I Hesitated To Tell Anyone This Story

My superpower only worked with shopping malls and video games

Hi, I’m Stephenie Magister ✨ (follow me), and below I’ll take you through a memory I’ve kept quiet for over twenty years.

CW: CA

“Who would have thought a 13-year-old girl could make me feel better than my family?”

The first time I told someone what happened, I did it with a smile. I meant it. I still mean it.

But the girl who heard me say it didn’t smile. “Stephenie…do you know how dangerous that was?”

Video games were my one chance to connect

Todd was somewhere around 19 years old and worked at the local Diamond Jims arcade, located inside the now-closed Metrocenter mall in Jackson, MS.

I met Todd when he got that job because by then, I spent every possible day at the arcade. If you worked there, you’d already seen me. You’d probably heard about me. You may have even played me.

When it came to video games, I was a teenage goddess. When I found a game I liked, I read the how-to guides in the bookstore on the first floor of the mall.

For Mortal Kombat, I learned every special move and fatality.

For Killer Instinct, I did the same.

For X-Men: Children of the Atom, I learned how to (sometimes) get the special character Akuma from Street Fighter. I didn’t like the character that much, but a gruff-yet-kind trucker named Frank couldn’t get enough of the Street Fighter easter egg character.

“That’s my boy,” he said. “Get me Akuma.”

When X-Men: CotA evolved into Marvel vs Street Fighter, I learned the combos that kept my opponents in the air until I was done with them.

Every character had a different appeal. I liked playing as Rogue because with one kiss, her ability let her temporarily mirror her opponent’s special abilities.

How cool was it for Rogue to fight back against Ryu with her own Hadouken?

Or Ken with her own dragon punch?

Or Wolverine with her own berserker barrage???!

Most of the time, people weren’t playing against me. They were playing to see me play. They handed me tokens or stepped aside for me to teach their worst frenemy what it felt like to lose to a girl.

Those guys took care of me like their little sister. They’d never seen a girl who liked video games and was good at them. I didn’t realize it at the time, but for my safety, those friendships never went beyond the video games.

As long as we stayed at the arcade, they never could.

Todd was different. Todd wasn’t just a player. Todd was an employee.

We spent so much time together, it was inevitable we’d open up. It was inevitable we’d break the rules.

The price of entry

When I met Todd, he was dating a girl his age — late teens. They met in high school. He lost his virginity to her. He took her to prom. He fell in love.

The first time I visited his house, he took me to his bedroom and pointed at the poster of Jenny McCarthy on his wall and said that she’d kept him company until the right girl came along.

His girlfriend was the right girl. He was going to ask her to marry him.

Then she broke up with him.

This was when I still saw Todd like an older brother. This was when I thought he saw me like a younger sister.

Maybe he did. I’m still trying to make sense of it.

He said he felt heartbroken. He’d planned on marrying this girl. At 19, that was a big deal.

I’d seen how that kind of heartbreak took down my father. Could I make a difference for my friend?

The price to leave

It’s been decades, so I can tell you I spent a lot of time after hours in the arcade office. I sat next to Todd while he counted the drawers, the tokens, whatever else he did while closing down that didn’t matter to a thirteen-year-old girl.

When he told me why he looked so sad, I told him what I’d learned from movies, television shows, and every Goosebumps book I could get my hands on. The bookstore on the first floor of the mall had almost all of them.

Instruction manuals taught me how to play video games, but RL Stine taught me how to connect with people.

Keep your cards close and your final twists even closer. But when the moment comes, tell the truth.

“If she doesn’t see how good you are, it’s her loss,” I said. “You’ll find someone better.”

“Damn,” Todd said. “Who would have thought a 13-year-old girl could make me feel better than my family?”

The price to stay

I kept going to the arcade, but every now and then, I got to stay over at Todd’s place. Staying there felt like finding an oasis in a blazing desert.

The biggest event came when a friend of his needed a house sitter. Todd and his friend stayed over with their Playstation, the earliest Tomb Raider, and their thirteen-year-old pseudo-sister.

Me.

My dad and his newest wife sent me over with plenty of sliced bagels and cheese. It wasn’t just my favorite food. It was the only thing I’d eat.

Once I was at the housesitting home with Todd and his friend, the video games started and things got blurry.

The excitement escalated. The games were what they were and never would be again.

I made a joke. The two nineteen-year-old boys laughed. They warned me to stop. I made another joke. They laughed again. They got to their feet. They picked me up. They overpowered me.

They took a long piece of rope I didn’t even know they’d had.

They held me in place. They didn’t know I’d already been trained not to fight. To instead find some sort of loving or playful reason why this was happening.

Twenty years later

“Do you know how dangerous that was?”

I looked at the girl with a stunned expression. No one had ever responded like that to what I’d told her. But then again, I’d never told anyone.

Some things don’t make sense with time. A lot else doesn’t make sense no matter how long you wait. Someone has to help you in a way you can’t help yourself.

Game over

I hesitated to tell anyone this story.

I hesitated just now when writing the story for you to read it.

It feels somehow both too insignificant and too personal.

I don’t know how long the boys left me tied up in the closet. A minute? An hour? Longer?

I heard them as they went back to playing Tomb Raider.

They were laughing. Whatever had happened and whatever was still happening was just a joke.

I pushed against the ropes and felt a comfortable restraint that only now feels uncomfortable in hindsight.

We stayed there several days. They tied me up more than once.

I didn’t ask whether I wanted it to happen. I just accepted that it was.

Finishing moves

What happened didn’t seem so bad at the time. Does it ever?

In the arcade, I could always take a loss as a learning opportunity. Go downstairs, find the right book, return to the arcade empowered with knowledge.

Except when I was thirteen, I was a young trans girl tied up in a closet by two nineteen-year-old boys.

There was no instruction manual for that game.

In all the years since then, I keep hoping there never will be.

Archive footage

To see what that mall looked like in the 90s, check out these home movies I found on YouTube.

And here you’ll see the old mall now on the way to collapse.

The end (of the article)

If you like my work and want to support it, buy me a cup of coffee! For more of my content, you can follow me for free (3 articles a month) or for $5 a month (unlimited access).

I’m also an editor for best-selling and award-winning authors, but to hire me, you need to go to Stephenie Edits (offsite).