Part 2: Next Level / Chapter 16
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We walked into the hospital and Darla looked around.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t ask a doctor to check you out, what with all the getting slashed and burned up?”
“I’m okay.”
“It looked really painful.”
“It was really painful.”
“Especially the burning.”
“Yeah, that’s the part I mean.”
“I could smell your skin cooking.”
“Rather not dwell on it.”
“It was horrible.”
“No, I know. And I’d like to try to forget—”
“Because it smelled like barbecue which I used to love before I went vegetarian, so I got kind of hungry, but I knew it was human flesh, so I was like ‘Am I a cannibal now?’ I was freaking out.”
“Sounds rough. Sorry you had to go through that.”
“I’ll be okay.”
The ridiculous exchange about how rough my charbroiling had been on her felt familiar. It was like we’d had similar sarcastic little back-and-forths for years. I supposed that sense of déjà vu paired well with the odd sense of comfort she felt in spilling her life story to me. There was an undeniable sense of established intimacy. I’d never had such an instant rapport with someone. But I tried to remind myself again about my trust issues.
I’d told her why we needed to go to the hospital on the way over but I hadn’t thought about what she’d do while I was watching Robbie for the rest of the night. I considered leaving her in the waiting area, but then decided that she should sign in with me. If Robbie’s wonky sleep cycle had stayed wonky, I thought he might be up—and if so, I wanted his take on how Darla might fit into RIP, or how RIP might fit into whatever was happening with her. So far, he was the only one who’d made any sense of any of this crap.
When we reached his room, we found he was indeed awake and watching TV. He looked over as we entered and gave a perplexed frown as he clocked Darla. Then he looked at me.
“Did you go cruising for chicks while you were supposed to be watching your poor, sick nephew?” he asked. “Gross, dude.”
Darla frowned at me in mock disdain as if her eyes had just been opened to my loathsome nature and said, “Yeah, gross, dude.”
I sighed and said, “Robbie, Darla. Darla, Robbie.”
They gave each other pleasant nods. Then, narrowing his eyes as if unsure of what we could say around Darla, Robbie probed, “So, for real, what’s the deal?”
“She knows everything,” I assured him.
“What? How? And where have you been?”
“Well, I went to GetGet to bait some Cutie Pants dolls into attacking me.”
“Ah. Makes sense,” he replied as if I’d said something sane. “How’d it go?”
“All things considered, not bad.”
“He got stabbed with box cutters and set on fire,” Darla elaborated.
“That doesn’t sound ‘not bad’,” Robbie said.
“It all worked out,” I replied.
I rolled up a sleeve and showed him my stats.
“Wow,” he said. “I guess it pays to get stabbed and set on fire.”
Then, looking closer at some of the new, less-than-flattering nonsensical additions, he asked, “Wait, how much ear wax is ‘way too much’?”
Darla joined him in peering at the tats and asked, “Can you really not ride a bike?”
“Why would I want to?” I answered defensively. “So I can be an entitled jackwagon who veers in and out of traffic and blows through red lights, screaming ‘Share the road!’ while everyone desperately tries to avoid ending my stupid, stupid life?”
“Or . . . so you can go for a ride in the park,” she countered.
Her even-handed reply diffused my defensiveness. These days when I thought about bikes, I always thought of the cyclists I hated. But the seed for that hatred had been planted long before I’d encountered the droves of dual-wheeled death-seekers converging on me during my morning commute.
“I took a bad tumble when my dad tried to teach me to ride as a kid,” I confessed. “Then I kind of lost interest.”
“He didn’t make you ‘get back on the horse’?”
“He never forced things.”
From the look in her eyes, I could tell she sensed there was more there—more, as in my feelings about my dad and the heartbreak I still felt at his premature loss all these years later.
“This is new,” Robbie said, interrupting the moment between Darla and myself and gesturing to the “Freebie” in my inventory.
“Yeah,” I said, refocusing. “Any clue what it is?”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Actually, yeah,” he said, encouragingly. “Regular RIP’s got ‘free choice points’ that you can apply to whatever stat you want. Maybe . . . try dragging it onto a stat.”
I put my finger on the tattoo and tried sliding it across my forearm. It worked. My Skin Thickness had only risen two points after my visit to the GetGet. It wasn’t the lowest number, but it seemed like the best candidate for bolstering at the moment. I dragged the freebie over that stat and pulled my finger away. Bam, it increased by one point, to eighteen. It also turned red, presumably to indicate a freebie had been applied.
“Cool,” I said to Robbie. “Solid mentoring.”
He smiled proudly, then realized he still had no idea what Darla was doing here.
“So how did you guys cross paths?” he asked, looking back and forth between the two of us.
“She showed up and saw all the dead dolls and Nancy’s mom exploding. When she didn’t get mindwiped, I thought she might be a player, but apparently, she’s just getting messages from the future through an old computer in her attic.”
“Nancy’s mom exploded?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Too many XP slips.”
“Was it like that bratty, purple kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?”
“Kinda.”
“So, we’re just glazing over the messages from the future then?” Darla asked.
“I was getting to that,” Robbie said. “I mean your prognosticating computer sounds cool. But it’s hard to steal the spotlight from his ex-girlfriend’s mom blowing up.”
“You don’t talk like a ten-year-old,” Darla said.
“I’m one of those unrealistically precocious kids,” Robbie answered. “Like you see in the movies.”
“Oh, yeah. One of those.”
“So, what do the messages from the future say?”
“Lots of stuff,” I said. “Including, ‘Henry Hubble gets a Street Smarts boost. Cha-ching! Hope for the human race!’”
Robbie furrowed his brow.
“That feels like a lot of pressure.”
I sighed.
“So . . . no progress. Just more questions.”
“Well, your stats are way better,” Robbie countered. “That’s progress. Now you may have a shot against the other two bosses.”
“Two?”
“There’s always three, total.”
“Assuming this crappy, glitchy game doesn’t throw in a few more.”
“Yeah, assuming that.”
“Well, maybe the glitches have an upside,” Darla floated optimistically. “Maybe the super car salesman was a higher-level boss and the next one will be the easy one you were supposed to face first.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t impossible, but . . .
“None of the glitches have been particularly good news so far,” I said. “And considering my stats are on the way to matching Marty’s, he had to be the level 1 boss. He was just served up earlier than he would have been in any sensible game.”
“So you’re on to the next stage and eventually the next boss?”
“I suppose.”
She paused as she peered down at my arm.
“What do these numbers under the quest summary mean?”
“Don’t know,” I answered. “There’s got to be some correlation to the missions listed next to them but I have no clue what it is. Knowing this fukakta game, I bet whoever or whatever’s in charge doesn’t know either—maybe that’s why the mission names only show up after the fact.”
She crinkled her brow, pensively.
“The numbers look like they could be—”
“Excuse me,” we heard the duty nurse’s voice. “It’s a two-person limit on visitors after hours.”
We all looked over at the door, to see she’d just escorted Margaret to the room. Our discussion of my tattoos and all things RIP would have to wait.
“It’s 3 a.m.” I said to Margaret, as she crossed to give Robbie a hug. “You’re supposed to be getting some rest.”
“I did,” she answered, looking Robbie up and down to convince herself his condition hadn’t taken a horrible turn in her absence. “And then I woke up and realized I’d abandoned my son and I was a terrible mother.”
“That’s not true, mom,” Robbie said. “You’re a bad mother at worst. Some days, I’d even say average.”
She smiled and shook her head at the joke. She seemed brighter, stronger, more herself. The brief rest had made a big difference.
“The nurse said something about . . . dead ferrets?” she asked.
“Yeah, weird stuff,” Robbie answered nonchalantly. “But we’re fine.”
Margaret nodded, and remarkably, let it go at that. I thought the nurse must not have gotten into much detail on the ferret corpse situation. I was glad.
Margaret finally looked over at Darla, seeming to notice her for the first time.
“Hi, I’m Margaret,” she said, extending a hand in greeting.
“Nice to meet you,” Darla replied, taking the hand and shaking it. “I’m Darla.”
“And what brings you to . . . ?” Margaret asked, trying to politely navigate her way through the obvious question of what the hell this stranger was doing in her son’s hospital room in the middle of the night.
“It’s complicated,” I cut in.
“Wait, is this a date?” Margaret gasped.
“What?” I said. “No, no, it’s . . . ”
I looked at Darla and we had a silent conversation about the many things we shouldn’t or couldn’t tell Margaret.
“It is a date!” she concluded amidst the pause. She may have been a little confused by the circumstances—given the hour and the venue—but mostly, she seemed excited for her little brother, who hadn’t had a date in quite some time.
“I was shocked too,” Robbie egged her on. “Can you believe he’s using me to score sympathy points with some floozy he met God knows where?”
“Floozy? I rate at least a tramp,” Darla said, jumping right into the fun. “Maybe even a harlot.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me you had a date tonight?” Margaret exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have asked you—”
“It’s not a date,” I reiterated.
“Okay. If you say so.”
She turned to Darla and said, “Listen, he’s a great guy. Kind of a fixer-upper, but solid bones. And no surprises, like those houses that look great and then you find out later that somebody did a bunch of murders in them.”
“Not a date!” I repeated.
“Right. Right, well, just in case, remember . . . ” Margaret said, gesturing to me like a game show model showing off the grand prize. “Good guy. Not a murder house.”
She winked at Darla, who nodded back knowingly.
“Still a two-person limit,” the nurse announced.
“Well, I’m not leaving,” Margaret said to me. “And you’ve got your not-a-date to get back to—plus, work in the morning. And if we’re still here by afternoon, I’ll need you rested and ready to watch Robbie again, so I can take another guilt-ridden nap and shower.”
I decided to let the date/not-a-date thing lie, as I’d finally realized it was as good a made-up explanation as I’d be able to offer for Darla’s presence. As for being dismissed, I was loathe to leave Robbie’s side, but, crazy as it was, I truly believed that the best thing I could do for him was to get back to winning Lazarus’ Kool-Aid. And for whatever reason, I was convinced that Darla was part of that equation.
“Alright,” I said, with a note of surrender. “I guess we’ll go.”
“It was great meeting you guys,” Darla said, as we turned to head out.
“You too,” Margaret replied with a smile.
Then as we walked down the hall, we heard her call after us, “Remember: Not a murder house!”