Pwned (4 page)

4.
Target Acquired

In case you were wondering, the real world kind of sucks
, my screen read that night.

Rekrap
had just sent me a private message while I was leveling my character on my own. Naturally, the entire guild (all five of us), were online, even though we weren’t raiding together.

Oh really? And why is that?
I responded, ready for another funny Rekrap story.

He had such an odd view of the world that it was always interesting
to hear his account of his day-to-day life. The boy could make a TV show about his existence and it would be quirkier and probably funnier than
The Big Bang Theory
. That was saying something.

I finally got the stupid house unpacked and went out to grab lunch and these crazy cheerleaders accosted me
, he typed.

I stared at the screen for a moment, unsure of exactly what I should say to that.

Of course, the thought had crossed my mind that the boy from the café might have been Parker. But honestly? I was trying to convince myself that I was being paranoid. After all,
Voyager’s Quest
had more than 11 million active users. There had to be at least some other people in Albany who played it, right?

What do you mean?
I asked, still holding onto the hope that his message was a crazy coincidence and it wasn’t him I had seen.

I
was just getting my food and a blonde one distracted me, trying to act all nice while a brunette dumped my food tray all over the ground. I hate cheerleaders
, was his simple explanation.

Oh yeah. They’re the worst
, I replied, completely dumbstruck by the whole conversation.

Like I said, what were the odds?

“I’ve decided we should invent a plague that only affects snotty cheerleaders,” Rekrap said over our guild voice chat channel.

“Agreed,” Eilarae chimed in happily.

Done
, typed Sovay, since she never used voice chat.

“Just not the hot ones,” Kaydinn said. I heard a stifled, “Ouch!” over the microphone before he quickly said, “Just kidding” with a laugh.

Apparently Eilarae didn’t like that comment.

I didn’t say anything to the remark, feeling slightly indignant that he would stereotype cheerleaders like that, even thou
gh Tawny and I had given him a good reason to hate us. But it wasn’t fair that he thought I was trying to distract him. All I did was smile at him for wearing a shirt from a beloved game and for looking like my celebrity crush from a very nerdy movie.

Was that really so horrible of me? Smiling at a boy
, just to be polite?

My silence over the voice chat channel didn’t go unnoticed
, and soon Rekrap said, “Uh-oh. I think I’ve offended Xandris.”

“Maybe she’s a closet cheerleader,” Eilarae giggled.

Fat chance
, Sovay typed.

I pushed my chat button and laughed nervously into the microphone. “Sorry
, I was getting attacked by a high-level mob. Had to concentrate,” I lied.

“Death to the cheerleaders.
” I added that as an unenthusiastic afterthought, completely against my will. It seemed like no matter what side I was on, I was always a reluctant hostage. College couldn’t come soon enough.

I would be the first person to a
dmit that Tawny could be a bit . . . we’ll say, abrasive. I knew it, Zane knew it, and the entire school knew it. But that didn’t mean she was a horrible person who needed to die from the plague.

She was just misunderstood.

You had to know how to take her sense of humor, and obviously Parker was not the type of person who understood that she only yelled at him because it made her happy and— . . . well . . . even as I thought that whole sentence out, it sounded like a pretty weak argument.

Y
ou can’t blame me for trying though, right?

+++

School was back in session the next week, returning with a vengeance and clearly out to get us for having dared to take a winter break.

I made my way
through my classes that Monday, ready and waiting for the axe to fall. I just knew that—since I had been unlucky enough for Parker to move into my hometown (which I still couldn’t believe had happened. That had to be the most amazing coincidence ever)—he would happen to have every class with me.

As luck would have it, however, I didn’t seem to have a single class with him.
At least, no classes before lunch period.

At noon, I
walked over to The Squad’s table with a proud smile plastered on my face, feeling relaxed and relieved by my Parker-less day, even though I shouldn’t have been so proud about something I had no control over. But what did that matter? I was triumphant as I sat next to Tawny.

“The
maroon in our new uniforms looks good with your teal eyes,” she said offhandedly, not wanting to make too big of a deal about giving me a compliment, I assumed.

“Thanks,” I answered, giving her a genuine smile.

I was definitely overly proud of my ability to remain seemingly normal, despite the fact that my ugly little secret life had decided to start going to school with me. Zane took a seat next to me and draped his arm lazily over my shoulder. I quickly pushed it away, giving him a stern look.

“This uniform is brand new. I can’t have you wrinkling it with your giant arm,” I said in exasperation.

For some odd reason, everything Zane did made me mad.

I know, I know, that sounded like a bad premise for a relationship
, but somehow it worked out for us. We loved having an explosive, volatile relationship. He would purposefully make me mad and I’d yell at him over everything.

It was fun.

Sort of.

“Are these skirts shorter
, or is that just my imagination?” he asked, placing his hand on my perfectly tanned bare leg.

Ta
wny insisted on not having any “pale corpses” on the team, so sunless tanning was mandatory. That, of course, meant less time for
Voyager’s Quest
,
where I could battle against actual pale corpses.

She was such a fun sucker.

“You’re a pig,” I remarked, swiping his hand away and shaking my head at his primitive behavior.

It may be true that we only wore our uniforms to get attention
, but it was our job as The Squad to flatly refuse any attention that came our way as a result of our good looks and well-tailored uniforms. It was one of the unspoken rules that Tawny ended up “speaking” quite often.

Looking around at the various cliques at each lunch table in an attempt to blatantly ignore Zane, my eyes found Parker. He was sitt
ing with a group of nerds (it didn’t surprise me for one second that he had found his tribe so quickly) and laughing about something. Today he wore another
Voyager’s Quest
shirt—this time dark blue—with his same fitted jeans he had worn the day of “the incident.”

At least he had managed to wash
all of the chocolate shake off of his pants.

His light brown hair was messy and sticking on end again
, and his pale skin looked like it could use a few good hours in Tawny’s tanning bed, but other than that, he was kind of a cool nerd. If there was such a thing.

Tawny took a seat next to me and crossed her legs, letting her foot bounce off of mine repeatedly in an attempt to get my attention.

“You’re worse than me,” she said suddenly and without any explanation as to what in the world she was talking about.

“That’s not possible,” Zane replied
, half sarcastically. “There’s no one worse than you when it comes to the Booty Squad,” he finished, using the very unflattering nickname the football team had given us since our mascot was a pirate.

He and Tawny didn’t exactly get along on the best of days
, so it made hanging out all together difficult. I usually had to pick between the two of them on weekends.

“Shut it
, moron,” she shot back. Zane rolled his eyes at her.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, finally deciding I should interject before this little exchange got uglier than a flyer’s ankle after her supports released her too early.

“I was just thinking that Zane might like to know why his girlfriend has been staring at that dork all lunch period,” she explained, nodding to the table where Parker sat with his friends.

“Huh?” Zane answered, sounding about as intelligent as a stereotypical jock should.

“Reagan is scoping out our next target for hazing the potential varsity girls,” Tawny stated with a proud smile, even though I had never agreed to making Parker our target.

In fact, ev
en though I didn’t technically “know” this boy, he was in my guild and I was pretty sure bullying someone from your own guild was a big no-no. That meant I had just been given the almost impossible task of changing Tawny’s mind.

Tawny wasn’t exactly an easy contender to take on.

She had once gotten a brand new car out of her parents by refusing to eat or drink anything for a few days. When she had to be taken to the hospital because she’d passed out at practice, they came to visit her with a car catalog, asking her what color she wanted.

“Actually,” I began slowly, tr
ying to pick my words carefully. “I don’t know that he’s really our guy.”

Tawny looked at me like I had completely lost my mind
, but didn’t say anything yet. Instead, she uncrossed her legs and sat up straight, no longer posing but focusing all of her attention on me. That was never a good sign.

“It’s just that, he seems to have quite a few friends over there already
. So he’s like a popular nerd, which means he’ll probably have some nerd girlfriend in a week or so and wouldn’t take the skinny dipping bait anyway. You know?” I asked, finishing my argument off pretty pathetically.

“Reagan
, I think all that blonde hair dye is starting to sink in a bit too much,” Tawny said slowly.

“I’m a natural blonde,” I protested.
“Mostly.”

“Do you really think that boy would turn
down one of us for some frizzy-haired nerd girl?” she asked, obviously not really wanting an answer. “He’s perfect and he’s the target. So shut it and do your job.”

5.
Initiating Stealth Mode

For the next few days
, I spent my time trying not to look at Parker in the hopes that Tawny would forget her vendetta. Honestly, the only reason she was so intent on ruining him was because she had seen me smile at him and now thought I had somehow lost my mind and was having a change of heart about the whole “being a soul sucking cheerleader” thing.

Which,
by the way, I wasn’t.

I mean
, no one wants to be described as “soul sucking,” but in high school, it’s better to be mean and in charge of things than nice and squished under the weight of the overwhelmingly cruel girls. If you can’t beat them, join them, right? Plus, I wasn’t
really
joining them . . . just tagging along on their awful rampage.

It was bizarre to see Parker at school after having talked to him for years over the game. It was al
most like meeting a celebrity; someone you were so familiar with, yet had never met.

The weirdest thing was when I passed him in the hallways and heard his voice
, in person, without any microphone static muffling his laugh. And of course, the fact that I knew who he was but he didn’t know that I was “the blonde cheerleader who had distracted him” made me feel like some sort of creepy stalker each time we talked in game now.

It was weird to listen to him talk about
my
school while I pretended that I had no idea what he was talking about.

You’ll never guess what happened,
he typed to me one day in a private chat while I was working on my in-game profession to get enough gold to buy my new armor set. Yeah, I had the nerd lingo down. I never said it was something to be proud of, but it was definitely quite a feat.

Did you finally decide to stop trying to auction off
Kaydinn’s stuff out of the guild bank when he’s not looking? There are only 5 of us in the guild. I think he’s going to catch on at some point,
I replied with a little laugh at my computer screen.

I’m not actually auctioning it off. I just want him to think I am to see how mad he gets. And no, that’s not it,
he answered only moments later.
I just got this really nice copy of
Voyager’s Quest: The Ultimate Guide
from my mom for my birthday.

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 rathe
r 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 o
kay?” 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 plug
ged 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 o
kay?

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 scre
en 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 somehow or if they were j
ust 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 scre
en 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.