Pwned

  I smiled and shook my head in the quiet confines of my room. The book he was referring to was a new hardcover guide to the making of our beloved game. Beyond that, though, it held all sorts of exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes photos, and insider information on the next expansion. Parker was such a nerd, but I had to admit, I was jealous that he’d gotten his hands on a copy.

  That’s awesome! Isn’t that thing like a million dollars? I asked, not wanting to sound rude, but still curious, since I had looked into getting it myself but found that I couldn’t quite afford it. The brilliant marketers at the Voyager’s Quest headquarters had decided the book needed to be leather bound to make it look legit. It definitely did, but it also made it way too expensive for most gamers who would actually buy it.

  It pays to be born, I guess, he answered. So are you excited for the Valentine’s Day achievements?

  Only a true gaming nerd would be excited for an in-game holiday rather than the actual holiday.

  I don’t think I’ll be on, actually. I think my boyfriend and I will probably go get dinner or something, I typed as I sipped at my giant glass of ice water, vaguely aware that the doorbell had just rung downstairs.

  Wow, you really do have a life, huh? I think I might be the only one who’ll be on! Sovay is . . . well . . . odd, so I don’t actually know if she’ll be on. Kaydinn and Eilarae are married, so I’m sure they’ll go out, and now I find out that Xandris has some big fancy boyfriend, he answered with a smiley face.

  Well, what about you? Don’t you have a girlfriend to go buy flowers for? I asked, half trying to make small talk, but mostly wondering if I could somehow use this information as leverage to stop Tawny’s scheming.

  “Reagan, you’d better be awake and decent because we’re going out,” I heard a very unwelcome voice saying right outside of my bedroom door.

  I could hear Tawny’s heels clicking on our wooden staircase as she made her way to my room and all of the feeling instantly drained from my body.

  “Crap,” I said under my breath, knowing that properly exiting out of the game would take a good few minutes.

  Realizing I had no choice, I ducked under my computer desk, hitting my head on the way down, and pulled the power cord out of the wall violently, sending a few sparks flying across the dark space. I brought my hand up to my eyebrow where a small cut sent a stinging sensation down my cheek just as Tawny opened the door, fully decked out in party wear.

  Looking from her bright red high heels all the way up to her voluminous rock star pony tail, I could see confusion all over her face. I had been quite the expert at hiding my little nerdy obsession from her for years. All of my gaming magazines and software were stashed in my underwear drawer like the dirty little secret they were, but I had never gotten this close to actually being discovered playing the game.

  “What are you doing on the floor? Did you already go partying without me?” she asked, searching my face for signs of a hangover even though she knew full well that I didn’t drink.

  “I was . . . there was a bug. Down here. I was trying to uh . . . smash it?” I asked, not really meaning that last part to be a question.

  “Ohhh kayyy,” she said slowly, making it very obvious that I was being uncool right now. “Anyway, get up and get dressed. I want to go out and do something.”

  “Ugh, right now?” I asked, looking over at the clock.

  It was only ten o’clock on a Saturday night, but I had already made plans with myself to play Voyager’s Quest all night. Plans with yourself are the kind you just can’t break. It messes with your entire schedule.

  “Wow. That was rude and kind of lame,” she said with a raise of her eyebrows.

  Her lip curled up as she looked at me the way she’d often look at the junior varsity cheerleaders.

  “Sorry, it’s just that I haven’t been feeling all that great lately,” I quickly amended.

  “Yeah, I can tell,” she answered slightly venomously, her eyes roaming over my baggy black sweat pants and hot pink tank top. “Not exactly keeping up appearances here, are we?”

  Now, I had known Tawny for a long time so I knew all about her rudeness, but this level of undeserved rudeness was different. It definitely wasn’t like her. She never treated me that way.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, hoping to turn the heat of her death glare away from me and onto the real problem, whatever that might be.

  “Peachy,” she said in a dry monotone before turning away from me and storming back down the stairs and out the front door.

  “WTF?” I said to my empty room, sounding like Eilarae using in-game terms in real life.

  I considered going after her for a moment, but when Tawny was in one of her moods, it was best to leave her alone and let it wear off. I could hear her car screeching away from the house and had to take a moment to gather my thoughts.

  I couldn’t think of a single reason why she’d be so mad at me. I had suggested that we leave Parker alone, but that was a week ago and I hadn’t said anything about it since. That couldn’t be it.

  Deciding it would be best if I just plugged my computer back in and let it recover from my very violent disassembly, I walked downstairs to the kitchen where my little brother Cannon was painting a picture on the kitchen table.

  Literally on the kitchen table.

  He was only nine years old, but the kid was an art genius (as well as an everything else genius). I was surprised his stuff wasn’t already hanging in the Louvre.

  “Mom’s going to kill you when she sees what you’ve done to the table,” I warned, opening the fridge and trying to find some good gaming food that was still healthy enough for cheering season.

  “Why would she do that? It’s a kitchen table,” he said, waving his hand over the very large orange slice he had just converted the round table into. “It’s meant for eating.”

  He did have a point, and the way he said all of this was very matter-of-fact and convincing.

  I couldn’t honestly say if Mom would be mad or not, since the orange had perfect shading and texture and pretty much everything you’d hire a professional painter to do. It just happened to be in a not-so-typical spot.

  “Whatever. I had no part in this,” I said threateningly, pointing my carton of vanilla Greek yogurt at him.

  “Just put a tablecloth over it and don’t tell her,” he countered, his intelligent little eyes searching my face.

  “Mom! Cannon painted all over the kitchen table. Again,” I shouted, throwing him a wicked grin as I headed back toward the stairs.

  “Well played,” he said at my retreating form as I heard Mom and Dad burst into the kitchen and begin to throw a fit.

  He would probably get into trouble for that, but they would never ever replace the table. They loved that Cannon was so talented. Someone in the family had to be, right?

  When I returned to my poor computer, the screen read that my system had just recovered from a “serious error”—the serious error being my ripping the power cord out of the wall while it was running a very complicated game. Oops!

  Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any problems as the game started back up and I logged in.

  Lost Internet connection? Parker asked the second the zone I had last been in popped up onto my screen.

  Lost power, I corrected with a grin.

  Ouch. Is your computer okay?

  I gave my computer a quick once-over, not that I’d be able to tell if it was damaged just by looking at it. It wasn’t like smoke would start billowing from the back if something were wrong. It wasn’t a Steampunk computer.

  Seems to be. So you never answered my question about the girlfriend, I persisted, even though he probably had answered and I just couldn’t have seen it because I was busy diving headfirst under my computer.

  I smiled at my screen as I waited for his response . . . which didn’t seem to be coming.

  The problem with talking to people online through typing is that you never knew if you’ve offended them so
mehow or if they were just being slow to respond. I waited a few minutes, telling myself that maybe he was typing out a really long, intricate story before starting to worry that I had hit on a touchy subject.

  After all, it was probably hard for a nerd to get a girlfriend. Maybe it was something he was really bent out of shape over.

  Rekrap? I asked, hoping I hadn’t hurt his feelings, since I was apparently on a roll with unwittingly getting people mad at me tonight.

  First Tawny and now Parker.

  Cannon didn’t count because he was my little brother and it was my job to bug him.

  Sorry. I think I hear people outside of my house. I’ll be right back, he typed mysteriously before leaving me in total textual silence.

  I stared at the screen for a moment, wondering if this was paranoia talking or if he was really about to be chopped into pieces by some crazy mountain man.

  Let me know once you figure it out so I know if I should dial 911 or not! I answered after a few more moments of silence.

  Unless of course you’ve already been kidnapped. In which case I’ll just go call right now.

  Still silent.

  All right, are you done looking outside yet? You’re making me kind of anxious.

  I tapped my thumb nervously against the space bar, making my character jump a few times by accident and staring at the screen like a starving person gaping at a feast.

  Sorry, I have to go. Some idiots in a black truck just teepeed my house.

  I stopped my thumb tapping for a moment. A black truck? Like, Zane’s black truck?

  Idiots plural? I asked, trying to get some information out of him to confirm my hunch.

  Yeah. Gotta go! he said before my chat box informed me that he had signed off.

  “Reagan, why is Cannon telling me that you gave him permission to transform our kitchen table into a giant orange?” my mom yelled up the stairs while I tried to figure out the odds that the culprits behind Parker’s unfortunate run-in with toilet paper were really Tawny, Zane, and our idiot friends.

  “Has to be a total coincidence,” I assured myself as I went down the stairs to try to outsmart my genius little brother in the lying game.

  I was in for a losing battle.

  6. Epic Fail

  The next Monday, back at school, I tried to ignore the nagging feeling that Tawny was behind this latest attack on Parker. Of course, the ability to keep my mouth shut had never really been a strong point of mine, so it only took a few minutes before I confronted her.

  “So, what did you do Saturday night?” I asked, using all of my willpower to keep from adding, “after you flipped out at me for no good reason.”

  “Went out and had some fun, since you didn’t want to,” she answered with a pout.

  At least she was posing and pouting, that meant she wasn’t too mad at me anymore.

  “What kind of fun?” I persisted, trying to get her to tell me so I wouldn’t have to straight up ask.

  “The kind of fun where Zane and I go teepee that little nerd’s house as part of Operation Haze Prep,” she said, a grin now spreading slowly across her full lips.

  “Wait, you and Zane alone?” I asked, forgetting for a moment that I was trying to call Tawny off the nerd hunt.

  When Parker said more than one person had teepeed his house, I thought that meant a group of my friends, not just my best friend and boyfriend. That wasn’t okay.

  “Yeah,” Tawny answered, throwing me a look that said “So what?”

  “I thought you guys hated each other,” I said slowly, trying to find a place in my mind where it would ever be okay for my best friend and boyfriend to hang out together.

  Alone.

  Without telling me.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures and you didn’t want to come out with me,” she said purposefully. “Remember?”

  “All too well,” I answered, feeling huffy that she was making it seem like I was the one taking this too much to heart, when in actuality she was the one hanging out with my boyfriend.

  “Oh, don’t act all offended. If you would be a good friend like you’re supposed to and hang out with me when I ask, I wouldn’t have had to hang out with Captain Idiot,” she said with an eye roll.

  I wasn’t sure if I felt like agreeing with her that Zane was kind of an idiot for hanging out with her or if I wanted to stand up for him. Neither option felt satisfying, so I just sat in silence, crossing my arms over my chest and staring straight ahead.

  “Hey babe,” Zane said, suddenly appearing beside me at the lunch table.

  Speak of the devil.

  “I’m not talking to you right now,” I answered, fully aware that I sounded like a 5-year-old.

  “That’s okay, we don’t need to talk,” he replied, leaning over and placing his mouth on mine.

  I only kissed him back for a second because really, he was my boyfriend and he happened to be gorgeous. I was allowed to have a moment of weakness. In my defense, though, I pushed him away after a few seconds.

  “Still in trouble,” I stated.

  “For what?” he asked, his eyes roaming down to my short black cheer skirt.

  He was in trouble so often that it was probably difficult for him to keep track of exactly what he had done this time.

  “Why were you and Tawny hanging out last night?” I asked him, once Tawny had moved on to terrorizing other members of The Squad.

  “Because you never want to hang out on Saturday nights. Sue me for having a life,” he said defensively, running his hand over his short, dirty blonde hair.

  “That’s not the point, Zane,” I countered angrily. “You can’t just hang out with another girl on a Saturday night without telling me.”

  “Oh my gosh, Reagan, do you really have to be in control of everything? I told you it wasn’t a big deal. Will you just drop it?” he asked, looking irritated that I thought this whole thing mattered.

  Maybe I was getting worked up over everything that had been happening lately, but somehow I didn’t feel like it was okay for Tawny and Zane to hang out without me. It was always hard to tell if you were being irrational when none of your friends were on your side.

  “Okay, fine. It’s not a big deal,” I mumbled, feeling like this was anything but “all right.”

  +++

  Yeah, that’s not okay, Parker typed to me as I recounted the situation to him that night.

  Obviously I had left out the fact that Tawny and Zane were the ones who were trying to destroy Parker’s life, and I changed teepeeing to simply “pranking” in order to hide any evidence of who I was really talking about. But it was nice to have someone on my side. It made me feel more sane.

  I had tried talking to my mom about the whole thing, but just as I sat down to talk to her, Cannon dropped a jar of paint off of the ladder he was climbing to get at our ceiling fan. How he had managed to drag a ladder clear into the living room without anyone noticing was far beyond my understanding, but the boy was a genius.

  I’m pretty sure it’s never okay for a boy and girl to hang out together alone when one of them is . . . attached.

  That’s exactly what I’m saying! They looked at me like I was a crazy person for being upset! I typed, feeling completely justified in my reaction now that I had someone I could talk to about it.

  It was nice knowing that Parker was only a mouse click whenever I needed a sounding board. He was a good friend, even if I wasn’t such a good friend for being involved with all of the bad stuff happening to him lately without his knowledge.

  In fact, that made me kind of a scummy friend and I probably didn’t deserve to have someone as nice as him to talk to. But since I wasn’t about to give up my one normal contact, I’d just continue to be selfish.

  As usual.

  I say you dump them both and find some people worthy of your friendship, he finally responded.

  Like you? I asked with a little smile.

  Exactly.

  +++

  It only to
ok a few days for Tawny and Zane to stop treating me like an irrational freshman, and when they finally came around, they were as talkative as ever. Tawny was going on and on about routines for the infamous pep rally where we’d haze the varsity potentials, while Zane was busy ranting about some soccer thing that I didn’t understand.

  It was nice to have life back to normal after a crazy couple of weeks.

  I didn’t understand how I could go years without anyone finding out about my closet gaming, then suddenly have to cover my tracks at every turn. It was pure madness, and it was turning me into a paranoid person. One lunch period, Tawny said something about a game and I instantly freaked out, asking her what game she was talking about and insisting that I didn’t know about any games. It turned out she was just asking what cheers we should do for the school’s first basketball game and I instantly regretted my overreaction.

  I was definitely losing it.

  Tawny had started to spend every lunch period staring intently over at Parker’s table like a woman possessed. I had never seen her latch onto a target like that, and it was kind of frightening to witness. The way her sharp brown eyes flicked back and forth between Parker and his friends was unsettling, like the gears in her head were working overtime to come up with some horrible new punishment for him.

  I wasn’t quite sure why his mere existence seemed to bother her so much, but I decided not to get involved. I had made a pact with myself that from now on I would stay out of any “Parker Plans” and wash my hands of the situation so that I didn’t have to spend my days feeling guilty for lying to both sets of friends.

  “Reagan, I need you to do something,” Tawny said suddenly, interrupting my mental pat on the back for not getting involved anymore.

  “Okay,” I agreed, not bothering to ask what the “something” was.

  Big mistake.

  “Nerd boy over there has been holding onto that stupid book for days,” she said suspiciously.

  I wasn’t quite sure what she was suspicious of. It’s not like the book contained her deepest, darkest secrets and that he was just waiting to unleash them on the school. I glanced over at Parker, who was wearing yet another Voyager’s Quest shirt.