"I heard you're still hanging out at arcades or something, ri
ght?" the first crony asked.
"Something like that," I said. I tried to step past them.
"You were still with Sienna, weren't you?" Ben asked. "That is rough, man, just rough. You doing okay?"
The actual sincerity of his statement set me back a step. "I think I'm still in shock."
"No kidding. I could have imagined a dozen other people from our graduating class offing themselves, but not her." Ben scrubbed his cleft chin. "I keep thinking maybe it’s a joke. Like that time you swapped out the science dummies’ insides with lunch meat. Remember? You used food coloring to make the white rats have bloody mouths so it looked like they'd turned zombie or something?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sienna would never go for a fake-your-death-then-zombie-attack-your-own-funeral kind of joke."
"See, that's what I'm saying. I could never figure you two out," Ben said. He clapped an arm around my shoulder and forced me to join him on the back porch.
The yard was full of cliques I remembered from high school. I looked around and could not find one knot of people with a gravitational pull. It was the same when I was actually in high school. I drifted, had plenty of friends, but no one close, and people either thought that was really cool or really weird.
I played it off then like I was a rebel, but looking at the funeral reception, I did not have the energy. The truth was I did not care. Small talk, schmoozing, and keeping up appearances – that was all Sienna. She made me hit my limit and I could not go back.
"Shit, this looks miserable. Count me out," I said.
"So, what? That's it. Sienna dies and you head back to whatever basement you make your money from?" Ben asked. "Yeah, I know all about the gaming thing. Nice gig."
"Yeah, guess I have a talent for it."
"You're for real? No wonder Sienna was getting sick of you. She was heading off to be a surgeon and you're playing video games," he said. He unwrapped his arm and gave my shoulder a punch. "This your wake-up call or what?"
"Wake up to what?" I asked. "Learning to tie a tie and take Daddy's place behind a useless desk at the shipping company?"
"That's legit, man. A real job. Something my honey is proud of," Ben said. He nodded across the yard to a stick-thin bottle blonde. She waved like a terrier wags its tail. "I don't mean to hit you when you're down, man, but think about it. Maybe now's the time to do something with your life."
"Funerals bring out the philosophers," I said. "Good luck with all that." I waved to his girlfriend. She gave me a once-over and a bright smile. I could hear Ben's teeth grinding.
"I don't get you, man. I just know you're going nowhere," he said. "Good luck with that." He clapped me on the shoulder one more time and led his trio off the patio into the grass.
Their next stop was Sienna's father. I snorted, remembering the last conversation I had with him before today. It had been remarkably similar to Ben's topic of choice: my lack of career. They just did not understand that my world was not theirs. That was what made people uncomfortable. Succeeding on the screens and high scores of the gaming world was not obvious to the rest of the world, especially to non-gamers, so they assumed I was floundering.
It drove Sienna insane that my source of income sounded so childish. At parties, she avoided talking about what I did as long as possible. I was not a tested, accepted, and career-tracked college student. In her circles of high achievers, that was impossible to understand. Throw in the whole making money playing video games bit and they looked at Sienna as if she was joking.
Still, she wanted to be the perfect pre-med package, and that included the high school sweetheart. I kept her from having to deal with flirtations and distractions. But after the third campus mixer, she realized I was more a blight on her image than a help. While she made up stories about me traveling or finding consulting work, or whatever other vague label she could slap over me, I became a success.
I glanced around the funeral reception and shook my head. Even if Sienna and I had stayed together, she would not have cheered my success. The gamer world was prone to mockery, outsiders did not understand it, and Sienna wanted something that was obvious. I always thought she'd end up with a luxury car salesman. Or maybe a real estate agent. Someone subservient to her career but dependable, upstanding, and normal.
Disgusting.
I could not help but see an overlay of Dark Flag. Ben would try to gather a clan and it would work, but they would die within days, routed by underlings, cleaned out by thieves, or razed by a ruthless leader that did not care about appearances. It was the kind of world where small talk had burned away in the apocalypse. All that mattered was finding your inborn talents and using them to survive.
I could not take on any desk job or career track that forced me to mimic rote skills. I could not pretend to be content with a day job. I wanted to use my talents, not store them in bins in the garage for the occasional hobby.
Maybe if I had explained it better to Sienna, maybe if I'd given her a rundown of my success, she could have come around. Did it matter that we'd end up in the same place, only together? We'd still be at some backyard party with me on my own and nothing to say. Except she might still be alive.
The thought burned down my throat and into my stomach like a shot of whiskey. I turned to see if there was anything to drink, anything to kill the feeling of guilt. A hired bartender in a crisp white shirt stood behind the counter of the outdoor kitchen.
He looked bored, mostly pouring iced tea, and I startled him. "Please say you have whiskey."
"Irish wakes are my specialty," he said. He poured the shot and left the bottle on the counter for me.
"Can I have a, um, another?" Quinn said. She glanced away from me.