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“Mark,” he said.
I was kind of scared to go down there. Listening to people howl in misery is not among my favorite pastimes. But I went.
“Hazel Grace,” Augustus said as he heard my footsteps. “Isaac, Hazel from Support Group is coming downstairs. Hazel, a gentle reminder: Isaac is in the midst of a psychotic episode. ”
Augustus and Isaac were sitting on the floor in gaming chairs shaped like lazy Ls, staring up at a gargantuan television. The screen was split between Isaac’s point of view on the left, and Augustus’s on the right. They were soldiers fighting in a bombed-out modern city. I recognized the place from The Price of Dawn. As I approached, I saw nothing unusual: just two guys sitting in the lightwash of a huge television pretending to kill people.
Only when I got parallel to them did I see Isaac’s face. Tears streamed down his reddened cheeks in a continual flow, his face a taut mask of pain. He stared at the screen, not even glancing at me, and howled, all the while pounding away at his controller. “How are you, Hazel?” asked Augustus.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Isaac?” No response. Not even the slightest hint that he was aware of my existence. Just the tears flowing down his face onto his black T-shirt.
Augustus glanced away from the screen ever so briefly. “You look nice,” he said. I was wearing this just-past-the-knees dress I’d had forever. “Girls think they’re only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I’m going over to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him. ”
“And yet,” I said, “Isaac won’t so much as glance over at me. Too in love with Monica, I suppose,” which resulted in a catastrophic sob.
“Bit of a touchy subject,” Augustus explained. “Isaac, I don’t know about you, but I have the vague sense that we are being outflanked. ” And then back to me, “Isaac and Monica are no longer a going concern, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He just wants to cry and play Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn. ”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Isaac, I feel a growing concern about our position. If you agree, head over to that power station, and I’ll cover you. ” Isaac ran toward a nondescript building while Augustus fired a machine gun wildly in a series of quick bursts, running behind him.
“Anyway,” Augustus said to me, “it doesn’t hurt to talk to him. If you have any sage words of feminine advice. ”
“I actually think his response is probably appropriate,” I said as a burst of gunfire from Isaac killed an enemy who’d peeked his head out from behind the burned-out husk of a pickup truck.
Augustus nodded at the screen. “Pain demands to be felt,” he said, which was a line from An Imperial Affliction. “You’re sure there’s no one behind us?” he asked Isaac. Moments later, tracer bullets started whizzing over their heads. “Oh, goddamn it, Isaac,” Augustus said. “I don’t mean to criticize you in your moment of great weakness, but you’ve allowed us to be outflanked, and now there’s nothing between the terrorists and the school. ” Isaac’s character took off running toward the fire, zigging and zagging down a narrow alleyway.
“You could go over the bridge and circle back,” I said, a tactic I knew about thanks to The Price of Dawn.
Augustus sighed. “Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft cohort. ”
“Me?” Isaac said, his voice breathy. “Me?! You’re the one who suggested we hole up in the freaking power station. ”
Gus turned away from the screen for a second and flashed his crooked smile at Isaac. “I knew you could talk, buddy,” he said. “Now let’s go save some fictional schoolchildren. ”
Together, they ran down the alleyway, firing and hiding at the right moments, until they reached this one-story, single-room schoolhouse. They crouched behind a wall across the street and picked off the enemy one by one.
“Why do they want to get into the school?” I asked.
“They want the kids as hostages,” Augustus answered. His shoulders rounded over his controller, slamming buttons, his forearms taut, veins visible. Isaac leaned toward the screen, the controller dancing in his thin-fingered hands. “Get it get it get it,” Augustus said. The waves of terrorists continued, and they mowed down every one, their shooting astonishingly precise, as it had to be, lest they fire into the school.
