Game On by Gloria Chao

Author:Gloria Chao [Chao, Gloria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

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Sunny is frozen. She hasn’t moved, maybe hasn’t even blinked, in five minutes? Ten?

Her monitor is still on, the game is still running—and the girl with the teeth is booking it. She heard Sunny scream. Sunny knows she heard even though that’s impossible. Right, impossible. It was probably just coincidental timing. Something in the game triggered the character’s motion right when Sunny shouted. That’s all. That’s all.

The girl with the teeth is in some sort of museum. She keeps looking behind her as if she’s being chased. She probably is. Why is she running, though? Or rather, how, since Sunny hasn’t pressed a single W, A, S, or D since the casino? Is this just one super-long cutscene?

Sunny reaches for her keyboard, and blood trickles out from under her glove. Dammit. The clot broke again. She clenches her fist hard, feels the skin pull more. A bright stinging sensation, and she can focus again.

On-screen, the girl with the teeth slows, stops running. She’s staring at one of the pieces on the wall. The graphics are even more lifelike than before. Sunny’s seen AAA releases with shittier animation than this. The textures are so vivid she’d swear she could reach out and—

Sunny finally sees what the girl with the teeth is staring at: Sunny’s hand. All of them, every one of the pictures currently in frame, are of Sunny’s bitten hands. This isn’t a coincidence. Those are her hands. She recognizes them. And this one—the one the girl with the teeth has stopped in front of, is reaching for—it’s today’s.

She was in class when the feeling hit. The swarm, as she’s come to think of it. She doesn’t know how else to describe it. Most of the time, she is a void. All her feelings and wants and intention scooped out of her like a pulpy mass of pumpkin seeds. But sometimes, for no reason she’s been able to discern, she suddenly . . . isn’t a person anymore, not even a void person like usual. She’s a swarming mass of bees. Not literally, of course, but nothing else comes close to capturing the tangible wrongness. She can feel the swarm roiling in her gut, buzzing in the meat of her every limb, into her throat and bloating her skull. Sometimes she can ride it out, wait for the swarm to recede on its own, but not today. This time, she rushed to the locker room (safer than the bathroom when gym’s not in session), ripped her gloves off, and sank her teeth as hard into her hand as she could. She doesn’t know why but it’s the only thing that can stop the swarm. Like turning a pressure valve. She doesn’t do it because she likes to hurt or wants to bleed. She just wants to stop the swarming.

This time she bled. And this time, Lisa saw. Not just the biting or the blood, but the history of both marked across the expanse of her hands.

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