Cure for the Common Universe

for Broccoli

You know, in some human sports, the winner is the one who scores the fewest possible points.

—GLaDOS,
Portal 2

I
was sixteen the first time I made a girl laugh.

It was an accident.

About twenty minutes before it happened, I had only one thing on my mind: protect the
Mona Lisa
from a horde of chipmunks.

“Squeeze a man boob for good luck,” one of the Wight Knights said through my headset.

“Squeezed,” I said.

Lightning carved across the computer screen. Thunder rumbled through my earpiece. Music swelled with horns, war coconuts, chanting chipmunks . . . and sneakers marching down the hall outside my door.

My shoulders tensed as the door opened, hall light making a glare across the battleground.

“Thought you were gonna get some exercise this morning.”

In the doorframe my stepmom Casey's silhouette marched in place.

“I will this afternoon,” I said. Then, into my headset: “Protect that alleyway, fellas.”

“It's three o'clock,” Casey said.

“Is it?”

I squinted at the soft glow around the edges of my blanket-covered window. My eyes went right back to the screen. I tried to ignore the
squeak, squeak, squeak
of Casey's sneakers and focus on the start of the battle.

“I got D,” I said.

My warrior hacked through some scaffolding so that my penguins would have materials to build a barricade.

“I need you to wash the Xterra,” Casey said. “It rained last night and now it's all speckly.”

“ ‘Need' is a funny word,” I said. “I
need
to destroy this army of chipmunks.”

Casey stopped marching and leaned against the doorframe in that pissed pose I assumed she'd had since high school. It was a safe bet, considering she had graduated four years before.

“Guys,” I said into my headset, “if their mecha-manatee makes it down the pass, we're screwed.”

“Do you ever wonder why you don't get girls?” Casey asked.

“Actually,” I said, swinging my axe, “a girl just texted me last night.”

“Can I read it?” Casey asked.

“No, you cannot.”

“What did she say?” Casey asked.

“Pop her!”

This was to the Wight Knights about the Mama Sumo bearing down on my barricade.

“You know, Jaxon, you wouldn't get turned down so much if you just got some exercise,” Casey said.

“Dammit. Chips are breaking through, guys.”

I furiously clicked my mouse, executing whirlwinds to keep the wave of chipmunks at bay. I wasn't about to take advice from someone who just four years ago would have rejected a guy like me.

“You just gotta get out there,” Casey said.

“Oh yeah? Is that all it takes?”

“That's all it takes.”

I kept clicking my mouse. “Should I strap on a Fitbit and march around the house like an idiot, painting my nails and complaining about a few speckles on my—
Dammit
.” My warrior was obliterated in a juicy splatter across the asphalt. “You're killing me, Casey. Guys, I'm in regen. Hold them back.”

My warrior's spirit soared over the streets of Arcadia to the nearest graveyard.

Casey's silence made me spin around in my chair.

She glared at me.

“Oh God,” I said. “Are you gonna cry again?”

She whirled and squeaked down the hallway.

“Don't worry!” I called after her, rolling across the floor in my desk chair. “I'll get the door!”

I slammed it and then rolled back to my computer. My warrior was still regenerating in the graveyard, tendrils of muscle wrapping around his bones.

I took out my phone and reread the text from that girl:

ewwwww jaxon just asked me out

Pretty sure she had meant to send it to someone else.

“Taste my axe!” my warrior said.

Raised from the dead, I trucked out of the graveyard back toward Plinky Plaza as heavier steps came down the hallway. Again my shoulders tensed as the door opened. The Xterra's keys plopped onto my desk.

“Clean the SUV, or I'm canceling your game account,” my dad said.

“You can't,” I said, eyes on the screen. While guiding my warrior back into the fray, I opened my drawer and pulled out my school transcript. “Four-point-oh. Remember?”

The battle was swallowed in black.

“Wha—” I spun around and found my dad holding my computer cord, unplugged.

“We're renegotiating,” he said.

“Dad, I'm in the middle of a
tournament
!”

“And?” he said.

“Rrg!” I threw off my headset, snagged the keys, and flew out the door, hoping to return home before the Wight Knights lost the battle. I hopped in the Xterra, tore out of the driveway, and sped through the streets of Salt Lake City, shading my eyes from the bright July sky. For me, summer did not mean
picnics, hikes, or tossing balls of any kind. It meant I could adventure through Arcadia for twelve hours a day without my dad hassling me. . . .

Until now, for some stupid reason.

I got to Sparkle Chrome, parked in the last garage to avoid a jock from my high school who was washing his Mustang, and then spent three whole minutes trying to get the token dispenser to accept my crinkled five.

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

I hit the dispenser. “Come
on
.”

If the Wight Knights won this game, we would be only four wins away from being in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of
Arcadia
players in the world. And that was halfway to becoming professional.

I unfolded the five's corner, smoothed it against the dispenser's edge, and tried again.

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

“I will end your life,” I told the dispenser.

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

“Rrg!”

I was my guild's tank. Without my warrior's muscle and cotton candy axe, the Wight Knights' guts were going to be
strewn across the Plaza. If I could just make it back in the next ten minutes . . .

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

I kept hitting the dispenser until some saint in a yellow hat wandered over and traded my shitty five for a crisp one.

reeeeeeen

. . .

plink-plink-plink-plink-plink!

I slammed the tokens into the slot, and big red numbers began the countdown.

10:00 . . . 9:59 . . . 9:58 . . .

I unholstered the spray nozzle, punched the high-pressure button, and started hosing down the Xterra. I whipped out my phone and group-texted the Knights:

AFK! DAD STUFF. HOLD OFF THOSE CHIPMUNKS OR I WILL SMOTHER YOU WITH MY MAN B—

That was when she screamed.

I looked up and found that my aim had wandered from the Xterra onto a girl near the token dispenser. I let off the spray gun's trigger, but it was too late. She was drenched.

The girl's mouth hung open. Her arms dripped at her sides. She stared at me in shock.

“I—I—” I had no words.

I stood there like an idiot for a full ten seconds. The girl finally rolled her eyes and shook droplets from her fingers. As she squeezed water from her hair and pinched the wetness
from her earlobes, I began to realize how beautiful she was—smooth pale skin, glossy black braids, lips like bouncy castles that I just wanted to
leap
onto.

I stared at this dripping beauty who needed my help—never mind that I was the one who had soaked her in the first place.

“Uh,” I said, looking around the car wash, “I'd offer you my shirt, but I haven't been outside for a while, and my skin might give you snow blindness.”

The girl looked at me, and for half a second I thought she was going to chew me out. But then . . . she laughed. She
laughed
.

“Nah, I'm good,” she said. She wrung out her T-shirt.

Normally I'd try to make myself look cool in front of girls. Chivalrous, at the very least. But right then I felt relaxed, relaxed enough to use humor I'd use with the Wight Knights.

Because no way was a girl I'd just hosed with water going to keep talking to me.

No way.

Right?

The girl nodded toward the Xterra. “That's a pretty big target to miss, dude.”

“I wasn't aiming at the Xterra.” I looked at the spray gun. “I thought this is what girls did at car washes. Wore white T-shirts and giggled while they got sprayed with hoses.”

The girl laughed again.
Twice
she laughed.

“Wet T-shirt contest isn't till five o'clock,” she said, waving
out her shirt, giving me little glimpses of her stomach.

I held out the sprayer. “You want revenge? I don't look too good in a wet shirt, but . . .”

The girl snorted. “Tempting.”

She didn't leave.

Instead she closed her eyes, tilted back her head, and pulled her shirt taut toward the sun. Her boobs were very apparent under her wet shirt. Looking at them made me self-conscious about my own boobs, which were big for a guy's, but not, like, Chun-Li-size or anything. I glanced down and remembered I was wearing a
Super Mario
mushroom T-shirt that read
I don't wanna grow up
. Ugh. Why did I even own that stupid thing?

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to conceal the
Super Mario
mushroom and my man boobs as best I could. Having the Wight Knights joke about my chest was a lot different from a girl seeing them in real life.

“So, uh, what's your name?” I said.

The girl kept her closed eyes toward the sun. “Serena.”

“I'm Jaxon.”

“Pleasure, Jaxon,” she said, because apparently that's what beautiful, interesting girls say when they meet someone—
Pleasure.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence while some guy vacuumed out his truck in the background. My lack of experience caught up to me.

“Uh, nice to meet you, Serena,” I said. “Sorry about the . . . yeah.”

I turned away before uncrossing my arms, and then continued to spray the Xterra.

6:34 . . . 6:33 . . . 6:32 . . .

I had completely forgotten about the battle of Plinky Plaza. One hundred percent of my focus was on Serena—beautiful, dripping Serena—in my periphery.

She was back at the token dispenser.

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

reeeeeeen

reeeeooooooon

“Good luck with that thing,” I called over the spraying. “It hates awesome people.”

“How did you get it to work?” she asked.

Oh God. We were still talking. I could keep this conversation going. I glanced at the dude in the yellow hat with unwrinkled bills. If he gave her a new bill, she would get her tokens and leave. I looked around for Serena's car.

“Um, what are you washing?” I asked.

She pointed. Leaning against the brick wall of the car wash was an old purple Schwinn bicycle, all muddy and scratched up.

“Just bought it for twenty bucks,” she said, walking over to the bike and wiggling the handlebars. “Guy told me the wax here does wonders.”