The Game

girls. He often used his nieces as a routine to convey his vulnerable, paternal side to women. He truly loved his nieces and seemed to come back to life a little when he saw them.
    Mystery’s brother-in-law, Gary, played us some pop ballads he had composed. The best of these was a song called “Casanova’s Child,” which Mystery sang along with at a near-deafening volume. He seemed to identify with the title character.
    Caroline and I left afterward. The girls chased us all the way to the elevator bank, laughing and screaming, followed by Mystery. Suddenly, a door swung open and a man in a clerical collar gave the girls a steely, condescending stare.
    “You shouldn’t be making so much noise in the hallway,” he said.
    Mystery turned crimson. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked. “Because I think we should. These are young girls. They’re having fun.”
    “Well,” the reverend said. “They can have fun in a place where they’re not disturbing other residents.”
    “I’ll tell you what,” Mystery snapped. “I’m going to get a knife, and we’ll find out just who exactly should be in the hall when I get back.”
    Mystery marched back to the house as the rest of us exchanged concerned looks. Again, I recognized the behavior from our road trip: It reminded me of when he’d snapped at the border crossing after I’d told him what to do, triggering his father issues.
    The reverend slammed the door shut, and Caroline and I slipped away in the confusion.

I didn’t really want to go back to Caroline’s. I’ve lived in cities my whole life. I hate the suburbs. Like Andy Dick, my biggest fear is being bored or boring. Weekend nights weren’t made for sitting around watching videos from Blockbuster. But Caroline couldn’t stay in Toronto. She didn’t want to be away from her son; she didn’t want to be a typical teenage mother.
    So while Caroline played with Carter the next day, I checked my e-mail. Mystery and I had posted a field report about Carly and Caroline a few days earlier, and my inbox was full with messages from kids in North Carolina, Poland, Brazil, Croatia, New Zealand, and beyond. They were looking to me for help just as I had once looked to Mystery.
    There were also two e-mails from Mystery. In the first, he wrote that he’d gotten into a fight with his sister over the hallway incident: “She proceeded to punch me several times. I had to restrain her by grabbing her throat and flipping her to the ground. I then left to go back to my house. I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to stop her from attacking me. Weird, huh?”
    The second one read simply: “I’m crackin’ up. I’m hungry, my head hurts, my skin aches, and I’ve been choking it all day to Kazaa porn. I’m going to get sleeping pills because if I stay up all night alone, I’ll go nuts. I can’t wait to disappear. I’m so close to saying fuck it and ending it all. This living thing isn’t fun anymore.”
    He was losing his mind. And I was stuck in bumblefuck, Ontario, watching Britney Spears in Crossroads with three teenagers, one of whom was supposedly now my girlfriend.
    The next morning, I had Caroline drive me to Mystery’s place.
    “Can you stay with me?” I asked.
    “I should really get back to Carter,” she said. “I haven’t been paying enough attention to him, and I don’t want my mom to think I’m being neglectful.”
    “Your mom wants you to go out and be with your friends. You’re putting this pressure on yourself.”
    She agreed to come inside for an hour.
    We walked upstairs to Mystery’s apartment and opened the door. He was sitting on his bed watching Steven Spielberg’s AI on his computer. He was wearing the same gray T-shirt and jeans I had last seen him in. There were scratches on his arms from his fight with his sister.
    He turned to me and began to speak. His voice was cold and dispassionate. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “The robots in this movie have motivated self-interest. They set objectives and then work to accomplish them. The child robot seeks protection from his mommy. The sex robot chases women. When he’s freed from a cage, he sets out to mate with real women again because that’s his objective.”
    “Okay.” I leaned against a computer desk pushed flush against his bed. The room was the size of a large closet. The walls were bare. “What’s your point?”
    “The point is,” he said, in the same deadened voice, “what is my objective? And what