Free Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) by Tom Germann Page A

something. I nodded at her and she was off and running like a shot. I couldn’t help checking her out.
    We started gaming together three years ago, and playing and it had been weird. Tina wasn’t as well-off as we were, with both her parents working lots, but we lived in the same neighbourhood and had played together since we were kids. Her house was a bit more run-down than the others, and when they had renovated, they didn’t put the latest high-tech gadgets in for monitoring homes like everyone else had. But they were really nice people and had barbecues in the summer for the neighbourhood kids. Those of us that were around, anyway.
    I think they would have let Tina come and play once in awhile but they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on silly things like that. They had her playing musical instruments and studying all the time.
    My parents chose a different path. Dad was gone a lot and Mom “managed the home fires,” like she used to say. As long as my grades were good, I got to come to the gaming centre regularly. She hadn’t liked the VR game until she really looked at it and did some online research. I worked out at home, ran, played tennis, and the gaming was allowed because of the physical fitness side and the hand-eye coordination that was improved on.
    Tina’s mom helped out with the local community groups and at church. She was always helping someone somewhere and knew the rest of the local moms pretty well. Everyone worked together. My mom liked Tina and liked having a “smart young woman like that” studying with me. She said it kept me on my toes and I worked harder and did better.
    The first time we all came to the centre, Tina sort of tagged along and then went in with us. One hundred dollars is not that much anymore, at least according to my parents and grandparents, compared to back in the day. Today, to play ten minutes of a VR game like that, it was cheap. To go once a week and then hang out after was okay. But that day, Tina grumbled and got angry when she found out that my mom had paid for her to get in. Tina made her own way in the world and didn’t like charity.
    My mom looked at her and me. She asked us both to sit down in the living room for a chat. It was kind of scary to realize how short both of them were, even though Tina was just about as tall as my mom at age twelve. My mom pulled my reports up on the living room screen and I was embarrassed, but mom pointed out how my grades were higher when Tina and I worked together. When they dropped after Grandmamma died, Tina had helped me get through it and my grades came back up. The school had told my mom to drug me and expect a bad year.
    It was a bad year, but I had recovered way faster than I should have, and my mom was not a big fan of drugging kids to make them feel better.
    I could never forget my mom sitting there talking to Tina like she was an adult and waving a finger at her. “You helped Tim get through all that and more, and help keep his grades up. That gaming is actually better for you, and look how everyone is getting so much exercise now! It keeps you out of trouble, and really, I am not worried about treating you, so suck it up, Tina!”
    Tina tried to grumble, but my mom is way too cool for that. Tina ended up giggling and saying thanks and that was it. We were a team. Jeff and Steve were old friends and we fit together just fine.
    We just kept going. A few weeks ago, Tina’s father had a heart attack and was recovering, but didn’t have the best insurance package out there. The new nannite strengthening that was out was top-notch and did great things, but it was expensive. They couldn’t afford it, but were working through it.
    Mom did everything she could to help Tina and her family out. Tina had an open invitation to sleep over at my place (in the guest bedroom, with my mom glaring at both of us as reminders of house rules). She had taken us up on that a few times, and we had the barbecue at their place two weeks