Level 13, p.13
Level 13, page 13
It had its funny side, but mostly it made our job even bigger than it needed to be. Beaver control, beaver cleanup, beaver transport, beaver secrecy. The time suck was becoming more than a hassle. I got an A-minus on my last book report. My score on the geometry unit test was borderline B-plus! Sure, these weren’t terrible grades,but A-pluses across the board were normal for me—at least they used to be before I pledged my life to GameFox229. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Cam told everybody he was failing eighth grade, but I was the one who was actually struggling. A month ago, I was probably the front-runner to be named valedictorian—the honor that went to the kid with the highest academic average in the school. I’d worked hard to put myself in contention for that. And now—thanks to a game stream—it was all starting to slip away.
But as much as I resented Cam for that, my heart went out to the guy. The strain on him was unimaginable. I was beginning to wonder if he even needed the Zorro mask at this point. Surely his cement-gray complexion and the giant bags under his bloodshot eyes were disguise enough. His smile was as rare as the trip to Level 13 that he couldn’t seem to earn. Xavier’s T-shirts all over school were the last straw. GameFox229 was seeping into even those few hours that should have been GameFox-free, surrounding us like fast-encroaching rivers of molten lava. There was just no escape.
As bad as I felt about Cam, I felt even worse that Chuck and I weren’t friends anymore. Oh, sure, that wasn’t GameFox229’s fault. Chuck and Daphne would have ended up together regardless of whether Cam had started streaming or not. But maybe the bad feelings wouldn’t have gotten so out of control if the three of us hadn’t had so much on our shoulders. Throw Elvis into the mix, and suddenly poor Chuck was caught between loyalty to Daphne and loyalty to Cam. Technically, some of the blame went to me, too—I should have recognized the impossible situation Chuck was in.
But I didn’t, and now it was too late. Quitting GameFox229 wouldn’t undo the damage. But as the old saying went: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
I was already putting the speech together in my mind as Cam and I got our bikes from the rack and pedaled off toward the habitat. We rode in silence. His mind was a million miles away, as he psyched himself up for the hours of streaming ahead.
We biked to the woods and headed in on foot. Just as we rounded the bend in the path, where the creek came into view, Cam grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked the two of us into the underbrush.
I opened my mouth to protest but he clamped his hand over it, stifling any sound. We both peered into the clearing. There was a man at Elvis’s habitat, standing over the pond, watching the beaver swim.
“It’s him,” Cam barely whispered.
I understood instantly. This was the mysterious stalker Cam had been seeing around town, who had even showed up at the Boxer house. To be honest, I hadn’t taken it very seriously up until now. As the pressure built on Cam, he’d been getting kind of paranoid (all this talk about selling his soul for subscribers). I suspected he was imagining things. But this guy was a perfect match for the description Cam had given—tall and thin, pale skin with a black goatee. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
By unspoken agreement, we backed away—slowly, silently—until we were at a safe enough distance for us to turn and run to our bikes.
“What now?” I asked. “Chill here till the guy leaves?”
Cam’s voice was shaky. “He’s not leaving. He’s figured out that I come for Elvis every day. He’s waiting for me.”
“So no GameFox?” I’d been about to tell Cam that today was my last day, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave like this. He looked really spooked—like he’d just seen a ghost.
“No beaver,” he amended. “We stream without Elvis.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “Your fans won’t like it.”
He was adamant. “That’s just the way it has to be. I’m not going anywhere near that guy.” He jumped on his bike. “Anyway, people care more about Level Thirteen than about Elvis these days.”
We pedaled to the Boxer house and headed for the door.
“If we run into my sister,” Cam advised me, “ixnay on telling her who we just saw at the habitat. She’s ready to call the FBI on him.”
Sure enough, Melody was waiting for us in the kitchen. “Where’s the beaver?” she asked.
“None of your business,” Cam said briskly, heading for the basement stairs.
“We’re concentrating on the gaming part this afternoon,” I put in, because it seemed like a real explanation was necessary. “You know, focusing on getting to Level Thirteen.”
She was surprised. “Why the sudden change?”
“What do you care?” Cam shot back. “You’re the one who’s always complaining about the smell. Today is stink-free.”
I tossed Melody an apologetic shrug as Cam dragged me down to the basement.
I kept the news to myself that I was quitting after this session. Cam had enough on his plate already, this being GameFox229’s first broadcast without Elvis. I didn’t want to throw him any more than he was already thrown.
To be honest, I was pretty thrown myself by what we’d seen at the habitat. The stalker was real after all! Who was this guy and what did he want? Scariest of all, was Cam in any danger? (And what about the rest of us?)
There was no time to think about that once the stream went live. We were running a few minutes late, so GameFox229 went online before its biggest audience ever—over 400,000 followers, all of them waiting, all of them impatient. Cam didn’t say anything about Elvis’s absence. He just started right in gaming, mumbling his usual commentary around the gummy worms in his cheeks. I held my breath, waiting for the audience’s reaction. For about thirty seconds, there was nothing. Then the message feed exploded with an onslaught of comments so intense that the scroll was just a blur:
Where’s the beaver?
Why isn’t he there?
Is he sick?
Is he dead?
WHO KILLED THE BEAVER? …
I scribbled a few down for Cam to deal with, but he shook his head, determined to bluff it through, beaverless. And as he battled the impossible Level 12, the comments gradually turned away from Elvis to the epic quest to conquer this rare version of Guardians.
I’d never seen messages coming in at such a frantic pace. I couldn’t help thinking of all the fans at our school—Jordan or Xavier or String, clad in their T-shirts, watching on their computers. Then I multiplied that by all the schools in all the towns in all the countries in the world, until my head was spinning.
It came suddenly, unexpected. Cam let out a wheeze, and for an instant, I was afraid he was choking on a gummy worm. He gestured with his controller at the computer screen. Under the main counter, which gave the current amount of followers—407,256—was a smaller display. This was the tally of full, paying subscribers. The number stood at 50,003.
He had done it. It had started as a distant dream, and here it was, glorious reality. My feelings about the stream hadn’t changed (it wasn’t worth the aggravation). Yet I was blown away with admiration for Cam. You could depend on it: Whatever he did went big.
I reached over the couch and slapped him on the shoulder exactly where Elvis would have given him a whack with his tail. I was still quitting, but at least I could walk away knowing that Cam had achieved his goal.
According to Newton’s third law of motion, for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What happened next proved that beyond any doubt.
A comment scrolled over the feed, one of hundreds. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed it, except that this one included a tiny thumbnail photograph. Of the tens of thousands of messages that had come to GameFox229 in the months Cam had been streaming, this was the first that had ever included a picture. I scrambled to the computer to get a look at it, but by that time the crawl had carried it off screen.
I pulled out my phone, logged in, and began browsing furiously through the recent comments. When I found the thumbnail, I tapped the image to expand it to full size. What I saw very nearly stopped my heart.
It was him—the stalker—a selfie taken at the beaver habitat. The pale, goateed mystery man held Elvis, football style, in the crook of his arm. The beaver looked terrified (although it was technically hard to judge these things). Covering the man’s long, skinny torso was a GameFox229 T-shirt.
From the heights of triumph to the depths of dread in thirty seconds flat. Action, reaction. Newton’s third law.
The picture was accompanied by a four-word message:
WE NEED TO TALK!
I really didn’t want to show the picture to Cam. But how could I not? This was his stalker and it proved that the guy was closer to Cam than even Cam suspected. The man with the goatee knew about Cam, where he lived, and where he went to school. He knew about Elvis and he knew about GameFox229. Scariest of all, he’d connected all the dots. He knew everything. Cam couldn’t hide from him. There was no hiding.
It definitely soured the celebration over hitting 50,000 subscribers. After GameFox229 logged off, Cam read the message over and over: We need to talk.
“Maybe he needs to talk,” was Cam’s nervous response. “I’ve got nothing to say to him, except maybe bug off. I’m not going anywhere near that guy.”
Cam couldn’t go back to streaming with Elvis now, and maybe not ever. It was crazy ironic. GameFox229 had just hit its greatest heights. How could something so successful be so doomed at the same time?
Neither of us had any idea what to do. Cam had me forward the picture to Chuck (I guess because two and a half heads were better than two). I couldn’t imagine what kind of wisdom he expected from good old Chucky. Chuck didn’t disappoint. We got a return text thirty seconds later: !!!! Chuck was a man of few words—or, in this case, none at all.
“I hate to say it, Cam, but maybe Melody’s right.”
He made a face. “Melody’s never right.”
“Be serious,” I persisted. “This guy knows everything about you. You can’t handle this alone. You should at least tell your parents, and maybe the police.”
He dug in his heels. “That would be the end of GameFox229.”
“It’s probably over anyway. No more Elvis. You can’t make it to Level Thirteen. How long do you think the fans are going to hang around?”
I almost told him then that today was my last day, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. He looked terrible—pale, nervous, rattled, and exhausted. You didn’t kick a person when he was down (even when he was too stubborn to admit that he was down).
At school the next day, the buzz was about GameFox229. For the first time ever, it wasn’t all positive. What had happened to the beaver? No one could seem to speak of any other subject. Kids gathered in small groups in their GameFox229 T-shirts, voicing their disappointment over yesterday’s streaming session. They had waited hours for the beaver to make an entrance, but he never showed. No one even mentioned where he was, or why he was missing. GameFox229 was a partnership, not a solo act. You couldn’t just change everything in mid-stream. What was this guy trying to pull? It wasn’t really GameFox229 anymore with the beaver missing. It might as well have been GameFox228 or 230.
“I don’t get what all the fuss is about,” Daphne complained to Chuck in the cafeteria line at lunch. “Why is it such a big deal that the beaver wasn’t there?”
I was a couple of places behind them. I shot Chuck a sharp glance. Any conversation with Daphne that mentioned beavers was straying into dangerous territory.
“We can’t control what some random guy on the Internet does,” Chuck said quickly.
“The P.A.G. sold all those shirts,” his girlfriend reminded him. “It’s a bad reflection on the club if GameFox229 lets his fans down. I’m just trying to understand how the beaver fits in. A beaver can’t game, after all—”
Casually, I reached ahead with my tray and prodded Chuck in the ribs—a gentle reminder to be careful how he answered.
He didn’t. Instead, he pulled out his phone and began studiously checking messages, pretending he hadn’t heard.
Daphne wouldn’t let it drop. “Seriously, what’s a beaver got to do with a game stream anyway?”
Chuck was getting nervous. “Nothing. How should I know?” He set his phone down on the tray so he could carry his lunch to a table. As he did, his thumb accidentally swiped the screen, bringing up the next message in the queue.
I thought my eyes would pop out of their sockets. It was the WE NEED TO TALK! photo—Cam’s stalker holding Elvis at the habitat.
I leaped forward to flip the phone facedown, but it was already too late.
“That’s the beaver?” Daphne shrieked. She snatched up the phone and stared at the screen. “That’s Elvis! I’d know him anywhere. And that’s his habitat! Who’s holding him?”
Chuck seemed to shrink inside himself like a cornered animal, his eyes wide and staring. I felt a stab of fear as I realized that once he started spilling the beans, he was going to spill all of them. This whole mess was so interconnected that one tiny pebble would start an avalanche. The stalker … Elvis … GameFox229 … Cam.
When Chuck finally found his voice, it was squeaky and an octave higher than usual. “Daphne,” he announced, “I’m breaking up with you!”
She recoiled in shock. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he told her, “but that’s just the way it has to be.” He grabbed back his phone and strode stiffly out of the lunchroom.
Daphne’s burning gaze fell on me. “Pavel, what’s going on?”
What was going on? I was supposed to be the smart one, but even I was having trouble processing it. Ever since he’d started with Duckne, I’d accused Chuck of being a lousy friend. I’d blamed him for everything that had happened to the Awesome Threesome just because he was the first of us to get a girlfriend. And now he had acted like the best friend in the history of friendship. He had done the only thing he could think of to change the subject under extreme pressure. And in the process, he had thrown away a relationship that meant a lot to him because there was no way he could answer without betraying Cam. He had (technically) abandoned ship to protect a friend.
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later!” I slid my lunch into the garbage and ran off after Chuck.
GameFox229 was falling apart, there was a mysterious stalker after Cam, and for all we knew, every kid in town was in danger. But at least there was hope for the Awesome Threesome.
When Pavel caught up with me in the hall, he threw his arms around me and hugged me like a long-lost brother.
I wanted to punch him.
“I hope you’re satisfied!” I rasped. “You’ve been trying to break up Duckne since day one! Well, congratulations—it’s over.”
At least he didn’t deny it. He had the decency to look ashamed. “You were amazing back there, Chuck,” he told me. “It was the only way you could have avoided blowing this whole thing sky-high. I’m not sure I would have thought of it.”
“It was only amazing because you weren’t the one who had to do it!”
“It was genius,” he insisted.
I was still mad, but it did lessen the pain of losing Daphne. When a guy like Pavel—who really was a genius—said you were a genius, it had to feel good. Even when you just deep-sixed the best thing that ever happened to you.
“Why did you guys have to send me that stupid picture?” I complained.
“You’re a part of this, too. That guy’s closing in on Cam, and Cam’s too stubborn to go to his parents for help. Who knows how much trouble he could be in? We don’t know who that man is, or what he wants with Cam. If today proved one thing, it’s that we’re still the Awesome Threesome, no matter how much we fight. We’re all in this together.”
Well, how could I argue with that? As heartbroken as I felt, it was definitely good to be friends with Pavel again. To be honest, I never really understood why that stopped.
But as we parted ways to head to sixth period, it was as if this huge weight descended on me. I wasn’t a boyfriend anymore. My footsteps were the footsteps of a single man. This was a single man’s locker. That was a single man’s social studies book. The corner was chewed up, probably by somebody’s dog. It had been like that when I’d gotten it at the beginning of the year. But right now it felt like it was because I didn’t deserve anything perfect and new.
I wasn’t in a ship anymore.
I had to find her, to apologize, to set things right. I couldn’t explain the picture, but maybe if I told her how sorry I was, she’d understand. I ran to her locker, but I was too late. She must have already gone to sixth period. I suffered through the longest social studies class ever. I couldn’t concentrate. The mangled corner of my textbook throbbed like an open wound in my soul.
I cut out early and stood by her locker for the entire class change. She never showed. What was going on? Where was Daphne? I sprinted to her seventh-period class—Spanish. Kids were filing in and taking their seats. Daphne was nowhere to be seen.
Señora Goldberg looked me up and down. “You’re not one of my students.”
“I just need to—I’m looking for—I have to talk to—”
“Adios, amigo.” She closed the door in my face.
There I stood in the hall, mind whirling, when String showed up for Spanish his usual three minutes late. “Yo, Chuck, what’s good?”
“Nothing’s good,” I mourned. “I’m looking for Daphne, and I can’t find her anywhere.”
“That’s an easy one.” His shrug was a masterpiece of flexibility. Every muscle in his body moved. “She dipped.”
“Dipped? You mean she left?”
“After fifth period,” he supplied. “Seemed pretty upset, too.”
“It’s all my fault,” I confessed. “We broke up at lunch. I just dumped her without any warning. I was a jerk—”
“Nah, that’s not it. She was talking about Elvis. Kept babbling about how he could be in danger or something.”
