“Cool,” Tamal said. “Hey, you wanna come with me to get a suit? I need something for the dance.”
As Tamal started listing his requirements for a suit, none of which I was certain Astrid was going to approve, my phone vibrated. I grabbed it out of the treadmill’s cupholder, expecting a text from my mother, or from Nora relaying a question from my mother, but it was a notification from the Promethean app. A message had arrived from DreOfTheDead. I checked to make sure Tamal wasn’t paying attention and took a peek.
DreOfTheDead: whats a pirates favorite letter
Dre had sent me a joke. And not even a good joke. A bad, bad joke. The kind my father probably would have tried to tell me when I was six. But I didn’t want to be a snob, so I responded.
PrezMamasBoy: R?
DreOfTheDead: aye you’d think so but ’tis the C
A sharp laugh busted out of me and I dropped my phone. It smacked the tread and went flying into the wall behind me. I hit the emergency stop and straddled the tread until it slowed enough for me to hop off. My phone’s screen was shattered, and I couldn’t read anything on it.
“You okay?” Tamal asked. He’d stopped his machine too and was staring at me.
“I am,” I said. “My phone is decidedly not.”
“What were you laughing about?”
I considered telling Tamal about Dre—I usually told Tamal everything—but something made me want to keep this to myself. “Just something I read.”
“It must’ve been pretty funny.”
I smiled impulsively. “Yeah, it was.”
Dre
I ROLLED THE twenty-sided die, adding a twist as I threw, and then held my breath as I watched the gold-painted numbers on the emerald-green icosahedron tumble and spin. “Come on, twenty! Come on, twenty!”
The die came to a stop. I blew out the breath and said, “Three. Plus my modifier, which is—”
“Still not good enough,” Mel said, wearing an excited grin.
Around the table, the members of my adventuring party groaned.
“You don’t have to look so happy about it, Mel,” I said.
Mel—Emelda Vincente-Perez—cleared her throat from behind the enormous screen that hid her secret machinations from the rest of us. She rolled her dice. There was nothing more nerve-racking than Mel wearing a shit-eating grin and rolling a whole bunch of dice.
“How many hit points you got, Dre?”
I checked my tablet where I kept my character sheet. “Lady Poppy Needles has seventeen hit points left.”
“Not anymore,” Mel snapped back. “While attempting to pick the lock, the door bursts open. Your delicate fingers slip and you trigger the trap. The chandelier hanging overhead falls and hits you, doing thirteen points of damage. You’re dazed. You’ve got blood streaming down your face and you can’t move. But when you look up, you see—”
“The Count of Crows?” I asked hopefully.
Mel’s smile grew deeper and more wicked. “The Blood Mistress, flanked by her entourage of impossible children.”
More groans from around the table. Adam said, “We are so not making it out of this alive.”
“I’ll heal Poppy,” said Dhonielle. “But it’ll cost you. Let me see if you’ve got anything I want.” Her cleric, Father Aurum, was devoted to the god of greed, so she couldn’t cast any healing spells without getting paid first.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I touched it through my shorts. We were still coming out of one of the hottest Augusts on record—thanks, climate change!—and while it might’ve been chilly at night, it was still balls-stuck-to-my-leg hot during the day. I had to sneak a peek at my phone under the table because Mel would’ve smote Lady Poppy Needles on the spot if she’d caught me. It was a notification from the Promethean app.
PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre. It’s Dean. What are you up to?
Every time. Every time this boy sent me a message, he introduced himself like I didn’t know it was him by his screen name. It was like he was writing from the 1950s sometimes, but it was also a little adorable.
DreOfTheDead: playing d&d
PrezMamasBoy: The role-playing game?
DreOfTheDead: no, the drinking game
PrezMamasBoy: I don’t drink. I did once, at my cousin’s wedding. I snuck some champagne. It didn’t agree with all the wedding cake I’d eaten prior to that.
DreOfTheDead: no drinking here either . . . unless you count coffee
PrezMamasBoy: Do you have a vendetta against proper capitalization and punctuation?
DreOfTheDead: nah
DreOfTheDead: just faster without them
PrezMamasBoy: Autocorrect is an option.
DreOfTheDead: turned it off
DreOfTheDead: kept changing my fucks into ducks
PrezMamasBoy: That sounds ducking awful.
DreOfTheDead: was that a joke???
PrezMamasBoy: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
DreOfTheDead: i’m onto you arnault
DreOfTheDead: anyway . . . what’re you doing
PrezMamasBoy: I’m at a debate tournament.
DreOfTheDead: hopefully you’re doing better than your mom did
PrezMamasBoy: My opponent started crying during cross-examination. I think I won, but I don’t feel particularly good about it.
DreOfTheDead: what the hell kind of questions were you asking?!
PrezMamasBoy: Good ones, or so I thought.
PrezMamasBoy: The judge is back. I have to go. I will talk to you later. ~Dean
“Dre?” Mel was looking at me like she was waiting for the answer to a question I hadn’t heard. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re trapped under a chandelier, the Blood Mistress is trying to kill you, your party is in danger, and you’re doing nothing?”
I laughed. “Oh. Right. In the game. I guess it’s time to show the Blood Mistress how I earned the surname Needles.”
Mel, Adam, Dhonielle, Caleb, Julian, Phil, and I made up the sassiest Dungeons & Dragons group that had ever crawled through a dungeon. We were kind of an offshoot of my school’s QFA group—that’s Queer Friends & Allies—because that’s where we all met. Mel, who was a friend and ally, had been the one to suggest we pop by and had forced me to go with her. Dhonielle had heard me and Mel talking about wanting to start a gaming group, and she dragged her BFF, Phil, in. Adam, Caleb, and Julian all followed after. We tried to get together at least twice a month to play on Sundays, but it was tough to work around everyone’s schedules. Especially mine.
“Seriously, Dre?”
The others had gone home, and I was helping Mel clean up the dining room. Her house was smaller than mine, but it was homier, and there were never photographers hiding in the bushes, so we usually played there.
“What?”
“It’s been two months since we’ve been able to get you to the table, and you spent half the adventure staring at your phone with that stupid grin devouring your whole face.”
“What grin?” I asked, but the second I started thinking about Dean, my lips went and betrayed me.
Mel pointed. “That one!”
I grabbed a slice of cold, congealed pizza from the box on the counter and took a bite. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”