Girl Mans Up

There are four of us dudes sitting here right now, and I kick all of their butts when it comes to video games-and I’m not even a dude in the first place. Maybe I’m being a little cocky here, but it’s true. My brother says I’m a little psycho, loading my gun and rushing for the middle of the battle, and yeah, sometimes I end up getting my butt kicked. But usually he’s there, covering me with his sniper skills, so we both come out on top.
“She’s cheating,” Garrett says to no one in particular. “Oh sure, I’m cheating,” I tell him, keeping my eyes on Colby’s forty-six-inch TV screen. “Obviously I must be cheating.”
“You put in the codes, or you’re using the glitch, but that’s still cheating,” he says, then to Colby, “Am I right?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Colby says from somewhere behind me, probably sprawled on his bed. “Except, she’s not cheating.”
“She legit plays that game all weekend with her brother,” Tristan says.
“And dude,” I tell Garrett, who’s somewhere on the floor to my left, “they fixed the update for that glitch last month. You can’t bust open the factory door anymore.”
“Fine. So you were taught well,” Garrett says.
“I taught myself well.”
Garrett laughs and I roll my eyes at the TV. He’s such a douche, but he can’t even try to knock me down in the video games department. I’m on the couch at the foot of Colby’s bed, Tristan next to me. When I first got here, I thought it was just going to be Colby, Tristan, and me hanging out. But Garrett’s sweaty butt was parked in front of the TV trying to complete this ambush mission in War Zone 3, and he was ready to whip the controller at the TV because he stupidly put it on the highest difficulty. So he dared me to do better, and I did. Twenty minutes later, I’m still playing and they’re all watching me.
“You watched me take over for you,” I tell Garrett. “Did you see me enter any codes? No.”
“Penelope, I wasn’t watching you the whole time. I was distracted by the Doritos, and we all know girls are pretty shady.”
Colby lets out a chuckle, which almost pisses me off, but Garrett’s always saying stupid things about Tristan and me to make Colby laugh. Like last month, when he was going off about how I should’ve picked the girl character in Slashko, when meanwhile it’s not even a question that none of them would ever pick her even for her better default weapons. I pick the guy characters because they never make girl characters that look like me. They make them hot, half-naked, and full of makeup-which is nice to look at, but it’s not me.
“All right now, calm down, Penelope. Is this your time of the month? Because I don’t – ”
“Suck it, Garrett,” Colby tells him before I can throw something back myself. “Period jokes? That’s lame.”
“All right, all right,” Garrett says. There’s silence for maybe twenty seconds and then Garrett’s at it again. “So, Colby. Would you say that Penelope is better than you at this game?”
“Well, she’s definitely better than you,” Colby says, and I grin like, ‘In your face, Garrett’. I hear Colby roll off his bed. “This is boring. Let’s go out.” He walks right over to the console and shuts it off on me, but I don’t say anything because we all know when Colby’s done, we’re all done.