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Gamer

Artem Savenkov

A Novel

English Edition

© Artem Savenkov

Where do I start? With childhood, probably. My name is Andrey, and I grew up when computers were gradually finding their way out of offices and into ordinary homes. The trend took a while to reach our town. Hardly anyone was going to buy an expensive machine just to work on it. But once kids discovered you could play games on one, parents all over the country had to listen to the same pleas. Dendy and Sega consoles weren’t enough anymore. We wanted a new toy. Out in the provinces, few families could afford one. Anyone lucky enough to own a computer instantly became best friends with half the neighborhood.

I begged my parents for that technological miracle, too. They kept putting it off: too expensive. Meanwhile, my classmates were getting computers. Some showed theirs off; others kept quiet about the loans their parents had taken out. At last, my turn came. One day Dad brought home several boxes. I saw the picture on the biggest one and knew right away.

“Andrey, come and see what Dad brought!” Mom said as she opened the front door for him.

Dad set a big white box with a picture of a monitor in the middle of the hallway and went back for the rest. I stood over it, afraid to believe it was ours. Mom looked at me, smiled, and went to clear my desk. Of course the computer was going in my room. I could do my homework in the kitchen. At that moment, I’d have settled for a windowsill.

Next came the tower, the cables, the mouse, and the keyboard. All white, all new, still in their packaging. I tried to lift the monitor, but it was too heavy. Dad asked me to step aside and put it on the desk himself. I was in charge of where everything went, though. I’d seen how it worked at my friends’ houses. When we got to the cables, Dad sat down with the manual. While he read, I plugged everything in. Mom laughed: he’d only just put the booklet down, and the computer was already humming. Later, I could recognize that sound from any room in the apartment. And the silence when I switched it off always surprised me.

At first, Solitaire and Minesweeper were enough. Kids and grown-ups alike played them, trying to beat each other’s scores. Then I wanted something more substantial: FIFA, Need for Speed, and, of course, Counter-Strike. We bought games at the market, where copies burned onto blank discs were sold alongside glossy boxed editions. They were cheap, but as a schoolkid I still had to beg for the money. I couldn’t walk past a stall like that. I’d pick up the boxes, read the titles, work out how much more I needed to save. I dreamed of growing up, earning money, and buying every game I wanted. For now, I played whatever I could afford.

There were fewer of us out on the streets. Gaming cafés were opening up. In our town, six rubles bought you an hour on a computer loaded with dozens of games. You could play over the local network, too, and later online matches became more and more common. Some of my classmates started skipping school to go to the gaming cafés. Their parents would be called in, and there’d be a scene at home. The kid would behave like an angel for a week, then start disappearing from class again.

At first, I didn’t skip school. I had a fairly powerful computer at home, just as good as the ones at the cafés, and before long my parents got us an internet connection. Everything I needed now fit on my desk. One summer, I went outside to see the neighborhood kids maybe twice over the entire vacation. They stopped coming to get me. It took me a while to notice.

My grades slipped. My eyesight wasn’t doing so well either: I was prescribed glasses at fifteen. By then I was used to sitting in front of that bulky monitor late into the night, hardly taking a break. Giving up games because my eyes were tired never crossed my mind.

I wasn’t looking for new friends. Talking to people online was enough. I did get good at gaming, though. Counter-Strike was my favorite. When I came across recordings of esports tournaments on YouTube, I watched them with my heart pounding. Then I’d launch the game and try to copy what the pros had done.

“Why are you always on that computer? Go outside with the boys!” Mom often said. She’d come home late from work, exhausted, cook dinner, and sit down to eat with me at nearly nine.

Dad almost never made it home for dinner. He got back around midnight and left early in the morning. My parents worked so hard to provide for the family that they had no time left to spend with us. Sundays were the only days we spent together: haircuts, groceries, shopping for clothes. We’d get home toward evening, turn on the TV, and watch a movie, exchanging a few words now and then. I soon got bored and went off to play. Later, my parents began arguing more and more often, and I put on my headphones so I wouldn’t hear them.

I often stayed up gaming until almost morning, and sometimes slept through my first classes. Mom began to notice. Before leaving for work, she’d try to make sure I was up in time for the first bell.

“Get up. Time for school!” she’d say, tugging my leg to make absolutely sure I was awake.

Once I’d opened my eyes, she’d go out into the hallway. The front door slamming shut finished waking me up.

“I don’t start till second period!” I’d sometimes try, when I was desperate for more sleep.

Mom didn’t believe me. But the school wasn’t complaining, and I rarely came up at parent-teacher meetings. I suppose she thought things were still going all right.

I didn’t stand out at school. I scraped by, said hello to everyone, let people copy my work or asked to borrow a notebook. Other kids bonded over sports, afternoons hanging out, and cigarettes sneaked behind the garages. I didn’t have a group like that. There was only Inna, a skinny girl with dark hair and slightly curly bangs. She had three dresses for school and wore them in rotation. She’d recently had her braces taken off. Our classmates had said plenty of cruel things about them, and Inna kept to herself. The teachers often seated us together, usually in the second row on the left.

“Together again?” I asked when our biology teacher put us at the same desk.

Sometimes I did want someone to talk to. It was easier with Inna than with anyone else.

“Again!” she said with a smile.

I don’t know whether she was pleased or just used to smiling back. The teasing about her braces had made her even quieter. She probably felt safer with me. I didn’t make fun of her, and I stayed out of other people’s business.

We sat next to each other for years. Even when we were allowed to move, we stayed at our desk. Gradually we became friends, although we hardly saw each other outside school, apart from walking part of the way home together. Sometimes we talked about homework or sent each other jokes. Inna spent a lot of time at her computer, too, and that brought us closer. Our classmates were already getting together and breaking up, while we still couldn’t bring ourselves to move beyond friendship. I couldn’t, anyway. I liked her. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

“Listen, we always walk home together, and we sit at the same desk, but we’ve never actually gone out. You know… just to hang out. Want to meet up today?” Inna asked one day as we walked our usual route.

I could tell from her face that she’d prepared for this conversation. I hadn’t.

“Sure! Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. We’ve never been anywhere together!” she said pointedly, looking at me.

I wasn’t nervous then. I’d thought something like this would happen sooner or later, only I’d imagined being the one to suggest it. The more we talked, the more we realized we liked the same things, and we both wanted to spend more time together.

“All right! In two hours, then. At the turnoff to your street.”

I chose it because I could walk there and save the bus fare.

“Okay. See you!” Inna said, going her way.

“See you!” I smiled and hopped onto a bus that had just pulled up.

As it carried me toward the turnoff, I watched her through the window. For the first time, I wished I hadn’t gotten on.

We were supposed to spend those two hours doing homework. Inna did, as I learned later. I checked my school planner: I wouldn’t get called on in one subject, there was no homework in two others, and I’d have to copy the rest anyway. Time for a couple of matches, then. I reached our meeting place with a whole minute to spare and began looking out for her.

She appeared a couple of minutes later. Instead of her usual school dress, she wore a light jacket and jeans, her hair loose. Looking at her, I only then understood that we weren’t walking home from school. We’d come here specifically to see each other.

Inna smiled. I became painfully aware of my old, pilled T-shirt and worn sandals. She’d gotten ready to meet me. I looked as though I’d just run out to buy potatoes.

“You look so beautiful!” The words came out before I could stop them.

Inna blushed a little, but I could see the compliment had pleased her. She softened.

“Thank you!” she said. We stood there for another few minutes, trying to think of something to say and somewhere to go.

“Come on, I’ll show you the river!” I suggested. It was the first thing that came to mind.

The silence was getting awkward. And the river was the only place I could think of where I had anything interesting to point out.

“It’s still too cold to swim,” Inna said. April had been warm, but the water was bound to be freezing.

“We don’t have to swim! It’s pretty down there.” I looked straight into her eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Let’s go to the park instead,” she suggested, a little shyly.

“The park it is.”

I didn’t care where we went as long as I was with her. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my clothes. Next to Inna, I looked as if I’d come out to take out the trash. All I could do was hope she cared more about the company than the T-shirt and shorts, too.

“Why didn’t you want to go to the river? Afraid of getting dirty?” I asked as we approached the park.

Inna hesitated, apparently trying to decide whether to tell me her secret.

“I can’t swim. I nearly drowned when I was little. I’ve tried to stay away from water ever since…” She lowered her eyes, as if ashamed of being afraid.

I wished I hadn’t asked. I wanted to cheer her up as quickly as I could.

“Oh, sorry. We’ll even steer clear of puddles, then!” I tried, hoping she’d take it as a joke.

“I’m not that scared of it. Otherwise I’d smell pretty bad. There’s water in the bathtub, too!” she said, and we entered the park smiling.

I had a little pocket money left. When I spotted a cotton candy stand, I bought one and handed it to Inna. She took the stick in both hands and smiled.

“Thanks. Why didn’t you get one?” she asked, pulling off the first piece and putting it in her mouth.

“I don’t really eat it.”

“How come? On a diet?” she teased.

I certainly didn’t need to lose weight. I’d forget to eat while I was gaming, and when I remembered, I’d make do with something I could carry back to the computer. It was hard to put on weight eating like that.