Level 13, p.6
Level 13, page 6
The door opened a crack, and he peered out at me. He looked tentative, like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. Proothi must have really freaked him out.
He didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead. “I’ve got all the details on the assignment. I can email it to you, if you want.”
The question seemed to throw him. “Okay,” he said finally.
I typed the address he gave me into my iPad. “You know what? I’ve got a ton of notes on the whole American Revolution unit. I’ll send you those, too. It’ll really help when you’re doing the Who’s Who.”
I expected him to say thanks. Instead, he took off down the hall, tossing a haunted look over his shoulder.
It was more proof that these school problems had him completely spooked.
Proothi was a tyrant, but he wasn’t a liar. Who’s Who in the American Revolution turned out to be a real nightmare. We had to identify and list the contributions of over a hundred different people from revolutionary times. I felt good about my decision to share my notes with Cam. Without my help, this assignment might have derailed any chance he had of passing the year.
A few days later, I approached him in class and asked if my notes had been helpful so far on the Who’s Who.
He looked completely blank. “Notes?”
At first, I was mad. Didn’t he appreciate what I was trying to do for him? To go by his reaction, he hadn’t even bothered to open my email!
Before an angry retort could tumble out of my mouth, I understood what was really happening here: The hero who’d created the P.A.G. and transformed a whole town was too embarrassed and too proud to admit he was in over his head.
My eyes actually filled with tears. He was even more admirable than I’d thought. What character! What dignity!
It made me twice as determined as before to make sure he passed Proothi’s torture test. But how could you help a guy who had too much grace to accept anybody’s help?
Suddenly, I had the answer.
From space, the planet Geldorf was a peaceful blue-and-yellow orb—but don’t you believe it.
As my ship slipped into orbit, deadly disruptor bolts from planetary defense blasted all around, vaporizing smaller vessels in my fleet. Fighter drones from the surface buzzed like fireflies, lighting up the darkness with lethal laser beams. A strontium torpedo went off like a miniature exploding sun, close enough to fry my starboard deflector shield. Damage reports filled my viewscreen. One more direct hit, and I was a goner.
In other words, it was ill.
Guardians of Geldorf was everything I remembered and more. How I survived for all these months without it was beyond me. And to find a replacement copy on sale for one dollar in the library’s throwaway junk restored my faith in miracles.
Even though Guardians was an older game, it was super realistic. The controller vibrated in my hands as my shuttlecraft descended through the turbulence of the atmosphere to the alien surface. It was something I’d done hundreds of times before—you know, before Melody threw out our copy. But this was the first time I’d ever invaded Geldorf as a streamer, with hundreds of followers watching.
“Hang on!” I shouted into the headset, my voice garbled by the gummy worms in my cheeks. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride!”
What a rush! My fingers moved at lightning speed over the controls. My concentration was 100 percent—even when I took a beaver tail in the side of the head.
Elvis loved Guardians, too. Oh, sure, he was just a beaver and shouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. But you just knew from his reactions that he understood he was watching something special. He couldn’t stay on the back of the couch. He was constantly leaping around—onto my shoulder, my lap, even the top of my head. And that weird crying-baby sound he sometimes made—it was practically nonstop today. His flat tail worked like a piston against the couch and me.
I swooped low over the aliens’ power station, swerving to avoid two antiaircraft hover-grenades. My strategy was to knock out the power grid before the invasion force began to land. That way, the extraterrestrials’ targeting systems would be offline.
“Time to turn out the lights,” I announced, my finger floating over the button.
I hesitated. The target looked a little different than I remembered it—probably because this was an earlier version of the game than I was used to. Some of my followers were noticing the same thing. A lot of the comments in my feed were asking about the actual copy of the game I was playing—how old it was, what year I’d bought it; one guy even wanted to know the serial number. Like I had time to check on that in the middle of a full-scale planetary invasion!
I launched the missile. The power station went up in a fireball. The planet went dark … and a car door slammed outside, close enough to make Elvis jump.
A few seconds later, I heard Melody’s voice upstairs. “Hi, Dad—what are you doing home so early?”
Involuntarily, my jaw clenched, and the gummy worms cemented my teeth together. I barely managed to mumble, “Checking on the serial number,” before taking GameFox229 offline.
Upstairs, Dad said, “I’ve got a killer headache. Mom volunteered to cover for me. Where’s your brother?”
“You have to ask? He’s in the basement.”
The next thing I knew, there were footsteps on the stairs. I grabbed Elvis, but there was nowhere to hide him—and no time to do it. I watched helplessly as the figure came into view—Melody.
“Go around the back,” I hissed urgently. “I’ll get on a chair and hand Elvis out through the window.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not touching that disgusting smell factory!”
“It’s an emergency! You want Dad to catch us?”
“He’ll catch you,” she corrected. “It’s not my problem. I’m not the star of GameFox229.”
“It’s twenty percent your problem,” I snarled. “You took a cut of this, remember?”
“I took twenty percent of the good stuff,” she informed me. “When we crash and burn, that’s all you.” And she disappeared up the stairs.
I was already on the phone to Chuck. The Awesome Threesome wouldn’t let me down.
The next three minutes were the longest of my life. Finally, there was a tapping at the basement window. Weak with relief, I climbed onto the chair and handed Elvis out into the waiting arms of …
“Pavel?” I whispered. “I called Chuck.”
He gathered the beaver into his arms. “Yeah, well, he couldn’t make it. Duckne had plans.”
“The nerve of that guy!”
Pavel shrugged. “At least he called me. Don’t complain. He could have left you hanging.”
I pushed the carrier out, too—a pretty tight squeeze. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I cleaned up the newspapers, pulled off the Zorro mask, and headed upstairs. This had been a crummy afternoon, with me interrupting my stream and all that. I’d definitely lose some followers, which wasn’t good.
But in another way, it was a positive development. Dad came home in the middle of everything, Melody left me twisting in the wind, Chuck let me down, and we still survived. And now we had a disaster plan in case any bad things happened in the future.
Dad was at the kitchen sink, drinking some Tylenol.
“Whoa!” He stopped me as I made for the back door. “Listen, Cam, I know that’s your man cave down there, but you’re starting to stink like a barn. Take a shower, will you?”
“I will,” I promised, and ran out to join Pavel.
By that time, he had managed to coax Elvis into the carrier. We doubled-sealed the gate with a square of duct tape—thank you, Dr. Casper—and got on our bikes to haul the little guy home.
“Thanks, man,” I told Pavel as we pedaled for the woods, the cage on my handlebars. “You were a lifesaver back there. Not like ‘Chucky.’ You know, this whole boyfriend thing is starting to get on my nerves.”
“Starting?” Pavel echoed. “Where have you been, Cam—Alpha Centauri? When’s the last time three words came out of that kid’s mouth without two of them being ‘Daphne thinks’ or ‘Daphne says’?”
“I guess I’ve been distracted with my stream lately,” I admitted.
“Sure.” Pavel was bitter. “You’ve got your lifestyle. Chuck’s got Daphne. The Awesome Threesome is down to just me, and technically it’s not so awesome anymore. Even Mrs. Backward noticed. She said: ‘Alone you are today?’ ”
“It’ll get better,” I promised. “Once GameFox229 is more established, it won’t take up so much of my time. And Chuck is bound to come to his senses sooner or later.”
“Really?” Pavel was unconvinced. “He took so many pictures of his precious Daphne that he ran out of memory on his phone. So to free up space, he deleted games.”
I swerved and almost flung Elvis into the ditch, pet carrier and all. “This boyfriend thing is like a disease.”
Pavel nodded sadly. “And our friend’s got a bad case of it. The worst part is we can’t even tell Chuck what a dope he’s being. He’ll just say we’re jealous, or we’re too immature to understand what it’s like to be part of a ship.”
When a smart guy like Pavel didn’t know what to do about a problem, you could be sure you were up against something really tough. Okay, GameFox229 was my top priority, but the Awesome Threesome was important, too. I’d always assumed that Pavel, Chuck, and I would be friends forever. But when a guy started deleting games from his phone, the whole world was out of whack.
Elvis seemed happy enough to be back in his habitat, although he did glance around in confusion, like he was trying to locate the TV. Guardians of Geldorf did that to a person—or even a beaver, I guess.
Pavel and I were going to hit Sweetness and Light, but then I remembered Who’s Who in the American Revolution was due tomorrow, and I hadn’t even started yet.
“For Proothi?” Pavel was wide-eyed. “You’re dead, man. I did it last semester. It’s the toughest assignment all year.”
“No biggie.” I shrugged. “Somebody sent me some notes last week. I forget who. And I forget why. But it’s definitely about the What’s What.”
“Who’s Who,” he corrected.
“Whatever.”
As I pedaled home, I reflected that I should just take a zero from Proothi. That way, when everybody thought I was flunking, it would be the truth. But that wouldn’t go over too well with the parental units. If they took away my console, sayonara, GameFox229. So much for honesty being the best policy.
At the house, I headed down to the basement. My computer was part of the streaming setup, but I occasionally used it for homework when it was absolutely unavoidable. I checked my email inbox, which was mostly full of reminders from gaming sites about how many points/coins/tokens/dollars/stars/crowns/trophies/smiley faces/shekels/yen I’d earned. There it was—Hannity, Kelly. With her notes, I should be able to knock this out in no time.
I opened the email and my eyes fell on the list of historical figures I had to research. My heart sank as I scrolled through the long list of names. Yikes, I didn’t know there were this many people in all of history, much less one little revolution. Eleven pages! If I had to research everybody here, I wouldn’t be done till the next revolution!
I thought hard, trying to remember if Mr. Proothi had told us a shortcut on how to research so many names. But all I could dredge up were worthless bits of advice like Budget your time and Don’t even think about trying to knock it out in one night. Wasn’t that just like a teacher? What if one night was all you had left?
Then I saw it. There was a second email from Kelly in my inbox. At first I thought it was just a duplicate of the notes, but then I realized that it had come several days later. There was no subject line and no message, just a document. Intrigued, I double-clicked on it.
It was the same list of historical figures as before. Only—I goggled—each name came with a paragraph that explained who each person was, and why he or she was important in the American Revolution.
It hit me: This wasn’t notes on the Who’s Who; this was the finished assignment—signed, sealed, and delivered!
I was amazed. Why would Kelly send me her work? Why would anybody? It didn’t make sense. Unless …
Kelly already sent me the notes once. What if she tried to do it again—a backup, just in case the first email never made it to me? But instead of just notes, she attached the whole project—her own.
I switched back and forth between the two emails from Hannity, Kelly. First the notes, eleven pages of names. Days of research—days I didn’t have. Second, the completed project. Zero research, because everything had already been done. All that remained was to submit it to Proothi on the school’s turn-it-in site. Thirty seconds, tops.
I took a gummy worm from the bowl and chewed thoughtfully. That would be wrong. Wrong to take advantage of Kelly’s mistake. Wrong to hand in somebody else’s work as my own.
On the other hand, Kelly wanted to help me pass. She even said so. That was why she’d sent me her notes on the Who’s Who in the first place.
I clicked back to the first email. If I started from here, I’d never finish in time, not even if I pulled an all-nighter. I’d flunk, which would be like a slap in the face to Kelly, who was trying to give me a break. But …
I clicked on the finished Who’s Who. If I took Kelly’s project, rearranged the order, changed the font, and switched a few words around—you know, hard to difficult, etc.—then I’d pass with flying colors. That would make everybody happy—Kelly, Mr. Proothi, and definitely me. It would even be good for Elvis, since GameFox229 would continue, and the little guy was turning into my biggest fan.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a great deal for everybody. I wouldn’t be not doing work. I’d be doing a different kind of work, since I’d use the extra time for streaming—work that would bring me closer to 50,000 subscribers.
I copied the document, made the changes, and converted the whole thing into Old English script—very classy. At the last minute, I remembered to delete the part where it said By Kelly Hannity and stuck my own name in there. That would have been a dead giveaway.
“For GameFox,” I breathed aloud, and hit upload.
The beauty of these turn-it-in sites was that it was already in Proothi’s inbox. All over in a heartbeat—no regrets, no looking back.
Gamer heaven.
When Cameron Boxer had been running the Positive Action Group, I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that something was off.
Don’t get me wrong—a public service club like the P.A.G. was every guidance counselor’s dream. There I was, buried under a mountain of unsold raffle tickets when Cameron came along and changed everything. Suddenly, short-sighted, self-centered middle schoolers came forward to volunteer to give up their free time, even their weekends, for the good of the community. Our only problem was that our numbers grew so fast that we had too many volunteers and not enough projects for them to help with.
There was never any question that Cameron made it happen, yet he always seemed removed from it all, like it had nothing to do with him, and he was just some stranger who had wandered into a party by mistake. It defied understanding. On the one hand, he was the greatest student leader I’d ever worked with. On the other, I never really worked with him. Most of the time, I couldn’t even find him. When the office paged him, he didn’t come. Staking out his locker didn’t help—he had others around the building so he could avoid you. When the bell rang at three thirty, he was out of the school and gone in a puff of smoke. Most of the time I had to stalk him outside the boys’ room when I needed to discuss something P.A.G.-related.
I use the word discuss very loosely here. I did the talking while he scanned the hall for an escape route. To have a conversation with Cameron meant you had to supply both sides. And the inevitable takeaway was that this boy knew absolutely nothing about the club he’d founded—and he didn’t want to know. The only evidence to the contrary was the P.A.G. itself. It was a huge success, a town legend, and had attracted virtually every student in the entire school.
I never thought I’d miss those days, slinking through the halls, trying to find Cameron and pin him down. Now Cameron had stepped back from the Positive Action Group, but I was still slinking. I was hiding from the acting president of the P.A.G., Daphne Leibowitz.
Unlike Cameron, Daphne was exactly what you’d expect a student leader to be—motivated, outspoken, high-energy, ambitious, and bold times twenty. She was determined to make the P.A.G. her whole life—and mine. With Cameron, I had to do all the talking; with Daphne, I was lucky to get three words in to her five hundred.
On Wednesday, she stormed into my office and slammed an envelope down on my desk.
“What’s this?” I asked, hating myself for asking.
“Open it!” she urged.
Inside was a second envelope, folded into thirds. When I got into that one, I pulled out—
“A tea bag?” I asked, holding it by the string.
“Don’t you get it? It’s a do-it-yourself tea party. We print the school’s address on the inner envelope, and everybody puts in their donations.”
I was mystified. “But where’s the tea party?”
“That’s what makes it do-it-yourself,” she explained. “You make your own tea in your own house, and the P.A.G. gets money for it. It’s a great fund-raiser for the library!”
“We can’t do that, Daphne,” I told her. “Too much postage. If we don’t get enough donations, we’ll lose money on the deal.”
Daphne had an answer for that. “You don’t need postage when you’ve got people power. We’ll send paggers to deliver to every house in town. And they’ll go back a few days later to pick up the donations.”
I had a vision of kids going door to door, shaking down citizens for their do-it-yourself tea. “No, Daphne. It’s a good idea, but it just won’t work.”
“Okay,” she said brightly. “I’ll think of something else.”
I didn’t doubt it for a nanosecond. Daphne always thought of something else. She thought of a lot of somethings. She proposed using school property to host a massive three-day carnival; she suggested we cancel classes for a week and hire eighth graders out as temporary farm laborers; she wanted students to bid on having their teachers locked in a cell for an hour at our municipal jail; she even floated a plan to set up a toll booth on Main Street and actually charge people a dollar for the privilege of driving across town.
