Fingers flew over the controls, alternating between the joystick and action buttons. On the screen before him, his character moved in response to his commands, left, right, jumping up and boosting himself in midair to make it across the expanse, strafing side to side as an opponent on-screen moved in and out of his line of sight. It was exhilarating to have this kind of control, that wherever the freshman boy pointed his fingers, his armored avatar obeyed. With the voices emanating from his headset, and adding only a few elements from his imagination, it was easy to pretend that he was the character on the screen, climbing into the mechanical robot in this battle of the ages.

"Theo, get your ass over to the other side of the map," demanded one of the voices through the headset, this one belonging to one of the boy's teammates, a former classmate of his named Jeremy. From the sound of his voice, it seemed like Jeremy was in serious trouble, but then again Jeremy was always the alarmist.

"I can't," explained Theo, gritting his teeth as he unloaded his barrage of firepower against the opponent dancing around his robot. The enemy was going to die, of that he was sure, it was only a matter of time and firepow—yes, a kill! "There's too many douchebags ganging up on my robot!"

As if to emphasize his point, the mechanized robot onscreen crumpled over in death, exploding in a violent fury which engulfed half the map, signalling yet another failure. Seething, Theo roared a loud expletive, expressing his anger in a voice that the entire house was sure to hear. He didn't think much of it, and launched into another fury of combat as his character respawned, robot-less this time.

Someone knocked on his door, but Theo was too focused on the game to notice. Suddenly, a small, thin woman was standing by his side, her hand on his shoulder. The boy looked up, peering below bushy eyebrows to make out the image of his mother. She hadn't changed from her business attire except to remove the jacket and loosen the collar of her blouse, but her thick, brown locks were let down from their business-style bun, cascading down her shoulders, interrupted only by the occasional fold or crease mark. Her brown eyes peered through thin-rimmed glasses, a clue that he had interrupted her after-work reading time. Theo knew what she was going to say before it came, so he was hardly surprised when the words came in her sweet, encouraging tone. "Theo," she started, the warmth in her voice doing an awful job of hiding the concern he knew lurked beneath, "I think you've had enough time shooting and blowing things up, tonight. Why don't you go do something else?"

"Sure mom, in a minute," he mentioned, his eyes returning to the screen where his focus lay.

His mother had several patented moves for dealing with her only son. Even if she led a busy life doing whatever it was that she did, Theo barely paid attention to his parents' jobs, Marina Navarro had never shirked from her duties as a mother. This move was easily her favorite, effective both against her son's video games and her husband's computer. She slipped between Theo and the screen, placing her hands on her hips to widen her stance. Her son leaned around her, playing her game for a moment as he tried to continue playing his, but she matched him move for move.

"It's Friday night, sweetheart," his mother spoke in a firm tone which left no room for negotiation. "You're a teenager, you should be out of the house."

In his ear, Jeremy was screaming for help again. Theo felt a twinge of guilt as he pulled off the headset to better hear his mother; the next time he spoke to his friend he was sure to get an earful for abandoning him.

"Fine," he decided in an exasperated tone. Hitting the button on his controller, the game shut down, immediately disconnecting him from the battle and contact with his former schoolmates. He made a mental note to apologize when he signed on again tomorrow.

A grin stretched across his mother's face, the only clue of satisfaction he would see all night. "I'll have Gregor drive you somewhere, Theo. I'm sure your friends are all hanging out at the mall."

In actuality, Theo's friends were in New York, staring at their video game screens and wondering why he had suddenly dropped out of their match. Since moving from the Big Apple to Bradbury in upstate New York, Theo hadn't done much to connect with anyone at his new school. Everyone at Bradbury High had gone to Bradbury’s middle and elementary schools together. There wasn't much room for the Latino transfer boy from New York, whose family immediately began flaunting their wealth in town, first by buying the biggest house in Grand Oaks, and then by having a chauffeur drive their son to school, eschewing the bus that even the upper-class freshmen weren't too snobbish to ride.

The Latino boy sulked the entire ride to the mall, or at least what the town of Bradbury considered a mall. It barely had two anchor stores, and the dozen or so shops that made up the rest of the pickings displayed such high prices and poor variety. If Theo had really wanted to do some shopping, he would have planned for the two-hour trip to Plattsburg. For most of Bradbury, the mall was the local teenager haunt, so it was a wonder how the stores there had enough business to survive.

Theo asked Gregor to drop him off at the door, instead of letting his father's chauffeur, or whatever he was, park the grey sedan with him inside. The big man just grunted in reply, he knew how to find his charge easily enough, and it wasn't as if the mall was even big enough to get lost in. The freshman boy knew he would only escape from the man's watchful eye for a few minutes before he was located, but it was enough to make him satisfied.

He set off on a mad rush to his favorite location, the only store he cared to patronize at the mall, GameStop. The example consoles were worn and unkempt, some with controllers that had been broken for months, but they were one of the town's few places of free entertainment. GameStop's main attraction, however, was their wall of new release games. Theo breezed past the wall of Playstation games, his face souring in disgust, and quickly reached the white and light green pastels of XBox game boxes. The first column held the upcoming games, or at least those that weren't prized enough to be showcased right next to the registers, and Theo examined the empty boxes for any further clues as to the future game's promise.

When he grew tired of the XBox wall, the brown-eyed freshman boy turned to the Wii games. A couple of schoolmates were standing at the wall, eyeing games like Super Mario Party or Kirby's Dream Collection. He figured they were classmates, anyway, he attended Bradbury High like all the rest of the town's adolescents. Theo stood silent behind them, watching, wondering if he knew the girl's name. Her frizzy hair and freckled face seemed familiar, as more than just a passing acquaintance, but he couldn't recall. He hadn't paid much attention to the people at his school since he moved here. They were already fine without him, and he was fine with doing his own thing, why ruin what worked?

Shooed out with the rest of the mall-goers at closing, Theo was surprised not to see the big ogre that was Gregor waiting for him. It was just at that moment that he felt a vibration in his pocket. Pulling out his phone, the youth pulled up the message it had just received from his mother, and read it quickly. It said, [i]Your father needed Gregor for something important. WALK STRAIGHT HOME RIGHT NOW. I'll see you when you get there. XXXOOO.[/i] The freshman boy rolled his eyes in characteristic teenage apathy, after his mother had made such a big deal about getting him out of the house, what could be so important that he had to hurry right back home? He decided to ignore the message, the mall might be closing, but that didn't mean the night was over.

Theo stood close enough to the somewhat-familiar girl and her companion to overhear what they were saying. He gleaned from their conversation that the girl lived at the apartments, but the older boy must live closer to the middle-class residential neighborhood at the center of town. Otherwise, the construction site would be no shortcut at all. He had passed the site plenty of times by car, and on the few occasions that his parents and Gregor had both been busy, giving Theo ample time to explore the town. The old construction site, evidently the original location for the mall before it had been moved, was fenced off to prevent just this sort of thing.

But, Theo had a thing for eavesdropping, and when he did he heard many such useful things. It was amazing how much someone would say when they thought no one was listening, perceiving silence for ignorance. He knew that the high school boiler room was a safer place to smoke weed or cigarettes than the bathrooms, he knew that the school nurse had a thing for the biology teacher, and he also knew...

"That's all fenced in, you know," the Latino boy blurted out suddenly, announcing both his presence and the fact that he'd been eavesdropping. His olive-skinned cheeks were burning at the embarrassment, though he knew they were only turning a darker shade of brown instead of red. With the dice rolled, Theo figured he might as well see where they landed. "But I heard there's a section that you can climb through without messing with the barbed wire."

Theo glanced from the girl to the boy, wondering if anyone would answer the spoiled kid from the wealthy neighborhood.