Pwned

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the fact that I had given him the key to the closet or our very wonderful but completely not allowed kiss.

  “I didn’t want you to suffocate,” I answered honestly.

  It was true that I had worried about him making it out of the stupid closet alive. So I wasn’t technically lying. Just omitting a few truths.

  “Okay. Fair enough. So why’d you kiss me?” he persisted, not letting up.

  “Oh. My. Gosh. Do you not understand the meaning of ‘don’t talk about that?’ What’s wrong with you?” I asked, finding it easier to be mean to him when I was desperate for him to stop talking.

  “I want to know if those other girls put you up to it,” he told me.

  I thought about my answer for a moment. Should I be honest with him and then hurt him even more when I let him know I still couldn’t be with him if I wanted to? Or should I lie and say they had put me up to it and get the whole “hurting Parker” thing done and over with right now?

  “Kimber told me to go kiss the geek in the closet. Something about some prank. That’s all I know,” I lied.

  It hurt to see the disappointment flash across Parker’s face, but I tried to remind myself that it was for the best in the long run. Trouble was, I couldn’t quite remember how this ended up working out for the best anymore. It was almost like I was just acting mean out of habit now.

  “Got it,” Parker said in an unreadable voice.

  I glanced over at him for a moment and sighed deeply. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that it would ruin Parker’s life if we couldn’t be together. I may be shallow, but I wasn’t that shallow. But I could recognize the look on his face just then. It was the look of someone who had been reminded that you could be dead wrong about a person’s character. It was the same look I had worn as I stood outside of Zane’s house in the freezing cold, wishing I could take back what I had seen.

  I wanted to tell Parker that even I wasn’t sure if I was a good person or a bad person anymore. That I hoped all of the mean things I had done had been because I was too weak to stand up for myself, and not because I wanted to do them. That I was trying to fix things but finding it difficult.

  But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I just said, “Sorry.”

  +++

  That night I holed up in my room, avoiding Mom and Dad. I had told them that Zane and I broke up, without giving them the unnecessary details behind the dissolution of our relationship.

  They kept insisting that we all go out for ice cream as a family since it was Valentine’s Day and I now had no plans. Obviously I shot that idea down and told them to go out to dinner like they had planned before their dramatic daughter showed up and dropped her sob story on them.

  Just because I couldn’t go out and have a romantic night didn’t mean they should be stuck at home as well.

  When I finally heard the car pull out of the driveway, and the sounds of Cannon watching the History channel faded into a constant hum, I booted up Voyager’s Quest. I knew Parker would be on, but in some small way, being online and being nice to him made me feel a bit better about how I had to treat him in real life.

  I had taken a long time to think over my current situation when I’d gotten home from school that day. Somehow, I was going to get back at Tawny. Not only for the whole “cheating” thing, but for all the years she had been mean to every person she came in contact with. I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to play out yet, but I was keeping my eyes open for the perfect opportunity.

  Zane was already taken care of, so I didn’t really have to worry about him anymore as far as my plan went.

  But then there was Parker.

  Once Tawny and I were no longer friends, would I still be on The Squad? I was co-captain after all. I couldn’t just quit. But I knew I wouldn’t want to be forced to be with Tawny every single day, especially assuming she’d be mad about whatever I came up with for revenge.

  Having Tawny angry at you usually led to a broken ankle because she “accidentally” distracted the person holding you up during practice. I didn’t think I could handle the anxiety of constantly waiting for the axe to fall.

  On the other hand, why should I quit The Squad? Just because Tawny was awful didn’t mean I should be forced to leave. She should leave. But I knew that would never happen.

  I secretly wondered if maybe the other girls would start being nicer if Tawny left. Maybe being mean wasn’t actually a cheerleader thing, but just a “friends of Tawny” thing, and I didn’t know any better because I had always been her friend.

  Of course, that didn’t say much about me that I could hate what I was doing so much but not change because I was afraid I might upset my friend.

  Really, I could blame my bad behavior on Tawny all day long, but I was the one who hadn’t stood up for myself. It was easier to say “Look at all of the horrible things Tawny made me do” than it was to admit that I was more at fault than her.

  And so, with this realization of my own cowardice, I was still brought back to the last problem: Parker.

  I had continually told myself that I wouldn’t be able to be his friend in real life because of my reputation. But if I were being honest, I probably wouldn’t want to be on The Squad after everything went down. With that out of the way, I had to decide if I was confident enough to make the switch from cheerleader to total nerd.

  Could I really deal with the constant taunting of The Squad that I knew I’d receive? If I didn’t start hanging out with Parker, what else would I do? It wasn’t like I had any other friends outside of The Squad, mostly because everyone who wasn’t in The Squad was being tormented by us.

  I couldn’t very well leave a group of people who hated me for another group of people who hated me. So really, maybe I had no choice in the matter. I might actually be able to be friends with Parker. It would almost make up for all of the awful things Tawny was doing to him. Plus, it would be a nice change for me to have a friend who wasn’t constantly manipulating me for their own purposes.

  This could actually work out, I thought with a small smile.

  I logged on and instantly checked the guild roster to find that Parker was the only other person in our guild online.

  “I guess Sovay really did have Valentine’s Day plans, huh?” I said with a laugh over our guild voice chat.

  “Xandris!” Parker exclaimed, making me feel warm all over that he was so happy to see me. Or, I guess, hear me. “I thought you said you weren’t going to log on today.”

  “Change of plans,” I answered dully.

  “Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good. What happened?” he asked with concern.

  “I broke up with my boyfriend,” I answered simply, not sure I wanted to go into much detail.

  “I’m sorry,” Parker said, sounding genuinely sorry. “Was it because of him hanging out with your friend without you?”

  “If by ‘hanging out with my friend’ you mean ‘being a cheating scumbag’ then yes, that’s why I broke up with him. Apparently the first thing leads to the second thing,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  Like I said, I may not have been fond of Zane by the end of our relationship, but it still sucked to be cheated on. Talk about feeling unwanted.

  “Ouch,” Parker said. “Want me to use an incineration spell to burn his house down?”

  “We can just steal Kaydinn’s Comic Con tickets and tell him my ex did it. That should take care of things,” I answered with a laugh.

  “Sounds like a plan to me. Well, since you’re on, do you want to do the Valentine’s Day events with me?” he asked, making me instantly grateful for a friend who knew how to take my mind of off stressful things. It was nice to have someone who got me.

  “I think that sounds like a wonderful plan,” I told him honestly.

  “Perfect! Stay right where you are. The city is where most of the events take place. I’ll come to you,” he said enthusiastically.

/>   “Will do, chief,” I answered, giving him a little salute which he obviously couldn’t see.

  “So, can I tell you something completely random and off-topic?” Parker asked suddenly while I watched the little dot on my map that represented him get closer and closer to where I stood in the city.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  “You sound a ton like that blonde cheerleader I was telling you about,” he said, catching me completely off-guard.

  I hadn’t even thought about it when he was talking to me at school earlier in the day. I had talked to him like a normal person then, not even bothering to try to disguise my voice at all.

  That wasn’t good.

  “Wow, I hope I don’t sound as rude as her too,” I joked, even though my laugh sounded forced and awkward.

  “You don’t,” he assured me, making me wince.

  So maybe he wasn’t idealizing me like I had thought. He actually did pick up on my rudeness. Oops.

  “So she’s not as nice as you thought, then?” I asked.

  I couldn’t help myself. I knew I was in dangerous territory, but it was like overhearing people talking about you. You have to hear what they’re saying even if you don’t really want to know.

  “I still don’t think she wants to be as mean as her friends, but I’m starting to feel like it’s her own fault she’s in the situation she’s in. It’s not like it’s that hard to tell people you don’t want to be a jerk,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Maybe it wasn’t hard for people like Parker to say that, but he wasn’t friends with Tawny. He didn’t realize how intimidating she was.

  “Maybe she actually likes her friends, just not what they do,” I said defensively.

  “Doubt it. Her best friend is like the devil,” he said, using the same exact word I often used to describe Tawny in my head. “I realize that she’s a scary person and all, but at the end of the day, sometimes you just need to grow a backbone.”

  I stared at my screen angrily. He had no idea what it was like being friends with Tawny. You couldn’t ever tell her what you wanted to do because even though she was pure evil and you just hated her to pieces, she still had this quality about her that made you want to impress her. She had always been that way. You looked at her and instantly wanted to make her like you. It was terrible.

  “Maybe you don’t understand her situation,” I said shakily, trying to keep my indignation at bay.

  “When did you take her side?” he asked, making me realize I may have been a bit too adamant in my defense. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down before answering.

  “I just thought you wanted a way to see the good in her. I was trying to help,” I lied.

  “Don’t worry, Xandris, I don’t need help seeing the good in her. I can already see it. But that doesn’t change the fact that she needs to stop being such a victim of her situation and do something to change her life,” he replied with so much logic in his voice that I instantly wished it were that easy.

  He certainly seemed to think it was. Maybe he was right and this whole situation wasn’t as hard as I had thought. I just needed to stop being a coward and tell Tawny how I really felt about her.

  And I would.

  I would tell her at school the next day exactly how I felt. No revenge needed. She may have been a horrible friend all of these years, but I didn't have to stoop to her level by making some elaborate revenge trap. I would leave the scheming to her from now on. I wasn’t devious enough for it anyway. I had just been waiting around hoping that some plot would fall into my lap.

  “You’re right, she does need to do something about it,” I agreed distractedly.

  I was terrified by the thought of standing up to Tawny, but at least then I could be who I wanted to be.

  At least, sort of who I wanted to be.

  I still wanted the option of hiding behind my cheerleading uniform so that I wouldn’t have to face the true horrors of high school, but the more I told myself that, the more I realized I hadn’t actually managed to avoid the “horrors”—I was right in the middle of them. Sure, I wasn’t being shoved into a locker but I was constantly feeling awful about myself and hating life. How was that any better?

  When it came down to it, I’d choose being happy over being popular any day.

  I’d always choose happy.

  “So now that I’ve hijacked the conversation with my obsessing over this girl who’s way out of my league and probably wouldn’t look at me twice, let’s do some Valentine’s Day events,” Parker said enthusiastically, breaking up my troubled thoughts.

  “I think that sounds wonderful,” I answered honestly.

  “I guess we both have someone we’re trying to forget about, huh?” he asked. “Although I guess mine can’t really compare, since I’ve talked to her a total of two times and you lost your actual boyfriend,” he quickly amended, sounding embarrassed that he had compared our situations. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t even worry about it. I’m not exactly heartbroken over the whole thing. He was kind of a jerk anyway,” I told him honestly.

  I didn’t need Parker to feel bad over anything else because of me.

  “Hello,” he said suddenly, his avatar finally making it to the city.

  As nerdy as it made me sound, I loved my avatar in the game. She was tall and slender, with long blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail that showed her pointed ears. She looked kind of like me, minus the fact that her skin was so pale it almost looked like snow. My skin was tan from the hours Tawny and I spent sunbathing in the dead of winter.

  Now that I knew what he looked like in real life, I could tell that Parker’s avatar actually looked quite a bit like him as well. He wasn’t nearly as lanky as Parker, though. None of the male characters in Voyager’s Quest were lanky. They were all overly muscled, which Parker had complained about on many occasions.

  Of course, when I complained about the fact that every female character had a huge chest, no one seemed to think it was a problem.

  Nerd or not, boys were still boys.

  “So, do you want to start with—” Parker began, before being cut off by a high-pitched female voice in the background.

  He must have been distracted by what she was saying because he kept his finger on the talk button, enabling me to pick up parts of the conversation. “No. Tell Mom she needs to fix it. I don’t know how to sew,” he said in a muffled voice, making me giggle.

  “Oh Rekrap, I also need you to sew something for me, if you wouldn’t mind,” I joked.

  “Sorry. That was my little sister. Her doll’s dress ripped and she somehow got it into her head that I know how to sew,” he explained, sounding a bit flustered that I had heard his conversation.

  “I have a brother. I get it,” I reassured him. “How old is your sister?” I asked.

  “She’s nine, but I swear, sometimes I think she’s older than me,” he said with a laugh.

  “Ugh, I know what you mean. My brother is nine too. He’s a little genius and it makes me so mad! He just makes me look inferior,” I replied, laughing as well.

  “Siblings,” Parker said with a deep sigh.

  “Siblings,” I agreed.

  “So, do you want to do the rose garden quest?”

  I hadn’t ever done the Valentine’s Day achievements because I had always had a date that night, but now that I was single, it was all new game content for me.

  “How do you do that one?” I asked, happy for a distraction from my recent drama.

  “It’s kind of tricky, actually. You have to be in a two-person group. Once you start the quest, you’re each dropped on opposite ends of a hedge maze with roses planted all along the way. We have to navigate to the center of the maze before the timer runs out, but we also have to pick the flowers in the same order the quest giver mentioned them in the beginning,” he explained, automatically switching from his lighthearted voice to his intense gaming voice.

  I loved it.

  “That sounds pretty hard
,” I said, not sure I was up for running that particular mental gauntlet.

  “The main thing is trying to remember what order they mention the flower colors in. The maze isn’t that hard to figure out,” he said with a soft chuckle. “Besides, it’s just a world event achievement. It’s not like a raid where Kaydinn will kill you if you mess it up.”

  “So you aren’t going to kick me out of the guild if I fail horribly?” I asked with a smile.

  “I never said that.”

  +++

  Staying up until one in the morning doing the Valentine’s Day events with Parker ended up being the best Valentine’s Day I had ever had.

  It didn’t even matter that I didn’t get flowers or chocolates or a nice dinner. I ate a bag of microwave popcorn for dinner and Parker gave me chocolate and flowers in the game. It was better than any amount of time I could have spent with Zane that night, pretending I didn’t know what he had done.

  Parker really understood me. It wasn’t just having a common nerdy interest that drew me to him. It was the fact that for the first time ever, I had a friend who listened to what I said. My words actually mattered to him, and not because I was blonde or wearing a short skirt. He didn’t care about that because he didn’t know what I looked like. For him, he was my friend because he liked my personality and not because he wanted something from me.

  What a novel idea.

  It was a refreshing and unfamiliar feeling, and I was starting to get addicted to knowing that someone cared. Really, the more time I spent with Parker (in game, of course) the less I cared about “surviving” high school. It was like I had said before—if what I was currently doing was “surviving,” then my survival skills sucked.

  Why not spend time with the people I actually wanted to be with, even if it meant I’d no longer have the safety net of popularity? Honestly, popularity was kind of a joke.

  It probably sucked way more than being made fun of for being the nerd I was deep down, but none of that quite mattered yet. The “let’s all forgive Tawny” streak I had been on earlier had vanished and I was back to my original plan. I still had a job to do, and until I could knock Tawny off of her pedestal to save my future generation of nerds from her wrath, I’d have to keep playing my little lying game.