MASON DIDN’T WANT to play in battle-mode. He liked battle-mode but he liked build-mode better, and sometimes he liked to just wander around and collect fruits and talk to animals.
“Come on, Mason.”
“Yeah, I thought you liked battle.”
“You should play with us.”
Mason stayed silent. Silent like a starfish, he thought. He didn’t know why that thought popped into his head, but it felt right. He pulled the fleece blanket up over his chest and shoulders, then his nose. Four of his five starfish points were covered by blanket.
“Come on,” Evie said. “Let’s just play.”
“But what about Mason?” Timmy asked.
“Mason’s…Mason. If he wants to play, he can join us later.”
Maybe later Timmy would be their new brother. Minus one Dad. Plus one brother. Mason pondered the equation. New brother equals more people to play with but also more people to share toys with, and Timmy had come to this equation with zero toys of his own. Mason hatched three new eggs and Timmy had zero eggs. Timmy also had no mom and dad, and not because he had hatched out of an egg. His mom and dad got old and died because time happened really fast and this made Mason sad. He imagined time like a rocket ship. Warp speed! The ship was here and then it was gone. Time was just the space in between here and gone.
This was why he liked build-mode more, and he wasn’t in the mood for battle.
He pulled the fleece blanket up over his head. He tucked his tablet under his arm and slid off the couch. He wandered toward the kitchen. Mason the Fleecey Ghost. He made a spooky ooooooh noise in his head, but his lips stayed silent. He couldn’t see where he was going. He could only see his bottom two starfish points and the sandy floor and the dog paws padding along beside him.
Then he saw the stairs, and he remembered what was upstairs in the tub.
The dog bounded up first. Mason climbed up after, still enshrouded in fleece, one carpeted step at a time. At the top he removed his ghosty covering and proceeded on, quiet-footed, silent like a starfish, past Mom’s room where Mom was busy working, to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The bathroom door was closed, because they didn’t want Barry to eat that thing in the bathtub.
It might make him sick, Evie said. Especially if he ate it whole.
It might make him disappear altogether, Timmy had said, reinforcing Mason’s conviction to not ever, ever eat anything strange.
Mason quietly opened the bathroom door, just a crack. He blocked the opening with his leg so that Barry couldn’t get in. He slid through and closed and locked the door behind him.
Barry had eaten a piece of old dirty pizza off the street. Barry had licked a smashed squirrel like a roadkill lollipop. Barry might eat anything, and he moved quick, so he couldn’t be trusted in the bathroom.
Mason hadn’t planned to get into the bathtub. But the bathtub—with its baby-blue plastic molding, its lime-green tiles, and the exotic creature floating inside it—reminded him of the Palmeo Island region on build-mode. He wished, every time he played there, that he could swim in its pixelated waters and make friends with its inhabitants for real; that there was a button that would open the door between the video-game world and his own. He couldn’t build in his own world like he could in the game, and he had to brush teeth and go to bed when he wasn’t tired and get woken up when he was tired, and he couldn’t fix what was broken. And so much was broken. It made him tired just to think about.
The inhabitant of the bathtub spun in circles. It was tiny, about the size of Mason’s hand. It had an oblong lumpish part that might be its body or its head, or both, and three feathery limbs. Its limbs had looked dark green, like pine-needle branches, when they fished it from the tide pool. But now it looked lime green, the same shade as the bathroom tiles.
Timmy said it was a squidoodle.
A wild squidoodle.
Timmy said his mom and dad never let him get a dog and that even though he kind of had a dog now in Barry he still wanted another pet.
Evie wanted a more cooperative pet than Barry to feature in her videos.
Mason wanted a pet that he could train. He had tried to train Barry, but Mom and Dad messed it all up. Mom gave Barry free treats even when he disobeyed. Dad said Barry should follow commands without treats because he had to develop his Power Nucleus. And now when Mason tried to train him, the dog just sat there and played dumb.
But maybe he could mold a wild squidoodle into a star performance pet.
Mason stuck his hand in the water to test it. It felt too cold. Someone had filled the bathtub up with cold water. Timmy said he had drained and refilled it with warm water when he brought the wild squidoodle inside, so the wild squidoodle wouldn’t get chilly.
It’s a tropical creature, Timmy had said. It can survive in space. And it’s very cold in space. But it likes it better warm.
The bathwater had cooled, so Mason ran the hot water to warm it back up. He set his tablet on the edge of the tub where he could easily reach it. He still had on his swim trunks, even though Mom had told him to change, but he took off his T-shirt. He climbed into the tub.
He imagined the Palmeo Island region in his game: the palmeo trees with their coco-fruits, their Monkeyons, their Parroquats; the turquoise waters filled with little Leafafish and Crabmatabs; the songs of the Mermeons that echoed from the deep, where the Sharkasaur reigned over ocean trenches filled with sunken treasures and pirate gold.
Let’s be friends, he said to the wild squidoodle, but not out loud. He said it in his mind, but his lips were silent, like a starfish.
Come over here, he said to the wild squidoodle as it twirled across the opposite end of the tub. Come.
The squidoodle stopped twirling. Its lumpish part bobbed up out of the water, as if it was looking at him, but it didn’t have any eyes that Mason could see.
Come, Mason said again in his mind.
The squidoodle obeyed. It twirled toward him. When it reached him, it stopped and, seemingly, looked up.
Good squidoodle! Now, shake. Mason offered his hand. The squidoodle lifted one of its three appendages and pressed the tip to Mason’s finger. Mason felt an odd jolt inside his brain. He giggled. He felt giggling inside his brain. He felt warm and tropical, encased in his self, but he also felt a sensation like floating.
Roll over, he thought. The squidoodle retracted its appendage and performed a flip. The squidoodle was much easier to train than Barry. If he had treats, he could train it to do anything. But Mason had just gotten to the Palmeo Island region. He didn’t want to leave yet. He didn’t know what kinds of treats the squidoodle would like best. So treats and training would have to wait.
“Do you like YouTube?” Mason asked, out loud this time. He felt too excited about his wild squidoodle training to stay quiet. “But maybe you don’t know YouTube. Here, I’ll show you.”
Mason turned his tablet on. He held it close to the water, where the squidoodle could see. The creature pressed its appendage against Mason’s leg, and Mason felt that same strange giggly jolt. He watched a video about a video game, battle-mode, but the squidoodle probably didn’t know about video games so maybe it didn’t understand.
“Let’s see what else there is,” Mason said. He scrolled through videos of cats and dogs, snake videos, unboxing videos, online toy shopping videos, more gameplay videos, cartoons, commercials disguised as entertainment videos, videos of Muppets and magic tricks and sharks.
The squidoodle prodded at him with its limb. Go back. The thought came into Mason’s head as if it was his own thought, but it wasn’t. Go back.
“Go back?”
He saw, in his mind, a vision of the tablet screen superimposed on the actual tablet screen but moving backward in time.
“You want me to…go back?” Mason said. “To one of those other videos?”
Go back. The squidoodle patted his leg. Mason scrolled back until he reached a video clip from an old television show. Four fat, brightly colored creatures with big ears, round eyes, and shapes protruding from their heads frolicked in a grassy field. Mason felt a strange humming in his brain. The squidoodle poked its lump out of the water and scooted closer to the screen.
They watched together, Mason and the wild squidoodle, until the video ended and the water turned lukewarm and Mason’s fingers pruned up, and he started to feel hungry. They were both hungry, he felt. He set the tablet on the bathtub edge where the squidoodle could still kind of see it. He stood up.
“I’ll be back,” he told it. “After I go get some treats.”