So on Monday, there was no repeat of that power hit. No ice in my veins, no lost time. It was just a normal exhausting practice. But it cleared my mind for a while, which was a good thing. I didn’t have to worry whether or not I had some weird undiagnosed color blindness, or if I was losing my mind from too much brain-rattling.

Then, when I got home, new drama.

I discovered that my brother, Hunter, had erased my game file for WarMonger 3 to create a new file for himself.

“I didn’t mean to,” he pleaded. “It didn’t tell me it was saving over your file until it was too late.”

This might seem microscopically unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but at the moment, I wasn’t about grand schemes—and in the minor scheme of me, it was a big deal. WarMonger 3, as I’m sure you know, is one of those games you wait years for, and is so complex, you spend maybe six months trying to beat it. I was well into my fifth month.

The game has three “save” slots, two of which were already hogged by other campaigns that Hunter was running. When you try to save over an existing file, the game asks, “Are you sure you want to obliterate this file?” and if you click “Yes,” it flashes a big red stop sign, which I suppose is now blue, and says in all caps, “WARNING! IF YOU ERASE THIS FILE, IT CANNOT BE UNDONE.” So basically only a total idiot could accidentally erase it. And in spite of the fact that I would often call him one, Hunter was not a total idiot. Which meant he might have done this on purpose.

“I always click too fast, without reading,” Hunter blurted. “You always say that.” His face was flushed as he spoke, he kept his distance, and he stayed on the balls of his feet in case I lunged at him, and he had to make a quick escape. I couldn’t tell whether the redness in his face was from him being upset with himself, or if he was trying to make me think he was upset with himself.

My first instinct was to pound him, but I had to restrain myself. Hunter was three years younger than me. Exactly so—we both have the same birthday, which neither of us liked, since neither of us was big on sharing. I had hit my growth spurt, but he hadn’t, and I was so much bigger than him now, hitting him could do some real damage.