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Authors: Rebecca Lim
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it always
is. On till I’m off and have run out of hours in the day.
The darkness is absolute in my windowless room and immediately the light has to go
on, too, or I’ll feel like I’m drowning.
I can’t just leave it to them to find her.
The thought makes me sit up. I fumble for my phone, speed-dialling Mum. I go straight
to voicemail for, like, the fiftieth time. It’s a long shot—the longest—but I tap
open the app, just to see whether she has played. In the absence of an actual life,
I play Words with Friends a lot.
Mum’s one of them, one of the friends , that’s how hard up I am for mates. She’ll
be sitting out at the meals table— working! —and I’ll be in my bedroom— working! —and
we’ll be playing each other. I’d hear her shriek, right through the wall, whenever
I got her a beauty.
Blinking furiously, I see that the game I’m playing with Vicki is open and she has
sent through the word sluts for 22 points. Her message in the message window reads: You and me, baby!
She’s intersected it with her previous effort— nudes —because getting naked with anyone,
anywhere, is on her mind a lot.
I’ve got great letters, I could get her in a million different ways right now, but
I flick out of the game we’ve got going on and tap into the one I’m playing with
Mum. With a catch in my breathing, I see that it’s still her turn. Nothing has changed.
Her last word was peptide and her message had been: You’re lucky I couldn’t use my
Z, darl .
My screen is telling me to give her a nudge because it’s been two days ! So I do.
I nudge my missing mother, heart in my throat. And I know it’s completely irrational,
but I actually hold my breath as I do it, in case she shoots something back. Which
is crazy, right? Because she’d completely forget to come home, or even tell me where
she is, but she’d keep on playing?
But there’s nothing; even though I wait through an entire chunk of adverts then the
news and weather bulletins on the radio, praying over my screen for the sparkly bling sound that will tell me she’s sent me a word, that she’s back.
Disgusted at myself for even looking, I flick to the last game I’m playing.
Changeling_ 29 has sent through: qoph for 46 points. Hebrew alphabet, 19th letter.
Classy.
Nice. I message him. But the day you beat me is the day the world ends, buddy .
Unable to stop myself, I stab the word teetered into the screen for 78, using up
all of my letters in one hit on all the good squares, together with one of his.
But he’s right back with qat for 32.
I look at the clock. It’s 6.09am.
When I’m on, he’s always right there, ready to go, like he’s been waiting for me.
He never seems to sleep. I think that if I didn’t live for our games so much, it
would kind of freak me out: how much we play, how much time me and Changeling_ 29 actually spend together, our thoughts bent on each other and total domination.
I crouch over the small pane of luminescence in my hand, studying my options. It’s
close this time, only nine points the difference. I wait for the taunt, the sledge,
that any normal person would make. But it never comes, because Changeling_ 29 never
writes me messages. He just plays.
I don’t know him. He’s just some random who challenged me to a game a few days after
I started at Collegiate and we haven’t stopped playing since. We’ll finish a game
and one of us will call an immediate rematch, setting up the first killer word for
an early advantage the way a decent chess player will always go for white over black:
to set the pace; to niggle and press and destabilise. It’s not that white is inherently
better, you understand. It just always gets to go first.
The games with Changeling_ 29 are always close. But it’s been months, and he hasn’t
been able to crack a win against me, and I love that it must be killing him. I think
of him as a him , because deep down I’m as desperate as Vicki is: even if it’s just
some
is. On till I’m off and have run out of hours in the day.
The darkness is absolute in my windowless room and immediately the light has to go
on, too, or I’ll feel like I’m drowning.
I can’t just leave it to them to find her.
The thought makes me sit up. I fumble for my phone, speed-dialling Mum. I go straight
to voicemail for, like, the fiftieth time. It’s a long shot—the longest—but I tap
open the app, just to see whether she has played. In the absence of an actual life,
I play Words with Friends a lot.
Mum’s one of them, one of the friends , that’s how hard up I am for mates. She’ll
be sitting out at the meals table— working! —and I’ll be in my bedroom— working! —and
we’ll be playing each other. I’d hear her shriek, right through the wall, whenever
I got her a beauty.
Blinking furiously, I see that the game I’m playing with Vicki is open and she has
sent through the word sluts for 22 points. Her message in the message window reads: You and me, baby!
She’s intersected it with her previous effort— nudes —because getting naked with anyone,
anywhere, is on her mind a lot.
I’ve got great letters, I could get her in a million different ways right now, but
I flick out of the game we’ve got going on and tap into the one I’m playing with
Mum. With a catch in my breathing, I see that it’s still her turn. Nothing has changed.
Her last word was peptide and her message had been: You’re lucky I couldn’t use my
Z, darl .
My screen is telling me to give her a nudge because it’s been two days ! So I do.
I nudge my missing mother, heart in my throat. And I know it’s completely irrational,
but I actually hold my breath as I do it, in case she shoots something back. Which
is crazy, right? Because she’d completely forget to come home, or even tell me where
she is, but she’d keep on playing?
But there’s nothing; even though I wait through an entire chunk of adverts then the
news and weather bulletins on the radio, praying over my screen for the sparkly bling sound that will tell me she’s sent me a word, that she’s back.
Disgusted at myself for even looking, I flick to the last game I’m playing.
Changeling_ 29 has sent through: qoph for 46 points. Hebrew alphabet, 19th letter.
Classy.
Nice. I message him. But the day you beat me is the day the world ends, buddy .
Unable to stop myself, I stab the word teetered into the screen for 78, using up
all of my letters in one hit on all the good squares, together with one of his.
But he’s right back with qat for 32.
I look at the clock. It’s 6.09am.
When I’m on, he’s always right there, ready to go, like he’s been waiting for me.
He never seems to sleep. I think that if I didn’t live for our games so much, it
would kind of freak me out: how much we play, how much time me and Changeling_ 29 actually spend together, our thoughts bent on each other and total domination.
I crouch over the small pane of luminescence in my hand, studying my options. It’s
close this time, only nine points the difference. I wait for the taunt, the sledge,
that any normal person would make. But it never comes, because Changeling_ 29 never
writes me messages. He just plays.
I don’t know him. He’s just some random who challenged me to a game a few days after
I started at Collegiate and we haven’t stopped playing since. We’ll finish a game
and one of us will call an immediate rematch, setting up the first killer word for
an early advantage the way a decent chess player will always go for white over black:
to set the pace; to niggle and press and destabilise. It’s not that white is inherently
better, you understand. It just always gets to go first.
The games with Changeling_ 29 are always close. But it’s been months, and he hasn’t
been able to crack a win against me, and I love that it must be killing him. I think
of him as a him , because deep down I’m as desperate as Vicki is: even if it’s just
some
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