loves you so much. You’re all she talks about. Have you seen what she’s painting?” Nick nods. “And she’s in here so much, watching people play Wellhall, painting it afterwards. Sometimes she talks to them as they play, too.” Jess pauses, looks away for a moment, then looks back at Nick. “She calls them Nicky.”
“And she plays, too,” Nick says. Jess keeps staring at him, saying nothing. “She plays, too,” Nick repeats, louder.
Jess stands up. “I don’t know. I’m not in there all the time. Maybe.” She turns and starts walking again.
“Thanks,” Nick says, pushing a polite smile onto his face. He knows his mom plays. And she doesn’t know how sick his mom is. She’s not even a doctor.
“If you ever want someone to talk to,” Jess says, stopping and turning to face him again, “I’m always around.” She smiles, but it’s a smile that’s trying to hide PityFace, and Nick has to work hard not to roll his eyes. It’s not her fault. She doesn’t know, after all. No one knows but him. But if Reunne isn’t Ms. Knight, then it has to be Mom. He feels himself evaporating, all the weight that he possessed gone, like he has used one of the potions in-game that let you carry a heavy load without affecting movement. No, not like that, he realizes, because the load is gone. Now if he can only figure out what Mom is trying to tell him in the game—what the sharp-eyed, smart part of her wants to say. It has to be some way to get her out, some symptom the doctors haven’t noticed that points to something besides Alzheimer’s. Maybe just the fact that she’s playing online with him would be enough for the doctors—she found him online, right? All he has to do is prove it’s her.
He still has to do that, he realizes, walking back outside to his parents. The actual proving. She won’t admit she’s Reunne. He might know it, and she might know it, and Nat might know it, but until Dad and the doctors know it, it doesn’t count. Or he can get her to admit it. Get Mom to realize that playing the game is enough to show how well she is.
He stops when he gets around to the back of the home. His parents are still on the bench, Dad’s hands small explosions while he talks, Mom staring straight ahead, leaning forward, hands clasped in the hammock of her skirt. He can’t make out what Dad is saying, but it’s loud. It sounds like a distant foghorn. Nick is behind them, so they haven’t seen him yet. He thinks of Severkin and creeps forward, his steps carefully placed to muffle sound. He watches his shadow, careful it doesn’t fall into their line of sight.
“He has to know,” Dad is saying. “He’s so angry, Sophie. It’s not fair to keep all this from him.”
“I don’t want him to fear what happened to me,” Mom says, her voice quiet as dripping water. “I don’t want him to even imagine what happened to me happening to him.”
“You prefer he not know anything? I think he doesn’t even realize how sick you are.”
“Let him live like that, then,” Mom says, straightening up. “It’s better than living how I lived.”
“Sophie,” Dad says as his hands come down in his lap like lead. “I may just tell him anyway.”
“No,” Mom says, turning to look at Dad, but as she does so, she sees Nick out of the corner of her eye. Her face goes from carved wood to cotton smiles. But her eyes are sharp. “Nicky,” she says. “Did I show you the painting I’m doing of you?” Nick nods slowly, wondering if this is box 1 or 3, “Memory loss that disrupts daily life” or “Difficulty completing familiar tasks.”
“You showed him already,” Dad says, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, he modeled for you?”
“Of course I remember,” Mom says, rolling her eyes. “I’m just making a joke.” Nick forces a laugh. No boxes to check after all.
“Did you find a nurse, Nick?” Dad asks.
“They were all busy,” Nick lies. “I wasn’t sure if I should bother them.”
Dad stands, hands on his thighs, a slow unbending. “I’ll go find one, then. Stay with your mother. Don’t upset her.”
Nick takes Dad’s place on the bench, and Mom rests her hand on his knee. Nick’s dad pauses, staring at her hand.
“He won’t upset me,” Mom says. Dad stares a moment longer at Mom’s hand, then nods and walks away.
“He worries too much,” Nick says.
“It’s good that he worries,” Mom says, looking out at the grass. “Did I show you the painting I did of you?”
Nick laughs. “That joke is getting old, Mom.”
Mom giggles, a strangely young sound, like a baby’s giggle. “Sorry,” she says.
“So when are we going to get you out of here?” Nick asks. “I know you’re Reunne. I know you’re teaching me about your history through Wellhall. But I don’t know what else you’re trying to tell me—what’s really wrong with you? How do I get you out?”
Mom is silent, staring at a sparrow that has landed in the grass a few feet away. The grass hides most of it, but when it pecks at the ground, its tail feathers bob up like a prairie dog.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to leave,” Mom says finally.
“You can do whatever you want,” Nick says. “It’s your life.”
“Oh, Nicky,” his mother says, her hand squeezing his leg. “It’s not completely mine. It’s yours, too.”
“And I want you at home,” Nick says, laying his hand over his mother’s. “Come home.”
“Look,” Mom says standing, “it’s Lamont.” Dad is coming toward them, Maria alongside him.
“Did you see this painting of you?” Maria asks Nick as they get closer. Nick nods. “Did you know your mom could paint like that? I had no idea.”
“She’s good at everything,” Nick says.
Maria laughs. “Good son,” she says. “Well, why don’t I take the painting into the studio and mark down that it should be hung in your room when it’s dry, Sophie? That sound good?”
“Thank you,” Mom says, nodding.
“And it’s about time for your pills, too. You want me to bring them out?”
“Yes, thank you,” Dad answers. Nick rolls his eyes. Maria takes the painting and goes inside, and Dad hovers, then sits down on the other side of the bench. “It’s a nice place, isn’t it, Sophie?”
“Oh yes,” she says. “Very peaceful, and everyone is so nice. Lots of old people, though. That’s why I’m always so happy to see you.” She leans her head on Dad’s shoulder and Nick stares at the sparrow in the grass again, which has been joined by another. This place might not be so bad, he thinks, but it’s not for her.
Maria comes back out, rolling a little cart of cups of pills and water. She plucks one cup of each and walks them over to Mom. Mom downs them without question.
“She’s been getting tired after her pills,” Maria says to Dad, like Mom isn’t sitting right there.
“Oh,” Dad says. “Okay, why don’t we take her upstairs, then, and let her rest? We’ll be back Sunday.”
“I have GamesCon,” Nick says.
“Oh, right. Sophie, Nick is going to a big convention in the city for that game he likes so much.”
“How exciting,” Mom says. “That’s the one with the mountain with the two cities in it, right?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. He looks at Dad. “I never told her that,” he says. “I think she’s playing it from here.”
“Are you playing Nick’s game here, Sophie?” Dad asks, looking at Maria. Maria shrugs.
“They have it here,” Nick says. He opens his mouth to say And I know who she’s playing but closes it. He doesn’t have proof yet. But this is a good first step. He’ll have to let Dad in on it slowly so he doesn’t blow up and tell Nick he’s wrong.
“Oh, the game, right,” Mom says. “The one with the mountain? Beautiful to look at. Strong basis in Nordic and Germanic mythology, I think. It’s amazing what these game makers can do now. I don’t think I’m very good at it, though.” She looks as if she’s trying to figure out what to say to him, but after a moment, winks instead.
“See?” Nick says. Dad stares at Mom, smiling. Maybe this will be enough.
Mom yawns loudly without covering her mouth.
“Okay,” Maria says. “I think we should get her upstairs. Want to go take a nap, Sophie?”
Mom nods slowly. Nick waits for Dad to stop them, to say But if she’s playing the game, like my son says, maybe she’s not sick. But he doesn’t. Nick takes a deep breath. He’s proved Mom is playing the game. Next he needs to prove that she’s sending him messages in it. But this is a good start. He feels filled up with something warm that expands his chest, giving him strength. A strength potion, maybe.
He and Dad help Mom upstairs, where Nick gives her a hug. “See you soon,” he says. He and Dad get back into the car and Nick gets out his cell phone as they drive home and texts Nat:
Ms. Knight plays a redhead priestess. And Mom said today she plays. Reunne must be Mom.
He waits a minute, but Nat doesn’t text him back.
C u on the game 2nite
he texts her.
“It’s nice that your mom is still playing the game, isn’t it?” Dad asks. He’s smiling. “She’s such a wonderful woman. You know that, right?”
Nick looks up, not sure whether to be confused or offended.
“Of course I know that,” he says. I know it better than you, he thinks. Nick knows exactly how amazing she is—fighting through whatever it is in her head that’s keeping her down, and communicating with him the one way she can. But he doesn’t say all that. Dad’s not ready yet.
When they get home, Dad says he’s going to go grade papers and that Nick should do his homework. They can order a pizza. Dad seems to feel sad when he spots the empty chair and the pizza box still in the recycling from the last time they ordered, but Nick knows that once Mom is home, everything will be better.