Virtually me, p.18
Virtually Me, page 18
I had chocolates for him and a new video I had made from clips I had of him. Most of them were of his intense game face as we were practicing for the competition. He watched it and laughed.
Bradley texted Jasper a music gift card with some suggestions of his favorite songs. I think most of them were K-pop.
Keiko handed him a yellow gift bag with cute matching tissue paper sticking out of the top that she had brought. “Oh, this is epic!” Jasper said, reaching into the bag. He pulled out a teddy bear wearing a yellow tracksuit.
“I made it at the mall,” Keiko said. “Push its belly.”
Jasper used both thumbs to squeeze the bear’s stomach.
“This is epic!” the bear said in Jasper’s voice.
Jasper’s eyes popped. “How did you do that?”
“Edelle helped me get a clip from your practices.”
“That’s amazing. Thank you,” he said.
“Whatever,” she said, but it was the first time I saw her totally and completely smile.
Hunter stood up with his paper grocery bag. “Mine is kind of dumb. Definitely not as cool as Keiko’s bear.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a foot-tall, two-columned trophy with a little lacrosse guy on the top. “I know you really wanted that tournament trophy, and this isn’t even close. But maybe you could hold on to this one . . . I mean, until we see if we can pull off a miracle and get you the one you wanted.” He smiled. “We probably don’t have a shot at first or second, but maybe, if we really work hard the next few days, and we rock it, we can get third.”
I realized what he was saying. “I thought you were quitting,” I said.
“I was,” he said. “I changed my mind. If you guys are still up for it.”
I nodded.
Bradley did too.
“But I still can’t play,” Jasper said. “Not for at least a couple weeks. I’m really sorry, guys. My doctors would be so mad at me.”
“Right,” Hunter said, “but we’ll still need you—and I have an idea about how you can help.”
“Is it just going to be the three of us?” Bradley asked. “Any replacement can’t be signed up for any other team.”
There was an odd pause, and then everyone looked at Keiko.
“Ugh,” she said.
CHAPTER 47
TOURNAMENT
Hunter
The stakes were high, we were in the middle of the tournament, I was trying to win Jasper a trophy, and I had a horde of alien insects trying to eat me for a snack.
Might as well be at the front.
I ran forward, spinning and shooting, hitting an alien beetle three times before it misted and I could focus on another spider.
Daebak and Vanya, or . . . Bradley and Edelle, whatever I was supposed to call them, hurried to help, firing and moving, dodging, and attacking. I could tell they were giving it their all, but they were nowhere as good as Jasper. He was still home recovering, and he couldn’t play, but we needed him.
“Watch your left,” Jasper called out. I whipped around to see a goopy alien scorpion only feet away. It took all my reflexes and speed to not be stung to death and still blast him.
“Epic!” Jasper yelled.
Jasper could join us in a spectator booth and call out directions. We had to log onto his booth instead of the entire crowd of students watching, but it was worth it. He was our coach.
“Hunter, stay in the lead,” Jasper said. “Edelle on the left, Daebak on the right.”
Jasper filled in the hole in our team.
Edelle screamed, and I turned in time to see Daebak blast another monster. Once we planned better to cover for her after she screamed, she’s done a lot better. Though the screams were still kind of funny.
“Keiko,” Jasper said, “watch out. They’re coming up behind you.”
“Ugh,” Keiko said, but then turned and blasted an alien mantis dead on, turning it to mist. She was actually a surprisingly good shot, but she never wanted to run. She liked to walk behind us.
It had taken a little bit to persuade her to join the team. But when Jasper asked, and Bradley told me to promise to drop off five packages of red licorice at her house to sweeten the deal, she gave in.
“Nice shot,” Jasper said. “That alien mantis won’t mess with Earth again.” I could only imagine what his mother might be thinking with him yelling about alien mantises.
“Whatever,” Keiko said.
“Three more coming down the left hall,” Jasper said, “Move down the right; it will get you closer to the mother ship. Don’t fight. Outrun them.”
“I hate running,” Keiko said.
We started moving down the hall, all in formation. This was taking absolutely everything I had. Running and punching, twisting and dodging. Everyone was doing their best, but I was still trying to make up for Jasper.
And the truth was, the more I tried, the more I realized we didn’t stand much of a chance to even get third place.
We scraped by in our first two events, with Jasper calling out orders. But we had seen our competition. And some of them were better than I thought.
But I couldn’t give up—this was my five minutes left in the game.
“Millipede coming at you,” Jasper said. His mom would think that was weird too. “And you guys are actually ahead of the other team. You’ve got this. You’ve got this,” he said.
We might not win, but I wasn’t giving up. Maybe this would be the comeback of the century. But if not, I think my teammates knew how hard I was trying, how I wanted to make up for how I’d messed up.
We’d see how long we could last.
And the longer we survived, the more Jasper would be yelling crazy things for his mom to hear.
CHAPTER 48
HEY, MOM
Edelsabeth
I had been editing for hours.
The video started off with me in one of my favorite shirts under my circle light. No filters.
“Hey, Mom,” I said in the video, “I thought I’d put this video together to show you a few things.”
The video cut to picture after picture of me last year from Instagram, and clips of videos from TikTok. Me with my puppy. Me hugging Kennedy. Me in my room. Me doing exercises. Me with the dinner Mom made. It even scrolled onto a picture of Parker’s website and showed a few of the pictures of me I had saved.
My voice narrated, “I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what other people thought of me. And making myself look good,” I said. “I was pretty good at it.”
Then the screen went blank.
“Then you took all that away,” my voice said. “You did it because you loved me, but I hated it.”
Vanya appeared, walking around the VR school. “When I started recording for this video,” I said, “I thought I was going to show you that I could do this, that I already knew everything about not caring too much about what I looked like. Like you were wrong, and I was right. Like I wasn’t missing anything, didn’t have any problems.”
The view came back to me. “Well, I’m not going to say that I was wrong, and you were right.” I pointed at the camera when I said the word you. “Because I don’t think you need any encouragement.”
I smirked. “But I did learn a few things.”
Music came in, but not too loud, as the video launched into different footage. First Daebak. Him smiling. Him on SkateCoaster. The two of us as little furry puffballs dancing.
“I learned that people love it when you get to know them.”
Then Daebak was dancing, the camera cutting in when he whipped his hair, and panning out when he kicked out his foot and shifted his hips. “And when you don’t spend your time trying to make yourself look good, but focus on someone else . . .” Daebak cocked his head and left arm to the side, then whirled into a 360 spin, “ . . . you just might make a friend.”
Vanya walked the halls again. “I learned what it’s like to be glossed over or ignored. And to have a lot to offer, but other people not seeing it. Not giving you a chance.”
“But others . . .” Jasper stacked huge blocks in Creation, then jumped on top of pillars in the obstacle course, then sat in his desk before science class smiling in his yellow jumpsuit. “Others will invite you to join in. And they won’t let other people kick you out.”
Keiko stood in the commons, no expression on her face. “And some people might never give you any encouragement, but they still might really, really need to receive it.”
Hunter, the virtual version, put up his glowing fists, ready to blast aliens. “And some people make big mistakes, but can also have an amazing comeback.”
The video cut back to Daebak again, laughing after he tripped a little in one of his dances. He looked down at the camera, dancing again, then covered his face. “I’ve learned that some people you used to ignore may be absolutely incredible. And they might give you a second chance too.”
Then I cut back to me.
“And I learned that being good is a lot more important than looking good.” I took a deep breath. “I know, it sounds like a fridge magnet, but it’s true.”
Me. No filter. Smiling.
“There it is, Mom,” I said. “You were right.” I blew my hair out of my eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
CHAPTER 49
NOT BAD
Bradley
I sat there looking at my phone.
Don’t judge me.
Summer was completely dead, and I was in mourning.
But I wasn’t eating Kix in my dad’s recliner—I did that earlier this morning.
I sat alone on the hard plastic bench in the commons of the real Balderstein Junior High, staring at pic after pic on my phone. They were all in a jumbled order:
—Edelle’s little sister with a chocolate face.
—An amazing picture of a giraffe made from different colored thumbtacks pushed into a board.
—A small, impressive turtle made from cardboard.
(Those last two were Keiko’s. Turns out she’s quite the artist.)
—Edelle was showing off a scarf made by some girl she met that I didn’t know.
—Daebak making the weirdest face, light bursting from his fist at an alien beetle, and Vanya about to get eaten in the background.
—Jasper coming back to school to play with us again for the first time.
—All the members of JaVaHuDaKe receiving fourth-place trophies. (Edelle’s mom had sent an email to the administration explaining Jasper’s illness, and how hard the team had tried with very little time to help Keiko learn, and how they still came together to get fourth. They decided to make trophies just for us.)
—Keiko, not smiling, standing on the sideline at Hunter’s lacrosse game. (If you look really closely, in the background you can see Ruby and Grace, but they look nothing like their avatars.)
Edelle’s mom let her back on social media, with some limits. And I liked looking at her pics. Some of it was her family, some of it was awesome stuff about other people she knew, and some of it was like my history.
“Bradley.”
I looked up, and immediately knew who it was.
“Hey,” I said, standing up, “you wore it.”
“Of course,” he said, “and it looks epic.” Jasper stretched out his arms to give a full view of his bright yellow tracksuit. Not teddy bear sized—Jasper sized. We’d all pitched in and got it for his birthday. Jasper and his parents decided that he was doing well enough to come to school in person, but he would only attend half days to begin with.
“You look good too,” he said.
It was just me, Bradley Horvath. No avatar this time.
“Thanks,” I said. I was wearing jeans, an Avalanche hat Jasper got me for Christmas, a Bubble Girls T-shirt Keiko got me, and the leather jacket Edelle and I had found at a secondhand store and then attached a whole string of little dangly things down both arms.
“I didn’t think we could wear hats,” Jasper said.
“We can’t,” I said. “I’ll take it off when the bell rings.”
“Keiko!” Jasper called out and spread his arms to hug her. She didn’t move. “Can I hug you?” he asked.
“Whatever,” she said, flatly. But as he wrapped his arms around her, a crack of a smile definitely came out.
And then I was getting a hug too, but from someone else. I think I blushed almost every time it happened. Even though she didn’t wear as much makeup and fancy clothes as she used to, I never thought I’d start off the year by getting hugged by a girl like her in the commons of the school.
I never would have guessed.
Not in a billion years.
“Two thousand five hundred and thirty-one views!” Edelle said, lifting her arms in celebration.
I smiled pretty big.
About halfway through last year, Edelle had persuaded me to start releasing my Daebak dance videos on social media outside the school. They got some traction and I got quite a few likes. But when the summer started, she convinced me to rebrand. To start new.
To just be me—Bradley.
That decision took a lot of deep breaths. But it was really working. I was connecting with all sorts of people, and views were growing every day. Who knew people might like watching this big guy move to the music? I even had this dancer from the local college duet me, and a boy about my same size say that because of me, he was going to start posting his videos too.
“You did most of the work,” I told Edelle. She was even better working with real life shots than virtual ones, like filming me dancing in front of the state capitol building, or under a streetlight, or in front of an old train.
Then Jasper started to beatbox. That was a signal, one of his favorite things to do now to challenge me. He wasn’t professional at it or anything; he was just trying to give me a beat. There, in front of the huge big glass doors of the school, all the new students coming in, he was trying to get me to dance.
So I did.
That’s right, big Bradley Horvath started to dance in the middle of the lobby at his new junior high.
Not Daebak—Bradley.
Jasper and Edelle clapped and cheered while I kept going, shifting to the left, then doing this stutter-then-turn I had been working on. (That got a rise out of them.) Keiko clapped just after everyone else, giving it a cool syncopated feel. A few people I didn’t know walked by and clapped and cheered me on. A few others even laughed a little. But I didn’t care. (It’s amazing how having a few people cheering for you makes it easier not to worry about the others that aren’t.)
I had just stopped dancing and high-fiving my friends when a booming voice rang through the school. “What’s up, people?” Hunter Athanasopoulos walked through the front doors and started giving people high fives. “Let’s get this going,” he said, and clapped several times.
His golden locks were gone. He had short hair now. He’d developed one more bald spot before they’d started filling back in. He had his hair buzzed so it could all grow back together.
In the end, I’d really liked virtual school, and I might have even stayed another year. Except I got outvoted. Everyone else wanted to go back.
And so I did it.
In a way, it was kind of like starting as a new me again. I mean, I was still Bradley Horvath, but I got invited to things, and I had friends.
And sometimes I had the confidence to dance.
“Whoa,” Hunter said, finally making it over to our group, “you can’t wear a hat to school,” he said, staring at me. “I should know.” He rubbed his hand over his short hair.
I nodded and took it off. I wasn’t really waiting for the bell, just for all my friends to be there.
Edelle smiled huge.
“Epic,” Jasper said.
Hunter shrugged. “It’s cool if you like it.”
“Not bad,” Keiko said and nodded a little.
And I ran my fingers through my bright pink hair.
Discussion Questions
1. What was your experience with school during the pandemic? Were you like Bradley, who loved doing online school? Or were you more like Edelle or Hunter, who really struggled with it? Why? What was good and what was bad about it for you?
2. If you had the chance to try virtual school, would you want to? Why or why not?
3. Bradley wanted to look different and start over. Why might that be appealing? Why might it be scary?
4. Edelle’s mom wanted her to become less concerned about how she looked. Why might being too focused on physical appearance be a problem with some people today? Why might it be nice to be less concerned with how we look?
5. Would you want to form a team and do the virtual game challenge? Why or why not? Who would you want to be on your team? Which game do you think you’d be best at?
6. If you could choose your own avatar, what would it look like? Would it look more or less like you right now?
7. Keiko was initially reluctant to go to the dance. Are you usually outgoing, or do you need convincing to spend time with lots of other people? How is being outgoing a good thing, and how is it a bad thing?
8. Jasper had some physical challenges that made it hard for him to compete in sports. If there was something you liked to do that you weren’t able to for any reason, how would you react?
9. Hunter made some big mistakes and had to work really hard to try to make them right. Why do you think it’s important to try to make things right when we make a mistake?
10. Bradley, Hunter, and Edelle all made changes in their lives based on their experiences in virtual school. Who do you feel is closest to your experiences at school? Have your experiences in school or with your friends changed you?
Bradley texted Jasper a music gift card with some suggestions of his favorite songs. I think most of them were K-pop.
Keiko handed him a yellow gift bag with cute matching tissue paper sticking out of the top that she had brought. “Oh, this is epic!” Jasper said, reaching into the bag. He pulled out a teddy bear wearing a yellow tracksuit.
“I made it at the mall,” Keiko said. “Push its belly.”
Jasper used both thumbs to squeeze the bear’s stomach.
“This is epic!” the bear said in Jasper’s voice.
Jasper’s eyes popped. “How did you do that?”
“Edelle helped me get a clip from your practices.”
“That’s amazing. Thank you,” he said.
“Whatever,” she said, but it was the first time I saw her totally and completely smile.
Hunter stood up with his paper grocery bag. “Mine is kind of dumb. Definitely not as cool as Keiko’s bear.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a foot-tall, two-columned trophy with a little lacrosse guy on the top. “I know you really wanted that tournament trophy, and this isn’t even close. But maybe you could hold on to this one . . . I mean, until we see if we can pull off a miracle and get you the one you wanted.” He smiled. “We probably don’t have a shot at first or second, but maybe, if we really work hard the next few days, and we rock it, we can get third.”
I realized what he was saying. “I thought you were quitting,” I said.
“I was,” he said. “I changed my mind. If you guys are still up for it.”
I nodded.
Bradley did too.
“But I still can’t play,” Jasper said. “Not for at least a couple weeks. I’m really sorry, guys. My doctors would be so mad at me.”
“Right,” Hunter said, “but we’ll still need you—and I have an idea about how you can help.”
“Is it just going to be the three of us?” Bradley asked. “Any replacement can’t be signed up for any other team.”
There was an odd pause, and then everyone looked at Keiko.
“Ugh,” she said.
CHAPTER 47
TOURNAMENT
Hunter
The stakes were high, we were in the middle of the tournament, I was trying to win Jasper a trophy, and I had a horde of alien insects trying to eat me for a snack.
Might as well be at the front.
I ran forward, spinning and shooting, hitting an alien beetle three times before it misted and I could focus on another spider.
Daebak and Vanya, or . . . Bradley and Edelle, whatever I was supposed to call them, hurried to help, firing and moving, dodging, and attacking. I could tell they were giving it their all, but they were nowhere as good as Jasper. He was still home recovering, and he couldn’t play, but we needed him.
“Watch your left,” Jasper called out. I whipped around to see a goopy alien scorpion only feet away. It took all my reflexes and speed to not be stung to death and still blast him.
“Epic!” Jasper yelled.
Jasper could join us in a spectator booth and call out directions. We had to log onto his booth instead of the entire crowd of students watching, but it was worth it. He was our coach.
“Hunter, stay in the lead,” Jasper said. “Edelle on the left, Daebak on the right.”
Jasper filled in the hole in our team.
Edelle screamed, and I turned in time to see Daebak blast another monster. Once we planned better to cover for her after she screamed, she’s done a lot better. Though the screams were still kind of funny.
“Keiko,” Jasper said, “watch out. They’re coming up behind you.”
“Ugh,” Keiko said, but then turned and blasted an alien mantis dead on, turning it to mist. She was actually a surprisingly good shot, but she never wanted to run. She liked to walk behind us.
It had taken a little bit to persuade her to join the team. But when Jasper asked, and Bradley told me to promise to drop off five packages of red licorice at her house to sweeten the deal, she gave in.
“Nice shot,” Jasper said. “That alien mantis won’t mess with Earth again.” I could only imagine what his mother might be thinking with him yelling about alien mantises.
“Whatever,” Keiko said.
“Three more coming down the left hall,” Jasper said, “Move down the right; it will get you closer to the mother ship. Don’t fight. Outrun them.”
“I hate running,” Keiko said.
We started moving down the hall, all in formation. This was taking absolutely everything I had. Running and punching, twisting and dodging. Everyone was doing their best, but I was still trying to make up for Jasper.
And the truth was, the more I tried, the more I realized we didn’t stand much of a chance to even get third place.
We scraped by in our first two events, with Jasper calling out orders. But we had seen our competition. And some of them were better than I thought.
But I couldn’t give up—this was my five minutes left in the game.
“Millipede coming at you,” Jasper said. His mom would think that was weird too. “And you guys are actually ahead of the other team. You’ve got this. You’ve got this,” he said.
We might not win, but I wasn’t giving up. Maybe this would be the comeback of the century. But if not, I think my teammates knew how hard I was trying, how I wanted to make up for how I’d messed up.
We’d see how long we could last.
And the longer we survived, the more Jasper would be yelling crazy things for his mom to hear.
CHAPTER 48
HEY, MOM
Edelsabeth
I had been editing for hours.
The video started off with me in one of my favorite shirts under my circle light. No filters.
“Hey, Mom,” I said in the video, “I thought I’d put this video together to show you a few things.”
The video cut to picture after picture of me last year from Instagram, and clips of videos from TikTok. Me with my puppy. Me hugging Kennedy. Me in my room. Me doing exercises. Me with the dinner Mom made. It even scrolled onto a picture of Parker’s website and showed a few of the pictures of me I had saved.
My voice narrated, “I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what other people thought of me. And making myself look good,” I said. “I was pretty good at it.”
Then the screen went blank.
“Then you took all that away,” my voice said. “You did it because you loved me, but I hated it.”
Vanya appeared, walking around the VR school. “When I started recording for this video,” I said, “I thought I was going to show you that I could do this, that I already knew everything about not caring too much about what I looked like. Like you were wrong, and I was right. Like I wasn’t missing anything, didn’t have any problems.”
The view came back to me. “Well, I’m not going to say that I was wrong, and you were right.” I pointed at the camera when I said the word you. “Because I don’t think you need any encouragement.”
I smirked. “But I did learn a few things.”
Music came in, but not too loud, as the video launched into different footage. First Daebak. Him smiling. Him on SkateCoaster. The two of us as little furry puffballs dancing.
“I learned that people love it when you get to know them.”
Then Daebak was dancing, the camera cutting in when he whipped his hair, and panning out when he kicked out his foot and shifted his hips. “And when you don’t spend your time trying to make yourself look good, but focus on someone else . . .” Daebak cocked his head and left arm to the side, then whirled into a 360 spin, “ . . . you just might make a friend.”
Vanya walked the halls again. “I learned what it’s like to be glossed over or ignored. And to have a lot to offer, but other people not seeing it. Not giving you a chance.”
“But others . . .” Jasper stacked huge blocks in Creation, then jumped on top of pillars in the obstacle course, then sat in his desk before science class smiling in his yellow jumpsuit. “Others will invite you to join in. And they won’t let other people kick you out.”
Keiko stood in the commons, no expression on her face. “And some people might never give you any encouragement, but they still might really, really need to receive it.”
Hunter, the virtual version, put up his glowing fists, ready to blast aliens. “And some people make big mistakes, but can also have an amazing comeback.”
The video cut back to Daebak again, laughing after he tripped a little in one of his dances. He looked down at the camera, dancing again, then covered his face. “I’ve learned that some people you used to ignore may be absolutely incredible. And they might give you a second chance too.”
Then I cut back to me.
“And I learned that being good is a lot more important than looking good.” I took a deep breath. “I know, it sounds like a fridge magnet, but it’s true.”
Me. No filter. Smiling.
“There it is, Mom,” I said. “You were right.” I blew my hair out of my eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
CHAPTER 49
NOT BAD
Bradley
I sat there looking at my phone.
Don’t judge me.
Summer was completely dead, and I was in mourning.
But I wasn’t eating Kix in my dad’s recliner—I did that earlier this morning.
I sat alone on the hard plastic bench in the commons of the real Balderstein Junior High, staring at pic after pic on my phone. They were all in a jumbled order:
—Edelle’s little sister with a chocolate face.
—An amazing picture of a giraffe made from different colored thumbtacks pushed into a board.
—A small, impressive turtle made from cardboard.
(Those last two were Keiko’s. Turns out she’s quite the artist.)
—Edelle was showing off a scarf made by some girl she met that I didn’t know.
—Daebak making the weirdest face, light bursting from his fist at an alien beetle, and Vanya about to get eaten in the background.
—Jasper coming back to school to play with us again for the first time.
—All the members of JaVaHuDaKe receiving fourth-place trophies. (Edelle’s mom had sent an email to the administration explaining Jasper’s illness, and how hard the team had tried with very little time to help Keiko learn, and how they still came together to get fourth. They decided to make trophies just for us.)
—Keiko, not smiling, standing on the sideline at Hunter’s lacrosse game. (If you look really closely, in the background you can see Ruby and Grace, but they look nothing like their avatars.)
Edelle’s mom let her back on social media, with some limits. And I liked looking at her pics. Some of it was her family, some of it was awesome stuff about other people she knew, and some of it was like my history.
“Bradley.”
I looked up, and immediately knew who it was.
“Hey,” I said, standing up, “you wore it.”
“Of course,” he said, “and it looks epic.” Jasper stretched out his arms to give a full view of his bright yellow tracksuit. Not teddy bear sized—Jasper sized. We’d all pitched in and got it for his birthday. Jasper and his parents decided that he was doing well enough to come to school in person, but he would only attend half days to begin with.
“You look good too,” he said.
It was just me, Bradley Horvath. No avatar this time.
“Thanks,” I said. I was wearing jeans, an Avalanche hat Jasper got me for Christmas, a Bubble Girls T-shirt Keiko got me, and the leather jacket Edelle and I had found at a secondhand store and then attached a whole string of little dangly things down both arms.
“I didn’t think we could wear hats,” Jasper said.
“We can’t,” I said. “I’ll take it off when the bell rings.”
“Keiko!” Jasper called out and spread his arms to hug her. She didn’t move. “Can I hug you?” he asked.
“Whatever,” she said, flatly. But as he wrapped his arms around her, a crack of a smile definitely came out.
And then I was getting a hug too, but from someone else. I think I blushed almost every time it happened. Even though she didn’t wear as much makeup and fancy clothes as she used to, I never thought I’d start off the year by getting hugged by a girl like her in the commons of the school.
I never would have guessed.
Not in a billion years.
“Two thousand five hundred and thirty-one views!” Edelle said, lifting her arms in celebration.
I smiled pretty big.
About halfway through last year, Edelle had persuaded me to start releasing my Daebak dance videos on social media outside the school. They got some traction and I got quite a few likes. But when the summer started, she convinced me to rebrand. To start new.
To just be me—Bradley.
That decision took a lot of deep breaths. But it was really working. I was connecting with all sorts of people, and views were growing every day. Who knew people might like watching this big guy move to the music? I even had this dancer from the local college duet me, and a boy about my same size say that because of me, he was going to start posting his videos too.
“You did most of the work,” I told Edelle. She was even better working with real life shots than virtual ones, like filming me dancing in front of the state capitol building, or under a streetlight, or in front of an old train.
Then Jasper started to beatbox. That was a signal, one of his favorite things to do now to challenge me. He wasn’t professional at it or anything; he was just trying to give me a beat. There, in front of the huge big glass doors of the school, all the new students coming in, he was trying to get me to dance.
So I did.
That’s right, big Bradley Horvath started to dance in the middle of the lobby at his new junior high.
Not Daebak—Bradley.
Jasper and Edelle clapped and cheered while I kept going, shifting to the left, then doing this stutter-then-turn I had been working on. (That got a rise out of them.) Keiko clapped just after everyone else, giving it a cool syncopated feel. A few people I didn’t know walked by and clapped and cheered me on. A few others even laughed a little. But I didn’t care. (It’s amazing how having a few people cheering for you makes it easier not to worry about the others that aren’t.)
I had just stopped dancing and high-fiving my friends when a booming voice rang through the school. “What’s up, people?” Hunter Athanasopoulos walked through the front doors and started giving people high fives. “Let’s get this going,” he said, and clapped several times.
His golden locks were gone. He had short hair now. He’d developed one more bald spot before they’d started filling back in. He had his hair buzzed so it could all grow back together.
In the end, I’d really liked virtual school, and I might have even stayed another year. Except I got outvoted. Everyone else wanted to go back.
And so I did it.
In a way, it was kind of like starting as a new me again. I mean, I was still Bradley Horvath, but I got invited to things, and I had friends.
And sometimes I had the confidence to dance.
“Whoa,” Hunter said, finally making it over to our group, “you can’t wear a hat to school,” he said, staring at me. “I should know.” He rubbed his hand over his short hair.
I nodded and took it off. I wasn’t really waiting for the bell, just for all my friends to be there.
Edelle smiled huge.
“Epic,” Jasper said.
Hunter shrugged. “It’s cool if you like it.”
“Not bad,” Keiko said and nodded a little.
And I ran my fingers through my bright pink hair.
Discussion Questions
1. What was your experience with school during the pandemic? Were you like Bradley, who loved doing online school? Or were you more like Edelle or Hunter, who really struggled with it? Why? What was good and what was bad about it for you?
2. If you had the chance to try virtual school, would you want to? Why or why not?
3. Bradley wanted to look different and start over. Why might that be appealing? Why might it be scary?
4. Edelle’s mom wanted her to become less concerned about how she looked. Why might being too focused on physical appearance be a problem with some people today? Why might it be nice to be less concerned with how we look?
5. Would you want to form a team and do the virtual game challenge? Why or why not? Who would you want to be on your team? Which game do you think you’d be best at?
6. If you could choose your own avatar, what would it look like? Would it look more or less like you right now?
7. Keiko was initially reluctant to go to the dance. Are you usually outgoing, or do you need convincing to spend time with lots of other people? How is being outgoing a good thing, and how is it a bad thing?
8. Jasper had some physical challenges that made it hard for him to compete in sports. If there was something you liked to do that you weren’t able to for any reason, how would you react?
9. Hunter made some big mistakes and had to work really hard to try to make them right. Why do you think it’s important to try to make things right when we make a mistake?
10. Bradley, Hunter, and Edelle all made changes in their lives based on their experiences in virtual school. Who do you feel is closest to your experiences at school? Have your experiences in school or with your friends changed you?
