by Dustin Brady
My screaming did no good, mostly because I’m not even sure that I was screaming. I seemed to be frozen in place inside of Stu’s phone with my mouth gaping open and fist in the air.
“You look just like Jesse!” Stu said.
“I AM JESSE!” I tried to scream.
Stu reached down and clicked off his phone. As soon as he did, the lights went out all around me, and I dropped to the ground. I stayed that way in the dark for a second, and then a dim night light clicked on. After my eyes adjusted, I found that I was trapped inside a big, clear cube, surrounded by a sea of similar cubes, all floating in space. Is this what the inside of a phone looks like? I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“What is… AHHHHHHHH!”
I turned to see the velociraptor staring at me. “Braw?” it said with its head tilted.
“DON’T EAT ME!” I yelled as I backed toward the corner.
“Braw?” the velociraptor said again. It started walking around me and sniffing. I stood perfectly still. It seemed particularly interested in the part of my head that I’d hit on the toilet. It stopped there and tapped. “Braw?” it said again.
Whatever it was doing, it didn’t seem too interested in eating me. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say that it was asking if I was OK.
“Uh, yeah, it’s OK,” I said to the dinosaur creature that definitely couldn’t understand English.
“Braw!” it replied and rubbed me with its nose. It then tilted its head down in front of me and closed its eyes. Uhhhh, OK? We stood that way in silence for a little bit. After a few seconds, it nudged my hand with its snout and put its head down again.
I scratched the velociraptor’s head between its eyes. “Is this what you want?”
The dinosaur leaned into the scratch and wagged its tail like a dog. Finally, it licked me with its gross dinosaur tongue and bounded off into the darkness.
I sat down in my corner of the glass cube. Now what? How would anyone find me in here? How long would I have to be missing for Stu to figure out that he’d captured the real Jesse into his phone? What would happen to Mark in the meantime? While all these thoughts swirled in my head, I fell asleep.
“Yeah, he was in the bathroom!” Stu said. I popped awake. “I’m telling you, it looked exactly like him. Look, I’ll show you.”
Suddenly the lights came back on, and I felt myself get sucked back into the air. Stu and his buddies appeared in front of me. It looked like we were in the cafeteria.
“Doesn’t it look like him?”
“Haha, yeah he’s got that same goofy hair and big nose!”
OK guys, really?
“That’s pretty cool! How do you make your own character in the game?”
“I don’t know,” Stu said. “I’ve been trying to find Jesse all morning to ask him myself. Oh wait, there’s his friend. Hey Eric!”
I saw Eric appear behind Stu’s shoulder. “What?”
“Do you know where Jesse is?”
“Mmmhmmm,” Eric said while nodding his head. Then he caught himself and started shaking his head. “I mean no. Nooooooo. Uh, I mean kind of. Well you see…” Eric is so bad at lying.
“If you do see him, let him know that I want to find out how he did this,” Stu showed Eric the screen with my body frozen in place.
Eric glanced at the screen and nodded. Then he did a double take. “WHOA! Is that… Where did you find him?!”
“He just showed up in the bathroom. My Sliceasaurus took him out in like five seconds.”
Eric started pacing. “This is not good! THIS IS NOT GOOD!”
“Stop being weird, man. It’s just a game.”
“No it’s not! I mean yes it is, of course it is, but oh boy. Boy oh boy. Hey, why don’t you let him go? Have you ever thought of letting him go?”
“Dude, you know how this works. Once you capture a Wild Thing, you can’t just put it back.”
“But I can fight you for him! Let’s duel Wild Things!”
“No way! I’m keeping him forever!”
“Come on, I’m sure I have something you’d want. Look.” Eric took out his phone and started scrolling through Wild Things. “Freezard, Newtonium, Slaptopus…” he skipped past one without mentioning it. “Starmander, Dragonfish…”
“Hey, wait, what was that one?” Stu asked.
“Oh, that’s a Level 3 Starmander! Pretty sweet, huh?”
“No, the one before.”
“What, oh uh, that’s nothing. That’s just…”
Stu grabbed the phone and scrolled back. “An Upside Down Flamezoid? You have an Upside Down Flamezoid?! I don’t know anyone who has an Upside Down Flamezoid!”
Eric snatched his phone back. “Oh yeah, no big deal. But anyways, if you want any of these other ones.”
“No way, I want to fight the Upside Down Flamezoid.”
“Can I interest you in a Fluffy Chupachu?”
I wanted to jump out of the phone and strangle Eric. Just get me out of here!
“Upside Down Flamezoid or nothing.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t…”
“Bye.” Stu started walking away.
ERIC!
“Wait! OK. I’ll do it. But no attack boosters.”
“Deal!” Stu grinned and swiped in front of my face a few times. Suddenly, I teleported out of the phone and back into the school. I found myself face-to-face with a big, black bat that had no eyes. The lights dimmed. The music started.
The bat opened its gigantic mouth and let out a deafening SCREEEEEEECH! When the screech reached its loudest pitch, a flame shot out of its mouth.
“AH!” I rolled left. The floor where I’d been standing was now a charred, black hole in the ground.
“Wow! Jesse must really want to live in your phone forever!” Eric said, clearly for my benefit.
So to be rescued, I’d have to get flamed to death by a giant, angry bat? This seemed like a horrible deal!
“Let’s see if you can dodge this!” Stu shouted. He swiped his phone, and I got struck with a lightning bolt.
“Ouch!” Everything flashed white. When the world came back into focus, I was looking down on Eric and his bat from my new height of 12 feet tall.
“I said no attack boosters!” Eric yelped.
“Oops,” Stu said.
Stu swiped a few more times, and I felt my hand start tingling. Oh no. Oh nonono. My left hand began rising on its own. NONONO! I tried pushing it down with my other hand, but I was too late.
SWOOOOOOOOOOSH!
I shot a massive blast of ice at the bat. The bat jumped into the air and did a barrel roll to dodge, but the ice blast was too big — I scored a direct hit on its right wing. The bat screeched and fell to the ground with one wing encased in ice.
“Haha!” Stu tapped a few times, and I started walking toward the struggling creature. I tried with all my might to stop my feet from walking, but the best I could do was slow myself to an awkward shuffle. The bat tried limping away, but mostly it just flopped in place. I felt a tingle in my left hand again. Oh man, if I iced this bat, Stu would win and I’d be trapped inside his phone forever.
“Watch out!” I yelled. Just two feet away now. The bat looked more pathetic than ever. My hand started rising. “Eric!” I yelled. “Tell Mr. Gregory I’m sorry!” The tingle in my hand turned into a buzzing. This was it.
At that moment, the bat turned to me, smiled a toothy smile, opened its giant mouth and swallowed me whole.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Leash
“GOT HIM!”
“Oh come on! That’s not fair!”
Eric didn’t hear Stu’s whining because he was too busy dancing in place. After a full minute of whooping and belly wiggling, Eric finally remembered that his best friend was inside his phone. A few taps and swipes later, I fell onto the cafeteria floor.
“You are the worst!” I yelled as soon as I hit the ground.
Eric looked puzzled. “What, I rescued you, right?”
“After getting re
al close to letting me die inside a phone for some stupid bat!”
“Well, technically it’s not a bat…”
I turned and walked away.
“Hey Jesse, wait! Come back!”
No way. I was getting out of this school before some other dumb monster started chasing me. As soon as I found Mr. Gregory, I’d stick by his side like glue and…
“Oof!”
Just as I took my first step out of the cafeteria, I felt a tug on my chest. I tried to take another step. Stuck. I turned to Eric, who was still looking at me through his phone in the middle of the cafeteria. “Wanna tell me what this is about?!” I yelled.
Eric glanced around and walked over to me. “Yeah,” he whispered as he turned the corner with me. “You’re on a leash.”
“A what?”
“Once you capture a Wild Thing, you can let it out on a leash to chase and battle other Wild Things, but you can never set it free again.”
“But what about those girls’ Bigfoot and T-Rex that were chasing me earlier? They certainly didn’t seem to be on a leash.”
Eric sighed and acted like he was explaining things to a two-year-old. “You can make your leash a lot longer if you want to pay money. But even the longest leash will always run out of line.”
I remembered the Bigfoot straining and clawing at me by the bathrooms. “So we’re stuck together?”
Eric shrugged.
“Terrific. Well can you at least pay to get a longer leash so I don’t have to stay so close to you?”
“No can do. My mom took her credit card number off my phone a loooooong time ago.”
We stood in silence for a few seconds. “Well, there is one adult who might be able to help us,” I said.
We snuck outside the school to look for Mr. Gregory. I figured he must be here by now, probably hiding in a…
“Psst!” the bush next to the dumpsters whispered. We walked over. Mr. Gregory poked his head out with a phone in front of his face. “Thank goodness you’re OK!” he said to me. He turned to Eric. “Thank you so much for keeping him safe — you have no idea how important he is for rescuing Mark. Don’t worry, Jesse and I will be back with Mark in just a few hours.”
“Cool,” Eric said. “But, um, one thing. Can we borrow your credit card first?”
“Why would you need a credit card?”
“Leash reasons.”
“Leash reasons?” Mr. Gregory started to get panicky. “What do you mean leash reasons?!”
“Well technically — don’t get mad — but technically, Jesse kind of got himself captured, but it’s OK cuz I rescued him, but it’s also kind of not OK cuz now he can only walk around on a short leash.”
Mr. Gregory turned his phone to me with big eyes. “YOU GOT CAPTURED?!”
“I said not to get mad,” Eric said.
“This is not good! This is not good at all!”
“It’ll be fine if you just let me borrow your credit card,” Eric said.
“I DON’T HAVE A CREDIT CARD!” Mr. Gregory yelled.
“Oh, I just thought since you’re an adult…”
“I mean, I have a credit card, but I can’t use it because they’ll find me!”
“Who’s ‘they?’” I asked, suddenly aware of the possibility that a full-grown man who constantly hides in bushes might be crazy.
“Bionosoft!” Mr. Gregory hissed.
“Uh, the video game company?” Eric asked.
“Wait, is that why you’re hiding in bushes?” I asked.
“Listen,” Mr. Gregory whispered. “They are doing some very bad things over there. VERY bad things! If they ever found out what I was up to…”
Eric glanced in my direction with an “are we sure this guy is OK?” look on his face.
Mr. Gregory noticed the look. “This sounds crazy, right? It probably sounds crazy.”
Eric laughed nervously while backing up ever so slightly. “Heh heh heh. Crazy? That’s funny. We don’t think you’re crazy, right Jesse?”
“Everything is just, well it’s honestly a little hard to believe.” I said.
“Just like it might be hard for someone to believe that you’re in a video game right now?” Mr. Gregory asked.
I shrugged.
“Mark is trapped inside of Bionosoft. I’ve seen him with my own eyes,” Mr. Gregory explained. “Now you can believe that or not — that’s up to you. But there’s, um, there’s one other thing I need to tell you.”
I had a sick feeling in my stomach. “What?”
“The only way I can get you out of Go Wild is by sneaking you into Bionosoft.”
CHAPTER NINE
Ice Bazooka
Crazy or not, Mr. Gregory was my only hope for getting out of this video game alive, which is why Eric and I soon found ourselves trudging through the woods behind our school.
“How much farther?” Eric whined after fifteen minutes.
“Not too far,” Mr. Gregory lied. We hiked for another hour before Mr. Gregory motioned for Eric to be quiet. He then pointed to an office built into the hill in front of us.
“Whoooaaaaaa,” Eric whispered.
I always kind of assumed that video game companies worked in sweet offices with ping-pong tables and old arcade games and cardboard cutouts of Sonic the Hedgehog everywhere. While some video game companies might operate that way, Bionosoft did not seem to be one of them. The building in front of us looked more like a top-secret government facility that experiments on sheep. The building was big, black and windowless. Scary warning signs and an electric fence surrounded the whole thing.
“How are we supposed to get in there?!” I asked as we approached the fence.
“WE weren’t supposed to. The plan was for you to sneak in as the invisible kid, while I helped you with a laptop I’d hidden in the woods,” Mr. Gregory said. “But now that we have to get both of you in, I’m out of ideas.”
I looked down the fence at a guardhouse 30 yards away. “Maybe we don’t have to both sneak in,” I said. “How long is the longest leash?”
“Four hundred yards,” Mr. Gregory said.
I nodded. “Follow me.” I led everyone toward the guardhouse. As soon as a car pulled up and the security guy walked to the window, I motioned for Eric to follow me and crouch-sprinted to the little building. We sat on the ground next to the guardhouse, me planning my next move and Eric trying to wheeze quieter.
“OK, pull up the credit card screen in Go Wild and be ready,” I said. “I’m gonna try to something, but I don’t know if it’ll work.”
Eric nodded, still panting.
I gave him a thumbs up and rolled through the guardhouse wall. There was the security guy, sitting at a desk in front of a panel of camera monitors. I took a deep breath and walked up to him. This was going to be super weird. I crawled underneath his chair and slowly pushed my head up. Pop! I made it through the chair and now sat face-to-face with the guy’s large, khaki-clad bottom. OK, this next part would be the trickiest. I located the back pocket and pushed my head ever so slightly until… Pop! My face made it through the pocket. My eyeball was now smooshed up against what I’d come for — the guy’s wallet. I pushed forward one more time. Pop! I could see inside his wallet! And once I took a few seconds to focus my eyes, I could even read the numbers on the credit card! I took a full minute to memorize the whole thing — I never, ever wanted to do this again. Once I’d repeated the number back to myself a few times, I ran back to Eric.
“5199-7455…” I recited a long string of numbers as Eric typed.
“OK,” he said once we’d finished. “What’s the CVV code?”
“The CVV code? What’s a CVV code?!”
“How am I supposed to know? I’m not the one with the credit card! Oh wait, it says here that it’s a three-digit number on the back.”
I sighed and walked back into the guardhouse to look through the security guy’s wallet again. A minute later, I returned. “It’s 455. Also, I accidentally learned the color of his underwear i
f you want to know that too.”
Eric put the number in the phone. “That worked!”
“So how much does it cost to make the leash as long as possible?” I asked as we scrambled away. “Like two or three bucks?”
“Uhhh,” Eric scrolled through his options. “The Ultimate Leash is $49.99.”
“Dollars?!”
“Well yeah, it’s 400 yards long.”
“You’re telling me that a fake, invisible leash inside a video game costs 50 real dollars?”
“I mean, it’s the only way you’re gonna catch any of the faster Wild Things.”
I shook my head. Eric swiped a few times, and I heard a very appropriate cha-ching cash register sound.
“OK, your leash is upgraded now,” he said. “But if you’re going in there by yourself, we should probably get you powered up.”
“Really? It’s not like I’m going to be fighting my way in or anything. It seems like monsters in the wild are peaceful until something attacks them, right?”
Eric didn’t answer because he was too busy spending someone else’s money. “Level 3? Check.” Cha-ching! “Ice bazooka? Why not?” Cha-ching! “Twice-as-nice ice, battle blizzard, frosty fingers…” Cha-ching, Cha-ching, Cha-ching!
My whole body started tingling. “Eric!”
He finally looked up.
“How much did all of that cost?!”
He looked back at the phone. “Like $70.”
“ERIC!”
“You want to do cool ice stuff, right?”
“I wanted to pay him back!”
“Oh.”
We finally made it back to Mr. Gregory. “Can we borrow $120?” Eric asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Mr. Gregory said, clearly not listening. He was typing on the laptop he’d hidden in the woods outside of Bionosoft. “Come on, come on, come on… Yes!” Right then, a glowing pair of glasses popped out of Mr. Gregory’s computer in the same way that the pear had popped out of his phone earlier that morning.
“Put those on,” he said to me.
I bent down and grabbed them. They were definitely in the game and not real life because they didn’t slip through my hands when I picked them off the ground. I put them on and noticed they seemed a little heavy. “What do these do?”