I couldn’t believe it. I’d had my share of bad luck over the past three months, but this was ridiculous. How many mascara tubes had I capped waiting for this moment? And now Fletcher Mulligan wasn’t even coming? He was in stupid frigging Cleveland?
As we walked away from the registration desk, Tack draped a burly arm around my shoulders. “The doc says he likes your game, Will. I don’t know much about computers, but I’d call that conversation a good sign.”
“It’s not,” I said. Mary and I had designed The Impossible Fortress for the king of video games, not some smug, suntanned corporate executive who didn’t even know Fletcher’s name. “There’s no way I’ll win.”
“Win, lose, who cares?” Mom asked. “It’s 1987 and Robert Redford still hasn’t won an Oscar. Do you think he lets that get him down?” Ever since she started dating Tack, my mother saw the bright side of everything.
There was nothing else to do except walk the aisles of the gymnasium—but even this was a disappointment, because the vendors were giving away disks, supplies, and other accessories, and every freebie was a reminder of what I’d lost. My mother insisted I take something, so I accepted a small plastic key chain molded in the shape of a Compaq PC. I knew it was the only computer I’d bring home that night.
Eventually Mom and Tack peeled off to an aisle of colleges offering programs in computer science, and I walked toward the coin-op arcade games, looking for Alf and Clark. Some kids were playing Ms. Pac-Man and Rolling Thunder, but the biggest crowd had formed around the Gauntlet machine, a game that allowed up to four players to compete simultaneously. I assumed a team of players had reached some unprecedented level, and I pushed through the crowd to get a better look. I found myself squeezing past a large man dressed in a white shirt and black tie.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Zelinsky grunted.
I did a double take. He was dressed in his usual work clothes, like he’d come straight from the store. My face must have said “What the hell are you doing here?” because he shook his head slowly: I honestly have no idea.
The Gauntlet screen flashed GAME OVER and the players turned to face a round of applause. Mary Zelinsky was joined by Lynn Scott, the cashier from Video City, and Sharon Boyd, the girl from the Regal Theater. At that moment, I realized they were the only three girls in a gymnasium crowded with teenage boys. Their very existence seemed a sort of miracle.
Mary recognized me and waved. Her fingernails were painted with a rainbow of zeros and ones, the same binary pattern she’d worn on the day we started working together.
“Hey, Will.”
She looked fantastic, a suntanned and more radiant version of the Mary I used to know. Her hair was shorter with blond highlights, a new look for summer. She was wearing an outfit I’d never seen before—a white blouse, khaki shorts, and pink Chuck Taylor sneakers. The new clothes fit her perfectly, now that she had nothing to hide.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” I said.
“My dad wasn’t going to let me,” she said, “but then I threatened to have another baby.”
Alf gaped at her until I explained this was a joke.
Mary introduced her friends to mine, but of course we already knew Lynn Scott from Video City. “It’s been a while,” she said to Clark. “You haven’t rented Kramer vs. Kramer all summer.”
Clark had avoided the store ever since our disastrous invasion of Mount St. Agatha’s, ever since Alf had exposed the Claw to the entire student population.
“I’ve been busy at work,” Clark explained. He was already stuffing the Claw into his pocket, but Lynn saw what he was doing and stopped him.
“Wait, hang on,” she said. “Did you really hurt your hand climbing under the fence?”
Clark laughed, like her question was a joke.
“No, I’m serious,” Lynn said. “What happened?”
He took a moment to scan the room—he might have been searching for escape routes—then reluctantly pulled the Claw from his pocket. “I was born like this,” he admitted. “It’s called syndactyly, and it runs in my family.” He turned the Claw left and right, allowing Lynn to take a closer look. “But trust me, as soon as I turn eighteen, I’m paying a doctor to saw it off.”
Lynn cringed. “What?”
“They’ll slice it clean at the wrist,” Clark explained. “Then they can fit me with a rubber hand that looks totally normal.”
“That seems extreme,” Sharon said.
“No, that’s crazy,” Lynn said. “There’s no reason to be self-conscious. All those times you came to Video City, I never even noticed.”
“Well, I kept it hidden,” Clark admitted.
“But I’d see you other times,” Lynn pointed out. “I’d see you walking around Market Street. Or reading in the library. Hanging around the mall. And all those times, I never noticed. Honest to God.”
I’m not sure what surprised Clark more: the fact that Lynn hadn’t run screaming at the sight of his hand, or the revelation that she’d been noticing him around town, in the library, at the mall. These revelations seemed to trigger an error in his programming; he stood frozen, his circuits freaking out, while Lynn and Sharon waited for him to say something.
“Enough already,” Alf said, pushing past them and bellying up to the Gauntlet machine. “Can I join next game? Because I am really good. You girls will like having Alfred Boyle on your team.”
Lynn took Clark by the hand, encouraging him to come along. “We need a fourth player,” she explained. “Mary wants to take a look around.”
“That’s right,” Mary said. “I do.”
“I’ll come with you,” I told her.
We set off quickly before Zelinsky could make any kind of protest. Mary and I walked past rows of vendors selling computer coaching, computer tutoring, and even something called Junior Achievement Sleepaway Computer Camp—four weeks in luxury cabins equipped with state-of-the-art PCs, all meals included, for $2,500. Mary grabbed a brochure and gave it to me as a joke.
I had a million questions I wanted to ask: Where had she been all summer? What was she doing? Did she ever think about me? Did she ever think about her daughter? I’d spent hours on the assembly line preparing for this moment. But Mary just made small talk, so I followed her lead.
“It’s a bummer about Fletcher,” she said. “I really wanted to meet him.”
“Me too.”
“Nothing against this guy Dr. Brooks, but he told me his first computer ran on punch cards. In the 1950s. I’m not sure he’s actually played a video game.”
“I keep telling myself we’re going to lose,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mary said. “Probably.”
She didn’t sound disappointed. It was obvious she’d already moved on to bigger and better dreams. She was enjoying her new PS/2, hanging out with Lynn and Sharon, buying new clothes and making herself beautiful, while I toiled alone in the cosmetics factory, obsessing over all my past mistakes. Push, twist, push, twist, push, twist.