Finding Gold

The figure sprints down the cobbled alleyway, around the corner and onto the dusty track leading out of town. Ahead, a narrow isthmus pinches the path to half its previous width, but there is no chance for slowing, it is all or nothing now, and the man keeps up his pace, his blue cape flying behind him. On the far side, where the track runs along the top of an open stretch of sand, pieces of gold and spilled gemstones glisten in the sun, easy pickings if you can take the time to swerve away from the sturdier ground above beach. Conner makes his decision fast and holds his line. Riches will have to wait until he is out of shooting range of the archer.

“Conner!” Conner pinches his brow. This, he does not need now. “Conner, get down here this minute and take this bin out. I will not be asking you twice.” Conner grunts, an angry, impotent nod to the annoyance he feels swelling inside him. He drops the controller and watches as the figure on the screen takes an arrow to his back and falls bloodlessly to the sand. Game over. Liam, sitting sprawled in the armchair behind him, laughs.

“You’re in trouble.”

“I am not.” Conner punches him in the thigh, but lightly.

“You couldn’t beat me anyway.” Liam grins at his brother, goading.

“I would’ve done. If Mum hadn’t ruined it.”

From the sofa, Aidan flops with a seal-like undulance onto the beanbag, and takes up the control. “Conner can’t, but I can. 5092 isn’t it? The score to beat?”

*

Downstairs, Conner yanks the binbag out of the pedal bin too roughly, and two tissues and a wet plastic wrapper fall to the floor. He bends to pick them up and recognises a familiar ache in his thighs. He has worked hard this week, practicing his sprint starts every lunch break at school as well as before school athletics training. Last year’s medals hang above his desk, a rainbow of ribbons on his notice board, golds and silvers. One bronze. One for almost every meet he ran in. He likes the summer. Sprints and hurdles, and only having to share the glory for the relay race. And there’s always glory, when Conner runs. In the winter, he shares it with a whole team, but he’s the one holding the cups in the team photos either side of the school trophy cabinet. But the switch to athletics as the summer nears always feels like a rest. A simplification. Conner likes to win, and that’s easier to control when he hasn’t got to rely on the rest of a team.

Conner hauls the binbag out to the big bin outside. He’s keen to get back to the warm and to the game. He would rather play a different one, something a bit more strategic, a bit more of a challenge, but this one is Liam’s favourite, and anyway, he can do his maths homework while he waits for his turn, so it barely feels like he’s doing it at all.

*

Aidan has taken a different line, and gathered quite a bit of the gold and several gemstones. When Conner sits back down, he is in the pine forest, jumping for coins hanging from the lower branches, and in the corner of the screen, his score reads as 4629.

“You’ll need to speed up if you’re going to beat me.” Liam says. The game keeps moving forward at the same speed whatever you do, but these little variations in route can add up. Aidan stops jumping and runs a straight line towards the open meadow. They watch the seconds counting down and the score counting up. It’s a balancing act between time and points gathered, complicated by the risk of death of course, but Aiden is doing well. Beyond the meadow is the wishing well, where the level completes, but in the six months they have had the game, no-one has made it to the well. The counter is at 4815 when Aiden smashes into a tree. The man on screen crumples to the ground and lays still.

“Fuck!” Aiden yelps, and Liam snorts with glee. “So close!” Aiden gets to his feet and hands the remote to Liam. “Your turn. I’m just going to grab my Physics.” Aiden prefers to study in his room, but this pattern of dipping in and out of homework has proved a nice way to fill the gap before dinner. He knows he will need to come back to the physics revision later, do it properly, but there are still four days until the regional science quiz, he figures he can afford to relax a bit. It’s not like he doesn’t know it, he tells himself, he got 98% on the last test in physics. Only a couple of marks more than Biology and Chemistry. But complacency is not Aiden’s style. Plus, if he hopes to get into Oxford, even a place in the national science quiz would look good for him.

*

Liam is half way across the bridge when his Mum calls. “Liam? Can you come and show me which bits of your PE kit need washing?”

“In a minute. I just need to finish my turn.”

There is no come-back, and Liam runs on, ducking to avoid a flying arrow. The bridge starts to fall away beneath him, as it always does, and he takes a flying leap for the far side of the canyon, landing with his toes on the grass. He veers left, following the cliff edge and avoiding the troll lumbering into the screen from the rocky outcrop opposite where the bridge ended.

“3900!” remarks Conner, and Liam allows himself a slight smile. He’s doing pretty well. Or would be, if he hadn’t just been side swiped by a bouncing rock. Liam throws the controller down in a dramatic display of frustration, but it’s all for show. He loves this part of the day, him, Conner and Aiden just hanging out together and playing this game. He sees less and less of them these days. Conner is always at training and Aiden is always studying, and at the weekends they want to see their pesky friends and there’s less time for drawing or making forts out of the furniture or having battles. Liam used to have a friend, at his old school, but since he moved he doesn’t see her anymore. Mum says he will make new friends and he needs to give it time, but the other kids call him mean names and once Ben Seacrest shoved him over, and Liam didn’t tell anyone because everyone said this was the best school for whatever his needs are and he will be happy here and no one is as fun as Conner and Aiden anyway.

Liam passes the controller to Conner. “Your turn, then Aiden, then me again.”

*

Conner takes the controller and settles into the beanbag. “Don’t be long!” he shouts after Liam. “You wouldn’t want to miss me BEATING YOU!”

“You WISH!” comes the retort from the corridor beyond, and Conner presses go, running the avatar through a familiar set of manoeuvres in a medieval looking town square. Beside him, Aiden turns the page of his book, glancing up to watch as Conner jumps from the steps of a building to reach a crimson gem floating above a fountain. He somersaults as he lands, sliding smoothly under a parked cart, and sidesteps a knight brandishing a sword.

“Did you hear what happened to Christian Knowles?” he asks Aiden.

“No? Oh, no, yeah. The party.”

“Yeah. Dom said the neighbours called the police on them ‘cos a girl puked in their hedge.”

“I think he’s been suspended from school.”

“Why? I mean, the party didn’t happen at school.”

“I dunno. I didn’t see him in school today though.”

“Probably still hungover.” Conner swerves into the pine forest, grabbing a gold coin as he goes. He’s playing smoothly, swinging round familiar corners, anticipating arrows and enemies he’s dodged a hundred times before. Now he is weaving between the trees, steering left to avoid a troll, right to grab a ruby, and before he realises it, he is in the meadow, twenty seconds left on the clock and a line of coins marking his route to the well.

“You’re on 5002 points” Aiden comments, and the boys fall silent with concentration. Conner jumps, missing one coin, but landing directly on another.

“5022.”

He steers wide, but the gameplay has narrowed, the expanse of grass is just for show, and he grabs another coin.

“5042. You’re going to do it.”

Conner can sense Aiden’s tension beside him. “I KNOW, I’m trying.” He clips another coin. 5062. He’s unstoppable now, and they both know it. The win is inevitable.

“Pull the plug” Conner snaps.

“What?”

“Pull the fucking plug!”

Conner lunges, yanks the plug out of the socket, and the screen goes blank. In the sudden silence, Conner and Aiden feel their heartbeats loud in their chests.

“Quick. Plug it back in.”

Aiden, laying across the floor, still has the plug in his hand. He pushes it back into the wall, and the console begins its soft pur. A gleaming logo punctuates the dark screen of the TV, and Conner flicks through the menus to get the game back up.

When Liam comes in, the room is quiet and both his brothers are doing homework.

“Did you beat me?” he asks.

“See for yourself” Conner mutters, without looking up.

Liam checks the scoreboard, sees his name still there at the top. 5092 points. Top score. He does a little dance, hopping from one foot to the other, arms cactusing to either side. “You can’t beat me” he sings. Conner lunges for him, wrestling him to the ground, one arm on the back of his head while the other swipes his knees out from under him. Then Aiden is there straddling Liam, pinning his hands above his head while Conner tickles the sides of his belly and Liam is still singing “You can’t beat me”, but in shrieked bursts of delight and pain, and then, when Liam can’t shout anymore for breathlessness, Conner rolls off him and Aiden stands up, watching as Liam recovers his breath.

“Whose go is it?” Liam asks.

“Nah, I need to get my work done.” Aiden moves back to where his physics book is splayed on the floor by the sofa.

“Same” says Conner, and rolls bodily across the floor to where he’s left his maths.

“Okay” Liam says, undiminished. “I’ve got a sheet to colour from Miss Lancaster”, and he runs down the hall shouting “Mum! I need my healthy eating sheet! I’m doing homework with Aiden and Conner!”

In the quiet, Conner shifts to the right. He doesn’t notice himself doing it. Aiden moves his books, just a fraction, without thinking, and between them a space opens up on the floor, just large enough for a boy, and a colouring sheet, and a spark of self-esteem.