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called “a mystery ashtray,” which got hurled back into the clay bucket.
    So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don’t have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.

19. Deconstructing Xargon
    My friends Max and Shelby and I get together after school some Fridays. We believe we’re designing a computer RPG game, but we’ve been doing it for two years and it never seems any closer to completion. Mainly because as each of us gets better and wiser in our particular areas of expertise, we have to toss everything and start over, deeming the old material to be childish and unprofessional.
    Max is the driving force. He’s the one who will stay at my house long past the time my parents have patience for him because, even though he’s the computer whiz of our trio, his own computer is a piece of garbage that crashes if you whisper the word graphics within a three-foot radius.
    Shelby is our concept queen. “I think I’ve figured out the story problems,” she says this particular afternoon. Like she says just about every time we’re working on this. “I think I need to limit the characters’ bio-integrated weaponry. Otherwise every battle is a bloodbath, and that’s boring.”
    “Who says bloodbaths are boring?” Max asks. “I like bloodbaths.”
    Shelby looks to me for support, but she’s looking in the wrong place.
    “Actually, I like them, too,” I tell her. “I think it’s a guy thing.”
    She glares at me and throws me a few pages of new character descriptions.
    “Just draw up the characters and give them enough armor so not every blow is a mortal one. Especially Xargon. I’ve got big plans for him.”
    I flip open my sketch pad. “Didn’t we promise to stop doing this if we ever started to sound like nerds? I think today’s conversation is the official marker of that moment.”
    “Oh please! That moment came last year,” Shelby points out. “If you’re so immature that you’re afraid of being labeled by morons, then check out and we’ll find another artist.”
    I’ve always liked the way Shelby tells a person exactly what she thinks. Not that there was or would ever be anything romantic between us. I think that ship sank in dry dock for both of us. We like each other too much to become awkwardly involved. Besides, our three-way friendship allows us benefits. Like the benefit of finding out from Shelby stuff about the girls Max and I like, andbeing able to tell Shelby whatever she needs to know about any guy she likes. It all works too well to ever mess with.
    “Listen,” Shelby says, “we don’t live this stuff, it’s just a hobby. We indulge a few days a month. I, for one, do not feel socially stifled by this.”
    “Yeah,” says Max. “That’s because you’ve got plenty of other things to stifle you.”
    She hits him hard enough to send the wireless mouse flying from his hand across the room.
    “Hey,” I yell. “If that breaks, my parents will make me pay for it. They’re big on personal responsibility.”
    Shelby looks at me coolly, almost glaring. “I don’t see you drawing.”
    “Maybe I’m waiting for inspiration to occur.” But inspired or not, I take a deep breath, and read her character descriptions. Then look at the blank page of my sketch pad.
    It was a problem with empty space that led me to art. I see an empty box, and I have to fill it. I see a blank page, and I can’t leave it like that. Blank pages scream at me to be filled with crap from my brain.
    It started with doodles. Then the doodles grew into sketches, the sketches grew into pieces, and the pieces are now “works.” Or “oeuvres,” if you’re really pretentious, like some of the kids in my art class who wear berets, like somehow their brains are so creative, they need a covering more unique than anyone else’s. My own “oeuvres”