Josh Baxter Levels Up

by Gavin Brown

  Contents

  Half Title

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1: THAT NEW GAME SMELL

  CHAPTER 2: GREEN WARRIOR NEEDS GRADES BADLY

  CHAPTER 3: IT’S SUPER INEFFECTIVE!

  CHAPTER 4: MAKE LIFE TAKE THE LEMONS BACK

  CHAPTER 5: SUPER SMASHED FACE

  CHAPTER 6: IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE

  CHAPTER 7: FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS

  CHAPTER 8: GOTTA CATCH … MOST OF ’EM

  CHAPTER 9: THIS NEXT TEST IS IMPOSSIBLE

  CHAPTER 10: PLAY TO WIN

  CHAPTER 11: WE’LL GO TO SOMEWHAT DISTANT LANDS

  CHAPTER 12: YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CLASSROOM

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The school bus is a loading screen for my new life, the empty space in a video game between challenges. I sit by the window, wondering what’s on the next level and watching the other kids get on the bus. My new classmates are wearing the kinds of clothes I thought only people on TV wore, back before we moved to a big-city suburb.

  Mom said I couldn’t bring my handheld on the first day of school, because I should make friends and not “be glued to that thing the whole day.” So I spend the ride imagining myself running along beside the bus, backflipping over the road signs and vaulting over mailboxes. The landscape I’m Mario-ing my way through is home, at least for now. New town, new house, new school. And no player’s guide to give me the tips and tricks I need to make it through the year. This is one game I have to figure out how to beat on my own.

  Mom says she was lucky that a job offer came in as the company went under. It doesn’t feel so lucky to me, having to move again during what should have been the first week of school. So for the third time in two years, I’m the new kid. This time, my sister Lindsay and I are showing up after everyone has already settled in.

  The bus pulls into the school parking lot and I see the next challenge that Mom’s forced on me. Howard Taft Middle School, three times the size of any of my old schools. Gym, classrooms, science labs, auditorium, library—and three hundred kids in my grade. I stand up with the other kids and shuffle forward as my heart starts banging like the drum track for a boss battle.

  The loading screen is over. It’s game on.

  Yesterday afternoon I came to school, met with the guidance counselor, and got my class schedule, a map, and a flier about school spirit. As starting inventories go, it’s pretty pathetic. Couldn’t I at least get a rusty sword or a mysterious ancient artifact?

  Before I know it I’m staring into the depths of my locker: Vault 151. Base of operations. Today my vault holds only the books, pencils, and binders that I brought with me—but with the right gear, an adventurer can accomplish anything. I close the door. I’ll just have to find grappling hooks, spell scrolls, and health potions along the way. Or maybe an enchanted hammer. I’m not picky.

  I take three steps down the hallway before I realize I’ve forgotten one key thing: Vault Security. A total noob mistake. I go back and pull out my shiny new lock.

  As it clicks shut, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around. The girl is a punk princess, with streaks of blue in her hair and a black outfit with more flaps and rivets than I can count. Back in my old school, the only thing that distinguished groups of kids was whether your shirt was of a band, a sports team, or a video game. Between this girl and the kids on the bus, I can’t be more out of my element with my messy brown hair that hasn’t been cut since ancient times, my thick-rimmed glasses, and my favorite T-shirt—Link from Legend of Zelda holding his bow and leading Robin Hood’s merry men out of Sherwood Forest. Even the shirt, as much as I love it, is starting to get too small.

  “Hi, I’m Maya,” she says.

  “Um, hi, I’m Josh,” I answer. A couple of her friends are watching from down the hall.

  She points at my lock. “I … think you just put your lock on my locker.”

  “No, this is mine, it’s 151.”

  She raises an eyebrow and points to the number above the locker that I’ve bolted shut: 153. I feel like even more of a noob than before. In my rush to secure the vault, I’ve snapped my lock on the wrong door.

  I grab the lock with my left hand and stare at it. The other day I committed the combination to memory and destroyed the paper, secret agent style.

  “I, uh …” My brain shuts down, like a glitchy game that freezes just before a crucial moment.

  If only I had the ability to figure out the combination by listening as I spun the dial, or casting an opening spell. But that takes years of wizard school, and all I’ve learned in the last couple years are the key dates of the Revolutionary War and how to reduce fractions and—

  The bell rings. I glance at the Punk Princess.

  “Seriously? You forgot the combination?” Maya rolls her eyes.

  “I don’t know … should we …” My voice trails off.

  “Great, now I’m going to be late.” Maya sighs. “Wait here.”

  As she walks away, I notice that her backpack has a patch with a punk Princess Daisy on it. I want to say how cool it is, but what’s the point? She already hates me.

  Kids head to their homerooms and the hallways empty out. Maya comes back with the guidance counselor, Mr. Alpert, in tow. Mom and I met with him yesterday for my quick orientation. He has platinum blond hair and pale skin, and is about nine feet tall. Or something. I’m not so good at estimating the height of things that high up. I can’t help thinking he’s some kind of frost giant trying to pass as a human.

  “Don’t worry, Josh, the janitor’s coming to cut it off,” Mr. Alpert says. “I was looking for you anyway, to make sure you got to your first class.” For a huge guy, he has this tiny, tiny voice, like he’s afraid if he speaks too loudly he’ll break something. And I can see why he had a hard time finding me—we must all look like ants to him.

  I keep looking down at my sneakers, hoping that this will all be over soon.

  “How are you holding up?” he asks. “I know how socially challenging first days of school can be.”

  “Fine, I guess, except …” I gesture at the lock.

  “Adjusting to a new environment can be emotionally trying,” Mr. Alpert says. “I want you to feel like you can share anything with me.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I lie. “I’ll do that.” Maya is looking the other way and pretending not to listen, but I’m certain she hears every word.

  The janitor saunters up, holding what looks like a pair of hedge clippers. He points them at my lock. “This the one?”

  Mr. Alpert nods.

  With a grunt, the janitor squeezes on the clippers and the lock comes off, the ring chopped in half. Maya puts away her backpack and a bunch of notebooks and supplies, locks her locker, and walks off without a word.

  I take out my gym gear and triple-check that I’m actually at Vault 151 before I use the lock I brought for gym class to secure it.

  “Don’t worry about this, Josh. Being at a new school is mentally stressful for anyone, and it’s easy to make mistakes,” Mr. Alpert says, going on to tell me that soon I will have lots of friends and be totally adjusted. I nod and say “uh-huh” periodically.

  Homeroom is almost over, so Mr. Alpert walks me to gym class. When we get to the door of the gym, the Frost Giant finally goes off to find someone else to embarrass.

  I’m so early for gym class that the locker room is totally empty. I store my normal clothes in one of the gym lockers but have to leave it unlocked. I bring one of my notebooks with me into the gym, sit on the bleachers, and draw a sketch of Luigi dunking a basketball. I look up only when I hear people arriving.

  My s
pider-sense is tingling. Something strange is going on. Girls are walking out of the boys’ locker room, on the left. A boy is coming out of the girls’ locker room, on the right. I stand up and walk over. There are small plaques next to each door and I realize what a royal goof I’ve made.

  I assumed that the gym was laid out the same as the one in my old school, which means I left my school clothes in the girls’ locker room … with all the girls. I want to give up on my clothes and leave them there forever, but then I’ll be stuck in sweaty gym clothes for the rest of the day.

  Sometimes, when faced with an impossible problem, I try to think of what my heroes would do in my situation.

  MARIO would charge into the girls’ locker room and start hitting things with his head until clothes fell out of the ceiling.

  Strategic Assessment: Unlikely to work. Also, I can’t jump that high.

  STEVE THE MINECRAFT GUY would punch the gym floor to get a bunch of wood and make some tools, then build a tunnel into the girls’ locker room so that no one could see him.

  Strategic Assessment: The gym floor looks pretty sturdy.

  MEGA MAN solves problems by jumping around and shooting plasma from his Mega Buster until he gets where he needs to be.

  Strategic Assessment: Didn’t get the fireball-shooting gloves that I wanted for my birthday two years ago. Maybe Target has them?

  I hear a voice behind me. “Yeah, that new kid is standing there staring into the girls’ locker room,” some guy is saying. “What a total creep.”

  I spin around, heart hammering like crazy. This is how rumors get started. How lives get ruined.

  “No, I was just, uh, I left my clothes in there …”

  The guy has a grin of pure evil on his face. “So you were taking off your clothes in there?” Turning to some girls, he says, “I told you—total creep.”

  They giggle and follow him as he struts off. I stand there gaping.

  Maya and one of her friends stay behind. Maya rolls her eyes. “I saw some boys’ clothes in one of the lockers. I was wondering who left it unlocked. You’re an idiot, Josh. It was the top left corner, right?”

  I nod.

  “Hold on,” she says with a sigh.

  “Watch out for Mittens,” Maya’s friend says while we wait. “He’s a big deal around here because he’s the receiver on the football team.” She spits out the words so quickly I feel like I’m going to get whiplash from trying to take them all in. “They all say that with him we’ll finally beat Lancaster this year. Whoever that is. I think it’s a team? Football is weird. I don’t really get it. I’m Taniko by the way be careful okay don’t get yourself hurt.”

  Maya comes out a few seconds later and tosses my clothes at me. “Just ask someone to help you next time,” she says, and walks off, muttering under her breath about stupid boys.

  She’s not wrong.

  The gym teacher yells for everyone to get on the bleachers, so I rush into the boys’ side, stuff my clothes into an empty locker, and run back out to join the rest of the class.

  “Welcome to gym class! Let’s get this train started!” the teacher bellows. He’s a typical gym teacher: a body like a flabby tank and a voice so loud he practically breathes fire. I pick my notebook back up and start sketching him as a dragon, but one that’s eaten so many unlucky adventurers that its wings aren’t big enough to lift it off the ground anymore.

  “Attendance time! Sound off when I read your name!” He launches into the list, stumbling badly on any name that isn’t Paul Smith or Amy Jones. He absolutely mangles “Maya Granados.”

  “May-yeah Grenade-Os!” is basically how it comes out.

  “It’s Maya Granados,” Maya answers, in a voice that makes it clear this is not the first time she’s tried to correct him.

  “Right, Grenade-Os!” he shouts. A couple of the jocks snicker, and one even mimes throwing a grenade and making a surprised face.

  When Mr. Barrington reads off the name “Henry Schmittendorf,” it’s my turn to snicker. A couple people give me weird looks. No one else even cracks a smile at the name.

  The kid who made fun of me at the lockers raises his hand and says, “Here.” And then Henry “Mittens” Schmittendorf glares over at me.

  “You think my name is funny, Creep?” Schmittendorf hisses. He stares me down with a you-are-a-loser-and-I-will-crush-your-life look in his eyes. I sit back hard and any urge to laugh disappears.

  “Okay, kids!” Mr. Barrington says. “This week we will be playing volleyball! Divide yourselves into teams of five!”

  I get up from the bleachers like a hermit crab inching out of its shell. I take a few steps down, and collide with Schmittendorf. He’s like a brick wall—five inches taller than me with a lean frame, approximately ninety-nine point eight percent muscle. I tumble to the wooden floor.

  “Oops, sorry,” he says as he pulls me up. Then he leans in and pats me on the back like he’s encouraging a teammate. While I’m choking on his horrible breath, he whispers, “I could destroy your life, Baxter. Watch yourself.”

  He turns away.

  I laugh.

  Not because I think it’s funny. I don’t. I’m more scared than the time I dropped my PlayStation down the stairs. Just like then, I can see a bleak life of sorrow and regret stretching out before me.

  No, I laugh because I’m nervous and scared. It’s a thing I do sometimes—my brain freezes and out comes a weird high-pitched laugh.

  Mittens spins on his heel. Everyone in the class is staring now, and I realize what it looks like. It looks like Mittens threatened me … and I laughed at him.

  He stares me down, eyes black with pure evil and fists that look like they could punch out all my hit points in a single blow. My chest feels like I lost a few already from our collision. How am I going to survive this day, let alone this year?

  Sometimes when you’re starting out in an adventure game, there are places you just don’t go, enemies you just don’t want to tangle with. You’re a noob with a dream and a bow made of twine and a twig. And if you step into the wrong area, poke the wrong enemy …

  “I warned you, Creep,” Mittens says, loud enough that the kids standing around us can all hear. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I shrivel from Schmittendorf’s gaze, staring at the floor and wishing I could hit “reset,” “new game,” even “power off”—anything to not be here right now. The only reason Mittens doesn’t deck me then and there is that Mr. Barrington shoves a ball into his hand and points him and his friends toward one of the volleyball nets.

  I’m grateful that in volleyball the teams are separated by a net. If not, based on the looks Mittens is giving me, I would be on my way to the hospital by now.

  Which might have been a mercy, since then I wouldn’t have to go to math class.

  As it is, I barely make it out of the Gymnasium of Despair alive. Mr. Barrington blows the final whistle, and it feels like I’ve limped out of a battle with one hit point remaining. I take a minute to lean against the wall and catch my breath. The last thing I want is to face Schmittendorf and his friends alone in the locker room.

  I find my way to math class and my jaw clenches when I see Mittens sitting in the back. He looks over and flashes me a grin that comes straight from the evil that grips his soul. I wonder for a moment if there’s a decent human being trapped in there, one who’s been corrupted by a cursed artifact. Probably not.

  I sit as far from him as I can, throwing myself into the chair so hard it hurts. I pull out my sketchbook and start drawing Mittens on a tiny raft, getting sucked into a giant toilet whirlpool of death.

  “Hey, man,” someone says, and I look up to see two kids. The one talking is tall and pale and wearing a Final Fantasy T-shirt. He has messy black hair and a slightly scruffy look—probably a rogue of some sort.

  “Hey,” I say back. You have to be careful with rogues—if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that they’ll stab you in the back the moment it’s to their advantage.<
br />
  “I’m Peter, and this is Chen Sheng,” Peter says. His friend is short, slightly round, and wearing the kind of glasses that are geeky—not in a cool way, but more like a my-parents-bought-the-cheapest-glasses-on-the-rack way. But there’s a fierce intelligence in his eyes—I wouldn’t want to cross him. He’d probably start flinging fireballs and lightning bolts at me, or cast a spell that tied my shoelaces together.

  “I’m Josh,” I answer.

  “Hey,” Chen says softly.

  “So,” Peter says, eyeing my notebook. “Saw you drawing in gym. What are you sketching in there?”

  I look down at my sketch and my stomach turns to ice. I’m pretty decent at faces, and it’s obviously a picture of Mittens. Peter has to have seen it, and I know exactly what would happen if Mittens knew about it. As if I’m not already in deep enough trouble.

  “Listen, I know what you’re trying to start,” I say. “Just leave it.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about, man?” Peter asks.

  What’s he really after? My brain short-circuits and orders Nervous Laugh Protocol, betraying me for the second time in one day.

  “All right, whatever,” Peter says as he shrugs and turns away. Chen Sheng just looks at me with an expression of confusion, then turns and follows his friend.

  They sit down a few desks away from me and start planning their strategies for something called a “decathlon.” They’re not making fun of me. Maybe I’ve made yet another boneheaded move.

  As the teacher walks in and takes off his coat, a paper airplane knocks into the back of my head and lands on the floor next to me. I look down. The word Creep is written in big letters on the side. I don’t even bother to look back—the quiet hyena laughs coming from behind me are all that I need to hear.

  I put my head down on the desk as I feel my life ending.

  “Did you have a good day, Joshie?” Mom asks, poking her head into my room when she gets home. I’m slouched down on my bed, holding a controller in my hand, but I haven’t even been able to muster the energy to decide which game to start.