by Gwenda Bond
I jumped at the beep of a chat and tabbed over to see SmallvilleGuy’s name beside the cursor.
SmallvilleGuy: I’m glad you wrote.
SkepticGirl1: Do you know something about that company?
No immediate response, but then . . .
SmallvilleGuy: Not that. I thought maybe you were too mad to want to talk.
SkepticGirl1: Oh.
Part of me wanted to type “Well, I wasn’t, sap,” and play it off. But I made myself give a more honest response. My pulse raced like I was in the game being pursued by a missile-carrying dragon.
SkepticGirl1: I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at them.
SmallvilleGuy: Oh.
SmallvilleGuy: I thought maybe it was because I didn’t keep you from getting shot. I know that must have hurt.
I laid my hands against my face, then lowered them to type.
SkepticGirl1: Don’t worry about that. You helped make sure Anavi got out okay. We’re the same.
SkepticGirl1: You and me, I mean. We’re the same.
SmallvilleGuy: How?
It was what I’d realized in the middle of the night, when I woke up from that nightmare. I searched for the right words, and they came, as easily as the words to tell Anavi’s story. Because they were the truth.
SkepticGirl1: We protect people, see what other people miss. We don’t need anyone to look after us.
He didn’t respond right away. I was blushing, like I had when I’d thought of the night before as a date.
Had this been our first fight?
We’re just friends, I reminded myself.
But then he posted a new message. I put my hands over my heart.
It was another photo of baby cow Nellie Bly, who was even more adorable this time. Because this time, Nellie wasn’t alone in making big eyes at the camera. There was a golden retriever snuggled up against her, the dog’s grinning face right beside her moony calf one.
That message was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.
SmallvilleGuy: My way of saying sorry, anyway. Meet Shelby, wonder dog. He’s taken a liking to Nellie Bly. And Bess likes Shelby better than anyone else in the world, so she lets him.
I didn’t know what to type. Nothing seemed right. He’d never mentioned that the farm had a dog before.
SkepticGirl1: Shelby made my day.
It was as close as I could get to telling him that he’d made it. By taking that picture. By being worried that we’d had a fight, just like I had been.
By caring at all.
SmallvilleGuy: I’ll do some digging on ARLabs, see if anyone’s posted about them before on Skies or elsewhere. And I can also ask TheInventor, my techie friend from the boards, the one who made our software. He’s unearthed dirt on lots of high tech companies behaving badly—and this one doesn’t sound like the kind that can be up to anything good.
I couldn’t help being a little disappointed he hadn’t responded to what I said. But I’d give him a break this time. Not ask him to tell me who he was, a way of saying thanks for being here.
SmallvilleGuy: Lois . . .
I waited, not typing anything. Not sure what to say.
SmallvilleGuy: You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect you anyway.
I smiled and sent a one-word response.
SkepticGirl1: Barbarian.
SmallvilleGuy: No, I was an alien, remember?
I rolled my eyes.
SkepticGirl1: Funny. And if you call me an elf, I’ll . . . do something.
SmallvilleGuy: Talk to you tonight, Princess.
His name disappeared and I said, to the empty Morgue, “I hate it when he gets the last word.”
“Who?” Devin asked. He and Maddy stood in the doorway, watching me like I was crazy.
I knew I was blushing, because my cheeks felt as hot as the scene of a five-alarm fire.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, closing the chat window.
“You have got to know saying that kind of thing only makes me want to know more,” Maddy said. She shot a glance at Devin then back to me, as if maybe he was the reason I wasn’t spilling the details. “We’ll discuss later.”
“Thank you for sparing me the gossip session,” Devin said. “I guess this is where you rushed off to after lunch?”
I deflected. “How’s Anavi?”
“Not herself,” Devin said. “But you noticed that.”
“Did Butler summon me again?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Not that we heard,” Maddy said. She walked over to my desk and put a tiny MP3 player down on the edge. “It’s that playlist.” She backed away, toward her own desk.
“Oh,” I said, snatching it up. “I can’t wait to listen to it.”
Maddy sat down and stared at her computer screen. Her shoulders were board-stiff.
Devin’s gaze ping-ponged between us. “Maddy is giving you music,” he said. “Maddy, whose taste is superior to all? You better hope you like it.”
“Shut up,” Maddy grumbled.
“I know I will. I asked her for it,” I said, and Maddy’s shoulders relaxed. “She always has the best band T-shirts. Never anyone I’ve heard of.”
“She does,” he said, before changing the subject. “Want to tell us where you really went when you cut?”
I did want to tell them—about the principal’s office, and the Warheads, and about the lab and the fact I was becoming more and more convinced the gamers’ odd behavior and their ability to get into Anavi’s head had something to do with whatever their independent study really was, whatever was happening in the afternoons at Advanced Research Laboratories.
But I wasn’t ready to spin out my still-developing crazy-mad-science theory for them. I liked having Maddy and Devin as partners in journalism, and I definitely wanted them to be my friends.
What I did not want was to drive them away before there was any way to prove something beyond the norm was going on. Even if I got something more solid, I’d have to think over the best way to share it. They didn’t know the true extent of what was happening to Anavi.
“I’ve been here,” I said. “I was ready to write my story. I got Butler on the record saying that bullying is no big thing.”
Devin whistled, low. “No one will ever call you a coward, that’s for sure.”
I took a half bow at my desk. “I’m glad people will know. For Anavi’s sake. She gave me permission to name her.”
Devin said, “I don’t know how to explain the way she’s acting. Stress, sure, but it’s weirder than that.”
He had no idea how right he was.
“If only you could give her a healing potion,” Maddy said. “A glowing orb of health or something.”
Devin opened his mouth to respond, but then shut it and went to his desk.
“What?” Maddy asked.
“There are no healing potions in Worlds, and only one glowing orb,” was all he said, slinging his bag onto his giant desk and himself into his seat in front of the enormous computer monitors. I was glad he’d been distracted from his line of thinking about Anavi, for now.
“So,” I said, “I figured even though I’m writing the story, we should all get credit. I want to put that you guys also contributed to the report at the end.”
They both attempted to play it casual, but their reactions were too happy.
“Ooh,” Maddy said.
“Perry will have to eat his words, hm?” I asked, before remembering their reactions when Perry had told them they should learn from me. I’d put my foot in my mouth. Again.
“Sort of,” Devin said, letting me off the hook. “But I’ll get started on designing a splashy layout for the piece.”
“The Scoop’s first scoop,” I said, grinning.
James came in at that moment.
James ignored my question, striding to his desk with a holier-than-thou-mere-mortals air.
I cleared my throat.
“First off,” James said, “I don’t care enough about getting you in trouble to do that. But more importantly, I believe in protecting sources, and in journalistic integrity. Not that I’m sure breaking into the school’s backend system counts . . . ”
“For a minute, I almost liked you,” I joked.
“But, no, I did not say a word, even though Butler brought you up. He knows I work here. He’s convinced that Dad will one day get his political muscle back and those tiny donations that my father doesn’t even remember will buy him a seat at the big kids’ table.”
“Oh,” I said.
Maddy sighed. Then sat up straighter in her chair again, as if noticing she might have done it out loud.
I needed to mend the moment. I had been unfair in assuming James had sold us out. Devin and Maddy both liked him. I should give him more of a chance—even if his perfect teeth and hair and the family moneybags that went with them did make it hard for me to trust him.
“So, James,” I asked, “you want an ‘also contributed’ on this story? Or not?”
“No, because I haven’t,” he said.
Well, I had made an attempt. “Okay with me,” I said, and went back to typing, letting my fingers fly across the keys.
I couldn’t wait until the piece went live.
*
After I got home, I didn’t really breathe until I outlasted dinner and got to head to my room for the night. I’d been waiting the whole time for my dad or mom to reveal dramatically that they’d received a call from the principal, nail me on cutting class, ground me, say there’d be no more job.
But it didn’t happen.
Maybe Butler had been distracted that afternoon, afraid his not-so-little Project Hydra secret was too close to the surface. He’d waved off the bullying like it was nothing, but I knew he was wrong about that.
People didn’t look too kindly on adults who turned a blind eye these days. For good reason. Butler might not believe it was a concern, but tell that to the parents of teens who went around miserable or even killed themselves because of it. There were far too many.
I softly called, “Night, Deathmetal,” and got a return good night from Lucy, before I locked my door and went over to the laptop. Part of me wanted to clip the holoset on instead and return to the game, purely to prove I wasn’t afraid to go back.
And also to see SmallvilleGuy again. Even if it didn’t count as truly seeing him.
But I had zero interest in going in solo, with the risk of running into the Warheads. And I wanted to preserve the newly recovered balance between SmallvilleGuy and me.
The sweetness of our talk that afternoon, and that picture he’d sent me. He couldn’t tell me who he was, but he was trying to show me more about his life. At least, that was what I wanted to believe. His inability to tell all might frustrate me, but I was positive he’d never lied to me. That meant something. So I signed into the secure chat.
SmallvilleGuy: I found some things.
SkepticGirl1: That was quick. Dirt, please.
SmallvilleGuy: First, you have to promise you’ll tell me what you’re doing where these guys are concerned.
SkepticGirl1: The Warheads? I thought we covered that. I can handle them.
In the real world. Mostly.
SmallvilleGuy: I meant the lab, but I worry about both. What I’ve turned up so far are some old articles about ARL research into mind control and group consciousness, and some more recent ones on acquisitions in the past few years.
SkepticGirl1: Relevant to my interests. Keep typing.
SmallvilleGuy: They did some experiments back in the ‘60s and ‘70s that didn’t turn out so well. The test subjects were vets, retired soldiers who’d been in the same units together. One involved trying to remotely control actions in combat to prevent mistakes. But they also wanted to see if it was possible to make a unit think as one, pursuing an objective together. Idea being they would have less fear for their personal safety, and make smarter decisions with increased brainpower focused on the same goal, fear-free. But none of their research on behalf of the military back then panned out. And when word leaked and the ethics got questioned, the research was shut down. They switched to a pure tech focus, developed some life-saving medicine, some gadgets. Pulled in the big money.
SkepticGirl1: Charitable souls, you’re saying, after they got busted. Interested in the good of mankind.
SmallvilleGuy: If by that you mean possessed of a desire to create the means of wiping out any parts of it that their customers might want to as completely and efficiently as possible . . . maybe.
SmallvilleGuy: Now the more recent stuff. With all this money, a year ago they bought the company that created the technology behind the first real-sim holo game, and if you guessed it was Worlds War Three, you’re right. The management of WorldsHQ, that company, is still separate, but obviously ARL has access to their tech. I’m still digging to see if I can find more about that, looking for any joint projects.
SkepticGirl1: You think they bought it for a reason besides raking in more cash-money, I take it?
SmallvilleGuy: I do. On the ARL side, there have always been whispers that the R&D department was up to other things. I found them mentioned on the boards here and there, links to articles that imply their CEO wants to woo customers with even deeper pockets. I bet they’d like the military back as a partner somehow, no doubt hoping they can break into the world of special ops projects again. I wouldn’t discount the idea of them working with less official partners either though.
SkepticGirl1: Hmmm . . . The Warheads definitely are in sync, and obnoxiously fearless. They didn’t care about Butler being on their cases at all. Or me. Do you think it’s possible this is R&D combining old ideas with new tech to take some handpicked gamers for a spin?
SmallvilleGuy: Yeah, but why would they be messing around with human kids? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not like they could send them out into the field or combat. Plus, the Worlds connection. There’s more to this.
I frowned.
SkepticGirl1: What do you mean, ‘human kids’? What other kind is there?
A moment of waiting, of the display telling me that he was typing.
SmallvilleGuy: I was typing too fast. I don’t know what I meant. Too much reading about aliens on the boards.
SkepticGirl1: Klutz. ;-)
SkepticGirl1: My story goes live at 7 a.m. tomorrow. Just about Anavi, and the way they bothered her, the way Butler said the school wouldn’t help.
SmallvilleGuy: Good. I’ll let you know if I hear anything useful from my friend, but maybe the whole thing will go away. I’d rather not see you get shot again.
SkepticGirl1: I’m Kevlar, you’re glue . . . Or are you something else?
Earlier I’d resolved to leave the “who are you?” question out for once. This wasn’t exactly asking that. So it didn’t count.
SmallvilleGuy: Night, Kevlar.
Of course it didn’t count. He didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 13
“From their earliest years, children are taught that if they have a problem that is too big for them to solve themselves, if they are in trouble or in danger, they should tell a trusted adult. Parents might give examples—police officers, soldiers, ministers, coaches, teachers, and, of course, principals. And so, to go back to our story, when 16-year-old Anavi Singh, excellent student and one of only 98 people to ever win the Galaxy Spelling Bee, was being targeted by this vicious group of gamers, who could blame her for trusting that her principal would help her?
“This reporter observed firsthand Principal Robert Butler treating S
ingh’s plea for help and confidential complaint not with the care it deserved, or by meeting his responsibility as a trusted adult to help her, but with disdain. He brushed it off. He brushed her off, left her to fend for herself. As he himself stated, ‘We don’t baby our students here. Real bullying is much rarer than these news reports make it out to be.’
“They tell us a trusted adult will be on our side, but what about when those adults can’t be trusted? What then? Then, we must protect each other and tell the truth.” – from “A Tale of Two Bullies” by Lois Lane (Devin Harris and Maddy Simpson also contributed)
*
I was rarely early for anything. It wasn’t my fault. Usually. Life threw too many distractions in my path, like videos of frolicking goats online or possible research lab conspiracies offline. But today, I arrived at school an entire ten minutes before the first bell. The red and blue halls were teeming, the hum and buzz of morning conversation a dull roar.
Could it be my imagination, or was there a brief silence as I passed people?
“She’s the one who wrote it,” a skaterish boy said to a girl rocking a fauxhawk.
The girl gave me a thumbs-up: “Way to stick it to Butler.”
I beamed at her with the force of an exploding sunspot. “Thanks!” I said, continuing on with more confidence.
There were a few more thumbs-ups, points and smiles—and the expected grumbling from people I could only assume were jerks or bullies themselves, adding a nasty comment here and there. But they couldn’t get me down, not when everyone else’s reaction was the equivalent of yay with pom-poms and confetti cannons.
Or close enough.
Maddy rushed up and took my arm.
“Oh. My. God,” she said. “Everyone read it. A couple of people even read some of my music reviews and shared them. Unbelievable.”
Devin materialized on my other side, holding up his palm, which I slapped. “We did it,” he said. “This is almost better than finding a dire wolf cache or getting a dragon to come over to House Devin’s side in Worlds.”
“Almost?” I said with mock offense.
He shrugged. “Dragons. Dire wolves. Versus school?”