At the start of my freshman year, my mother dragged me into the principal’s office to protest my new class schedule. She explained I had no place in a class called Reading FUNdamentals. “Billy knows how to read,” she said. “He belongs in Honors English, not a bunch of dummy classes.”
Mr. Hibble, the principal, smiled and nodded with the patience of a man who had heard it all a thousand times before. When my mother finally finished, he directed her attention to my eighth-grade transcripts (all Cs and Ds) and my state assessment tests (“lowest 25th percentile”). He suggested that a little remedial work would raise my academic performance, and offered to make a deal: “When we get to the end of the first quarter, we’ll look at Billy’s grades. If he earns a B+ or better in any of these classes, we’ll bump him up to the general level equivalent. And if he succeeds there, we’ll bump him up to Honors.”
My mother shook his hand, satisfied that she’d solved the problem. She felt confident I would be taking Honors Everything by the middle of ninth grade. On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen and Mom treated us to ice cream. I sat on the hood of our Honda, licking a soft-serve vanilla cone, while she paced back and forth in the parking lot, giving me an animated pep talk. “We’ll show that Mr. Hibble, won’t we? As soon as you get that report card, we’re going to march right back into his office. And I can’t wait to see the look on his face!”
The next day I returned to school determined to please her. I wanted to bring home a report card that would impress her, the sorts of grades that mothers post on refrigerators. I sharpened all my pencils and organized my Trapper Keeper notebook for maximum efficiency.
But every time I walked into a classroom, my willpower vanished. I’d try to focus on the teacher; I’d try to listen and take careful notes. But after five or ten minutes I’d be doodling, and eventually one of my doodles would morph into a sprite, an animated shape constructed of 504 bits in a 24-by-21 grid. Or I’d just scribble down a few lines of BASIC code, something to test on my computer when I got home from school. I’d mastered the art of hiding reading material underneath my notebook so I could study the Commodore Programmer’s Guide while my classmates drilled the parts of speech or hunted for common denominators. As long as I sat in the back and kept quiet, my teachers were happy to ignore me ignoring them.
And now I was failing Rocks and Streams.
“These teachers think you’re an idiot,” Mom told me. “And all you’re doing is proving them right.”
“I’ll do better,” I promised.
“Yes, you will. And I’m keeping that power box until you do. You’re playing too many games.”
“I’m not playing games,” I said. “I’m making games.”
“Not anymore. Not until your grades improve.”
I started to feel nervous. Normally she was too tired to argue with me, but that night she seemed unshakable.
“Look, Mom, I promise As and Bs, all right? But I really need my computer. Fletcher Mulligan is coming to New Jersey and he’s the king of video games—”
“I said no more games! You’re fourteen years old, Billy. You’re not a little kid anymore.” She checked the clock—now she was really late for work—then grabbed her car keys and hurried for the front door. “I am busting my butt to take care of you,” she said. “I cook your food, I clean your clothes, I even give you an allowance. But you’re not keeping your end of the deal.”
She was right, I knew she was right, and I felt terrible. My mother was much younger than all the other moms at my school, only thirty-three years old. Her long brown hair was streaked with gray. All she ever did was work and take care of the house. She never went out for fun; she didn’t really have friends. On her nights off, she watched Dallas and Dynasty, and gabbed on the phone with my aunt Gretchen, who was married to a big-shot Realtor in Manhattan and sent checks every month to keep us afloat.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m going to do better.”
She was so angry, she left the house without saying good-bye. I watched her car pull out of the driveway before going into her bedroom. Most of our house was pretty tidy, but she reserved the right to leave her room an absolute mess. The bed was unmade and there were dirty clothes all over the floor. An ironing board lay toppled on its side; it looked like a tornado had swept through the place.
I opened her closet and pulled on the light. I reached deep into the back, past shoes and sandals that she hadn’t worn in a decade, and grabbed the handle of the fire safe. It was a heavy white chest with a four-digit combination lock. I set the tumblers to 1129; I had guessed the combination years ago, after learning that November 29 was my father’s birthday. I’d never spoken to my dad; he left Wetbridge before I was born and supposedly moved to Alaska to drill oil wells. He didn’t call or write or send money, and Mom rarely spoke of him, but that birthday combination never changed. This fact led me to wonder if maybe he’d reenter our lives someday. Maybe he’d show up on our doorstep with flowers and money and a plausible explanation for his fourteen-year absence. Because I felt certain he’d have a good explanation. I would be willing to listen.
But in the meantime, we were on our own.
I popped the latches on the fire safe and lifted the lid, and there was my power supply box, resting atop tax returns and bank statements. I carried it back to my bedroom, plugged in my C64, and went to work.
600 REM *** INSTRUCTIONS ***
610 PRINT "SAVE THE PRINCESS! SHE IS"
620 PRINT "IMPRISONED IN A DANGEROUS"
630 PRINT "FORTRESS. YOUR MISSION IS"
640 PRINT "TO AVOID THE GUARDS, ENTER"
650 PRINT "THE FORTRESS, AND FIND THE"
660 PRINT "PRINCESS BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT."
670 PRINT "HIT ANY KEY TO BEGIN."
680 GET A$:IF A$="" THEN 680
690 RETURN
I SPENT THE NEXT few nights sneaking the power box out of my mother’s fire safe and sneaking it back before bedtime. Yes, this was dishonest, and yes, I felt bad about lying. But I knew that winning the $4,000 IBM PS/2 was more important to my future than anything I’d learn about Rocks and Streams. If I was serious about Planet Will Software, I couldn’t work on a Commodore 64 much longer. Newer computers offered more memory and better graphics, and C64s would be obsolete in another year or two. I needed to upgrade to the latest technology, and the contest was my best chance to do it.