Pwned (3 page)

I was a cheerleader. I was allowed to be dramatic.

Right now I’m in Southern California. The desert part, not the pretty part. It gets cold sometimes but mostly it’s just hot and miserable. But pretty soon I’m moving up to Oregon so I bet I’ll be complaining about the cold in a few months. What can I say? I’m just a whiner
, he typed.

As I read his message, I paused.

He was moving to Oregon? Oregon as in,
my
Oregon?

My initial reaction to this news was joy. How awesome would it be to have a
guildie so close by? I would have someone I could actually talk to in person about the game.

Then I realized what that would mean. There would be someone close to me who knew about my nerdy gaming obsession—someone who could most definitely tell my friends about it and ruin my reputation, which I had spent years building up.

I
could be the one being stuffed into a locker soon rather than the one doing the stuffing!

Okay, so I never stuffed anyone into a locker. But I had stood by and watched Tawny do it numerous times. I knew it wasn’t pretty.

The worry that I could be “outed” crept over me like a cold chill . . . but only for a second.

I was having a seriously blonde cheerleader moment.

Of course Parker wouldn’t ruin my reputation, because what were the odds that he was moving to my town? Pretty slim. Oregon was a big place. It wasn’t like if you moved here you were required to move to Albany. This logic helped me to relax. My status as popular cheerleader who would never play an online game was safe.

Right
?

3.
The Raid Boss Versus Spiderman

Tawny was pacing up and down the locker room like a woman possessed. We were still out of school on winter break, but we had commandeered the locker room and the gym for practice.

Most of the time Tawny lacked any sense of enthusiasm while within the confines of the school, but today was different. Today she was discussing how we, as The Squad, would haze the girls trying out for next year. Any opportunity for humiliation, blackmail, and general chaos always put Tawny in a good mood.

“What if we told them they made the squad . . . but really . . . they didn’t,” said
Beckie with a triumphant smile, obviously quite proud of herself for what she thought was a brilliant plan.

Tawny turned a vicious look on her.

“That’s a great idea, genius,” she said sarcastically. “Do you even know what hazing is?”

Beckie
looked confused for a moment, possibly not catching onto the sarcasm in Tawny’s voice. I would never call Beckie stupid, but more than once I’d heard her say that she wasn’t “the sharpest crayon in the box,” combining both the massacre of two well-known sayings with her own ability to unwittingly prove her point.

“We need something that will make them prove they really want the glory that comes along with being part of The Squad. It’s got to show that they’re one of us,” Tawny stated, the maniacal gleam back in her eye as she continued to pace.

I sat quietly on the bench, pulling stray pom-pom strings off of my uniform. I did have a pretty brilliant idea for hazing that I knew Tawny would love, but somewhere deep inside I knew it would be pretty harsh to whomever the poor victim turned out to be. I didn’t consider myself a mean person . . . I just had a reputation to live up to at times. Keeping my mouth shut right then, for example, was one of those moments where I proved to myself that I could be nice.

“Reagan?” Tawny said suddenly, turning all the intensity of her brown-eyed stare on me.

“Yeah?” I asked distractedly, lost in my own thoughts of how noble I was being.

“Do you have any ideas? You were the brains behind our sophomore year hazing. I’m sure you can think of something.”

Now the whole team was looking at me hopefully. Looking to their leader for advice. I scrambled for something to say, trying to think of a way to haze the girls that wouldn’t end in possible arrests.

“Don’t you think we should give some of the other girls a turn to prove their brilliance?” I asked, trying to get myself off the hook.

“Brilliance?” Tawny replied, raising her eyebrows at me as if I’d lost my mind. She did have a point.

“Well . . . I do have one idea. But it’s kind of iffy,” I said cautiously, hoping they wouldn’t get too excited about it.

Tawny was standing there, posing like a supermodel with her hip jutting out to one side. I couldn’t tell if this was her look of intense concentration or if I had completely lost her. Either way, it was ominous.

“So before the last basketball game in March, we always have that big rally, you know? We get out of class for it and everyone has to come.” Tawny nodded slowly; she was definitely listening. “Well, what if each of the girls from the junior varsity squad that we’re considering moving up has to pick a boy out of the stands to come and cheer with them. Obviously this will make them look dumb . . .”

“But how is that hazing the girls? They have to pick guys out of the crowd anyway,” Tawny interrupted, obviously unhappy that my plan wasn’t meeting her expectations.

“Well, right before they go to get the guys, we give one of them a note to pass on. They won’t know which one of them will get it before they go up, so to prove they’re up to the challenge, they have to agree to it before knowing if they’ll even be taking part,” I said, not sure if I was explaining myself very well.

“I don’t think I get it,” Beckie chimed in, though she wasn’t the only one who looked confused.

“Like Russian r
oulette,” Tawny said with a wicked grin, looking as if she played her whole life like a game of Russian roulette. “But what does the note say?”

“It’ll say something intriguing. Something good enough to convince the unlucky boy to meet our candidate somewhere on campus after the school is locked,” I explained, actually forgetting how mean my plan was and feeling pretty proud that I had thought of it all on my own.

“Skinny dipping,” Tawny said knowledgably. I laughed and shook my head at her. Only she would come up with that so quickly.

“All right, skinny dipping.
So I guess that means we’re going to have him meet this cheerleader at the pool after hours.”

“And this is where it gets good, I’m guessing,” Tawny said excitedly.

“Oh yes,” I replied. “So the boy goes into the pool area to wait for our cheerleader. Meanwhile, we mess up the hallways—spray-paint, tip trash cans over, throw stuff all over the floor. Pretty much make it look like some drunk teenager had a party in there. Then we lock the doors to the pool area, pull the fire alarm, stash the spray-paint cans in his locker, and get out of there before the cops show up,” I finished triumphantly.

For a minute no one
said anything, and I started to wonder if my brilliant plan wasn’t really that brilliant after all. It was just as well really. That meant I wouldn’t have to feel guilty knowing I was the mastermind behind such a heinous act.

“It’s perfect,” Tawny finally said, sealing the fate of our future victim with those two words. “That kid is definitely going to get arrested for that. What better way to prove you really want to be part of The Squad? I love it!” She came over and gave me a hug, which proved to be a little awkward since I was sitting on the bench holding my uniform up to inspect it for any remaining pom-pom strings.
“And
that
, girls, is why she’s co-captain.”

I smiled at the compliment, feeling proud of myself, even though I knew I should be feeling about as proud as a thief who steals cookies from Girl Scouts
.

+++

“I’m glad we’re pretty much the same person, Reagan,” Tawny said as we walked into our favorite café to grab a quick lunch after our very relaxing pedicure. “It makes it a lot easier to be your friend.”

I laughed and looked over at her, never quite sure when she was joking and when she was being serious. Today it looked like she was being serious.

“Glad I could help,” I replied, shaking my head.

We got quite a few head-turns as we walked through the café doors. Even though we could have changed out of our uniforms after practice, Tawny and I would sometimes wear our cheerleading uniforms outside of school in order to remind
people that we were important.

At least, that’s how Tawny put it.

I kind of thought it showed people that we were completely self-obsessed, but it wasn’t exactly my place to point that out to her. My job was to nod and smile at everything she said so that I could get through my high school career as peacefully and confrontation-free as possible.

“I’m being serious. If I had to pretend to be friends with any of the mouth-breathers on The Squad, I think I’d throw myself off a cliff.
Or one of them. Whichever was easier,” she remarked thoughtfully as we took our place in line behind a lanky boy with messy light brown hair and thick black rimmed glasses.              I couldn’t quite tell if this boy was actually a geek or if he was one of those hipsters who wore thick geek glasses ironically.

“Oh good, we get to join the ranks of the unwashed,” Tawny said dryly as we stood behind her next unfortunate victim.

The boy turned slightly at this comment but pretended he didn’t hear. I could tell he was trying to ignore us by the way his light brown eyes locked on the ground like it was a security blanket.

Poor geek.
He hadn’t figured out a good way to survive high school yet, like I had. I sort of felt like my whole four years of high school was one epic quest where I had to disguise myself as a cheerleader in order to infiltrate the ranks of the enemy and make it out alive.

I guess it wasn’t as easy for boys. In order to
“pretend” you were a jock, you’d actually have to play sports. That did require some level of athleticism that this boy probably lacked.

His dorky appearance was definitely all Tawny would need to launch her next attack. He reminded me of Andrew Garfield (
Spiderman
being another nerdy, under-wraps interest of mine). Between his thick glasses, messy hair, fitted jeans (that were actually surprisingly cool, though that probably hadn’t been his intention), and his stupid black T-shirt that . . . wait.

His stupid
black T-shirt just like the one I happened to own in a fitted girl’s top!

It was a
Voyager’s Quest
shirt showing the title of the latest expansion. An involuntary smile played on my lips as I stared at the boy with newfound respect. He glanced at me for a moment and his brown eyes widened at my unexpected smile before he quickly turned away again.

Unfortunately
, my little lapse in self-control caught Tawny’s attention right away. She eyed me suspiciously, as if I had just asked if being popular was really all that fun. Was my cover blown?

“That’s the new kid,” she whispered in my ear, causing me to jump. “He starts in January and should be
dorking up the hallways in no time.”

“Oh,” I said noncommittally, hoping I could recover from my accidental mental jaunt into my other life.

How on earth did Tawny even know about new students? It was like she hacked into the school’s records every night to make sure no geeks were infiltrating our ranks without her knowledge. She was like an evil overlord. Or a raid boss.

I bet we’d need a full twenty-five man raid to take her down.

“How about I give him a proper welcome?” she asked venomously.

She didn't wait long enough
for me to tell her it was a bad idea. I couldn’t just throw a fellow gamer under the bus, could I? Before I could form a convincing sentence, though, the boy picked up his tray of food from the cashier and started to turn to look for an empty table, unaware of Hurricane Tawny heading right for him.

She stood right behind him so that the second he turned around
, all she had to do was give his tray a little bump, sending it crashing to the floor and all over him.

“You idiot!” she yelled at the boy
, who now wore an expression of pure shock.

The poor geek had probably never been this close to a cheerleader before, especially not a screaming psycho cheerleader. And Tawny was the leader of
that
particular pack.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered, still looking very confused and undoubtedly trying to figure out how
her
bumping into
him
was his fault.

It totally wasn’t, by the way. That’s why he couldn’t make heads or tails of what was happening at that particular moment.

“You could have ruined my uniform,” she screamed, looking livid and—quite frankly—terrifying, even me.

“I didn’t . . .
you weren’t,” the boy continued to stammer, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

It was a sad sight
, to say the least, and I did feel a pang of guilt, since I had probably provoked this little outburst by smiling at him. That was exactly why I wasn’t nice to people. Tawny zeroed in on any kindness like a hawk and devoured it.

Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic. But that’s what it felt like most of the time. That’s why it was best for me to keep my head down and get through high school so that I could go to college and actually be who I wanted to be.

Cowardly? Yes. Effective? Totally.

“Why don’t yo
u go back to your foster parents’ basement and save us all from having to look at you, fatty,” she said, even though this boy was probably six feet tall and 170 pounds.

Far from fat.

That just happened to be Tawny’s insult of choice, no matter what her target looked like. It was probably because you could tell even the skinniest of girls that they looked fat and they would believe you. I wasn't sure how effective the insult was on boys, but that didn’t seem to bother Tawny at all.

The boy stared at her in horror, caught between his indignation at her outburst and the overwhelming desire to run from the scene before the chocolate sha
ke started to drip from his now-ruined
Voyager’s Quest
shirt onto the floor.

“Well, go,” Tawny ordered
, sounding like this boy was too slow to understand what she was demanding.

He didn’t say anything, which surprised me a bit that he wouldn’t even stand up for himself. Instead
, he left his tray of food on the floor and walked out of the café in a controlled rush that looked like it wanted to be a full-out sprint.

“Loser,” she said with an eye roll
, before calmly walking up to the register to order her lunch.

She might have been my best friend, but she was kind of the devil
.