The World of Men

By late June, Harlan and I could tell that it would be another wasted summer. We posted up at the sticky tables in the mall food court each day, sucking sodas through curly straws. I’d play games on my Nokia phone while Harlan watched the girls from school, his eyes stuck on them as they wandered by in packs and pretended not to notice. The new year waited at summer’s end for all of us, and our girls had just learned how high schoolers dressed: jean cutoffs, tank tops, and cherry-red glitter gloss that they smacked on their lips to make sure it was even. Each time they passed, Harlan jittered on the bench beside me, looking like a shook-up bottle of Pepsi.

Wheaton was already half-empty of kids. Every summer a lucky group of our friends got shipped off to expensive sleepaway camps. Harlan and I were left behind with the other kids whose families couldn’t afford camp. Our moms had worked for the State of Maryland since before we were born. They didn’t love their jobs, but they liked each other, so our families spent a lot of time together. Harlan and I were the same year in school and our parents had decided that we would be friends, even though we didn’t have much in common.

Although we never got sent off to camp, the two of us came up with our own tradition: We began each summer with a bet. The game went back as far as I could remember, from when we were kids and our parents slipped us quarters each morning for the arcade, up through our later middle school years when shopkeepers angrily wagged their brooms at us and told us to go get jobs. Our early bets were innocent: bet you can’t break into the all-time top ten in Ms. Pacman; bet you can’t win the oversized pink gorilla at Dave and Buster’s; bet you can’t down the extra-jumbo blue raspberry Icee from the AMC concessions in under an hour. There was cursing and puking, but no one got hurt.

Soon though, we would be freshmen. Everything felt new and untested. We were both losing interest in our childhood games, instead ready to settle into who we were going to be in high school.

One day, we found ourselves in the deserted south wing of the mall again, where shoppers never went anymore. The south wing had been home to the mall’s Hechinger and Circuit City before they closed down. Soon, the neighboring stores had followed, shutting their doors before they had even cleared out all of their merchandise. Now the south wing was a stretch of shuttered storefronts, guarded by retractable steel grates that security thought could keep us out. Harlan used a pole to lever up the Sharper Image grate and we slithered under, taking turns holding up the steel. We plugged in two of the abandoned massage chairs and kicked back. The empty storeroom was dark and cavernous; the only sound was the high buzz of the massage motors. Harlan turned to me, jiggling as the rollers pounded his back.

“I bet,” he started, his voice warbled by the power of the massage. “I bet you can’t make out with Katy Preston by the end of the summer.” He flashed me his hyena grin, so I knew that he was serious. I rolled toward him in my chair and hit the up arrow, kicking it into high gear. The rollers pinched and kneaded at my guts, shaking me with a throb that slowly rose upward. I made myself find and hold his gaze. Girls liked Harlan’s bright eyes and tousled blonde hair, but his teeth were too big for his face and his oily skin was pocked with zits.

“I bet you can’t either,” I said. Katy drew less of my interest than she did Harlan’s, but I wasn’t going to back down from a bet. We both eased into our chairs, knowing exactly what kind of summer this would be.

* * *

Then, that night, I discovered the Dungeon. I came across it along the concrete stretch of Georgia Avenue that lay between the mall and home. A quarter-mile south, there was a dingy shopping center of mall rejects: a doughnut store, a pawn shop, and a 7-11. One store had been vacant for months, but that night a light shone from deep inside, and an old neon sign, white and blue, lit up the window. It read, “Dan’s Dungeon,” and next to the letters a superhero’s glowing cape and legs blinked on and off in two different positions, running in freeze frame.

No lights were on inside, but when I pushed at the door it swung open a few inches. The inside of the store was under construction, but it was already overpacked with junk. Comic books, figurines, posters, consoles, and costumes covered every shelf and surface in the little shop. The whole room was bathed in a soft glow from the row of classic arcade games that beeped and blinked along the back wall. I groped around in the darkness and knocked over a model raygun, which tumbled loudly to the floor and made a popping phaser noise upon impact. There was a shout from the back room: “Jimmy!” Then feet shuffled across the carpeted floor and a short, slender boy emerged. He looked me over suspiciously, then asked, “What are you doing?”

“The door was open,” I said. “I was just looking around.”

The boy seemed to relax. “We’re not open yet,” he said. “We were just taking a break from unpacking. Dad thought someone was stealing,” he said. The boy had a soft, faintly lilting voice. He crossed the room and knelt to pick up the toy gun. When he stood, I got a better look at him. He seemed friendly, with dark skin, curly hair, and straight white teeth that gleamed in the blue light. He held a thick trading card deck in his hands, which he shuffled nervously.

“What is this place?” I asked, awed by my surroundings.

“Dan’s Dungeon,” he replied. Then he added quickly: “I’m not Dan, if that’s what you were thinking. It’s my dad’s place. I’m just helping out for the summer.”

His eyes flitted toward the back room. He’d left the door ajar and through the narrow opening I saw a man’s legs, wrapped in sweats and tube socks. The electric blue of a TV screen glowed through the gap in the doorway. We heard rapid gunfire, the plastic clicks of button mashing, followed by a series of grunted curse words.

The boy winced and then his narrow shoulders slumped. “Sorry,” he said. “Dad’s kind of a troll.” He was distracted by the cards in his hand; he had shuffled through the deck and pulled out two cards, which he examined closely. Then he placed the two cards back in the deck and shuffled again. The cards briefly held his full attention. I stepped softly over the piles of junk, trying not to make a sound. Eventually, though, he remembered me and looked up from the cards.

“Dad and I should probably finish up unpacking.” Outside, the sky was getting dark and the shadows were growing long. I headed quietly for the exit, but the boy followed after me.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“I’m Marcus.”

“James.” He grinned and thrust a photocopied flyer at me. It was a black-and-white sketch of a muscled superhero in an action pose with block letters that spelled out a time and date. He walked with me to the exit and stood in the door after I left. I was a few feet down the lamplit sidewalk before he called after me.

“Come back for our opening next week, Marcus,” he said. “We’re having a signing.”

* * *

Harlan spent the next week coming up with new games we could play in the mall. There were indoor games, such as Cart Racing and Escalator Surfing, followed by outdoor games after the aging security guards had kicked us out for the day. If other kids were around, we could play King of the Mall on the top floor of the parking structure. Or, Harlan would try to impress the sophomore skaters with tricks on his board. I’d shoot Harlan’s stunts with my dad’s camcorder. We were almost having fun.

If no one was around and we weren’t in the mood for games, Harlan would sneak into storage behind Sears, where they kept the returned and broken furniture. I’d help him drag out whatever he could find — lawn chairs, a sofa, once even a queen-size box spring — into the back parking lot, where we’d take off our shirts and roast ourselves in the sun. We must’ve looked odd to shoppers: two sweaty, sunburnt, shirtless kids lying out in the lot, reading comics or flat-out asleep. But mall security wasn’t allowed to set foot outdoors and no one else ever bothered us.

By the next week we were into July. The hot sun beat down on us; the air was swampy and thick with mosquitoes. We lay out in the lot. Harlan had nodded off and I was shielding my eyes from the afternoon glare to play Snake on my phone, when a slamming car door caught my attention. Across the lot, a girl and her mother were climbing out of a minivan.

“Harlan,” I hissed. “Wake up!” He groaned and shook himself awake, then glared at me until he noticed who I was staring at.

“Katy freakin’ Preston.” He let out a low whistle. I could see what he liked about her. She had the longest legs I’d ever seen, golden skin that glowed with year-round tan, dark eyes, and wavy black hair. She was in our grade but already had curves like a college girl. She traipsed calmly across the lot, the only thing in Harlan’s world.

“Go talk to her,” I teased.

“Nah, man,” Harlan said. “I’m playing it cool. Waiting for her to talk to me.”

The mall doors slipped open, and Katy and her mom disappeared into the cool air inside. She hadn’t even noticed us.

“Real cool, Harlan.”

He laid back on his lawn chair, hands behind his head. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“You’ve got till the end of summer, actually.”

“I didn’t see you making any moves,” he said. “Too busy over there with your nose in your phone.” His voice made that scoffing sound it made when he got annoyed.

“I dunno,” I said. “She’s not really my type.”

Harlan jerked his head toward me, a look of utter disbelief on his face.

“Katy Preston is everybody’s type.”

He didn’t seem open to other opinions, so I just let his words hang between us. We sat in silence in the shimmering heat, watching the parking lot fill and empty and the highway lanes beside the mall clog with afternoon traffic. By the time the sun began to set, Harlan had forgiven me.

“Wanna come over later? PlayStation and pizza bagels?” He knew that was my favorite thing to do after a long day in the sun, much better than sitting at home with my parents, staring at TV reruns and listening to them complain about work. I was about to tell Harlan yes, but then I remembered I couldn’t.

“I have a thing,” I said.

“No you don’t. You don’t have things.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I told him.

He gave me a searching look, like he was trying to figure me out. Then he leapt up, burned bright red and dripping sweat. He grabbed the chair’s armrest and yanked it back toward the warehouse.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Whatever.”

* * *

The Dungeon looked better that night. The overhead lamps were powered on, and in the light, the place looked less like a nerd’s dirty secret. The shelves were still overloaded, but the construction was finished and the piles of junk had been cleared off the floor. The small store was packed with people seated in rows of folding chairs facing a mic against the far wall.

I spotted James behind the counter, engrossed in his solitary card game. But he looked up and smiled when I walked in. Then, as he glanced around the room, his face fell into a look of worry.

“Guess we’re out of chairs,” he said in a hushed tone.

“I’ll just stand here, if that’s cool.” I leaned against the glass and examined the cards in front of him. “You’re really into this game?” I asked.

His face lit up and he shuffled the deck carefully. “Realm is the best. It’s sort of like Risk, if you’ve ever played that. Like Risk meets Magic, with a bit of Settlers added in.”

I nodded along, pretending I understood what he was saying.

“I could teach you, if you want,” he offered.

A short man with sloping shoulders shuffled across the room to the microphone and began mumbling about the most recent comic book he’d written. I turned back to James and nodded. He brushed the game he’d been playing into a pile and pulled out a game board, which he unfolded on the counter.

“Realm’s better with two players because you can use the board,” he said. He leaned back on the stool. “Pick a side.”

The board was an intricate map of two unfamiliar lands. The left side showed a dark forest with twisted black trees and a few impossibly dark caves; scrawled in crimson ink across the top were the words “The World of Magic.” The right side looked more familiar. It had brown craggy mountains and smooth green fields, and across the bottom the same script read, “The World of Men.”

On a whim, I pointed at the World of Magic, which made him grin with surprise.

“Most people go with what they know their first time,” he explained. He split the deck of cards into two, one pile of cards with blue backings and another pile with purple. He drew seven blue cards for himself and placed seven purple cards on the counter in front of me.

“You want to build up your realm to be as strong as you can. Eventually, you’ll want to try to conquer the other realm. If you’re a more aggressive player, maybe you build up an army of knights and archers and plan an early attack. Or if you’re more defensive, you might build walls, moats, castle keeps, and some solid fortresses. That’s the best part of Realm: you can build any world you want.”

James began flipping the cards over, alternating between my stack and his. Each card was a beautiful swirl of color featuring a medieval-looking character or place. Above each image was written the card’s name, and in a text bubble below, its description: The Merfolk of Redsea, fearsome warriors with muscular torsos and glittering flippers, armed with tridents and knots of rope; Sir Edmund Wain, Errant Knight, a solitary, broad-chested rider in gleaming armor atop a powerful horse; Wytchhenge, a ring of giant, stacked boulders through which you could make out cloaked forms circling a fire; the Grain Stores of Myrrhos, large rectangular structures with pitched roofs, bursting with enough grain to feed a whole nation.

I was so drawn in by the game, the beautiful cards, and James’s vivid explanation of the rules that everything else in the shop seemed to slip away. But a gruff voice brought all of reality rushing back: “Jimbo!” His dad had crossed the room from the back and walked up to us. He wore the same sweats and socks he’d worn the last time I saw him, though today he’d dressed up the outfit with a pair of Adidas sandals. Coarse, graying stubble covered his cheeks, and his dark features seemed to be drawn into a permanent frown.

James quickly looked away and muttered under his breath, “I hate when you call me that.”

His dad either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore what he said. “We’re outta chairs. Grab some more from the back,” he said. He glanced down at the counter and noticed the cards and the game board between us. He sized me up quickly, then cracked a smile.

“I keep telling Jimmy trading card games are for sissies.”

“Dad,” James protested, but his dad ignored him and kept grinning. He stuck a thick, meaty hand at me.

“I’m Dan, this is my place. Welcome,” he said. “Sorry to keep you standing.”

“I don’t mind at all,” I told him, but he shook his head.

“Someone was just going to get more chairs,” he said. Dan gave him one last look, then wandered back toward the speaker to listen. He left an unsettled air between the two of us.

“Sorry about my dad,” James said quietly. “I keep telling him you can’t talk like that anymore.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

James hopped down from the stool and slid around the glass counter. He was dressed in a white tank top and shorts that cut off above his knobby knees. I pictured how Harlan would react if he saw the short shorts, how he’d catch my eye and hide a cruel smirk behind his hand. But Harlan wasn’t here and no one in the shop seemed to care at all.

“I’m just gonna run to the back,” James said. “Then maybe we can play a couple rounds? If you like it, I can even send you some websites to learn more.”

He stood there waiting for me to answer, but a rumbling sound had drawn my attention outside. The noise grew louder and closer, then a pack of boys appeared at the window and rolled by. They were Harlan’s skater friends from school, boys in dirty T-shirts and ripped jeans whose boards were attached to them like fifth limbs. They all had the same pinched, unwashed look, and they eyed me and smirked as they slipped past the window. Without thinking, I took a step away from James. Harlan and his friends knew I liked comics and games, but I was still left with the unnerving sense that I’d let them see something I shouldn’t have.

* * *

The next several weeks were a blur of heat, sweat, and boredom. There were days so excessively hot you could watch the heat’s shadows ripple on the pavement. There were an uncountable number of conversations with Harlan, him spouting off some whacky theory or ridiculing the shoppers at the mall. The whole time blurred together in my mind because I wasn’t actually paying attention. I nodded along and muttered “uh huh” at every pause, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

James and I had traded AIM usernames and we were chatting regularly. James was funny and kind, and after a long day at the mall, I couldn’t wait to get back to my parents’ computer to chat with him. As promised, he had sent me links to a handful of online Realm forums. I spent the final weeks of summer secretly exploring them, reading the text about the game while the graphics loaded line by line over our dial-up connection. There seemed to be no end of new things to learn: there were techniques and plays to make, new cards to collect, guides and accessories to buy, and even a ring of gossip forums to follow for tournament news. Realm was truly a world in itself, one I shared only with James, and I was drawn deeper and deeper into it.

And then, I remember looking up from my phone one day to find myself on the roof of the mall with Harlan watching me impatiently. The sun hung low behind him, painting the clouds in bright colors. Parallel rows of suburban homes stretched away from us in all directions. Ours were out there somewhere, though I couldn’t have picked them out.

“Did you hear what I said?” Harlan asked, his voice shaded with irritation.

“Tell me again.”

“We’re hanging out with them tonight. Katy Preston and her friend Mara.” He arranged his face in a smug grin and sat there waiting for me to say something.

“Ask me how I did it,” he said finally.

“Did what?”

“Are you even listening?”

I glanced away for a moment, my eyes drawn to a flash on my phone screen that said I had a new text message from James.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“I was down in the food court — solo, because you’re never around anymore. I saw her get in line at Panda Express, so I got in line next to her at Taco Bell. Casual. Then, we both ended up at the condiments stand at exactly…” He glared as I punched a reply on my phone’s keypad.

“Dude,” he said.

“I can’t make it tonight.”

Harlan drew himself up slowly. His chest jutted out and his face flushed with color as he tried to contain his rage. He sat for a second in charged silence, like the moment before a firecracker goes off.

“What’s your deal, anyway?” he asked. His voice was so unnaturally cool and measured, it was terrifying. In all the years I’d known him, it was the angriest I’d ever seen him.

“I just have somewhere to be, that’s all.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling.

“Playing cards with that geek at the comic book shop?”

“He’s not a geek,” I said. I didn’t bother to ask how he knew.

Anger rose in Harlan’s voice. “You’d rather go play some card game than have a chance at winning the bet?”

“It’s just a stupid bet,” I mumbled. I said it without thinking, but the words hung there and I realized they were the truth. For the first time, my best memories from summer break were not with Harlan. I doubted that I could explain to him what I shared with James, and honestly I was afraid even to try.

All the anger deflated from Harlan, like a party balloon leaking air. Without it, he looked like a tired little kid. I could see that I’d hurt him, but I could also see him rooting around for the most hurtful thing to say back. It’s how he’d always been: a sore loser. He stood suddenly and rushed from the spot on the roof where he’d been sitting, an unreadable look on his face.

“You keep hanging out with that little queer,” he said, “everyone at school’s going to think you’re one too.” He passed without looking at me.

“Harlan,” I called, not really expecting it to stop him. The soles of his shoes squeaked loudly as he crossed the roof, then the door to the stairs clanged shut behind him.

* * *

James had texted to say his dad would be gone for a couple hours that evening, and if I wanted to come over to play a few rounds we’d have the shop to ourselves. Harlan had left me in a sour mood, though, so I killed some time at the mall to let it pass. I rummaged through the sales rack at Foot Locker, shot some hoops at the arcade, then bought a giant pretzel that glistened with butter from the Wetzel’s. These were all things I’d done hundreds of times with Harlan, but doing them alone that day felt very different.

It was dark outside by the time I left the mall. I felt dizzy and ill as I walked down Georgia Avenue — maybe I’d overdone it with the pretzel, but I suspected it was the fight with Harlan that had me feeling off. I’d been his friend for as long as I could remember; I wasn’t sure if I knew how to be anything else.

When I got to the Dungeon, the sign in the window had been flipped to read “Closed,” but the door was unlocked and swung open when I pushed it. The main room of the shop was dim and empty, but a sound like sniffling came from the back room. I wandered back and found James slumped on his dad’s ratty sofa. An open cut gaped on his forehead. He held a striped hand towel over his lap, catching drops of blood in his open palm. I rushed to the sofa and knelt beside him.

“What happened?” I asked.

“After Dad left, I went to get some snacks from 7-11. These kids on skateboards chased me down. They hit me, called me names.” He was almost apologetic about it. A thought hit me, and just the idea of it brought the dizziness back. I slid onto the sofa beside him.

“What did they look like? Was one blonde, with big front teeth?”

James exhaled sadly, as if even trying to remember was too taxing. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was dark, I could hardly see them.” He dabbed at the cut with the towel, but the pain made him wince.

“Here,” I said. I took the cloth from him and wiped the red trail that ran down his temple and cheek. A dark circle bloomed beneath his right eye.

“So what did you do?” I asked. “Did you call for help? For the cops?”

“They got a few punches in before I could get away. I ran and hid behind the bushes in back. I could hear them getting close. They were about to find where I was hiding, so I played the Wizard of Korvos.”

“What do you mean you ‘played’ him?” I asked, confused.

The Wizard of Korvos was one of the most powerful magical cards in Realm. His specialties were defensive magic, protection, and healing. You played him when your forces were outnumbered or surrounded and his magic would protect them from their attackers.

“I pulled my deck out and threw the card on the ground,” he said. “The skaters poked around the bushes for a bit, but they didn’t find me. Eventually, they gave up and rode away.”

I wanted to leave it be, bandage him up, and move past it all. But I was stuck on what he’d said. “You know it’s not real, right?” I asked gently. It felt cruel to shatter his fantasy after he’d already been hurt that day. But he turned to me earnestly, like he’d expected the question.

“They stopped hurting me though,” he said. “Isn’t that real enough?” His voice was barely louder than a whisper. I leaned toward him, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on my face. We were briefly frozen in that moment. There were only the faint electronic beeps of the games in the next room and the distant, gravelly sounds of cars rolling down the alley behind the shop. And then there was another noise: the heavy click of a key in an old lock, then a pop as a deadbolt retreated. James scooted away from me and flushed with color as his dad came in the back door. Dan stood on the doormat for a moment, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, looking over his son’s face. James cast his eyes down to the floor.

“There was a fight,” he said.

“How’d you get in a fight? School hasn’t even started,” Dan said. Then he asked, “Did you win?”

“It wasn’t really like that.”

“I’ve told you before: you have to hit bullies back. Otherwise, they learn they can walk all over you.”

“I don’t like fighting, Dad.”

“Then you shouldn’t let them hit you,” Dan said, his voice growing louder.

James turned away from his dad, which only seemed to make him angrier. Dan’s face reddened and he began to yell, sending droplets of spit flying. No son of his was going to be some other kid’s punching bag. I could see James retreating inward, hiding from his dad’s fury. I had an urge to reach out and wrap him in my arms, to put myself between him and his father, but I suspected that would only make things worse.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I grabbed James’s deck from the cushions and shuffled through it, just to have something to do with my hands. I squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could and blocked out the yelling. I imagined a different world, one where I still had a best friend, where I could walk alone at night without straining my ears for the distant sound of skaters, where there wasn’t a mall or school or an endless, scorching summer vacation; a world made of something other than hurt and loss. And then, once I’d fully imagined this world and knew every inch of it, I realized the yelling had stopped.

When I opened my eyes, James was on the couch next to me, holding a bag of ice to his eye. Dan was gone. I shifted on the cushion and James turned to me, lowering the ice.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Where’s your dad?” I asked, confused.

“He’s gone for now,” James answered. “I mean, he’ll be back eventually, but for now it’s just us.” He reached down and pulled the Realm deck from my hand — without noticing, I’d clutched it so tightly my knuckles had gone pale. Then he took my other hand and flipped it over. I was holding one last card, which he took and held up for me to see. It was a simple Castle Keep card, the most fortified structure in the game. Heavy artillery or strong spells were required to breach it, otherwise it was an unbreakable barrier against anyone you wanted to stay away.

James held my hand in his. He leaned close, until only a few inches were between us. He smiled at me, a smile that seemed to hold a whole new world of possibilities.

“See?” he said. “You’re learning how to play the game.”