How Could This Be Real?

4. Death Run

He rolled over to his other computer and logged into his account.

"Um, I don't think I'm ready for Death Run yet."

"You must trust the Squiddy lessons, they are the best way to learn."

I sighed, "Fine." We joined a game and soon it was starting.

"Alright, get pumped, 3, 2, 1, go!"

I ran forward and got taken out at the first obstacle. "Great start," I muttered. I respawned and got a bit farther, slowly falling into the swing of things. It was pretty hard to concentrate with Squid screaming the whole time though.

"Oh yeah, look at that! No! I died! Come on, we can do this!"

"You're not making a video you know, you can relax."

"How do you know I'm not recording right now?"

"Because you don't have a microphone in front of you."

"Hey, you're supposed to be focused on the game."

"I can multitask." Right as I said that I failed a jump.

He laughed, "You were saying?" A minute later Squid won and did a stupid victory dance. "Oh yeah! Who's the DR king? Squidoodilie is! Woop woop!" I finished a few seconds later. "Hey, seventh, not bad for a first run," he said.

"At least I didn't DNF."

"That's the spirit! Wanna go again?"

I shrugged, "Why not?" We played a few more times and eventually I was getting second and third places, but always behind Squid.

"See? I told you Squiddy lessons work!"

"They haven't worked until I've got a 1st place."

"Well then I guess you'd better try harder!" We entered another race and both had a nearly flawless run. We were neck-and-neck and at the final obstacle, I jumped and strafed straight into the finish line.

"Yes! I knew I could do it!"

"Oh, I let you win," he said but I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Just then, David's Skype went off. We switched places so he would be in front of the camera and he answered it. "Hey Ash, what's up?"

"You ready to record yet? It's getting kinda late and I don't wanna get behind. I mean I can do it by myself if you're busy, but the people love you ya know."

Squid gave me a prideful look and I waved it off. He looked at his watch, "Oh geez, how did it get so late? Yeah, I'm ready, one sec though." He muted everything so they couldn't hear each other and turned to me, "What time do you have to get back?"

I looked at my phone and saw a text from my mom, "We decided to go out, we'll be back in a few hours. Feel free to order room service."

"I can stay as long as I get some dinner."

He grinned, "I'm sure Nicole can whip up something for us, I'll go ask. Don't let him see you," he motioned to Ash.

I cocked an eyebrow, "You embarrassed to have me here?"

His eyes widened, "No no no, it's just that, I, you, um..."

"I was kidding," I interrupted, "I wasn't gonna let him see me anyway."

He let out a sigh of relief, "Thank you, I'll be right back. Keep practicing, you're gonna be in a video." Before I could say anything he was already out the door.

I rolled my eyes and watched Ash setup. The camera was at a different angle than I was used to, his facecam was always from the other side. I guessed this one was another screen next to the one he was playing on since it was facing him head on. He tapped lazily on his keyboard and I saw his character pop up on my screen.