Chapter 8

At about the same time, in a different part of the lunchroom, Howie’s older brother Jack and his girlfriend Vixen were talking with Autumn’s older sister Summer, and her boyfriend Alan. There were just the four of them at the table. The four of them were close friends, although they’d only come together as a group in the last few months.

In a way, it was a little surprising the four of them were friends at all; their common interests were very limited. Jack was a fanatic birdwatcher, and Vixen was well on the way to being one, and not just because she liked hanging around with Jack. Alan and Summer had several shared interests, as well, particularly complicated role-playing games. Jack and Vixen also knew the other couple had other shared interests, but didn’t know about them in any kind of detail. Alan and Summer liked looking at birds, up to a point well short of Jack and Vixen’s passions, and the birder couple could get along with role-playing games, mostly out of courtesy toward their friends.

But in spite of the lack of commonality of interests, they shared a few, and had shared a few tough times together, too. All of them had been pretty much loners up until a few months before, when a number of unexpected things happened in a short period of time. Now they had been discussing going to the same college together next fall, and maybe even sharing an apartment. None of it would have been imaginable to any of them when school let out last spring.

Jack glanced across the table at Vixen, where she was looking unhappily at the poor excuse for pizza, and was still pretty surprised about the whole thing. He’d known Vixen virtually all his life, at least about all that he could remember. She’d been in kindergarten with him, had been in his classes at Spearfish Lake all through school. Over the years she’d matured from a small, slender, quiet little girl with long brown hair that mostly was a home to girl cooties into a small, slender, quiet girl with long brown hair, a small but reasonable chest, funny looking glasses and the worst case of zits in Spearfish Lake High School. They’d always been friendly but never close friends, until they accidentally discovered that they were really soul mates.

It had been quite a rush for a guy who was considered to be one of the odder of the oddballs in the senior class at Spearfish Lake High School, mostly because until Vixen came along birds were the primary passion in his life. Jack was easily the best-known and most knowledgeable birdwatcher in Spearfish Lake, inside or outside the high school, with much more interest in birds than traditional high school boy activities, such as things like football or chasing girls. Birds had only fallen slightly to a close number two position, partly because Vixen had started to develop an interest in birds not much less intense than his. She still had some catching up to do in knowledge, but they were working on it. He’d long had a desire to somehow make a life out of his enthusiasm with birds, and now Vixen was starting to share that dream. One more year of high school – well, less than that – and they’d be taking their first steps down the road to making it a reality.

Like Jack and Vixen, Alan and Summer had known each other as distant friends most of their lives. And, like Jack and Vixen, their romance was a new and wonderful thing to them – Jack had been the one to put them together, if somewhat inadvertently and off-handedly. But Alan and Summer were even closer, if such a thing were possible, for they’d discovered early on they shared a secret they’d both thought they were pretty well alone with: both were Wiccans, although of a slightly different flavor if no less intense. It was something that had been passed down through many generations of their families, and they’d each been surprised – no, downright astonished – to make the discovery of the other’s closely held secret. Only the Goddess, they agreed, would have made it possible for them to come out to each other.

Summer’s mother knew most of the story of the connection between Alan and Summer, but not all of it. Jack and Vixen knew the outline of the secret, if not the details; when you got right down to it, Jack and Vixen’s interest in Wicca was about as intense as Alan and Summer’s interest in birds, which was to say, not much. Each couple was polite about their lack of enthusiasm about the other’s non-romantic interests.

“Summer and I have been talking about the game,” Alan said. “We think maybe we’re ready for another trial session.”

“Good grief,” Jack replied, realizing he wasn’t talking about football. “I didn’t know the two of you were still messing with that.” Back in the summer, the two had been developing a role-playing game, based on witches and inquisitors, which Jack suspected hit pretty close to the both of them. The development of the game had been at least a little bit of a cover story for other things the two were doing, which included putting a pretty solid romance together too.

Alan and Summer had held one trial session of the game a little over a month before. They had Jack and Vixen along with a couple acquaintances joining them. It really hadn’t gone very well, at least partly because no one but Alan and Summer had any idea of what they were doing. There was clearly much development left to do, and except for Alan and Summer no one else was a gamer anyway.

“Oh, yeah,” Alan said. “We had to back off on it a bit when school started, but if we can incorporate some of the changes we’ve been talking about, we’re probably about ready to try it again. Maybe we can get the gang together some evening this week. It sure would be nice to have more than six of us, though.”

“I could ask Howie and Misty,” Jack offered. “I don’t think they’d go for it. I mean, they play an awful lot of Nintendo, but that doesn’t involve much thinking.”

“Might be worth a try,” Summer put in. “I think Autumn would be willing to sit through an hour or two of it. She reads enough fantasy books that she ought to be able to get hold of the idea of the game pretty easily, and she knows a bit about what Alan and I have been doing, I mean, with the game. But Alan is right; it’s going to work better if we have a few more people.”

“I hate to say it, but you’re on your own for that,” Jack told them. “I don’t know any other gamers in town.”

“We can’t think of anyone, either,” Summer admitted. “It’s kind of frustrating.”

“You know,” Jack replied thoughtfully, “maybe the best thing for you to do would be to put it on a back burner and wait till we get down to college. There’s bound to be some gamers running around a place like that.”

“We’ve kicked it around,” Alan said. “The hell of it is that we’d sort of like to have a working game when we go down there. Once we have it functional we can draw some real gamers in and have some fun with it. But the only way we’re going to be able to get it working is to have some test sessions before we go, and when you get right down to it, we need a bigger group than we had last time. One of the reasons it didn’t work very well is that each one of us had to play two or three roles, and that pretty well had things screwed up before we started.”

“Yeah,” Summer agreed. “Alan and I even lost track of what we were doing, and it had to be harder for the people who didn’t know anything about the game. What we’ve tried to do is optimize it so we can play it with a little smaller group, and make it easier for beginners. It’s going to be hard to know how well we’ve managed that till we can try it out.”

Jack thought about it for a moment. Role-playing games did not interest him in the slightest; as far as he was concerned it was a waste of time during which he could be out bird watching. However, Alan and Summer had been out several times birding, and while it had been a cover story he knew they had about the same interest in birds as he had in games. Well, he thought, it’s like the birding pun: one good tern deserves another. “I guess I could do it, as long as everything else works out.”

“I’m willing to take another shot at it too,” Vixen agreed. “Especially if it’s a rainy, crappy day when there’s not much chance we’d be out looking at birds, anyway.”

“Maybe we should ask around a little further than we’ve done in the past,” Summer suggested. “Maybe put up a notice on the bulletin board or something. We might find someone we don’t know about who’s really into gaming. And it’s not impossible Autumn might know of someone who would be interested.”

“Might be,” Jack conceded. “She’d know kids in her class better than we would. And for that matter, maybe Howie would know someone, too.”

“That might work,” Summer agreed. “All we really need is eight or ten kids, counting us, and she might know some other kids who have their noses in fantasy novels about as much as she does. That would give them a running start at understanding the game. A couple hours would at least tell us if we’re on the right track. Alan, I suppose we’d better plan on doing it at your place again, but when?”

“I don’t know,” Alan shrugged. “I’m pretty sure the folks will go along with us setting it up in the living room again, but as to when, about all I can say is after school sometime.”

“That’s not going to work, if we’re going to have Autumn there,” Summer pointed out. “She’ll have cheerleading practice, and then the game Friday. Jack, that’ll probably be true for Howie, too, if you can get him.”

“Yeah, well, the odds are at best fifty-fifty on that,” Jack replied. “Now, if I could talk Misty into it she’d drag him there by the ear if she had to.”

Vixen shook her head. “Boy, it sure seems like she has a ring in his nose, doesn’t it?”

“Something like that,” Jack agreed. “Maybe he’ll realize it someday, and maybe I ought to bring that to his attention some time. But it’s his life, after all.”

“Well, maybe on the weekend,” Alan shrugged. “The Frostee Freeze won’t be open, so that means one less place for kids to hang out. Maybe we could do it Saturday night and order a couple pizzas or something.”

“That might work,” Jack agreed. “Nothing like a little bribery to get someone to sit through a game. That might even help drag Howie and Misty into the deal. I get the impression that she thinks the two of them need to be seen together as much as possible so she can prove Howie is her boyfriend.”

“You might be right at that,” Vixen smiled. “I know just how that works, too. It felt awful good to be able to come back to school this fall and know that other people were seeing that I could really get a boyfriend after all.”

“I feel sort of the same way,” Summer agreed. “And it feels good to be able to show it off a little. But while we haven’t hung out with them very much, somehow I don’t get the same feelings off of Misty.”

“Yeah, well, you could be right,” Jack agreed. “I mean, I know from hanging around you and Vixen that girls don’t always think the same way as guys do. Back last summer Howie and Misty were playing Nintendo a lot, and I thought it was just screwing around. But it seems to be getting a lot more serious. But, to get back to the idea of a game session, maybe Saturday afternoon, too. I don’t think we can do it after school, at least not until football is over with.”

“Football and practice does plug things up, doesn’t it?” Summer sighed. “I mean, I only go to the games because Autumn is a cheerleader and I feel like I have to support her.”

“Same reason I go to the games,” Jack shrugged. “If Howie weren’t the on the team I wouldn’t go, either. But it’s a family thing.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Yeah, maybe I can do something with that.”

Jack didn’t get to ask Howie about it until they were heading to bed that evening. After practice, Howie had rushed home, gobbled supper, and then headed over to Misty’s house to study with her, or at least so he said. From what Jack knew about the two of them, the odds were about evenly split between Nintendo and studying each other’s tonsils. Actually studying school work seemed like it would be a long shot. That kind of stuff wasn’t going to do Howie any good in the long run, Jack thought.

“So,” he said to his brother after he got in, “did you get much studying done?”

“Some,” Howie sighed. “Not as much as I would have liked. Misty wanted to play Nintendo, so we played Nintendo.”

“I’m not going to get on your ass about it,” Jack said, “but you might want to do some thinking about what has to come first before it bites you on your ass.”

“I know,” Howie sighed, “but Misty has gotten pretty bossy and cranky lately. I don’t like it, but what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I can’t answer that,” Jack replied, “but I’ll tell you this. Vixen and I may spend a lot of time together, but at least we respect each other’s needs to hit the books. We’re not together all the time, and you know that.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have football on top of everything else.”

“Yeah, but we have a fall bird migration to make up for it. It probably eats up as much time as football, but we find time to do it, and at least we get to do that together. That helps. We manage to find time for other stuff, too, not just birds. Like, we get to hang out with friends, too. I haven’t been following too closely, but it sure seems like you haven’t been doing much of that.”

“No, I haven’t,” Howie sighed. “To tell the truth, I’m getting pretty damn tired of some of the guys I used to hang out with, like Matt Wadsworth. He seems so full of crap it’s incredible. You know I told you about watching Bree Gravengood land a glider on Saturday?”

“Yeah,” Jack smiled. “I guess I know the kid but I don’t think I’ve ever talked to her.”

“She’s a pretty good kid, just really quiet,” Howie said. “But Wadsworth just absolutely refuses to believe she could do something like that, and anyone who disagrees with him is just totally full of shit, no matter if they saw it or not. He really made an ass of himself about it in the locker room.”

“I guess there are blowhards who wouldn’t believe a snake could bite them on the ass even after one bit them,” Jack shrugged. “Look, Howie, we went through a lot of shit from those kinds of people this summer. The one thing I learned out of it is that sooner or later they get what’s coming to them.”

“Yeah, true,” Howie grinned at the memories. “The hell of it is, Misty is right on that. I don’t need to be hanging around those kinds of assholes. But even a good guy like Jared Wooten is just the same to her. Jared is a nice guy, he’s smart, not an asshole like Wadsworth or some others we could name. But it seems like whenever Misty and I talk about doing something, it’s something she wants to do, or hanging around her friends. Hell, today, she all but dragged me away from the lunch table. We were sitting by ourselves when some team members came and joined us, and she really got a hair up her butt about it.”

“I hate to say anything, but I think maybe you might have to restore a little order,” Jack counseled. “Insist that the two of you are going to do something you want to do.”

“And then she’ll throw a fit.”

“Look, Howie, having a girlfriend is kind of a give-and-take thing. It looks to me like you’re the only one who’s doing any giving and she’s the one doing all the taking.”

“Yeah,” Howie sighed. “It seems like that to me a lot, too. But what can I come up with that isn’t hanging around with some of my friends?”

“Here’s an idea. You know that Alan and Summer are putting together a role-playing game, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard you talk about it. It sounds like something Alan and Summer would come up with.”

“Well, it is,” Jack grinned, “and I’ll be the first person to admit that it’s not exactly the thing I care to do, either. But they’re friends, and sometimes you have to give a little to keep a friendship going, you know. Now, they’re planning on having a test session of the game next Saturday evening. The last time we had one it didn’t go very well, but they’ve been working on it.”

“So I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m thinking is that you tell Misty you promised me that you’d go to the session and bring her along. It’ll only last a couple hours and there’ll be pizza. Tell her you owe me one and this is how I asked you to pay it back.”

“She’ll throw a fit,” Howie repeated. “Even if she were into role-playing games, and I doubt she’s any more into them than I am, it would be something I wanted to do and not something she wanted to do.”

“Maybe it’ll be a way you can show her that you do have other things to do rather than let her have her way all the time,” Jack pointed out.

“Nah, she’d never go along with it.”

“You might be right,” Jack said. “But maybe you’d better be giving some thought as to how much you want to be with her before you get yourself in over your head. What happens if she starts to get snippy about the time you spend playing football?”

“Hell, she’s pretty snippy about it now. I should be spending more time with her. If I weren’t the quarterback, I think she’d be pushing me to give it up entirely, but being seen with the quarterback is sort of a status thing for her I guess.”

“OK, then,” Jack nodded. “Think about this. Suppose she comes to you with an ultimatum, it’s either football or her?”

“If it was last year I might even take her up on it,” he said. “This year, no way. Things are going pretty good right now. I don’t think we’re the greatest team ever to take the field, but we’ve already got the best record of the last ten years, and the season is still just getting going. I couldn’t let my teammates down, and hell, I wouldn’t want to let the school or the town down.”

“So you’re saying there are limits somewhere,” Jack said. “You might want to do a little thinking about just where those limits actually are.”

“But what if she throws a real hissy and decides she wants to break up with me?”

“Do you want an honest answer? You’ll be without a girlfriend, and that could be either a good thing or a bad thing. But if she wants to draw lines in the sand like that, I really doubt it would be a bad thing. Either she’s going to have to learn to give a little, or you’re going to have a hell of a rough time wrapped around her little finger.”

“Yeah,” Howie said thoughtfully. “You might have a point there, and maybe this game thing would be a good place to try it out.”

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