I felt like I might be in love with him. And he might be in love with me. I didn’t know for sure, but I wanted to find out.
It felt important to see what might happen between the two ofus.
Also, I was applying to colleges that offered video game design programs, and I wanted to visit some of them. Going to Mexico City with Isadora would make that impossible.
Saar told me I was welcome to finish out my senior year living with him. He liked having a kid around, since he didn’t have any himself. And I liked living at Saar’s. He was kind. He had the plunge pool, a fridge full of food, and that huge game console.
So my mother left.
7
That happened inNovember. Once Isadora was gone, I felt a rush of anger at her. At the way we’d always lived. I buzzed with axe-throwing rage at my itinerant childhood,
at not mattering enough for Isadora to want to stay,
at patterns that kept repeating like there was no way to ever stop them.
I wasn’t surprised she wanted to move on with a different guy. When had she ever done anything else? But I was mad that she actually went, when she’d watched me begin to care about our life in California, begin to care about Saar and Venice Beach. She’d seen me fall for Luca and make all those friends. My heart had opened right in front of her. And she still forced me to choose between her and everything else that mattered to me.
Saar was a hot tangle of misery. He’d been devoted to Isadora and imagined he was a safe harbor for this untamed, magical woman. He thought the two of them would get married. When he left that dinner party, Saar had kissed Isadora good night, happy and trusting, with no inkling that she’d stop loving him by morning.
Now he brought home tall chocolate cakes and ate a large piece every day after dinner, even though he normally watched his diet very carefully. He’d sit on the couch, playing video games, unshaven and wearing a pair of very old, very unattractive Juilliard sweatpants.
Still, he didn’t drink too much. Or do any drugs. He nevermissed his ninety minutes of exercise. Every weekday, he went to work. He memorized his lines and asked me what groceries I’d like to have in the house.
Saar was a very responsible person.
Isadora never asked about him, though she texted me pretty often. She told me she was probably always meant to live in Mexico City.I feel truly alive for the first time!she wrote. She called me sometimes, too—but not on a regular schedule. Usually, she rang while I was in school and couldn’t pick up.
Each week she was gone, I felt I knew my mother less. She was on a boat speeding out into the ocean. Smaller and smaller, she was disappearing.
Soon I’d stop being able to see her at all.
During the winter holidays, I celebrated Hanukkah with Saar’s family in a small Oregon town. He bought my plane tickets. By the end of January, I had written all my college essays and turned my applications in.
In the evenings Saar and I ate dinner in front of his big screen. The meal was usually lean protein and salad, and the games were usually first-person and violent (though not always):Grand Theft Auto, Luigi’s Haunted Mansion, Arkham City, Red Dead Redemption.Around when we finishedLuigi’s Mansion,he started dating again. First there was Nicki, a makeup artist. After her, Serena, who is a creative writing professor at UCLA.
In April, I get into UC Irvine. It has affordable in-state tuition and a program in game design. Saar buys me a sweatshirt with the college logo and helps me apply for student housing. I fill out financial aid forms explaining that I don’t live with a parent anymore and get a job behind the counter at a coffee shop. I plan to work there full-time until school starts.
I am coping.
I am fine.
I’m raging and bereft—but I’m a responsible person, too.
I do my homework and unload the dishwasher and try to be an adult, even though I feel like a lost little girl.
Then Luca breaks up with me.
8
We are inhis car on the way to a party. Luca is driving and I am talking about this game I’ve started playing calledKiller Odyssey—what I think of it, and how I would have made it different if I’d built it. I like the sound design. I’m trying to figure out what makes an effective soundscape for a game, because it’s not just the music that’s important. It’s the bounce noises, the bangs, the swish of a weapon through the air.
I dig my sketchbook out of my backpack. It’s a graph-paper notebook where I write down ideas and make sketches for levels. I talk as I draw, with my feet on Luca’s dashboard. “Instead of Odysseus killing the Cyclops monster by stabbing it through its single eye, which is how you beat the level,” I say, “it would be cool if you could actually pop the Cyclops eyeballoutof the monster’s head and then use it as a tool. The eyeball could let you see around corners, maybe. Or you could throw it in the air to get a bird’s-eye view of the game map that you couldn’t get any other way, like to see shortcuts. Or maybe it could be an exploding eyeball, or a poison-gas eyeball. How would you want to use an eyeball weapon? Like, imagine it’s a very ginormous eyeball.”
I’m drawing eyeball weapons in my notebook as I talk, and Luca is grunting back at me in what I think is an appreciative way, whenI realize he has parked the car.
I turn to look at him. “Are we there?”
