Recipit
“Yet it may be we shall meet again,
While the sad, wild world goes on.
It may be we shall meet again
On the shores of Avalon.”
Peter’s mother, as ever, sang in her soft, lilting soprano voice. When he was younger, he had felt anchored by the sound in the near-dark room. Now at nearly eleven, he told himself he was humoring her. He himself didn’t fully realize how much he still needed that grounding. He thought of the music spells used in his video games; that was as far as his insight reached.
“Ready to sleep, Petey?”
“I think so.”
“Not over-stimulated, like you were before the six o’clock rule.”
“I was fine, really.”
“Except the way you’d sneak all around the house every night.”
It was true. Even after Laura and Jim had taken to unplugging and padlocking the GamePro, Peter had padded around the house in the nighttime dim, looking for something he’d never been able to name.
“I tried to be quiet, Mom.”
“A mother can always hear her baby. But I do appreciate you trying.”
He felt bad, often did these days, though she tried to never make him feel like less than the perfect child. She had encouraged him in things she didn’t understand, fostered one special interest after another, even worried too much to tell him what the last doctor had said when Peter was sent out of the exam room, even though it made her tear up. She deserved more than an awkward son with no friends.
“Do you want me to stay until you’re asleep?”
“It’s okay. I know the way to the bathroom now.” After nearly five months, he didn’t get lost and go into meltdowns over it anymore.
“I can still stay.”
“I’m really okay.”
She kissed him, for a long time, as though it were a point she needed to make. “I love you.”
“Me too.” The words were uncomfortable, cheap, said too often and too easily.
Laura left the nightlight on, enough brightness to make the many posters visible, and here were his only true companions. Celano from Last Legend 3, a beautiful mage with sky-blue hair and gleaming silver armor. Kerr from Night of the Harbingers 1, first brave soul to investigate the haunted Yimiko Mansion. Punk loligoth Danzig from Fatality Foto 2, sporting a digital camera as her weapon. Peter felt he knew them without them knowing him, and that was what made it so comfortable.
Of course, that didn’t keep a knowing, teasing smile off pretty Danzig’s face.
“It’s not that I don’t want friends,” Peter whispered to her. “I just never know what to say. Remember back in Port Harbor? Whenever I tried to talk, all I could do was babble about you guys. No one understood. I was just so nervous.”
Kerr, who usually seemed to be pointing his gun at Spiros from Last Legend 7, swiveled unseen to aim accusingly at the bed.
“I did try to let other people talk, I did. But once I started I couldn’t stop.”
Because you love us, Celano’s beautiful face seemed to say. He could read her expressions well enough, if not anyone else’s.
“Of course I do,” Peter murmured, and watched her until his eyelids grew too heavy.
#
Ava was cooing in her highchair the next morning at breakfast, which was sometimes enough to calm Peter. He adored his seven-month-old sister and loved to provoke peals of laughter from her. But today, the lump in his throat was too big. He could barely get his toast past it.
“Petey? You okay?
He nodded.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m okay.” He’d briefly lost his voice right after the move to Ivanville. Normal stress, the pediatrician said.
“Just nervous?”
Just? “Do I have to go?”
“Oh, baby,” Laura said sadly. “Just give it time. The other kids need to get used to you, just like you have to get used to them.”
“They don’t like me.”
“Do you like them?”
“No.”
“I guess you all have some changing to do then,” she said, brightening a little. “You know, Mrs. Gardener next door said her granddaughter is coming to visit this summer, and she has trouble making friends too. I bet you’ll get along great.”
“Does she like video games?”
“If she doesn’t, maybe you can change her mind.” Laura dropped some Cere-Os on Ava’s tray. “Or she can get you to play outside more.”
“It’ll be too hot in the summer.”
“It might not be. We’re closer to the water here than we were in Port Harbor. Just promise me you’ll give being here a try.”
“Okay,” Peter said, not very convincingly.
“Just remember. Give other people a chance to talk.”
“But I hate when it’s quiet. It makes me feel…I don’t know. Like my stomach is flopping around.”
“Nervous? Honey, no one likes an awkward silence. When it gets quiet, talk. Just let the other person talk too.”
“But I don’t know when they want to.”
Laura hid her frown behind a tea cup. “When it gets quiet, count to five. If the other kid hasn’t spoken, you can talk.”
“The other kids don’t play my games.”
“Talk about something else.”
How? I don’t think about much else. “…okay.”
“I know it’s harder to do than say.”
Everything had been hard for him, from what he remembered, harder than it seemed to be for everyone else. At home, everything was warm and familiar. School and crowded stores were like someone was screaming into his ear and flashing lights in his face. He was too big to hide behind his mother, and yet that’s what he had to do. He sensed her worry, and his father’s disappointment, even though it was usually hard for Peter to sense people’s emotions.
“Ready, honey?”
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. It seemed like he blinked, and he was standing in the bustling schoolyard. Laura’s arm was holding Ava’s carrier, and Peter deliberately didn’t grasp the other. His classmates were carelessly bidding their parents farewell, yet Peter wanted to crawl under his mother’s skirt.
“Okay, honey?”
No, he wasn’t. The lights, the noise. “I’m fine. You can go.”
Laura kissed him, quickly in hopes it would go unnoticed, and was gone. Mason Alcott, a large and unpleasant boy, was approaching, and that was never good.
“Hey, Noss. Wow, you still let your mother walk you up? How old are you?”
Unsure if he was being asked or taunted, Peter answered. “Almost eleven.”
“Ha, and I thought you couldn’t talk.”
“I didn’t talk until I was three.”
“You really are a freak. Hey, Tom, Noss couldn’t talk till he was three!”
“Neither did Albert Einstein,” a female voice said coolly, and the tall, welcome sight of Miss Shoemaker came into view.
“Who?”
“A very smart man. Pay more attention in class, Mason. How are you, Peter?”
“I’m very well, Miss Shoemaker, how are you?”
She smiled. She liked him, adults usually did. “I’m very well. Did you do all your homework?”
“Yes, Miss Shoemaker.”
“Maybe Peter will be a good influence on you, Mason. Come on, boys, time for class.”
It was noisy, the process of filing into the classroom, getting settled, Miss Shoemaker patiently bidding them be quiet. Both she and Peter were grateful when the noise died down. It confused Peter, why the other students weren’t more respectful of their teacher. She was helping them, after all, giving them so much of her time.
Peter tried to concentrate on the first lesson, going over their fractions homework, but the kindergarteners were having morning recess just outside, and a few of the windows were open. Intelligent and dutiful as he was, Peter was easily distracted and perturbed by noise and movement. It was a far cry from how absorbed he always was in his video games, neglecting sleep and food when allowed to in order to save fictional worlds, rescue maidens made of pixels. They were real to him. The waking world was a ghost, and full of ghosts.
Peter’s stomach tightened when the bell rang for lunch; here was the worst part of the day. He shuffled reluctantly to the cafeteria, picked out a slice of pizza and some fruit, and began the torturous process of looking for a place to sit. The first table he approached filled up before he could take a seat. At the second, the occupants glared at him until he backed away. At the nearly empty third, a surprise – the boy he sat across from actually offered a weak smile.
“Hi. You’re Peter, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Michael. You sit next to Ellen Mier, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“What’s she like?” Michael asked eagerly.
“She’s okay, I guess. We don’t really talk.”
“Really? I wish I sat next to her. I’d pass notes to her all day.”
“Why? We’re not supposed to pass notes.”
Michael shot him a look that Peter couldn’t decipher. “Because she’s so pretty. She’s definitely the prettiest girl in our grade, and just my luck, I’m not in her class. Tell me everything you know about her.”
“She had a cold last week. I could hardly concentrate on my quiz, she was sneezing so much.”
Another odd look. “What else?”
“She wore a Mighty Teen Titans T-shirt once. Maybe she likes that show.”
“That’s better. Too bad I hate cartoons.”
“It’s not a cartoon,” Peter said quickly. “It’s anime.”
“Huh?”
“Anime are Japanese animated shows. Fans consider calling them cartoons pejorative.”
“Pe-what?” Here at last was a look Peter recognized – the you’re-so-weird look.
“Derogatory.”
“Huh?”
“Insulting.”
“Are you a dictionary or something?”
Is he joking? “No. You’re thinking of a thesaurus.”
“Is that a dinosaur?”
“Um…”
“I’m kidding. I know what a thesaurus is, I’m not stupid. Tell me more about Ellen.”
“She wears pink a lot.”
Michael nodded. “Maybe I should get her a pink rose or something.”
“Pink roses signify romantic feelings. Do you like Ellen?”
“Wow, you’re dense. Why do you think I’m asking about her?”
“I wasn’t sure. She has a BoyzRBoyz patch on her backpack.”
Michael groaned. “She has awful taste in music, then. Well, no one’s perfect. At least she’s pretty. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
“Not as pretty as Celano.”
“Who?”
“The mage from Last Legend 3. She comes pre-equipped with All-Heal 3 if you input the right code on the party screen, and she has the highest evade stat of all the playable characters, which is really good, because her defense and attack are awful. Well, she’s not really for fighting, she’s for healing, so she’s always the first you should revive. I’ve gotten her up to level 98 twice, which is really hard ’cause she dies on disc two…”
Peter trailed off, having finally realized that Michael was looking very put-upon.
“Um, do you like video games?”
“My dad won’t let me play them.”
Peter couldn’t seem to find his voice after that. Michael concentrated on his pudding cup, and neither of them spoke for the rest of lunch break.
#
Laura sensed Peter’s depressed mood the moment she picked him up. The boy could barely respond to her questions during the car ride home, and only picked at the snack she made for him. Laura took him to the living room and herself put the GamePro controller in his hands, and this prompted a weak smile. Peter put in the third disc of Last Legend 3, and as he played, he felt his anxiety fade into the background.
He could never explain the importance of his games well, not to his parents, not to Dr. Kaufman who had asked so many questions about them. It was like the noise and brightness of his own world became less, enough to tolerate, and the pixelated problems he faced were ones he could handle. Here were monsters he could defeat with easily read stats and weaknesses, people he could understand, worlds that not only accepted him but needed him to save them.
To Laura’s continuing relief, the games Peter loved were not particularly violent or bloody, although there were some gruesome scenes in Night of the Harbingers. Mostly they were fantastical, full of magic and supernatural elements. The Last Legend series was about heroes questing to save worlds based on folklore and myths. Fatality Foto was scary, even to Peter who had played and re-played it, but as he tried to explain to Laura, that was the point of playing it. Sometimes doing so put his real life into sharp relief, made it less scary by comparison.
Peter bit his lower lip. He had always wanted to defeat the Mega-Ogre without relying on his stock of Restore Flutes. But it was difficult without Celano, and he was already stressed and distracted.
“Let’s go for it,” he decided. “Kahl, equip your best ax, don’t worry about experience points. Norg, bow and arrow are useless against his armor, so use your daggers. Lili, you’re taking Celano’s place. Just concentrate only on healing.”
The ogre got the first turn, but fortunately, his initial attacks were weak. Peter sacrificed some of his hit points to cast All-Armor on the party, and had the gray mage Lili use her first three turns to cast Magi-Defend on each playable character. Just in time, too, because the Mega-Ogre’s attacks began in earnest – Earth-Shake which dealt damage to defense, a Magi-Null web which rendered Norg vulnerable, and Rock Storm which hurt all their stats. Lost in the world of Ivaris and its people, Peter concentrated hard and delegated tasks to his characters. Norg let his daggers fly into the ogre’s tough hide, Kahl whaled on him with a mithril ax, and Lili cast Restora 1 and 2 when necessary.
The familiar victory trumpet finally sounded, and Peter dropped his controller to pump his fists in the air. “Yes! Yes!”
“What is it, honey?” Laura came to the wide doorway, Ava on her hip.
“I did it! I beat a Mega-Ogre with no one dying!”
“That’s great, honey. Ava, your big brother’s a hero.”
“Can I hold her?”
Laura carefully handed the baby over. Peter kissed his sister’s nose and slowly spun around a few times to make her giggle.
“Honey, I’m taking her out back to go on her play mat for a while. You want to come?”
Peter looked longingly back at the screen, but nodded. “Just let me save.”
Peter carried the baby out so Laura could lay out the colorful mat and bring a few juice boxes. The woman and the ten-year-old sat on the back steps and watched Ava slowly crawl around and stare with wide eyes at the sky overhead.
“Mom, when will she talk?”
“Maybe not for a few more months. Petey, can you tell me what happened in school?”
The boy reluctantly related his failed conversation with Michael. Laura didn’t seem as discouraged as Peter felt.
“It was a good try, baby. Think of it as practice.”
“But I messed it up.”
“Petey, for a long time, you didn’t understand what you did that made it go wrong. You do now, that’s progress.”
“But it still happens! How do I make it stop?”
“Like everything else, it takes time.”
“Did it happen with you or Dad when you were kids?”
She paused. “Your dad and I were always pretty social. But it’s okay that you’re not.”
“I want to be.”
“Would you like to try an after-school activity? Karate, maybe, or ceramics?”
Peter frowned. “Aren’t you worried I’ll get in a fight, like with the dog-walking club in Port Harbor?”
“Baby, you punched Tommy Masters because he kicked a defenseless puppy. I didn’t punish you because I agree with what you did.”
Agree? She had taken him out for ice cream and threatened charges of animal cruelty when Mrs. Masters demanded Peter be punished. The boy had been so upset, refusing to eat until the local vet declared the little Labrador unharmed.
Laura was still talking. “I doubt anything like that will happen again. Do you want to try?”
“…maybe.”
A yellow butterfly landed on Ava’s play mat. The baby looked at it with wide eyes and crept closer. For some reason, the sight made Peter feel wistful, a word he did not yet know. Had he ever felt that wonder unaccompanied by sadness?
“Think about it.”
“What if it ends up being just like school?”
Laura ran her fingers through his brown hair. “It might not be.”
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“If Ava’s gonna talk soon, how come I didn’t talk till I was three?”
The corners of her mouth briefly tightened before she smiled. “Everyone’s different, honey.”
Peter Noss had little skill in detecting deceit, but he had a feeling his mother was hiding something.
#
Peter always remembered his dreams, usually related to the video games he played, and sometimes questing adventures inspired by his mother’s Arthurian stories. But never could he recall being aware in one as he was now, standing in the center of a wood straight out of Grammy Pearson’s faerie tales. Honeysuckle perfumed the air and twined around the tall, leafy trees. There was a path leading ahead of him, and in the stories, paths always led to what happened next. Peter began to walk.
The trees were so tall and dense that he couldn’t see the sky, but dreamlike, shafts of light pierced the green canopy all over the place. Peter, who normally would be very anxious in a strange place without his mother, continued without fear, smiling at the sound of small creatures overhead and in the surrounding bushes. He did not hesitate at all until the dirt path forked into two, one leading almost straight on and the other to the left.
He hopped, one foot to the other, before turning to the left. He started then, because someone was yelling, “No, no!” and a girl with a head of red ringlets was running to him down the straight part of the path.
“No! Not left! Sinistra!”
“Sin…what?”
“Left. It’s Latin. You know the word ‘sinister,’ right?”
He did. Bad, unlucky, of ill fortune.
“Don’t go that way till and if you feel ready. Baba Yaga is that way.”
The odd name was familiar. “Who?”
“The old hag of the world. She’s helpful sometimes in stories, but mostly she’s just dangerous. Her gate and fence are made of bones, and no one knows where they came from.”
Peter’s head was aching, just behind his eyes. “Where am I?”
“It doesn’t have a name yet, we just call it the woods. We don’t have a name for the clubhouse yet either, or you for that matter.”
“I’m Peter.”
“That’s your name in the daytime,” she said, though it seemed to be afternoon. “Here, we have names based on what we love. I’m Lingua, because my special interest is languages. Come on, let’s see if we can get there before you wake up.”
She tugged him down the straight path, and Peter began to walk alongside her. Lingua had a very bright and animated face beneath her blue eyes and spray of freckles. Peter found himself wanting to trust her, because he sensed something in her that was similar to himself.
“Are there others at this clubhouse?”
“Right now, I think only Spotter is there. The others might be along later. Not everyone comes every night.”
“Spotter?”
“He’s obsessed with train schedules. Seems langweilig to me, but we don’t judge here.”
“Seems what?”
“Boring. German. What do you like?”
She asked as though she really wanted to know, not just to be polite like most people.
“Video games. Last Legend, mostly.”
“Cool. Okay, we’re almost there.”
They turned a corner around a bush tall and full of berries, and Peter blinked in surprise. Ahead of them was a tall and very thick birch, and all around and up and down it was built a ramshackle but charming treehouse, with windowed and roofed rooms peeking out, and rope and wooden ladders and a sliding pole leading in and out. At the foot of the tree lay a plank of empty wood, as though waiting for something to be written on it.
Peter felt his eyes welling up with tears, though he could not say why. He felt an urge to thank the girl who was clapping him on the shoulder, but could get nothing out.
“Recipit,” Lingua said, and Peter woke up.
