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“I’m not in trouble, am I?” “No, why would you be in trouble?” Because lately, Sadie was almost always in trouble. It was impossible to be eleven, with a sick sister, and for people to find your conduct beyond reproach. She was always saying the wrong thing, or being too loud, or demanding too much (time, love, food), even though she had not demanded more than what had been freely given before.

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back- I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can.

"It is no easy matter being the little sister, this I know. And I am also proud of you for befriending that boy. Even if things ended badly, it was a good thing you did for him and for your-self. That boy was utterly friendless, injured, alone. You were not a perfect friend, but you were his friend, and he needed a friend."

How do you preserve the impossible to preserve? Or, in other words, how do you stop time and death? Could there have been a more propitious place to begin the company that would become Unfair Games?

What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

She could tell you exactly what was wrong with any game, but she didn't necessarily know how to make a great game herself. There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities.

The only way to get through this period is to make things any-way. And it is possible that, without Sam (or someone like him) pushing her through this period, Sadie might not have become the game designer she became. She might not have become a designer at all.

"Sometimes, I would be in so much pain. The only thing that kept me from wanting to die was the fact that I could leave my body and be in a body that worked perfectly for a while better than perfectly, actually-with a set of problems that were not my own."

"Tou couldn't land at the top of a pole, but Mario could."

While Keanu sat in the chair, Audrey lay in the bed next to Tiny Tim, their fingertips casually touching, in the way of people who were entirely comfortable around each other She almost seemed to be an extension of him, and he, of her. There is love here, she thought. In the end, she decided, with some amount of disappointment, that none of them were involved romantically.

On the night Sam went missing, it occurred to Sadie that nothing in life was as solid-state as it appeared. A childish game might be deadly. A friend might disappear. And as much

as a person might try to shield herself from it, the possibility for the other outcome was always there. We are all living at most, half of a life, she thought.

Do you think you're the first person to ever have a baby? Or lose someone? Do you think you're some goddamned pioneer when it comes to grief?"

Sadie shifted forward, and he could feel the momentum of their argument. He could feel the cruel thing she was about to say in response to the cruel thing he had said. But the cruel thing did not arrive. Disturbingly, she slumped forward, and started to weep.

He watched her, but he did not go over to her. "Snap out of it, Sadie. Come to the office. We work through our pain.

That's what we do. We put the pain into the work, and the work becomes better. But you have to participate. You have to talk to me. You can't ignore me and our company and everything that came before. Everything isn't over because Marx is dead."

Sam nodded. "May I ask you something that I've often

"Oh God, this sounds serious."

"Why do you think we never got together?"

Sadie sat next to Sam on the bed. "Sammy," she said. "We were together. You must know that. When I'm honest with myself, the most important parts of me were yours."