It’s a one-mile walk to the strip mall that houses Roll Again Games. Not the pleasant kind of walk, either, but a journey down the sidewalk of a road that has four lanes of traffic with drivers all going at least ten miles over the speed limit in each direction. I should tie back my long blond hair, but the strong gusts of wind make a quick mess of it no matter what I do, so right now it’s swirling around my head like my own personal tornado.
I’m trying to play Taylor Swift’s latest album, but the Bluetooth keeps disconnecting from my hearing aids, which makes for a staticky and frustrating listening experience. It finally manages to connect long enough to reach a fantastic bridge when an incoming call interrupts and rings loudly directly into my ears.
It’s my sister, of course. I answer the call. Who else would I actually talk to on the phone?
Like always, it’s bad timing. We’ve been playing phone tag for nearly a year now since she left for college.
“Hey, Lee—” I start, but Amelia launches right into something I can’t hear over the noise. “What was that?” I shout at my cell phone. She’s still rambling on. “Wait, I have not heard a single word you’ve said.”
There’s a lull in traffic as I near the stoplight intersection where I need to cross the street. There’s a family walking their dog in the opposite direction. I nod toward them as I advance to the other side of the road.
“Where are you?” Amelia asks. “I’m just trying to figure some stuff out real quick. How much do you actually need the car this summer?”
I laugh, uninhibited and wild, at the absurdity of what she’s saying to me right now. A driver stuck at the light glances my way. “You’re asking me this as I’m
literally walking on the side of the highway.”
“It’s not a highway.” She’s quick to correct, assuming where I am. “It’s just a road.”
“I’m not debating the definition of a highway with you right now as I’m walking next to one. Yes, I need the car.”
“On your way to game night, right? You’re still doing that?”
I roll my eyes and adjust the strap of my bag that’s been digging into my shoulder. “Yes, I told you about the new character drop. I got the Fortune Teller, who has action cards that—”
“I think I’ve just outgrown playing Rivalry,” she continues, stuck on her own thought, asking me another question without listening to my answer. “Doesn’t Peyton drive you sometimes?”
We’re often on a similar wavelength that enables conversational shortcuts, but sometimes it just feels like I’m being steamrolled. “She has to watch her brothers tonight.”
Amelia is speaking again, but quieter now—and not to me, I realize. It seems like she’s dropped the phone away from her ear to talk to someone else, probably her roommate.
My sister is only a year older than me—and still many, many years younger than several of the people I’ll see at Roll Again Games in a few minutes—but since she went off to college, she’s been abandoning our shared hobbies, like this board game, Rivalry, that we used to play all weekend long, imagining elaborate backstories for our chosen character decks. We didn’t even fully understand the game’s rules back then. We’d just roll dice and swap cards at random until we eventually declared a winner.
(Which meant that, as the older sibling, Amelia usually “won.”)
We’ve been growing apart for a while now, but the roots took hold long before she even left for school in Philadelphia. If I had to pinpoint an exact moment where I finally stumbled upon a divide between the two of us, it would be Amelia’s diagnosis.
These days it still isn’t obvious to most people. Put us in front of any stranger and ask them to spot the difference, and they likely wouldn’t discover how we no longer experience the world the same way. However, I’ve felt the wedge driven between us, even if it goes unaddressed for the most part.
Five years ago, when Amelia started high school, she began having difficulty reading the board, which led to several doctors’ appointments. Eventually, she got diagnosed with a rare eye disease that causes central vision loss. Our parents shed tears that they tried and failed to keep secret from us, but somehow Amelia kept her chin up, almost unfazed.
I know my sister better than to buy into that act.
I know why she gave up playing Rivalry with me. Her growing frustration at not being able to take in the entire game board the way she once did, each turn taking just a bit longer for her to get her bearings. The effort to play outmatching her enthusiasm for the game until, ultimately, she insisted she simply wasn’t interested.
Eager to keep my favorite opponent, I researched and found a large-print edition, but by then, I wasn’t sure how to push her about it. I wasn’t going to beg. Instead, the large-print box sits on a shelf in the family room, collecting dust, along with our original Red Witch and Twilight Elf character kits.
“I’m almost there. Hello? Lee,” I say, dragging out the
ee of her name until she returns her focus to our call, wrapping up whatever she was discussing with her roommate.
“Sorry, yeah, so okay, I was thinking—” Amelia says right as the Bluetooth cuts out again and the call drops. She doesn’t hesitate to call back and continue talking as if we were never disconnected. “What I’m trying to figure out is how exactly I’m getting the car home for the summer.”
I step carefully over an uneven sidewalk crack. The obvious comes to mind. “By driving it?”
It’s easy to picture her lying on her dorm room bed, pursing her lips together and humming for a moment before she raises her concern with that plan. “It’s at least eighteen hours from Philly back to Omaha. More like twenty-plus, with traffic and stops.”
“I remember.” From having driven all that way with our parents last fall to drop her off at school.
She ignores the snark in my voice. “How am I supposed to drive it back by myself now?”
“I don’t know? Do you have any friends who need a ride in this direction?”
“Well, Mom said maybe—”
“I just got here, and I’m a little late, so we can figure it out later.” I hold my bag level, trying to keep the box inside upright. I pick up my pace as the path veers right into a small strip mall with a nail salon, dollar store, Chinese takeout counter, and my beloved board game shop, Roll Again Games. This walk always takes me longer than I expect it to.
“Sure. I don’t call you enough,” Amelia teases, “but when I do, you have to go?”
“You call me when I’m running late to Rivalry!”
“You call me when I’m in class!”
“Who takes a night class?”
“It was the only section of Social Media and Society that was offered this semester.”
“That’s not my fault.” I hop off the sidewalk to save a few seconds cutting across the small parking lot, empty except for a few vehicles parked in front of the shops, but have to jump onto the curb when a stealthily silent car sneaks up behind me. “Ah! I almost died.”
“What?” Amelia is quick to ask.
“Miss you, bye!” I say, hanging up the phone as I push open the heavy glass door to Roll Again, the bell chiming loudly and alerting everyone to my late arrival while my phone buzzes with a text from my sister.
Amelia: You’re not dead, right?
Iris: All good
Amelia: Miss you too!
The shop is cozy, with overhead lamps placed strategically to encourage this mood. I weave around the front displays and low shelves that showcase the newest board game releases, imagining my own creation one day sitting among them. A long shot, but something that inches closer to possible if I place at the Omaha Board Game Expo next month.
I walk along the wall full of used games for resale until I make it around back to the play tables. My bag slips from my shoulder, tilting the box I’ve been carrying, making a mess of all the pieces inside.
Great.
The store owner, Bryce, waves me to the tables, where the usual crowd is already situated, game decks in hand, waiting for player assignments. He’s in his late thirties and wearing an oversized band tee atop a striped long-sleeved shirt. His glasses have slid to the edge of his nose as he stares me down.
“Don’t worry, Iris. I’ve already got your name queued up.” Bryce taps on the random generator app on his tablet as I slink into a seat at the empty folding card table in the back. “Shit, it just rebooted. It’ll only be a few more seconds.”
Sally, a cheery woman in her sixties and self-proclaimed gamer grandma, turns around to offer me a platter of homemade cookies. I smile a thank-you and grab one, nodding apologetically as she also presses a napkin into my hand. I know better, especially after Declan’s smudgy fingers nearly stuck a chocolate fingerprint on my precious character art last month.
Is Declan here? I don’t see him.
Christopher and Lucas—the father-son duo who is very serious about consulting the rule book—are next to me, and a couple of the other teens my age are up front, but there’s no Declan in sight, which is probably for the best, because I keep getting stuck playing against him lately.
Some random generator that is.
Although I guess we are both here the most often.
I pull my game deck out of my bag and place it on the table in front of me. As expected, the cover of the cardboard box has slid up half an inch, which is all it took for the pieces inside to dislodge from their places. I should buy a travel kit, but the affordable option would be a boring black case, whereas this box has a gorgeous blue-and-gray-tone illustration of the Fortune Teller on the cover. Sure, the corners might be getting a little worse for wear, but that just shows how much I love this set.
The reflective shine on the Fortune Teller’s crystal ball. Her wavy gown and chin held high. Her long gray hair. And her sparkling gray eyes, clouded, mysterious, and not particularly focused—suggesting that, while she can see multiple futures, her own vision isn’t clear.
I’m well aware that blind eyes aren’t always so obvious.
“All right,” Bryce says, holding up his tablet and quieting all the side conversations. “We’re up and running. Tonight it’ll be Sally versus Leslie. Christopher versus Mischa. Dakota versus Shakir. Roy versus Lucas.” That seems to be everyone . . . except me. Wait, we have an odd number tonight? “And Iris versus Declan.”
Again? I’m not surprised, but I am confused.
While the others stand from where they’ve been sitting, shuffling around to new tables to face off against their opponents, I walk over to Bryce. “Um, I don’t think Declan is here.”
“Oh, he’s sorting some stock for me. You can go grab him.”
“He works here now?”
“A couple hours when I can use the help,” Bryce says, still fidgeting with the tablet.
In the back, there’s a closet-sized storage room where Bryce shoves all incoming restock shipments. The door is ajar, and I find Declan standing next to a stack of cardboard boxes, with the one on top flapped open, revealing all the dice packets that will be added to the display shelf, but he seems to have been halted mid-task with a somewhat intense phone call.
One that I’m uncomfortable interrupting.
I’ve never seen Declan “The Dice Love Me” Weber look so serious. Although I do see him almost every single week in that same yellow hoodie with a single stripe across the chest, like some unofficial game-night uniform he always dons. It’s either that or the matching green one. I should start flipping a coin to guess what outfit he’ll show up in each week.
Declan glances in my direction, and his hunched shoulders relax as if he’s pretending he was unbothered the whole time. He turns around, voice lowered so that I can’t hear his parting words as he hangs up the phone, before facing me again.
“Game time?” He arches an eyebrow. “You again?”
“
You again?” I cross my arms. I can never get a read on this guy.
“Some random generator,” Declan mumbles.
“I was
just thinking that.”
Copyright © 2026 by Anna Sortino. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
