Market Crash Mode

Marcus felt like a **zombie** walking into first period Monday morning. Three hours of ranked matches with his squad—VoidReaper, PixelPixie, and Chad_The_Bad—would do that to a person. His mom had thrust a chewy orange **vitamin** at him while he was grabbing his backpack, claiming it would help his "gamer brain" develop. He'd dry-swallowed it just to make her stop hovering.

"Bro, you look dead," Jay whispered, sliding into the desk beside him. Marcus just grunted. Jay was the kind of guy who could pull off varsity jacket energy while still quoting anime memes—that rare high school unicorn who never worried about being cringe.

Mr. Henderson was in full **bull** mode at the front of the room, pontificating about supply and demand like he understood anything about the real economy. Marcus's dad had been trying to teach him about stocks since he was twelve—**bull** markets, **bear** markets, how the whole system was basically one giant casino for people with too much money. Marcus had tried explaining crypto to his dad once, and the look on his face had been absolutely devastating.

"Dude," Jay whispered, "did you see the new skins drop? That Cyber Samurai set is literal fire."

Marcus's phone buzzed in his pocket. His streaming **cable** was acting up again—he'd been fighting with the connection all weekend, and his chat had been absolutely ruthless about the lag. Maybe that was why he'd thrown that match in overtime. Maybe.

"Marcus, you with us?" Mr. Henderson called out. The class snickered.

"Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about... market forces," Marcus improvised. Jay snorted, practically vibrating with suppressed laughter.

The truth was, Marcus was tired of performing. Tired of being the Gamer Kid™, tired of trying to balance his dad's expectations with his own actual interests, tired of calculating whether every outfit choice would signal the right thing to the right people. Maybe that's what his mom meant by vitamins—little things you had to choke down because somewhere, someone said they were good for you.

"Wanna come over after school?" Jay asked as the bell rang. "New co-op dropped. We can fix your setup."

Marcus hesitated. He could go home, study for the econ test he was definitely going to fail, and listen to his dad talk about compound interest. Or he could go to Jay's, not worry about whether his stream was lagging, and just play.

"Yeah," Marcus said, feeling something unclench in his chest. "Let's do it."

Sometimes the best investment wasn't a stock at all.