Childhood's End.

And suddenly, just like that, Bully was over.

I figured once the "wronger" side of the tracks opened up, the end was near, but suddenly I was on the last mission of the game, running around in a sillier version of the riots at the end of GTA: SA, and then out the other side, watching the credits roll. I wasn't ready.

The game doesn't really end, of course--you get to go around and do all the side missions you might have missed, kiss the girls and guys you might not have kissed, and loaf around Bully style, and I thought I'd spent a week or two doing just that. But after collecting the remaining three photos for the yearbook, I popped the game out of the PS2 and looked to one of the new games I'd compulsively ordered online despite my tremendous backlog. (More on that later.)

I haven't written off Bully--just the other day, I found online the list of guys you can kiss, and I'll be damned if I'll put the game away until Jimmy's kissed 'em all--but I worry that, despite my writing that (and believing it), it may be a while before it ends up back in play. GTAIII is the only sandbox game I continued to play for any duration once I ended.

True, a few times I booted up GTA:SA (because I still hadn't scored with that crazy martial arts chick) but it was disquieting and odd. I'd shoot some hoops or wreck some cars while waiting in between dates, but, sounds of gunfire aside, it felt far too much like when I go home to visit my Dad in Humboldt County: I find myself nostalgic and unsettled, surprised by how small and how quiet everything feels. I had C.J. shoot hoops in his old neighborhood and he looked lonely and alone, an old fart trying to figure out why it all feels different when absolutely nothing's changed. I don't want that to happen with Bully, but I worry it's gonna be the same. I'll boot up Bully, send Jimmy in search of Cornelius, or a frisbee, or a butt to pinch, and suddenly he'll be the kid who went away to college and came back the next summer, slightly skeevy in his cocky dedication to do everything (and everyone) he couldn't do the first time. And I think I'll maybe be able to handle that for about two hours before I shudder, turn off the machine and find a new game. As with life, so with art.

But it was a nice childhood while it lasted.