I wrote the petition tonight. It's two pages, typed, and it took me four days, which is about how long it took me to get a cleric from level 1 to level 20 back in March, if anybody's keeping score. (I am. That's the problem.)

The petition goes to the dean's office and asks them to let me back in for spring semester. You're supposed to explain "the circumstances that contributed to your academic difficulty" and "the steps you have taken to address them." I wrote the truth. I almost wrote "a computer game" and then I wrote EverQuest, because the lady on the phone at the dean's office said they'd had four of them already this fall and I might as well be specific. Four. I pictured four other guys in four other basements.

Steps taken: Canceled account 9/15. Job, 40 hours a week, since August. Computer moved up to the living room where anybody can walk by. Reading an actual book. Phone meeting with my advisor in October.

Dad watched the Ryder Cup all afternoon and yelled at golf, which I have never seen a human being do. The Americans came back from way behind. He said, "See? It's not over till it's over," and then looked over at me like he hadn't meant to say it out loud, and went to get a beer.

Mom's mailing the petition tomorrow from the post office by the hospital. I'm re-enrolling for January. If they'll have me.

Library card. My old one expired in 1996, which the lady at the desk thought was hilarious.

I took out Into Thin Air, about the people who died on Everest in 1996, because it was on the front shelf and it wasn't very thick. I read it in two nights. It's the first book nobody made me read that I've finished since I was maybe fifteen.

There's a part about the rule the guides had: if you aren't at the top by a certain time in the afternoon, you turn around, no matter how close you are. And people kept going. They could see the top. They'd paid all that money and trained for years and they were right there, so they kept going.

I'm not comparing a video game to Mount Everest. Nobody died of EverQuest in our basement. I'm just saying I know what it feels like to be way past the time you said you'd turn around, and see the top right there. "One more level." I said that at two in the morning every night from March to May.

Next up: The Hobbit, which I read in sixth grade. Yes, I quit a fantasy game and went straight for dwarves. Baby steps.

Day four. It's so quiet down here I can hear the furnace thinking about coming on. My right hand keeps reaching for a mouse that isn't there. Watched TV upstairs with Nicole and she let me pick, and I didn't know what anything was.

More tomorrow. Or not. We'll see.

I did it.

I logged on at seven after supper, because I told the guild I would. Everybody came to Kaladim, which takes forever, even though they had a Plane of Fear raid planned. (Plane of Fear. That's a real place in the game. My mother read it over my shoulder once and crossed herself.)

I gave Hadrik's stuff away. The shield I camped nineteen hours for in Lower Guk went to Brinna, our new cleric, who is fourteen levels behind me and a little in awe of me, which is embarrassing. The armor went to whoever could use it. My platinum went to the guild's bank mule, which is a character somebody keeps just to hold stuff. Everybody did /hug. Liriel, who is a night nurse in Oregon, typed "Go to bed, Evan" in guild chat, which is what she's been typing at 3 a.m. since April. First time I ever listened.

Then I typed /played one last time. 38 days, 14 hours. Since March 16th.

That's 926 hours. I did the math on the back of a pay stub. Fifteen credits for fifteen weeks is 225 hours in a classroom, so I played about four semesters' worth of class this year. I went to maybe six weeks of one.

I walked him to the bank and logged out there. I didn't delete him. I couldn't. He's just not anywhere now.

Then I went to the account page and clicked Cancel, and it asked me if I was sure. I sat there with the pointer on the button for eleven minutes. I timed it. Dad came halfway down the stairs, didn't say anything, and went back up. And I clicked it.

$9.89 a month. That's what it cost. That was the cheap part.

Steelers 43, Browns 0. Dad was happy for three straight hours. He called me upstairs for the second half and we sat on the couch, and he didn't say anything about school and I didn't say anything about anything, and it was the best night we've had since the letter.

Then I came back down and raided until 2:30 in the morning.

I said I'd tell the truth on this page, so there it is. The Tally was going down every week since the warehouse and I was proud of it, and then this week it went back up, and I was going to fudge it and I didn't. Forty-one hours, on top of forty at work. Do the math. I did, at the scanner, at six in the morning.

Friday I fell asleep standing up in aisle 30 and Rudy let me, and then woke me up before the supervisor came around. Rudy is 52 and has been there nine years. He said, "Kid, whatever she is, she ain't worth it." He thinks it's a girl. I didn't correct him.

I'm quitting Wednesday. I told the guild tonight so I can't back out.

Worked. Time and a half. The warehouse doesn't care what day it is, which I've come to respect.

A guy in Ohio e-mailed to ask if I really think my guild are my "real friends," in quotes. Fair question. Here's the answer.

Ogmund is an ogre warrior. In real life he fixes air conditioners in Texas and has three kids, and he's our guild leader, and he runs a forty-person raid like a shop foreman. When my grandfather died in April I posted it on the guild message board, and Ogmund logged on at four in the morning his time and just stood there with me in Kaladim for an hour, not killing anything. Liriel is a high elf enchanter and the night nurse, and she knew more about my grades than my parents did until August. Pix is a gnome wizard and a guy in Sweden doing his military service who learned most of his American slang from me. Sorry, Pix.

So yeah. Real. I've never heard any of their voices. I know all their birthdays.

That's the hard part, honestly. It isn't the game. Killing gnolls is boring. It's that at three in the morning there are forty people who are glad you showed up, and in the daytime there's a letter on the fridge.

First week at the warehouse. It's a distribution center out past the airport (not saying which one) and I'm a picker. You get a scanner gun and a list and you walk up and down aisles forty feet high pulling boxes to ship to stores. Shower curtains. Car wax. One whole aisle of those plastic jack-o'-lantern buckets. $7.25 an hour, 6:00 to 2:30.

Here's a thing nobody tells you: it's the same as the game. Walk around a big place, find the thing, get a little beep, move on. There's even a number at the end of your shift that tells you how you did (picks per hour). The difference is at the end of the week at the warehouse I get a check, and at the end of a week in Norrath I got a pair of boots.

Dad drops me off on his way in. We don't talk. It's 5:40 in the morning, so that works for both of us.

I started the Tally up at the top. Every night I write down how long I played. Honest numbers. If I've got a problem I figure I should at least look at it.

Mass with Mom and Nicole. First time since Easter. Mom lit a candle and I didn't ask who it was for.

Dinner was the worst one yet. Mom made pierogies, which she only does for occasions, and I think the occasion was she needed something to do with her hands. Dad asked one question the whole meal: "How much was spring semester?" I knew the number. He knew I knew. I said it out loud anyway, because he wanted me to hear myself say it.

He's driven a plow truck for the county for twenty-six years. He goes out at three in the morning when it snows. He didn't go to college and neither did Mom. I was going to be the one.

After, Mom said she isn't angry, she's scared, and that was worse. She calls it "your game," like it's somebody I've been seeing.

Nicole, who is sixteen and who I honestly thought didn't know I existed, came down at eleven and sat on the basement steps and said, "That was really bad, huh," and went back up. I don't know why that's the part that made me cry.

The rules: get a job. Computer stays in the basement for now, but the phone cord to the modem lives in Dad's sock drawer if he wants it to.

The university sent a letter Saturday. It came to the house instead of my campus box, and it had the dean's office on the envelope, and Mom opened it because she thought it was the tuition bill for fall.

It wasn't. It was the letter that says I'm on academic suspension for fall semester 1999, which I have known since May, because the first one came to campus and I read it standing at the mailboxes and threw it out. All summer I told everybody I was taking a few months off to work and figure stuff out. I did not work. I figured out how to get a dwarf cleric to level 44.

Spring GPA: 0.80. One C, two D's, two F's. The C was in a class with a take-home final.

So that's what this is. I'm Evan. On March 16th of this year a game called EverQuest came out, and I bought it the first day, and after that I left my dorm room for class, then for food, then not really for class. I'm writing this because I need to tell somebody the whole thing, and lately the only people I talk to are in the game.

Mom put the letter on the fridge with the magnet from the pizza place. It's still there.