The Best American Short Stories 2011 by Geraldine Brooks & Heidi Pitlor

Author:Geraldine Brooks & Heidi Pitlor
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary Collections, American Fiction - 21st Century, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Canadian, General, Anthologies, American, Canadian Fiction - 21st Century, Fiction, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780547242163
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2011-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

I get bored with Eric's game. Lucy Mantooth never warms up. Her wizard-thief leaves me for dead in a collapsing wormhole. Was there something I was supposed to say? I resume my old routine: peanut butter, batch, nap.

One day I'm headed home to do just that. A sports car pulls up to the sidewalk, a midnight-blue Corvette.

"Need a ride?" the Dungeon Master asks.

I don't, but slide in anyway. I've never been in a Corvette.

We drive around town for a while, past my school, the hobby shop.

"Thought you didn't have a license," I say.

"Who said I do?"

The Dungeon Master smiles.

"There are rumors and there is the truth and there are true rumors. You want the rundown?" he asks. "Here's the rundown. Hit a kid with a bat and gave him brain damage, yes. Flashing, yes. Burning my bowel movements, no. Have I been to the bughouse? I've been to the bughouse. Am I insane? Does my opinion even count? Remember all the newspaper stories about how the game makes kids crazy? Makes them do horrible things?"

"My mom clips them for me."

"Love those. Take, for example, suicides. The game doesn't create suicides. If anything, it postpones them. I mean, the world gives you many reasons to snuff it, got to admit."

"I'm fourteen," I say. "I don't know what I admit."

"In another age you could be a father already. In another neighborhood, even."

We drive for a while. We're a few towns east.

"Nobody's seen you lately," the Dungeon Master says. "Marco says you play with some snotty faggots at school."

"I stopped."

"You hear about Cherninsky? He got caught with all this stolen musical stuff in his garage. Amps and guitars and drums, the whole deal. Tried to dump it in the reservoir, but the cops got most of it. Now his dad might go to jail."

"His dad?" I say.

"Harsh, right? Anyway, we're into war-gaming now. Real technical shit. It's not the same. Brendan can barely handle it. We're doing Tobruk. I'm Rommel."

"The Desert Fox."

"You read," the Dungeon Master says, though I picked up the name from an old tank movie. "That's what I like about you. That's why I thought I could teach you."

"Teach me what?"

We pull into a scenic lookout, the Palisades. Past the bushes in front of us the cliff drops sheer to some rocks in the Hudson. The Corvette idles, and I wonder if I made a mistake when I accepted this ride. The Dungeon Master looks off across the river as though ready to jump it.

"Teach me what?" I ask.

The Dungeon Master guns the engine. I turn to him—that pale skin, the fine-spun beard, the bright, bitter eyes.

"Teach me what?"

His answer is another rev. His fingers drum on the gear knob. We're going to fly a dragon, after all. Part of me is ready. Maybe it's the part that kept me in Dr. Varelli's study so long.

"Whoa," the Dungeon Master laughs. "You're shaking."

He shifts into reverse and swings the car around. Soon we're back on town streets.

"Had you shitting," he says.

"You did.

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