Chapter 22

Gavin almost nods off a couple of times before midnight, but fearing that his mother will simply throw a blanket over him on the couch and let him sleep through till morning, he pops back up when his chin hits his chest. Swept along by his excitement—the first signs of happiness he’s shown since receiving the news about his father—she restored the Wi-Fi connection on the iPad and agreed to let him stay up late. Gavin can’t tell if the troubled expression on her face has to do with granting him internet access or if she’s just worried about how he’ll react if the tablet doesn’t chime with a winner notification when the clock strikes twelve, but he decides it doesn’t matter. If she’s letting him stay up, and getting invested in whether he wins, then he’s sure she will also take him to the show in Boston.

“Isn’t it cool that the first show will be in Boston? That’s less than an hour from our house,” he says, hoping for a sign that she’s onboard, but she offers only a noncommittal smile in reply.

Gavin has tried to explain the details of the video, but he isn’t sure she gets it. He offered to show it to her, but she’s still enough in her own world that he can’t get her to focus. It also worries him a little that if she did grasp all the details of what he’s excited about, she might reject it. The best he can get out of her is the promise that she’ll watch it if he wins a trophy. He gives it a rest after that, not wanting to press his luck.

By eleven, he can see she’s regretting her decision to let him stay up, but by then there’s no turning back. Sitting on the couch beside him in her flannels with a cup of chamomile and a book she has turned only a few pages in since they sat down, she pats his knee and says, “It’s good to see you happy.”

“I really think I might win. My scores are good.”

She starts to say something but stops herself and seems to see him clearly for the first time in days. “Honey, you have dark circles under your eyes. Have been losing sleep over Daddy? Are you having nightmares again?”

He ticks his head side to side. If she thinks he’s sleep deprived, will she change her mind about letting him stay up? She brushes a lock of shaggy hair away from his forehead with a finger and he senses her scrutiny deepening.

“No,” he says. “No more nightmares. I’m sleeping good.”

It’s true; he hasn’t had nightmares in weeks. Not since he stopped dreaming of the Nether and started dreaming of new levels in Rainblocks. It’s a strange sleep that leaves him feeling empty, not restored, but he’s getting a full eight hours most nights—and the extra experience has definitely boosted his performance during his waking gaming time.

“Mama?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m sorry I kept secrets and had a meltdown about gaming. You have enough to worry about. I’m sorry I acted out.”

She nods. “Thank you. Sometimes it’s hard to control our emotions, right? For me, too. Especially when we’re upset about things we can’t control.”

“I love you, Mama.”

She pulls him in and kisses his temple. “You remember what you agreed to, right?”

“I go to bed at twelve-fifteen no matter what.”

“Yes sir. No tears if you don’t win.”

“And no bouncing off the walls if I do win.”

She smiles sincerely at this. It’s a rare sight these days and it breaks his heart a little to realize it. He wishes for a bright hot half-a-second that they were waiting up for a video call from Daddy on Afghanistan time. But he pushes that aside, because this is nice; life is hopeful for a little while. It’s a good distraction and they’re waiting for it together.

“Twelve-fifteen,” she says. “If it hasn’t popped up by then, you can check again in the morning.”

“Can we keep the iPad on Wi-Fi in the morning?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m not making any more decisions tonight.”

The game notification from Rainbow Dave chimes at midnight: a bright green lizard icon and the word CONGRATULATIONS!

Gavin screams.

He wakes in the morning with the fear that it was just a dream, but when he checks the Rainblocks trophy screen, the lizard is still there. It’s amazing. Out of millions of fans, thousands in the Boston area, he’s been chosen. He floats through the house like a balloon bobbing along the ceiling, imagining how cool the show is going to be. His mom lets him FaceTime with Jacob to share the news, and he is stunned to hear that his friend is also a winner.

At first Gavin thinks his friend is lying, but when Jacob goes on to say that he didn’t stay up late because he didn’t think he would win and was surprised to find the icon pulsing on his screen when he picked up his tablet this morning, Gavin realizes it’s the truth.

“You’re sure it’s a lizard?”

“Of course.” Jacob turns his head away from the camera, the way he does when his mom is calling him. Gavin can’t hear Lucy, but he’s sure that’s what’s going on. She’s telling him to come and eat or something and their call is going to be cut short, which is fine. A relief, actually. Gavin doesn’t want Jacob to think he’s jealous. And he isn’t, really. How can you be jealous of something you also have? But he feels weird, and he feels bad about feeling weird. Jacob always FaceTimes with him from a desktop computer, so the view in the background is always the same: a shelf of Lego models of famous monuments from around the world—Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. Jacob yells something back to his mother, but Gavin doesn’t hear it because at just that moment, as if the spiking volume of Jacob’s voice in the microphone caused it, the screen scrambles with a burst of static and Jacob is replaced with what almost looks like the silhouette of a man backlit by the sun. The speakers squeal—a metallic echo that could be a word. But if it is, he can’t make it out. Then the pixels freeze, a grid of glitchy abstraction, and Jacob’s voice comes through clearly again before the picture resolves into his face, his room, and his models on the familiar shelf. “—same trophy you got.”

“You cut out for a second. My connection sucks. Does it say anything on the icon?”

“Just ‘congratulations.’ Pretty wicked, huh?”

“Yeah.” It takes a second for Gavin to be happy for his friend, but as it sinks in, he gets over having some of the air let out of his own balloon and realizes that he’s even more excited than he was, if that’s possible. They’ll be going to the show together! And anyway, maybe his lizard will come with extra abilities Jacob’s doesn’t have. He does hold a much higher score, after all.

“I gotta go,” Jacob says. “Later, Vader.”

Over the next week, Gavin checks the mailbox every day, including Sunday. His mother even lets him spend a little time each day playing Rainblocks while he waits for his lizard to arrive, but only while sitting on the couch beside her. She glances away from her phone periodically to see what’s on his screen, but he receives no messages during this time and logs in mostly just to check the scoreboard.

When the package finally arrives, the return address is a mail drop box in New York. Gavin races up the driveway so fast he almost trips over his feet, bangs through the screen door, and cries out, “It’s here! It’s here it’s here it’s here, Mama.” He plucks the scissors from the kitchen knife rack and is clumsily butchering his way through the cardboard and tape when she emerges from her office and asks him to hand the scissors over before he can stab them through his hand.

Gavin bounces on the balls of his feet while she opens the box, and then he’s digging through it, spilling packing peanuts all over the kitchen floor.

“So, who is this again?” his mom asks.

“Lime the Lizard. He’s based on Dave’s pet.”

“And what does it do?”

Gavin takes the docking station from the box and sets it on the kitchen table. There’s nothing fancy about it. It’s a plastic circle the size of a teacup saucer, painted with a black and metallic silver crackle effect. Gavin checks the port and sees that the plug fits the kind of iPad he has, as if Dave has seen to every detail.

“You snap the dock into the iPad and put the character on it to add the character to the game, like with Skylanders on the PlayStation.” He rattles off the info distractedly, turning the figurine over in his hands. Lime is even cooler in person. He’s not very detailed, but the mischievous curve of his mouth, the way it slants away from his googly eyes, is perfect. The green paint almost glows in the daylight, and with his diamond head slung low over wide-set forelegs, he looks poised to spring off Gavin’s palm. Another cool detail: in imitation more of its cartoon likeness than its real-world model, the lizard’s snaking tail fades through a series of rainbow hues before tapering off.

Gavin runs a finger down the tail and smiles.

“Are you going to plug it in?”

“Dave says it won’t work for the first time until the event. He wants to be there when we all try it.”

“Why not hand them out at the event then?”

“Because it’s also your ticket to get in. I think high scorers get special seats. Jacob got one, too.”

“Really? Cool.”

“I can go, right? To the event? With Jacob?”

“When is it, again?” She doesn’t remember anything lately. She’s so out of it, it’s scary.

“August seventeenth. Please say I can go. It’s like, the only thing I’m looking forward to for the rest of the summer.”

She nods, processing this, and rubs his shoulder. “I know what it means to you, honey. And I hope I can take you. I just don’t want to promise you anything that I might not be able to deliver while we’re waiting for news about Daddy.”

“But—”

She silences him with a look. “I will try. And I don’t see any reason right now why we couldn’t go. But we need to kind of take things day by day until we know more. I’ll talk to Lucy since Jacob is going. Maybe we can all go together or maybe she can take you if I can’t. But I can’t make any promises yet, okay?”

Gavin feels cold in his stomach and hot in his face and the lizard is blurring like he’s looking at it through a rainy window. He tries to keep control of himself and not cry. If he cries, his mom will think he’s crying to get what he wants—a promise. Crying at the thought of not being able to go to the event. But it’s not that.

She gives him time to get a handle on it and catch his breath. He squeezes the lizard tight in his hand, looks up at her, and blurts the question out, his voice twisting up an octave on the last words: “Is it because we won’t be able to go if Daddy’s funeral is that weekend?”

She pulls him in, burying his hot face in her chest, lacing her fingers through his hair as he lets out a sob. “Oh, baby. My baby boy.”