It was a bright Friday afternoon, and in downtown Detroit many couples were happily chatting and enjoying the nice day. This 80-degree weather was uncommon, even in June, and everybody seemed to be taking advantage of it. All of the children were beside themselves with joy that summer break was finally there, and they had barely been able to sit through their last day of school.

Crell hurried through the town, head down, barely noticing the weather or the people around her. Being a little overweight and wearing thick glasses had sent her on the path to being socially awkward, and because of this she had stopped trying to fit in at school in around fifth grade. It was okay though, because she really had little interest in social classes. Her passion lied elsewhere, centered in a certain small dark room beneath the nice shops of town. This place that she was so keenly hurrying towards was the Dragon’s Lair, a rundown old arcade that didn’t get much business. Crell had discovered the Dragon’s Lair around third grade, and her eyes had been glued to their machines ever since.

As soon as Crell got to the arcade, she hurried down the steps and let out a sigh of relief. The stuffiness of the little arcade was much better suited to her personality than the fresh air outside. Inside the Dragon’s Lair it was pretty dark, but not in a scary way. The arcade was a single room which was cram packed with games.
Crell was an amazing gamer, which came naturally but was also accentuated by years of gaming hours on end. Her obsession with arcade games was so serious that recently her grades had started to slip because she was gaming and spending zero time on schoolwork. This made her parents lose their already small amount of faith in Crell, for they thought videogames would get Crell nowhere in life. They decided to put in place a new rule that said Crell had to do her homework before leaving the house at night. Still, Crell visited the Dragon’s Lair whenever possible.

Jared, the owner of the Dragon’s lair, glanced up then smiled toothily as Crell walked in. “Hey Crell, how goes it?”

“It’s going good. In fact, better than normal, since school’s finally over.” Crell pulled out 50 cents from a large pocket on her cargo pants and handed it to Jared. Since Crell had been coming to the Dragon’s lair for years, Jared knew that Crell wanted a diet coke. “Thanks,” Crell said as she popped open the lid and took a sip.

Each game at the Dragon’s Lair cost twenty-five cents, but with Crell’s allowance of four dollars per week, she couldn’t afford to buy her much-needed sodas and pay for her gaming hours. To pay for her continuous games, Crell had made a deal with Jared where she received unlimited quarters (for games only) if she cleaned the shop after it closed. Every night at 10:00, Crell would come to the Dragon’s lair (though she was usually already there playing games anyways), and clean up. The counters needed to be wiped, the floor swept, the games wiped down, and all the games unplugged to save energy. Additionally, on weekends Crell would often work for a few hours each day at the counter. Crell had known Jared for so long that he was like a second father to her, so if she missed a weekend once in a while Jared would be fine with it.

Crell walked over to Zelda and inserted twenty-five cents. She started out with a few quick deaths, but after a while started to get into the game zone. Her dark brown eyes were staring directly ahead, and her brow was furrowed. Her fourth play of the game took around thirty minutes before her character was finally killed. “Darn it,” Crell said to herself as the dreaded Game Over flashed before her eyes.

The flashing Joust game in the corner of the room attracted Crell, and she headed towards it. As she walked to the game, she glanced at the Dragon Lair’s announcement board. Many flyers were haphazardly posted on top of each other, because nobody ever bothered to take down the old signs. Some signs boasted of annual gaming competitions, others of events happening around town. One in particular caught Crell’s attention. The heading read: “Got Pac-man Fever?" Below this, the poster proceeded to explain that nobody had ever played a perfect game of Pac-man since its release six years ago, and the company Midway had decided to give out 100,000 dollars to anybody able to play a perfect game. Playing a perfect game consisted of eating every single dot, power pellet, enemy, and fruit throughout all 256 levels of Pac-man without losing a single life.

Crell had never heard of a real-life challenge this big before, or at least not one that applied to her. She felt a rush of excitement when reading the sign, because she knew that not a week before she had gotten very close to doing exactly what this flyer proposed. Her game had been perfect up until level 212, when she tragically lost one of her lives by running into Blinky (yes, she did know the names of all the ghosts by heart). Playing a perfect game of Pac-man had been one of her personal goals as a gamer as long as she could remember. Some doubt crept into her mind too though, for this was a feat that had never been completed by anybody ever. How could she, a seventeen-year-old girl who had never done anything useful with her life, be better than the whole world at something?
Still, the idea of winning 100,000 dollars was enough to get Crell excited, and gave her a sort of determination. She would bead Pac-man, for inside herself she knew that she had a true gift for gaming, and that it was her calling. In fact, she always knew that being a professional gamer would be the one true job she’d love, but her parents refused to believe this. What they wanted was an intelligent daughter who would go off to college and get a math or science degree.
Crell glanced at her watch, and was pleased to see that it was only 1:30. This meant that there were still hours and hours left in the day. Last time Crell had been close to winning the Pac-man game, it had taken her around six hours. She knew that if she failed late in the game, she would have to start the game all over again. Winning would not be easy, because missing something as small as one single fruit would result in failure. Then, a strange calm feeling came over Crell. She knew that if she lost today, she would have tomorrow to try again, and the next day, and the next. This was not a onetime thing, and Crell would be allowed as many false starts as she needed.
Crell headed towards the Dragon’s Lair Pac-man game, which was shoved in between Asteroids and Berzerk.