Gameboy

I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. Any five-year-old knows when mom tucks you in, it means you’re supposed to go to sleep. But Auston and Preston don’t go right to bed, so I don’t want to either. I close my eyes as mom kisses my forehead and take long slow breaths as she leaves. As soon as I hear her footsteps squeak up the stairs, I roll out of bed and grab my pink Gameboy.

Mom and dad’s room is upstairs, so it’s a lot easier to sneak around because they can’t hear all the way down here. I don’t even have to sneak past them on the way to Auston and Preston’s room. My brothers don’t look up as I go in because they’re already playing. Auston lies on top of the castle bunkbed. He’s sitting like a mermaid with his legs back and his stomach pushed up as he leans on his elbows. We built the castle with dad just a few months ago when Tyty, our baby brother, came home from the hospital. It’s a thick and built out of yellowy two-by-fours so that it won’t fall down if the roof falls down. Grey bumpy walls are screwed on the outside so it kind of looks like stone, but it’s dangerous grey stuff. If you rub your hand on it, it’ll scratch you.

Preston—he’s my twin—sits by the nightlight, dressed in the Toy Story pj’s he gotten on Christmas eve. His blue Gameboy set on his knees as he plays Warioland. I sit down next to him on the other side of the dim blueish light and switch on my handheld. I watch the letters fly across the screen in my hands until it spells out “Gameboy” in a muted rainbow of colors, and then it blinks to the Megaman menu. Auston doesn’t need a nightlight because his Gameboy has a tiny light on a stick you clip on top of it, and it points down and lights up his screen. I don’t really want to play right now, my bed is a lot comfier than leaning against the wall and sleep is pinching my eyes and pushing down on my head, but Auston and Preston are playing their Gameboys, so I want to too.

I start playing Megaman on the same level I’d been on all week. I push the buttons to make him climb down the ladder on screen and jump over the lava pits, but the same badguy always shoots me with his laser gun and Megaman falls off the screen and I lose a life. I look up at my brothers and see they’re still staring at their Gameboys like I hadn’t even come in.

“Do you wanna to trade games?” I ask them.

“Nope,” Auston says, turning his screen towards me, but I can’t see anything on it because it’s too dark and far away. “I just got a raichu an’ I’m almost to the next gym.”

“Uh-uh,” Preston says. I look over at him and he’s leaning so far forward over his Gameboy his head almost touches his knees.