Daydream Believer

cxviii. summer and spending time with my family

cxviii. summer and spending time with my family

“Hey McKenna,” Noah said as I re-entered the house after a very long day at work. Aaron was fun to talk to as usual, but work could still be exhausting.

 

“Hi Noah,” I said. I collapsed onto the sofa where Noah was playing video games. “What are you up to?”

 

“I’m just playing Minecraft,” Noah said. “In Hardcore mode, of course. Do you want to play?”

 

I shrugged. “Sure, why not?” I said. I didn’t really know how to play, but it didn’t look hard. I was pretty sure it was just one of those games where you build stuff. Noah passed me a controller and I started playing with him. I spent the first few minutes trying to figure which button was which, while Noah yelled at me, saying the game was “easy.” I figured it out fairly quickly though and I followed Noah around in the game while he showed me all of the stuff that he built.

 

“And here’s my version of the Eiffel Tower,” Noah said as he showed me a supposedly to scale version of the Eiffel Tower. It was indeed pretty impressive.

 

“Uh Noah, what’s that behind us?” I asked as I looked behind us in the game. There was some green thing behind the wall around the tower.

 

“It’s just a zombie,” Noah said. “He can’t get through the wall.” Noah walked into the tower in the game and our characters both went to sleep.

 

“How long have you been working on this?” I asked Noah.

 

“I don’t know. A long time,” Noah said. “You should see my stuff on Terarria. It’s even better.”

 

“Isn’t Terarria just a rip off of Minecraft?” I asked.

 

“No!” Noah shouted. “It’s totally different.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say,” I said. Honestly, all of Noah’s video games were the same to me.

 

Brooklyn entered the room. “Can I play?” she asked.

 

“Sure,” Noah said. Noah was nice enough to explain the controls for Brooklyn. I didn’t get why he didn’t do that for me. I was just as clueless as she was, if not more. Brooklyn was a fast learner. She had to be, considering how much therapy she went through. I admired her strength sometimes. I could have never gotten through everything that she did.

 

Noah was nice enough to give both of us another tour. As mentioned, Noah was an impressive builder. You’d think that there would be a better use for his intellect than recreating important monuments in a video game, but he seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully this little skill could translate into something useful someday.

So there we were, all three of us playing video games on a couch. It was an odd sight: a video game architect, a little girl in a wheelchair, and a shy, nerdy teenager playing together. Most people wouldn’t even guess that the three of us were siblings. It was a beautiful sight really. The three Gregory children were finally at peace.