A Pokémon Go Love Story

Chapter 1 - Life As Usual

My phone buzzes again. I'm about ready to smash it underfoot, or grind it up and feed it to my hamster, or put it through Chinese water torture. I love my best friend, Kamri, to death, but she needs to know when to give up. Seriously.

I settle for muting my phone completely to eliminate the distraction, and turn back to the calculus problem I'm working on. I lean over and stare at it, finally trying out a few ways of solving it. Twenty minutes later, I scratch out my latest attempt and take a break to braid back my thick, dark blonde hair. I can feel sweat trickling down my back, and all I can think is Damn, I almost wish I'd taken her up on her pool offer. I take a deep breath and a sip of rapidly melting ice water to clear my thoughts. Almost, I think, forcing my mind to drop the daydream of gliding through a refreshing pool, and think of the test only six weeks away.

I finally give up and skip to the next problem, when the doorbell rings. I have just barely wondered who it is when it rings again, like the visitor is impatient.

Oh, Kamri. I can't help but grin. That girl is as stubborn as they come.

I welcome the excuse to stretch my legs as I go to open the door. She pushes her way past me and heads to the kitchen.
"Hey Leia, explain to me why you're not answering my texts, woman?" She says, tossing a pretend death glare over her shoulder at me.

I follow her to give her a hug as I prepare to make my case. "Kamri, I told you I need to study for the test. I need to get a high scire on this or I might not get the scholarship I need."

Kamri is pulling out sandwich ingredients, setting them out in neat rows on the counter. "I know, I know, you've told me like a dozen times, but you need to give yourself a break - it's like I never see you anymore," she complains, her fingers flying as she piles up condiments on her masterpiece. I try to say something in defense, but she steamrolls right over me. "You know what you need to do? You need to get yourself a good distraction. Something you can relax with. Like maybe -" she wiggles her eyebrows at me pointedly. "- a boyfriend." I begin my protests but she waves them away and says, "Yeah, whatever! We don't need to rehash this again- don't want one, don't need one, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, y'know what you should do? Download this game." She scoops up her completed sandwich with one hand, and pulls out her iPhone with the other. She taps her screen and some sort of dramatic theme music starts blasting from the speakers.

"What the-" She lowers the volume quickly, then proffer the phone to me. "Let me know when it finishes loading."

"A game? Really?" I don't see what she's trying to do here, but I'll let her show me. I watch her methodically clean everything up, wiping the counters till they're shinier than they were before she got here. (She's a tad OCD.) I glance down to see the game has loaded, and I hand it back to her.

"Okay, so you remember that game, Pokémon? It was a show too, I think."

"Um, yeah. Sure."

"So they've made a new app, and it's insanely popular. Like, the servers crash a hundred times a day because it's so overloaded. Or, at least, that's my theory." She flips her dark dreadlocks over her shoulder and continues. "The way it works is based off your real-life location, so you have to walk all over to play. The point is to try and catch Pokémon, which are virtually placed all over geographic locations." She proceeds to explain various aspects of the game in great detail, but I space out at some point and when I come back to earth she's still talking between bites, saying, "-though the points for it turned out to be low, so it was like a total waste of my time to put on pants and tramp outside in the scorching sun just for that pathetic creature."

"Uh-huh." I nod sympatetically. "Well, thanks for telling me about it, but I think I'll pass."