We leave with Sum of All Fears and Warrior Kings. Trevor's also got a preowned copy of Masters of Teras Kasi for the Playstation. We're driving home in his Honda listening to a tape of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. I'm thumbing through the manual for Warrior Kings. Since there's no manual to speak of in Sum of All Fears, Trevor is leafing through the Playstation booklet for Teras Kasi. He glances down as he drives.

"Hey, you can be Boba Fett," he says, looking up just in time to hit the brakes before plowing into the back of a pick up truck stopped at a light. There's a cute girl in the car next to us. I smile at her as if to say 'I know the guy who's driving almost wrecked, but I'm just the passenger, what can I do?'. She pretends she doesn't see me. She's talking on a cell phone with one hand. There's a cigarette wedged between the fingers of her other hand, which is lightly propped on the steering wheel. Her rear view mirror is angled directly at her, maybe so she can put on make-up. Or maybe she'd just rather look at herself more than the cars behind her.

"Check her out," Trevor says, "She's not a very safe driver."

"Hey, at least she's in a Volvo," I say.

"So Boba Fett can use his jetpack and thermal detonators. And he has a flamethrower, which I don't think is accurate from the movies, but, you know, gameplay and all that." The light has turned green and the car behind us honks.

"Why don't you let me look at that while you drive?" I say.

"Okay, hand me the Warrior Kings manual."

"No, you just drive."

"Oh, shit," Trevor says, hitting the brakes, "We forgot Donny at the mall." The car behind us honks again.

Donny had made a beeline for the food court when we got there. Malls are apparently where kids go in the summer when there's no school, which is why he wanted to come with us. We told him we'd come get him before we left. He asked us to pretend we were store detectives arresting him, which he thought would be pretty cool in front of his friends.

"Just come up to me and say, 'excuse me, sir, we'd like to ask you a few questions down at the station', okay?" he'd asked. But that was almost three hours ago.

"Do you think he has enough money for a cab?" Trevor asks.

"C'mon, we have to go back and get him."

"Yeah, I guess," Trevor sighs, making a three point U-turn in his little Honda.

When we get to the mall, Trevor asks me to go get Donny. "I'm going to run by EB and just check to see if it maybe came in with a later shipment, maybe FedEx or US mail or something."

I find Donny in front of the Sbarro with a bunch of other 14-year-olds. Many of them are girls. I don't remember girls dressing like that when I was his age.

"Excuse me, sir," I say in an official voice, "I'm going to have to ask you to come down to the station with me." The girls look up, skeptical. I'm wearing shorts and a Paul McCartney Driving Rain USA Tour 2002 T-shirt. I've got my EB bag with me.

"You're not a cop," Donny says, "Let me see your badge."

He didn't tell us he was going to say that. He's Trevor's nephew, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now.

"Let's go, Donny," I say, still trying to sound official.

"He's my parole officer," Donny says to one of the girls, who flutters her eyes at him.

"Hey, that's the dude that was in EB staring at boxes for two hours," says a kid with braces. He's the one who was playing Princes Leia. "My Mom said he was probably some kind of pervert since he was in there so long."

"Eww," one of the girls says. It occurs to me that when I was 14, I used to get that sort of reaction from girls a lot.

"Maybe we should call security," Donny says.

"Let's go, Donny," I say again, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." I think I heard that in a movie once. Or maybe NYPD Blue.

"Okay," he announces to the other 14-year-olds, "but if I get molested and my body gets thrown in a ditch, remember this guy."

"Jesus, Donny," I tell him as we're going back to the car, "That wasn't funny. That sort of thing happens, you know."

"Chill out. I told them you and Trevor were going to come up and do that. We were just having fun with you. What did you get?" He gestures at the EB bag.

"Warrior Kings. Trevor got some stuff, too."

"Warrior Kings? What is that, about Vikings and shit?"

Is it okay to reprimand a kid for language if the kid isn't any relation to you? I did this once at a Magic the Gathering tournament when some kid said 'goddammit' after I counterspelled his Fireball. In front of about a dozen spectators, he told me to fuck off and untap my damn cards already. I didn't know what to do, so I laughed like I thought that was really cute and then untapped my cards.

Trevor's waiting by his Honda. "Any luck?" I ask him.

"No. But I went ahead and got Heroes IV while I was in there." Trevor pushes in the Conan tape and pulls out of the parking lot. "Hey Donny, hand me the manual to Heroes of Might & Magic IV."

Donny's digging through the plastic EB bag. "You got Masters of Teras Kasi?" Donny says, "That's really gay. Plus it's for the Playstation One. Nobody plays that anymore. Hey, do we have to listen to this classical music?"

I intercept the manual as Donny hands it up to the front seat and spend the drive reading the different units to Trevor. A dragon golem, efreets, mermaids, stuff like that. I'm a little carsick by the time we get home.

We're bored with Sum of All Fears by 4pm. We lose interest in Warrior Kings a little after seven and Heroes IV won't boot up, but we're tired of sitting in front of the computer by then anyway. We end up playing Masters of Teras Kasi until late that night. We're just killing time, planning to be at EB again tomorrow. I guess we're always waiting for the next release date. There's an existential metaphor in here somewhere, but it's kind of depressing, so I just make Han Solo beat the crap out of Luke and try not to think about it.

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