by Gavin Brown
I stare out the window, imagining myself jumping and dodging through the landscape, and zip-lining down a long power line. “I’m sorry I blew up at you at Thanksgiving.”
“It’s okay, Josh, I know—”
“No,” I interrupted her. “It’s not. I know how hard you work. I know how hard these two years have been. I know you …” I choke on the words for a second. “I know how much you lost, too.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute. We sit in silence as the car hums along the road.
“Josh, I’m so sorry,” she finally says. “I know how hard this has been. New schools, new classes, new friends. So many times in just a couple years.”
“It’s okay. At least I’ve got some friends now. And I’ve been getting help for the next math test. Taniko talks a lot and has too many pens, but she’s really smart.”
I look over at Mom. Her lips are smiling, but she still looks sad.
“It’s good you’re catching up on your schoolwork. Taniko sounds like a nice girl.”
I’m relieved that she’s happier with me, but it’s not enough.
I don’t want to say anything. It would be a lot easier to let the moment last. But if you have something hard to do …
“Mom, I know the school stuff is important. But this Decathlon thing really matters to me. It’s the quest that will make everyone friends again. That will give me friends in the first place.”
She sighs. “I get it, Josh. I do. This may sound funny to you, but I know what it’s like to be in a new town without any friends.” She looks around at the buildings we’re passing by.
“Oh,” I say. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
“If the Decathlon matters that much to you, then you can count on my support. And I’m sure your sister will want to see you and your friends win.”
I sigh. “If I can convince them to do it.”
“What? They backed out?”
I shrug and look back out at the sidewalks sliding by. “Yeah, but I have a plan. I’m going to get them back into it.”
“I’m confident you can pull it off, too,” Mom says, as we turn into the driveway and park. “When you put your mind to it, I’m always amazed at what you can do.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. We get out and walk to the front door. “One more thing.”
“What’s that, Joshie?”
“Don’t you dare move us again!”
We both laugh, and she ruffles my hair. “Don’t worry about that. We’re doing well here. This is home now.”
I stop for a second in the front hall while she goes in to grab a snack before heading to the cell phone store.
I guess this is home now, isn’t it?
I don’t have to wait long to find out the results of my “diabolical” machinations. Before science starts the next morning, Chen slides in next to me. I can’t tell whether he’s happy or sad; he’s just kind of agitated. I turn and raise an eyebrow.
He sighs. “It started out okay, but when I pointed out that what he was doing to Taniko was the same as what people at his old company did to him … he kind of freaked out.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
Chen looks at me, slightly confused. “It’s not your fault. I knew what I was doing.” He shrugs. “And, I mean, after yelling for a while, he said I could do it. But not to complain to him when I get my heart broken. I felt really good after I told him—but I’m pretty sure my mom was the one who made him change his mind. She at least wants me to have friends.”
“So you’re back in?” I feel a little guilty for how happy it makes me, when Chen is clearly dealing with some heavy family stuff. But I won’t lie; I’m pretty pumped.
He nods. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
I go home that day still in shock that I actually got Chen to convince his parents to let him come back. And when I get home and go to drop my bag in my room, there’s another surprise waiting for me. Sitting in the middle of my room is a pile of game systems, games, and cords—everything that Mom took away.
There’s a sticky note on the side of one of the consoles. It says, I know how much this Decathlon means to you. And your sister is very persuasive. I think she’s going to be a politician someday. —Mom.
By the next day I’m feeling pretty good, and it gets even better when Mr. Ramirez hands out our tests. I walk up to the front of the room and sit down with what amounts to a Certificate of Awesome on my desk—an 87. The absolute minimum needed to get a B+!
It had taken some work to get the Whirlwind to slow down to my speed, but in the end, Taniko’s multiple-pens method of teaching had gotten me a pretty solid grasp of the last section. My spider-sense tingles and I look up as the Mitten Monster returns to his seat at the back of the room, scowling like someone sniped his power-up.
“Not good?” his friend Stan asks.
“Whatever,” Mittens answers. “At least I’m sure I did better than Creep.”
“Man, if your grades slip too much—”
“I know,” Mittens says, cutting him off, but keeping his voice low. “I won’t be able to play in the next game. And my dad will go completely berserk. Even worse than last time. I can’t believe Creep did that. He’s such an idiot. And he probably knew what would happen the whole time.”
Apparently Mittens has forgotten how I took the blame for the whole fight.
Peter leans over from his chair and looks at the test sitting on my desk.
“Hey, B-plus,” he says, louder than he needs to. “That’s actually pretty good, Bax!”
There’s complete silence from behind us. I stare forward, wishing Peter didn’t have a death wish, and didn’t feel like he had to include me in it as well.
Mr. Ramirez says a few things about the night’s homework and lets us go.
“Move, Creep,” I hear as I stand up. Mittens pushes past me, and as I try to back up, my calves catch on the chair and I thump back down.
For the rest of the day and the next, every time I see Mittens he makes a point of walking as near as possible to me and muttering “Creep” in a low voice. In class, across the hall, in gym—it doesn’t matter. It’s like someone pushed his “hatred” slider up to maximum.
The continuing harassment from Mittens is frustrating, but I know I can’t give up. An adventurer doesn’t stop just because an entire school is making fun of him. The next challenge is to get Peter and Maya to join back in. I thought I’d done the hard work, but when I explain to Peter the next morning that Chen, Taniko, and I are all ready to go for it, he gives me a dull look.
“If Maya’s going to be a tyrant about it, what’s the point? I wasn’t really having that much fun. If you want to play video games, you guys can just come over and hang out.”
Maya has more or less the same reaction when I find a chance to talk to her in front of Vaults 151 and 153 between classes.
“Look, if Peter won’t take it seriously, what’s the point? We’ll get crushed and then everyone will feel bad about it.”
I realize this isn’t going to be easy. I need help. I hate asking for it, but when I think about it, none of my heroes made it through their quests without having to call on some allies. Half of them are about a team that all work together. So I swallow my pride and go for it—I need the Oracle.
That night I find Lindsay while she’s in the living room binge-watching some show about people making out in spaceships. I wait for the moment between when one of the episodes ends and the next automatically begins.
“Linds, thanks for talking to Mom,” I say. “You didn’t have to do that.”
She shrugs. “It was no problem. Honestly, I’ll look for anything to talk about with Mom when she’s driving me home from practice. If I don’t distract her, she goes into autopilot talking about getting ready to look at colleges. That’s, like, a century from now; I don’t want to think about it.”
I nod. “I understand. That must be hard.” I wait a second, until the opening credits fo
r the next episode start. “So … are you thinking about a big university or a small college?”
She throws a pillow at me. “Shut it, kid.”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Um, actually, I was hoping you could help me with something.”
She looks up at me while an opening montage shows hot people kissing and yelling at each other in all different parts of space. There are some explosions, too, but generally in the background. Now, I’m not against kissing, but I think they would need to put in some more laser-gun fights before I’ll think about watching it.
“I need to figure out how to get two of my friends to stop fighting.”
She hits “pause” and swings around to face me, eyes alight. “Oooh, fun. Let’s figure this out.”
I start by catching her up on what’s going on, how the Punk Princess asked too much of us, and how the Rogue rebelled.
“Okay.” Her legs automatically crisscross the way they do when she thinks hard. “The first thing you need to do is make both of them feel like they’ve won.”
“What? How is that possible? My friends aren’t idiots; they’ll notice if I trick them,” I object. The Oracle is smart, but I don’t think even she is capable of that sort of sorcery.
“You don’t have to give them the same thing,” she answers. “You have to find something that Maya wants, and find a way to make it sound like a good idea to Peter. And the reverse for Peter.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, this is about how they feel, not about stuff. So you have to make each of them feel valuable, like they bring something special to the table. What are their skills?”
We mull it over, and the outline of a plan starts to come together in my head. One so crazy, it just might work. Lindsay has a whole set of tricks for me to use. By the end of our conversation I can only conclude that the Oracle really knows how to deal with people. When she’s president, I hope she’ll appoint me the country’s first Secretary of Video Games.
The next time I catch just Peter and Chen at lunch, I decide to try talking with Peter to get things back on course.
“So, we all actually want to do the Decathlon, right?” I begin.
“Yeah,” Chen agrees. Lindsay said that having more than one person on your side was important.
Peter shrugs. “I already told you no, Bax. It’s not going to be fun.”
“I get that. If you can’t cut loose and try stuff out, you don’t have a good time.” Trick number one: say what they feel back to them in different words so they feel understood.
The Rogue nods. “Yep.”
“The thing is, what you do is useful. When you mess around, you find new ideas and make us think about the games in a different way. You’re like the R&D group, like the top secret lab where they’re inventing robots that will accidentally kill us all.” That’s trick number two: make him feel like what he does is valuable.
He grins. “Yeah, that’s exactly it! Kill all humans, that’s my long game.”
We all laugh, and I lean forward to make the pitch.
“But Maya’s important, too. She makes sure we work hard and get precise strategies for the final game.” Trick number three: get him to see the other side as having value, too.
The Rogue sighs. “Yeah, that’s fair. And I do want to win. I want to destroy Mittens.”
“So what if we agree to mess around and experiment half the time, and get serious and play to win the rest of the time?” The closing argument: offer something that feels like it gives him a win.
“Right on,” Chen says. He’s sitting back in his chair with a look of shock.
“Start out wild and then get intense,” Peter agrees. “I like it. She’s really in for this?”
“Yeah,” I answer. True, she hasn’t exactly said that, but … close enough.
With the Punk Princess, I have to run the same thing more or less in reverse. I catch her when we’re walking out of gym. Even though I have my arguments ready, I’m way more nervous for this one.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I say.
She smiles. “Other than my algebra test this morning, everything’s good.”
“So, the Decathlon,” I say. I have to cut to the point—I don’t have much time.
“Look, we already talked about—”
“Hear me out,” I say.
“Okay, fine,” she says in a slightly annoyed voice. I gulp as I realize that, in my enthusiasm, I interrupted her kind of loudly.
“You feel like Peter is just goofing around, getting in the way of us winning because he wants to have fun.” Trick number one. Understanding.
She cocks her head to the side. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“And you want us to work hard so that we can win. And we all, even Peter, want to win. That’s why you’ve been working so hard, trying to keep us on track.” Number two. Sense of value.
“Yeah!” she answers. “That’s why I don’t get it. Why won’t he work hard like the rest of us?”
I bite my lip. It’s time to go for it. “He’s like the experimental lab. He messes around, but sometimes he comes up with a great idea or makes us see things differently. Like his Pokémon strategy of combining Belly Drum to supercharge Aqua Jet for a high-risk attack that only works if they don’t expect it. We never would have come up with it if he hadn’t failed at it five times.” Number three. Both sides.
Maya gives me a look. “You know, you’re kind of good at this.”
And now it’s time to close the deal.
“What if we split our time between playing for fun and exploration, and serious practice?”
“All right, Josh Baxter. If everyone else is in—let’s do this.”
On the walk over to Peter’s house after school the next day, I feel a little like I’ve been dabbling in the Dark Arts. Everyone is there, and a day or two ago none of them wanted to be. I haven’t lied or tricked anyone, exactly. On the other hand, last night I was able to give myself a big experience bonus on the Wall of Heroes. The Dark Arts do have their perks.
This social stuff is going to take some getting used to. I still feel like Professor Lupin or Obi-Wan would probably give me a lecture if they found out. On the other hand—it worked, right? Sometimes you have to be a tiny bit villainous to get things done.
Things don’t go back to normal immediately. When we all get down into the basement, the Carpeted Dungeon is weirdly quiet. Usually everyone is making fun of everyone else, and arguing over what we should do first.
“What should we play?” Taniko asks, when no one moves to start anything.
No one says anything for a long moment. Someone has to do something, or all my hard work will fall apart.
“How about Mario Kart?” I suggest. “I’ll sit out the first round.” I’m pretty sure scientific studies have shown that no human can possibly not have fun while playing Mario Kart.
They drive in silence for the first lap. It’s eerie, hearing the joysticks tapping back and forth. When they round the end of the first lap, Chen and Maya are in third and fourth place, trailing behind Taniko. Peter is leading up at the front. I glance over and see his face in fierce concentration, twisting his controller as he zooms around each turn.
I look back at the screen. Peter is about to go off a jump when a streak of green shoots out from Taniko.
Peter doesn’t even have a chance to react. The shell slams into his kart.
“Nailed you!” Taniko yells as Peter’s Metal Mario plummets into the abyss.
The silence stretches for a long second.
“Oh, I am so going to take you down,” Peter finally fires back as Lakitu drops him on the track. He takes the opportunity to throw a pillow at Taniko, who squeals as she ducks it.
Everyone laughs at them, and I can feel the tension in the room dissolve. My team is back.
It’s game day. If the movie trailer guy were narrating my life, his grizzled voice would be intoning how every day of my life has led up to this one moment. Preparing for the climacti
c battle that will shape my destiny.
And he would be right.
I’m wearing my favorite T-shirt: Link with Yoda perched on his back, and a speech bubble above Yoda saying, “There is no tri-force. There is only do or do not force.”
I sit through my classes, barely able to pay attention. No one else seems as distracted, even the other kids who I know are competing. I guess they think it will be “fun.” Which it will be. This is my chance to do something that matters with my new group of friends. The whole day I feel like I’ve guzzled three cups of the fancy coffee that Mom makes every morning. I’m totally on edge.
When Mom, Lindsay, and I get back to school that night, the school parking lot is almost full. The Decathlon’s a fund-raiser for the class trip, and all of the student council I-need-to-get-into-honors-classes-for-high-school-or-my-life-is-over types have turned out, along with everyone who wants to play. Of course, it’s nothing like the football game days when we’ve driven by and seen cars lining the sides of the street half a mile before and after.
The gym is packed. There is a line of TVs and game systems along one wall. On another is a big whiteboard with the team names written out, along with the schedules and a place for the final results.
Taniko wanted us all to dress the same, but that was too much trouble, so in the end we all settled on headbands like Solid Snake. People give us funny looks, but I think we look pretty awesome.
Mr. Ramirez somehow recruited Ms. Pritchard to help him, and they go around announcing that we’re five minutes from starting. The team huddles together.
Peter grins. “I know you guys think I goof off a bit, but I’m excited.”
“Thanks for agreeing to do this, guys,” I say. “This has made coming to school here a lot more fun.”
“Let’s have a good time, and do our best,” Chen adds.
“I’m so glad we’re in this together!” That’s Taniko, of course.
Maya looks around at the group with a serious expression on her face.