I sat still as the pixelated character bounced from side to side, rearing to go one more time, if only he knew I sucked at this game.

Above the character is a large button labeled ‘replay’ and it was designed to beg me to click it, bright blue jumping off the screen, shadow over-animated. The button to quit would be hidden somewhere in the corners of the screen, essentially invisible to the naked eye, a not-so-distant relative to the ‘x’ button of mobile ads.

I sat still, sunken into the back of my chair, I lost the last round, zero stars. The taskbar at the bottom of my screen read ‘3:15’, I’d been here all night. I imagined this to be a lot more exciting than it is.

Today- well, technically yesterday- is my first day back from school. And sitting here is an experience I fantasied all through the semester. It was the base for all discussions about the holiday, after staying months with nothing but our books in hand, solving equations week after week, it would seem everyone and their mothers couldn’t wait to be back home, glued to their seats and screens.

I don’t remember being this terrible at it.

I lean back in my chair, leaving the gamepad at the table, I get up after a deep breath. The walk downstairs is alien to me, the stairs I’d walked the past few months had always been crowded by other boys, always. Some having conversations about anything from ants to cars, some with their nose deep in a fantasy novel they’d borrowed from a friend of a friend, and had to return for the next five people lined up after them, some like me simply walking downstairs for a drink of water.

The quiet in the room now feels alien to me.

The water from the fridge is clean and cold, a luxury that makes the metal tainted water I’d been drinking feel like horse piss, even though just a week ago I’d gulp down several plastic bottles of it at a go, fetching one more for the road.

I want to enjoy the luxuries that no one else in this house would see as such, but soon they would return to being luxuries again, except this time I wouldn’t have means to reach them. Just another month, and I’d be back again, no one here would bat an eye if I reached for an apple from the counter top. But just another month and I’d be returned to my three-square bowl of slop.

Back upstairs, the pixelated character waits for me, fully customized as I’d left it, rearing to go for another round, the replay button above him shining in the dark of the room. Do I have another choice?

I simply have to get better, and run farther, and get more points. I simply have to get a new strategy, or clearer head.

The pixelated character knows no backward, in a few hours, it’d be a new day all over again, and I’d have to press replay, me.

In just a month I’d jump in with a new strategy and see how long it lasts this time.

I move my cursor above the character and secure the headphones around my ears, game music surrounding me.

And I click the only option, replay.