LOVE AND VIDEO GAMES

The summer before college, Keegan earns a spot in his favorite game’s first big tournament—but what about his chronic pain?

Keegan’s only close friends are people he’s never met in real life: his Epic Hearts teammates on the game Pantheonic. His favorite is Alix, the boy on whom he has a massive crush. Keegan’s thrilled and terrified when the Epic Hearts earn a spot in the augmented reality tournament featuring Pantheonic’s best players. Luckily, all goes well: Keegan, who’s cued white, and Alix, who’s trans and presents Latine, are vibing. Keegan opens up about his health struggles, and Alix explains the trauma of emancipating from his family when he came out as trans. After 10 months of treatments, physical therapy, and being treated as “an irrational mess” or “overdramatic and oversensitive” by awful medical workers because he has chronic pain without a known cause, Keegan finally gains insight into a diagnosis when a teammate gives him a book explaining that his pain comes from “repressed emotion.” He feels guilty for seeking treatments that cost his parents money, and he believes the book’s advice that he “must resume all normal physical activity” and that when he has devastating pain, he should just tell his brain that he doesn’t “need a physical response to anxiety.” While some readers may find this advice useful, for others it may come across as shaming, not to mention medically dangerous.

Gaming joy and gay romance marred by an impassioned denunciation of teens seeking medical care.