There was a girl once.

Her name was Anya. She lived down the street and always had a pink band-aid somewhere on her skin — elbow, wrist, the ridge of her shin. One spring afternoon, when Eliot was nine, she found him standing at the edge of his front yard, watching the other kids set up a basketball hoop in the cul-de-sac. She walked right up and said, “You’re always looking, never playing.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

She pulled a leaf from the hedge, pushed it under his nose, and said, “Smell it. Smells like green.” Then she ran off barefoot, laughing, before he could respond.

He remembered that for the rest of his life — not because it was important, but because nothing ever quite replaced it.

—

He watched a lot as a child. From windows, from the back seat of the car, from behind glowing glass. Watching was safe. Interacting, less so. Other kids were loud, physical, unpredictable. The digital world, by contrast, asked nothing he couldn’t give. He could mute what annoyed him, rewind what confused him, skip what bored him. And over time, real life began to feel clumsy. Heavy. Too slow for his mind.

He still played outside sometimes — until fourth grade. He was fast, with good reflexes, and once blocked a taller boy’s layup. They slapped his back and called him “E-Z.” He didn’t hate it. But he didn’t miss it either once it was gone.

His mother said the school was changing. Getting too political. Too much focus on identity, too little on math and science. One day, after a tense parent meeting, she said she’d had enough. “You’re smarter than all this. We’ll do better at home.”

Eliot didn’t argue. He liked home.

He liked the way his room lit up when he asked it to. The way his tablet remembered where he left off. The way his games welcomed him like a hero returning from war. And most of all, he liked the forums — the message boards where other kids posted walkthroughs, jokes, and GIFs about their favorite worlds. No awkward small talk. No waiting your turn. Just pure, shared obsession.

At eleven, he joined a Minecraft modding group and published a custom expansion that got five thousand downloads in a week. His screen name, “Heli0s,” started showing up in comment threads. Someone made him a logo. Someone else called him a prodigy. He copied that into his profile and stared at it often.

Outside, the world moved on. Anya stopped coming around. The boys down the street got taller and louder. The basketball hoop sagged. And Eliot stayed indoors, where the feedback was cleaner, the wins more obvious.

He didn’t feel like he was missing anything. Not then.

In fact, he felt like he was getting ahead.

Sometimes, though, before the screen pulled him in for the day, he would wander outside after breakfast — barefoot, holding a slice of toast, blinking into the sun.

The air felt different in the morning — not just cooler, but younger, like the day hadn’t yet decided what it would become.

Eliot would just stand there sometimes, letting the sun warm his skin through his t-shirt, watching a snail make its slow pilgrimage along the brick border near the roses. 

He didn’t think to name the feeling. It wasn’t joy exactly. More like a quiet permission to belong to the world.

And then he’d hear the digital chime of an incoming chat message.

And just like that, the moment would evaporate.

—

By twelve, Eliot was already doing better than most kids his age — at least by the numbers.

He aced his online classes. Not just with good grades, but with glowing feedback. His logic skills tested high percentile. His essays were flagged for “voice maturity.” His math instructor — a soft-voiced AI in the shape of an owl — once called him “exceptionally self-regulating.” He clipped that phrase and saved it to his desktop.

He wasn’t just smart. He was proficient. He completed modules early. Read white papers about probability theory. Dabbled in machine learning courses made for college students. And at night, he played.

Games were more than games. They were his country — a realm where fluency meant access, where skill earned admiration. In a PvP shooter, he climbed the ranks so fast that strangers asked to team up with him. His screen name became a kind of shield — no one knew he was a quiet twelve-year-old in gym shorts, eating yogurt tubes in a dark room. They just knew he was good.

That year, he minted his first crypto token. A tutorial showed him how to script it, assign value, simulate scarcity. He sold it on a digital marketplace and made six hundred dollars in three days. His parents were baffled, impressed, slightly concerned. They praised him — but cautiously. They still hoped he’d make “real” friends.

He didn’t see the need.

⸻

The real turning came one afternoon in early summer, right around the end of seventh grade.

He was coding a texture pack for a medieval-style building sim — tuning the look of rust on chainmail — when a text popped up on his family’s shared tablet. A boy named Marcus, who lived two doors down, was having a birthday thing at the park. Pickup soccer, burgers, music. “Bring a friend,” the message said. “2PM. Come chill with us.”

Eliot read it twice. Then looked at the clock. 1:43.

He stood up. Walked to the window. The sky was bright — too bright — and the trees were loud with wind. He pictured Marcus and the others kicking a ball, shouting, laughing. Getting dirty. Elbows, teasing, someone tripping, someone yelling “Goal!”

He felt something tighten in his chest.

Then he sat down. Slipped his headphones back on. Pulled the texture window back up. Clicked open a new chat with a gamer in Norway who had been giving him tips on surface mapping.

“I don’t really like those kids,” he muttered to no one. “Their games are stupid.”

He didn’t say it with bitterness. Just with finality.

Like a boy closing a book and placing it on a shelf he’d never reach for again.