by Dustin Brady
“No, it’s only a video game if you can play it on a TV. It’s even in the name — VI-DE-O.”
I pointed to the YouTube video he was watching on his phone at the time. He grumbled and turned away.
As Eric played with his phone on the bus, I silently thanked him for not listening to me last week. He swiped past the first page of apps, then the second, then the third and fourth and… how many apps could he possibly have on here? Finally, he landed on his choice for the morning.
Meow meow meow meow
Not Go Wild.
Meow meow meow meow
It looked like some weird Japanese cat game. “Eric!” I yelled, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
Meow meow meow
“Eric!”
Meow
“Eric!”
Meow
“ERIC!”
Meow meow meow meow
“GAAAAASP!” I heard next to me. “LOOK AT THIS!”
I slowly turned. A wide-eyed third grader across the aisle was pointing a phone directly at me and making a face like he’d just seen a ghost. I smiled and waved.
“THERE’S A KID IN THE GAME! THERE’S A KID IN THE GAME!”
I nodded and made a “this is our little secret” shushing motion.
“HEY! HEY!” The kid was desperately trying to share our secret with the his seatmate. Fortunately, his buddy seemed to be more interested in catching his pre-school nap than seeing what was going on. After a few seconds of pestering, the third-grader gave up and moved on to Eric.
“HEY! HEY!”
Meow meow meow meow SPLAT!
Eric looked up.
“THERE’S SOMEONE SITTING NEXT TO YOU!”
Eric looked at the kid confused. He waved his hand through me a couple times. “Uh, no there’s not.”
“HE’S IN THE GAME! GO WILD!”
Eric shook his head and went back to his phone.
GASP! “I’M GOING TO CAPTURE HIM!”
Wow, that went bad in a hurry. As the kid swiped through his phone to find some horrible creature that he could use to fight me, I got right in his face. He settled on something probably with sharp teeth and brought his phone back up to…
“AH!” When he saw my face taking up his whole screen, the kid jumped back into his sleeping friend. His friend grunted and scrunched closer to the window.
“I need you to give the phone to him,” I pointed at Eric. “NOW.”
The third-grader whimpered and passed his phone to Eric. I’m guessing he’d never had a video game character demand that he give up his phone before. Eric took the phone and looked at it funny. “What is this?” he asked. “I don’t…”
Suddenly, my face filled the screen. “Hey I need to talk to you now.”
Eric looked at the phone, then past the phone, then back at the phone. Then his mouth fell open.
“AHHHHHH!”
The whole bus turned to look at us.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elsa
“Stop it!” I hissed.
“AHHHHHHH!” Eric continued.
I put my hand over his mouth. That didn’t do much good because my hand was, ya know, invisible. I looked up. Kids everywhere had begun recording the commotion. The third-grader across the aisle kept screaming to everyone who would listen to turn on Go Wild. In mere seconds, I’d be discovered by half my school. With no place to hide, I did the only thing I could think of. I climbed under the bus.
I still wasn’t quite sure how the whole invisible thing worked, but I did understand that if I pushed hard enough on something, I could pass right through. So I pushed my head through the floor — which caused Eric to scream louder —
“AHHHHHHH!”
And found a good place to sit under the bus. I mean, it wasn’t a “good” place. It was rumbly and rusty and kind of hot. But there was enough room for me to curl up once I pushed the rest of my body through. The last thing I did before disappearing down there for good was poke my head back up through the floor and try to explain the situation to Eric one more time.
“Hey, I’m OK, but I need you to call my parents to tell them…”
“AHHHHHHH!” Eric’s eyes got bigger and his face got redder as he stared through the phone at the talking head on the ground.
“You know what? Never mind.” I disappeared back under the bus, where I stayed for the rest of the ride to school. While I probably wouldn’t recommend riding under the bus every day, as a one-time ghost thing, it actually turned out to be not too bad.
When we finally arrived at school, I rolled off my perch under the bus and scanned the crowd walking into school. No Eric. Had he already gone inside? Oh no, there he was spinning around in circles with a phone in front of his face. I stepped out and waved to him. He stopped spinning, waved back and jogged over.
“Jesse! Is it really you?!”
“Yeah, I need…”
“Oh cooooool!” Eric looked me up and down with his phone. “After you crawled under the bus, I figured out that you’d probably gotten sucked into another game. How is it? Is it the best?”
“It’s OK, I just need…”
“Can I come too? How do I get in?”
“I don’t think you can. What you can do is…”
“Have you upgraded yet?”
“I don’t know what that means. But I need you to…”
“HEY! You haven’t seen a Golden Hawkadoodle have you? They’re super rare, but I hear there’s one around here! If you…”
“ERIC!”
“What?”
“I need you to call my parents to let them know I’m OK.”
“Yeah, sure. Why didn’t you just say so?”
I walked around the corner of the school with Eric as he called my mom. “Hi Mrs. Rigsby… Oh yeah, as a matter of fact, he’s right here! Yeah he, uh, he came over to my house early this morning… Why didn’t he tell you he was coming over? I don’t know, that seems irresponsible.”
I gave him a look and threw up my hands. Of course he couldn’t see.
“Sure, you can talk to him!” Eric held out the phone. I stared at him in disbelief. After a second of holding his phone in midair, Eric realized his mistake and took it back. “Actually, sorry, he can’t talk right now. Uh huh. OK. I’ll let him know.”
He hung up, went back to Go Wild and turned the phone toward me. “Your mom said you’re in big trouble.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, you should have told her where you were going.”
“I’ll remember that next time I get sucked into a video game.”
“A mobile game.”
“A what?”
“You got sucked into a mobile game. A video game is one you play on a…”
“OK, we don’t need to go through this again. I just need to get out of here before anyone else sees me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To rescue Mark.”
Eric gasped. “Really?! How?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I said. Mostly because I didn’t know.
“Well as long as you’re in the game, you should figure out your special ability.”
“I don’t think I have a special ability.”
“Sure you do! Every Wild Thing has a special ability. Like there’s one that can call down lightning, there’s one that has poison burps, one that does tornadoes.”
“I don’t think I can do any of those things.”
“Well, you can probably do something. You should try figuring it out. While you’re at it, maybe you could sneak into the cafeteria and let me know what’s for dessert today.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Fine, but if you happen to see a Golden Hawkwadoodle…”
“Just go to class.”
Eric gave me a thumbs up and put his phone in his pocket. Then he looked back in my direction and waved his hand where he remembered my face being. “Man, this is cool!” Eric exclaimed as he turned to walk to class.
; Alone at last, I took a breath and looked around. Mr. Gregory had seen me get on the bus, so he’d probably be at the school soon. All I had to do was stay away from anyone playing Go Wild until then. In the meantime… I looked at my hands. Did I really have special powers? I squinted really hard and tried to shoot fire from my eyes like the snake. Nothing happened. I burped. Smelly but not poisonous. I pressed my finger against my palm like Spider-Man, got mad like the Hulk and clenched my fists like Wolverine. Zip, zero, nada.
This was stupid. After being up for half the night, I needed a nap, not a superpower. I yawned and stretched my arms.
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
The tree next to me turned into a giant block of ice.
Whooaaaaa. What was that? I tried yawning again. Nothing happened. I stretched my arm again. Nothing. But when I stretched my arms and spread out my fingers —
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
A blast of ice shot out of my hand. Nice! I tried it again.
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
OK, so I was basically Elsa from Frozen! Maybe I could build an ice castle next to the school. I pointed my hand to the sky and iced again.
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
SQUAWK!
CRASH!
What was that? I ran over to find that I’d accidentally blasted a big, golden bird out of the sky. It fell to the ground in a chunk of ice.
“HEY! What did you do to the Hawkadoodle?!”
“Nothing! I thought your Blastasaurus got him!”
Two girls appeared from around the corner of the school. They were accompanied by their Wild Things — one had a spikey T-Rex-looking monster and the other had a brown version of the Bigfoot I’d seen earlier in my tub. As soon as they rounded the corner, they stopped dead in their tracks. They looked through their phones first at the Golden Hawkadoodle at my feet, and then at me.
“Jesse?” one of them said.
That’s when the T-Rex charged.
CHAPTER FIVE
Slip-n-Slide
“ROOOOOOOOOAR!”
That was the T-Rex.
“GRRRROWLLLLL!”
That was the Bigfoot.
“HELLLLLLLLLP!”
That was me.
We all ran toward the basketball courts, me leading the way and my two monster friends following close behind. As they gained ground, I remembered my power. I reached back, spread my fingers and…
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
…A big ol’ miss. I tried again.
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
I froze the flagpole behind Bigfoot. One more time.
SWOOOOOOOOOSH!
I missed again, but this time I missed in front of the monsters instead of behind them, creating a frozen slip-n-slide on the ground.
THUD-THUD-THUD-ROOOOOOOAAAA-THUNK
The T-Rex slipped, then slid across the ice, wildly waving its tiny T-Rex arms to regain its balance. It spun around a few times before smacking its head into a tree. I looked back to see it lying on the ground with stars floating above its head.
One down! By now, the Bigfoot was almost on top of me. I reached back and tried icing again.
SWOOOWWwwwrrrr
Instead of the usual ice blast, my hand spit out a pathetic snowball. It hit the monster in the face, freezing half its mouth in a permanent sneer, while the other half continued to growl. I reached back to ice again.
Click. Click. Click.
My hand actually clicked. I guess that meant I was out of ice. I circled around and ran back toward my slip-n-slide. By the time I reached the dinosaur, Bigfoot was swiping at my head. I jumped onto the ice, slid for 10 feet and turned to see how Bigfoot had done. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a little more coordinated than the T-Rex. After shuffling his feet and spinning a few times, he eventually recovered to resume the chase. I ran past the girls, who had been staring at the scene through their phones with their mouths open the whole time.
“PLEASE CAN YOU TELL YOUR MONSTER TO STOP CHASING ME? THANK YOU!” I screamed as I passed by. They continued their unhelpful open-mouthed stare.
I sprinted past them toward the school, and then POP! through the wall into the school library. Just before the Bigfoot followed me in, I dove behind a row of encyclopedias in the reference section. The Bigfoot snorted a few times. I don’t think he saw me. I took a second to catch my breath.
Well if there’s one good place to hide in the library, it’s the encyclopedia section. Judging by the dust on these things, not a single person has touched an encyclopedia since the internet was invented. The uninterrupted wall of books provided some nice cover for me to take a little rest.
“And over here are our reference books.”
I scrunched behind the E-G section as a librarian led a teenage girl into my aisle.
“You won’t have to do much here. Just make sure everything stays neat. This is the one area where you’ll have to dust every few months. See?” The librarian bent down, removed two of the encyclopedias I was hiding behind and wiped her finger along the shelf. “It gets a little dusty.”
Are you kidding me?! Out of all the books to pick up! I tried rolling to better cover, but I was too late. Bigfoot saw me.
“GROWWWWWWWWWL!”
I got up and ran, plowing through bookshelf after bookshelf until I popped out of the back of the library into the cafeteria. The Bigfoot followed close behind. As I ran past the lunch ladies setting out trays of food, I peeked over. Peach cobbler for dessert. Eric wouldn’t be happy.
I ran through the cafeteria into a classroom, where nobody noticed me except for one very surprised kid who had been hiding his phone at his desk playing Go Wild. He jumped when he saw a sixth grader followed by a giant Bigfoot burst through the chalkboard. I swerved into the hallway and continued trying to shake the monster.
I needed a plan fast. The end of the hallway was coming up, and it dead-ended into a pair of doors. Maybe if I dove through the door on the right and quickly rolled through the wall into the room on the left, I could get away. I put my head down and sprinted faster. I could practically feel Bigfoot’s breath on my neck. Twenty yards, ten yards, almost there. I looked up to judge the dive and only then did I realize which door I was about to jump through.
THE GIRLS’ BATHROOM?!
Invisible or not, no way I was diving headfirst into the girls’ bathroom. I jabbed my right foot into the ground to switch directions on the fly. Unfortunately, doing anything “on the fly” requires a bit of coordination, and coordination is not something I was born with. My legs twisted into a pretzel, causing me to trip and roll to a stop right outside the bathroom door.
“GROWWWWWWWWWL!”
I put my hands in front of my face and prepared to get eaten.
“GROWWWWWWWWWL!”
I scrunched into a ball.
“GROWWWWWWWWWL!”
Was this monster ever going to eat me? I peeked between my fingers to see the Bigfoot leaned all the way over with its arms stretched toward me. The monster scraped its feet on the ground and clawed wildly, kind of like a dog at the end of its leash trying to catch a taunting squirrel. I quickly rolled into the boys’ bathroom and sprawled out on the tile floor to catch my breath. What was that all about?
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
Unfortunately I didn’t have time to figure it out, because at that moment something that looked exactly like a Jurassic Park velociraptor stepped onto my chest.
CHAPTER SIX
Got Him
The lights in the room dimmed and intense battle music started playing.
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
“Hey! Wait!” I scrambled to my feet.
The velociraptor stepped back and got into a fighting stance.
“Jesse?”
I spun around. Stu Sullinger, a kinda tall, kinda dumb kid from my class, was looking at me through his phone with a bewildered expression on his face.
“Stu! Stu, you gotta help me!”
“Whoaaaaa!”
The velociraptor swiped at my face. I dodged left.
&nbs
p; “How did Jesse make himself a character in the game?!”
“I’m not a character in the game! I AM in the game!”
The velociraptor swiped again. I dodged right.
“Is this yours?!” I pointed at the velociraptor.
“Wait,” Stu said. “No way! Are you talking to me?”
“BECAUSE IT WOULD BE REALLY GREAT IF YOU COULD TELL IT TO STOP!” I said as the velociraptor climbed onto the counter.
“Haha, this is nuts! Jesse’s going to have to show me how to do this!”
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
The velociraptor launched itself at me with its claws out. I rolled underneath the attack.
“STUUUUUUUU!”
“He’s going to go crazy when he finds out that I captured his character!”
“What? No! Hey, are you even listening to me?!”
Stu swiped on his phone a few times, and the velociraptor’s eyes turned glowing red. It crouched down and started snorting like a bull. This might be a good time to try the ice thing again. I stretched out my hand and…
SWOOwwrr
…Lobbed a pathetic, slushy snowball at the dinosaur’s face. Apparently my power needed longer than three minutes to recharge.
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
The velociraptor put its head down and charged. I tried to jump out of the way, but I was too late. It headbutted me through the toilet stall door.
“Oof!” I landed on the floor and bonked my head on the toilet. As the velociraptor collected itself, I tried to find something to use as protection. Maybe I could climb through the toilet?
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
I did not get to test that horrible idea, because right then, the velociraptor pounced its final pounce. I squeezed my eyes closed. Suddenly, the screeching stopped. The battle music stopped. Everything got dead quiet. I finally dared to open my eyes.
All I could see was Stu’s face. He looked like a 100-foot-tall giant. From this angle, I was getting a particularly good view of his right nostril. Stu looked down at me and broke into a huge smile.
“GOT HIM!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Upside Down Flamezoid
“HEY! LET ME OUT! THIS ISN’T A GAME! STU! STU? STUUUUUUUU!”