->?eAKor

so lost. It was like my brain had just fallen out of my head.

tne said of course she would get me a ticket. As I lookedk at hex she looked almost as lost as I felt, which I appre-

i f*9~\:ed. V^yGoodbye, Pineapple!" Sculley waved, and I waved back,h, my God, his family is sooooo crazy!" I heard the refrain

become distant and shrugged it off, knowing Sculley was onlytripping and probably meant "crazy" in a good way. Still, I

_ was eager to disappear into the mob of passers-by going to~ - z W » » . A i .. work o n just another Monday morning. \1&}—-• ^^*o ^>\V^V>iS> >^X-^_1,i^- I sat for a couple of hours at the Frog Pond orTTne Boston

Common, my favorite place that Ma would take me, Kathy,and Kevin when we were the "three little kids." I was the youn-

Y .V.C. A ^.rwH 1 /\y\AV\Q §est m tne ^am''y back then. Until Seamus and Stevie cameC £,

\1balong ten years after me with a whole new father, Coley, I hadbeen the only one with a different father. That felt weird some-times, if I thought about it. But Ma gave me the name Mac-Donald to be like the other kids, even though I'd heard ii^jfrlsyfather's last name was Fox. I had never met George FOT*,_arndthe other kids hadn't seen their father — "Mac" in family sto-ries — in years. Being one of the "three little kids" used tomake me feel connected to some grouping in the family, and toKevin and Kathy more than anyone else. (*?)

a letdown to see the Frog Pond allthese years later, as^aratirteen-year-old. It looked like nothing more than a big

puddle. And in the below-zero weather it was ugly, with stibeer cans trapped in the frozen brown muck. Being th

made me feel like all the big things in my life — music andfriends I'd thought superior to all the ordinary people in theworld — were bullshit. I had to keep moving.

I had no idea what to do with the rest of the day other thancall patient information every hour until there was no more in-formation. Maybe no more Kathy. I decided to go to my auntTheresa's in Jamaica Plain. Theresa looked after me when I

'"p\CLvLc_j V\^ was small and Ma was getting her degree at Suffolk. She had""• \ilVs/*4-. three kids at home, and they had once been like a second fam-

ily to me. There was something calming about Theresa. Shekept things simple, never talked behind anyone's back, alwaystold the truth, and never asked insulting questions. If I showedup at her house these days after running the exciting gauntletof people shouting obscenities about how I looked, Theresawould just shrug. "Oh, I don't care for the ripped-up old man'sclothes too much, but whatever makes you happy."

She was family, but not as close as Ma to Kathy's situation. V\ i ,.She was the person I needed right then. When I got to Theresa's \ ^l^->house, no one was there, so I walked back up Carolina Avenueto/fi*Sfc) phone booth to call the hospital. I couldn't help butnortee-tne peace of Carolina Avenue during school hours, com-pared to Old Colony, where a lot of Kathy's and Kevin's friendswho had dropped out kept the street corners busy even on thecoldest school days. I saw Theresa walking down the hill carry-

ig a bundle of groceries in her arms, looking excited to see me.new by her expression that she hadn't heard about Kathy.

Ma's family was always the last to be told anything. I hadn'tvisited Theresa much since I'd become a teenager. But when-ever I'd drop by her house out of the blue, she'd thank me fiftytimes over for visiting.

Michael," she said when I approached her. "Isn't thate you came over!" If her smile grew any wider I knew I

^wouldn't be able to break the news to her. And I had to let it allout again after an hour on the bus listening to commuters carryon like it was just another day.

ocni

44 ORSON SCOTT CARD

re'"X

VTO^

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eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. And on, as high as hed hold the numbers in his head: 128, 256, 512, 1024,

1048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144.At 67108864Hie began to be unsure—had he slipped out adigit? Should he be in the ten millions or the hundred mil-lions or just the millions? He tried doubling again and lostit. 1342 something. 16? Or 17738? It was gone. Start overagain. All the doubljrig he could hold. The pain was gone.The tears were gonSp« jvould not cry.

Until that night, when the lights went dim, and in thedistance he could hear several boys whimpering for theirmothers or fathers or dogs. Then he could not help himself.His lips formed Valentine's name. He could hear her voicelaughing in the distance, just down the hall. He could seeMother passing his door, looking in to be sure he was allright. He could hear Father laughing at the video. It was all

clear, and it would never be that way again. I'll be old:^hen Ijver see them again, twelve at the earliest. Why didJptsay yes? What was I such a fool for? Going to school

would have been nothing. Facing Stilson every day. AndPeter. He was a pissant, Ender wasn't afraid of him.

> 5 want to go home, he whispered. ^"l^^^^P'PBut his whisper was the whisper he used when he cried'1

out in pain when Peter tormented him. The sound didn't* ,r n< *y

travel farther than his own ears, and sometimes not that far.J\,4And his tears could fall unwanted on his sheet, but hisW

sobs were so gentle that they did not shake the bed, so quiet £they could not be heard. But the ache was there, thick HI

jis throa^ and the front of his Jfece, hot injiis chest and inis eyes. I want to go home. Afl.'-t€v-<acno/v

Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly amongthe beds, touching a hand here, a forehead there. Where hewent there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindnessin this frightening place was enough to push some over theedge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, hiscrying was over, and his face was dry. It was the lying face

/__he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been

ENDER'S GAME 45

cruel to him and he dared not let it show. Thank you forthis, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught mehow to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need thatnow.

\o i I

°

•k

I'

_ , , . , , „ , , , , _ .. &^Ue-li3»nThis was school. Every day, hours of classes. Reading. Q u\(

Numbers. History. Videos of the bloody battles in space, ^vj.the Marines spraying their guts all over the walls of the g$-eS~'••'•bugger ships. Holos of the clean wars of the fleet, ships x^^^lturning into puffs of l ight as the spacecraft killed each othetev*rl(deftly in the deep n igh t . Many things to learn. Jinder workea £^j«^ ;*>

£p hard as anyone; all of them struggled for the first time in ^^r^ ***'their lives, as for the first time in their lives they competedwith classmates who were at least as bright as they. < , ; ;

But the games—that was what they lived for. That was syvJ&JC• ^what filled the hours between waking and sleeping. fu? ±t</\>

Dap introduced them to the game room on their second^.r^s*> +day. It was up, way above the decks where the boys livedand worked. They climbed ladders to where the gravityweakened, and there in the cavern they saw the,dazzling

jjtghts of the game|.Some of the games they knew; some they had even played

at home. Simple ones and hard ones. Ender walked past thetwo-dimensional games on video and began to study thegames the bigger boys played, the holographic games with r—'^"': -objects hovering in the air. He was the only Launchy in that *^ A \part of the room, and every now and thenpne oflfagJ''boys would shove him out of the way. f^SPre yotrlLnn.g-T yA (,-.'«• ^ •here? Get lost. Fly off* And of course he would fly, in the ^ \Qi'\<jy\ <^\lower gravity here, leave his feet and soar un t i l he ran into vv>j^y ' „&something or someone.

Every time, though, he extricated himself and went back,perhaps to a different spot, to get a different angle on thegame. He was too small to see the controls, how the gamewas actually done. That didn't matter. He got the movementof it in the air. The way the player dug tunnels in the