Words by Nam Nguyen Illustrations by Mia Carnevale
H
eartgold and Soulsilver were the perfect Pokémon games. My favourite detail about them, and I can’t understand why the developers never reused it, was that your lead Pokémon would walk behind your character. Such a minor feature sparked such joy and immersed me so well in that universe—a reminder, dear player, that through this world’s trials, you will never walk alone. I haven’t played Pokémon Heartgold in years, but the nostalgia stays, entangled with my memories of you. You’re still on my team, you know. “On the night of a full moon, if shadows move on their own and laugh, it must be Gengar’s doing.” We became friends in Grade 10. For a semester, we and three other boys congregated at 9:35 each morning, too early for the cafeteria to bother serving food, and we fought to survive Lord of the Flies-style in this forgotten lunch hour compelled by our overcommitted class schedules. In the mutual struggle, we dubbed our quintet the USSL or “United Socialist Second Lunchers.” That’s how I got to know
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you. Our unabashedly nerdy high school cultivated eccentric tastes and yours were no exception. You were an excellent student who worked hard but played hard too, in every sense: played Sporcle quizzes in the library, played tennis on the school team, played trombone for the jazz band, played Dota 2 online. Thus, I anticipated stiff competition when we started bringing our DS to school; I wouldn’t stand a chance against you without learning a lot more of the Pokémon Gen 4 meta. “The leer that floats in darkness belongs to a Gengar delighting in casting curses on people.” My post-secondary life has been less digital thanks to the dual analog experiences of theatre and social drinking. I was doing the latter at a trendy fusion bar in Queen West last fall when a friend mentioned that your funeral had been the previous week. We moved through the platitudes in reaction: “So young.”“It got bad fast.”“He was such a nice dude; great tennis player, too.”“But he’d just started that treatment. That sucks.” “Didn’t he trade me my Gengar? You know, the
