Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
“Who’s ready to teabag some newbs?”
I stayed quiet the entire game, internally freaking out that I was playing with Leo even though I wished more than anything to be unaffected by him. I couldn’t help it. I was a teenage girl, and the first time I’d seen him rip his jersey off after a football game had been my sexual awakening.
Of course, like most of the student body, he had no idea who I was.
At the end of our game, Leo denounced everyone on our team for “sucking ass.”
Except for me.
And then he changed my world with three words.
“Octostigma, wanna squad?”
Octostigma was my username, one I’d patted myself on the back for thinking of because it was so cool and creative and elusive, and no one had even remotely the same one. It was combining two things I loved — octopus, the coolest animal on the planet, and stigma, which was the ancient Greek term for tattoo.
Hearing Leo Hernandez say that username, hearing him ask me to play with him?
Another awakening.
Everything happened fast after that. He added me as a friend, barked out a laugh of surprise when he found out I was a girl, and then we played several rounds on the same fireteam before he had to go to bed.
But the next night, when he logged on, I was immediately invited to play with him again.
It went on like this for about a week before, one night, he declared, “I’m bored with this. Do you have the new Resident Evil?”
“No.”
“Can you get it?”
“Maybe.”
“Let me know when you do.”
With that, he exited Halo, and I saw the notification pop up that told me he was playing Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
I was not above begging my mother at the breakfast table the next morning. In fact, I quite literally fell to my knees.
“Games are expensive, and you just got one for your birthday,” she said.
My dad gave her a look over his Sunday morning paper, which said without words that her telling me a game was expensive was comical considering what she spent on a pair of shoes weekly.
“Please, Mom. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” I said earnestly.
Mom looked at my dad and then back at me. “Next season, you’ll be introduced to society.”
And I shit you not, I didn’t even groan or roll my eyes. “Done.”
It was that easy. Agree to be a deb and I got the ticket to my crush. Two days later I had Resident Evil: Revelations 2, and when I signed on, Leo was already there.
“Stig! You got the game,” he announced when our headsets connected.
I tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped at the nickname he’d given me, at the fact that he seemed happy I was online. “Don’t get too excited,” I told him. “I’ve never played before, which means I’ll undoubtedly suck ass.”
He laughed at me using his verbiage. “I’ll teach you.”
And that’s all it was for a while, him teaching me the ropes of the game in Raid mode with the only conversation between us being me asking questions or him giving tips. But eventually, when I had the hang of it, the intimacy of playing a game with only Leo and not a squad full of other strangers hit me. And when we didn’t need to talk about how to play the game anymore, we started talking about other things.
“So, how old are you?” he asked me during a raid one Sunday night.
“Fifteen. You?”
“Sixteen,” he lied. I knew it was a lie because his birthday wasn’t until October, but I let him lie because I liked the idea of him lying to impress me.
“Cool.”
“So, you’re a sophomore?”
“In a few weeks when school starts,” I said, pausing when we came upon a cluster of zombies that required concentration. When we made it past, I continued. “Not really looking forward to that, to be honest.”
“Why?”
“School sucks.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.” A pause, then, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
My skin burned so fiercely I took one of my cold hands off my controller and pressed it against my cheek. “No.”
“No?” Leo laughed. “That’s insane. How do you not have a boyfriend?”
I snorted. “The boys at my school are not into girls like me.”
“Are you kidding?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Then they’re idiots. If there was a girl at my school who played video games? I’d be all over that.”
“You have no idea what I look like.”
“So?”
Heat full on invaded my body at that, like I had an inescapable fever.
“Are you hitting on me, LeoHernandez13?”
“Maybe I am, Stig.”
My stomach did a backflip. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know who I am.”
The conversation stalled as we hit the end of a raid, all focus on slaying zombies and other creatures. When we were back in the lobby, Leo said, “So what do you do when you’re not gaming?”