Under the Dusty Moon by Suzanne Sutherland Page B

together without a plan in mind was such a great idea.
    Lucy started off by writing the scene for our opening page, and she told me to look away as she started typing frantically. Obviously she’d had an idea in mind already. I distracted myself by looking at the piles of papers and framed family pictures hung on the wall until finally Lucy told me that she was finished.
    â€œWhat do you think?” she said, leaning over me to reread her words while I looked at them for the first time on the screen.
    I’d only read a few lines of what Lucy had written before I started to get a weird feeling in my stomach. It was about a young woman time-traveller who found herself transported to an ancient Mayan village.
    â€œCool,” I said, trying to be as positive as I could. “This is sort of like an LoA tribute, right?”
    â€œYeah, I guess, kind of. But it’s just a starting point. I mean, we could go anywhere with this — the story’s wide open.”
    â€œI just meant …” Was I wandering into a friendship bear-trap ? It didn’t feel like there was any good way out of this. “Maybe we should do something more original?”
    â€œI don’t only write fanfiction, you know,” Lucy snapped.
    Definitely a bear-trap .
    â€œI know, I know. Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I said, trying to back-pedal . “I was just hoping that our game could be, you know, more personal. I mean, I thought the whole point of making our own game was to tell our own story.”
    â€œFine,” Lucy said, “go tell your own story, then.”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “We only just got started. Let’s just keep going and see what happens. I like this as a start, I think that there’s lots we can do with it.”
    â€œSure,” Lucy said, “we can copy Lore of Ages IV , scene by scene. Because that’s all you think I can do, right?”
    â€œThat’s not what I said!” I was getting mad now at how indignant Lucy was. She was just pissed that she’d been so obvious. That wasn’t my fault.
    â€œWhatever,” Lucy said, turning back to the screen and deleting what she’d written to start over again.
    I could feel anger tightening like a fist inside my head, and I was about to leave without saying another word when I remembered that I had absolutely no other plans for the rest of the summer. That Mom was about to leave. And getting another chance with Shaun definitely wasn’t going to happen. She Shoots sounded absolutely amazing, but there was no way I could go on my own. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, but I was just going to have to apologize anyway.
    I sighed and sat back down next to her. “I’m sorry, okay? I was a jerk. I’m sorry.”
    Lucy wouldn’t even look up from the screen, which was still blank. “You were.”
    â€œI know,” I said. “Forgive me anyway?”
    â€œYeah,” Lucy said. “I guess so.”
    â€œCome on,” I said, “let’s grab, like, some paper and a pen and sketch out some ideas.”
    â€œFine,” Lucy said, grabbing a pen and a small spiral-bound notebook from the drawer of her parents’ desk and sitting down cross-legged on the floor. “You’re so retro”
    â€œBlame my mom,” I said, taking a seat next to her, “she’s got me, like, stuck in the nineties.”
    We spent the rest of the afternoon brainstorming until we finally came up with an idea that both of us liked. We decided to make a game about a creepy old house, where you could explore different rooms that led from one to another. We couldn’t decide on what the ending would be, or even a name for the game, but figured that coming up with descriptions for each of the rooms and what was in them would give us lots to work on before we had to figure out what the point of it all was.
    After that, I started going over to Lucy’s