Pwned

by Shannen Crane Camp

  At least, that’s how Tawny put it.

  I kind of thought it showed people that we were completely self-obsessed, but it wasn’t exactly my place to point that out to her. My job was to nod and smile at everything she said so that I could get through my high school career as peacefully and confrontation-free as possible.

  “I’m being serious. If I had to pretend to be friends with any of the mouth-breathers on The Squad, I think I’d throw myself off a cliff. Or one of them. Whichever was easier,” she remarked thoughtfully as we took our place in line behind a lanky boy with messy light brown hair and thick black rimmed glasses. I couldn’t quite tell if this boy was actually a geek or if he was one of those hipsters who wore thick geek glasses ironically.

  “Oh good, we get to join the ranks of the unwashed,” Tawny said dryly as we stood behind her next unfortunate victim.

  The boy turned slightly at this comment but pretended he didn’t hear. I could tell he was trying to ignore us by the way his light brown eyes locked on the ground like it was a security blanket.

  Poor geek. He hadn’t figured out a good way to survive high school yet, like I had. I sort of felt like my whole four years of high school was one epic quest where I had to disguise myself as a cheerleader in order to infiltrate the ranks of the enemy and make it out alive.

  I guess it wasn’t as easy for boys. In order to “pretend” you were a jock, you’d actually have to play sports. That did require some level of athleticism that this boy probably lacked.

  His dorky appearance was definitely all Tawny would need to launch her next attack. He reminded me of Andrew Garfield (Spiderman being another nerdy, under-wraps interest of mine). Between his thick glasses, messy hair, fitted jeans (that were actually surprisingly cool, though that probably hadn’t been his intention), and his stupid black T-shirt that . . . wait.

  His stupid black T-shirt just like the one I happened to own in a fitted girl’s top!

  It was a Voyager’s Quest shirt showing the title of the latest expansion. An involuntary smile played on my lips as I stared at the boy with newfound respect. He glanced at me for a moment and his brown eyes widened at my unexpected smile before he quickly turned away again.

  Unfortunately, my little lapse in self-control caught Tawny’s attention right away. She eyed me suspiciously, as if I had just asked if being popular was really all that fun. Was my cover blown?

  “That’s the new kid,” she whispered in my ear, causing me to jump. “He starts in January and should be dorking up the hallways in no time.”

  “Oh,” I said noncommittally, hoping I could recover from my accidental mental jaunt into my other life.

  How on earth did Tawny even know about new students? It was like she hacked into the school’s records every night to make sure no geeks were infiltrating our ranks without her knowledge. She was like an evil overlord. Or a raid boss.

  I bet we’d need a full twenty-five man raid to take her down.

  “How about I give him a proper welcome?” she asked venomously.

  She didn't wait long enough for me to tell her it was a bad idea. I couldn’t just throw a fellow gamer under the bus, could I? Before I could form a convincing sentence, though, the boy picked up his tray of food from the cashier and started to turn to look for an empty table, unaware of Hurricane Tawny heading right for him.

  She stood right behind him so that the second he turned around, all she had to do was give his tray a little bump, sending it crashing to the floor and all over him.

  “You idiot!” she yelled at the boy, who now wore an expression of pure shock.

  The poor geek had probably never been this close to a cheerleader before, especially not a screaming psycho cheerleader. And Tawny was the leader of that particular pack.

  “I’m sorry,” he stuttered, still looking very confused and undoubtedly trying to figure out how her bumping into him was his fault.

  It totally wasn’t, by the way. That’s why he couldn’t make heads or tails of what was happening at that particular moment.

  “You could have ruined my uniform,” she screamed, looking livid and—quite frankly—terrifying, even me.

  “I didn’t . . . you weren’t,” the boy continued to stammer, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

  It was a sad sight, to say the least, and I did feel a pang of guilt, since I had probably provoked this little outburst by smiling at him. That was exactly why I wasn’t nice to people. Tawny zeroed in on any kindness like a hawk and devoured it.

  Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic. But that’s what it felt like most of the time. That’s why it was best for me to keep my head down and get through high school so that I could go to college and actually be who I wanted to be.

  Cowardly? Yes. Effective? Totally.

  “Why don’t you go back to your foster parents’ basement and save us all from having to look at you, fatty,” she said, even though this boy was probably six feet tall and 170 pounds.

  Far from fat.

  That just happened to be Tawny’s insult of choice, no matter what her target looked like. It was probably because you could tell even the skinniest of girls that they looked fat and they would believe you. I wasn't sure how effective the insult was on boys, but that didn’t seem to bother Tawny at all.

  The boy stared at her in horror, caught between his indignation at her outburst and the overwhelming desire to run from the scene before the chocolate shake started to drip from his now-ruined Voyager’s Quest shirt onto the floor.

  “Well, go,” Tawny ordered, sounding like this boy was too slow to understand what she was demanding.

  He didn’t say anything, which surprised me a bit that he wouldn’t even stand up for himself. Instead, he left his tray of food on the floor and walked out of the café in a controlled rush that looked like it wanted to be a full-out sprint.

  “Loser,” she said with an eye roll, before calmly walking up to the register to order her lunch.

  She might have been my best friend, but she was kind of the devil.

  4. Target Acquired

  In case you were wondering, the real world kind of sucks, my screen read that night.

  Rekrap had just sent me a private message while I was leveling my character on my own. Naturally, the entire guild (all five of us), were online, even though we weren’t raiding together.

  Oh really? And why is that? I responded, ready for another funny Rekrap story.

  He had such an odd view of the world that it was always interesting to hear his account of his day-to-day life. The boy could make a TV show about his existence and it would be quirkier and probably funnier than The Big Bang Theory. That was saying something.

  I finally got the stupid house unpacked and went out to grab lunch and these crazy cheerleaders accosted me, he typed.

  I stared at the screen for a moment, unsure of exactly what I should say to that.

  Of course, the thought had crossed my mind that the boy from the café might have been Parker. But honestly? I was trying to convince myself that I was being paranoid. After all, Voyager’s Quest had more than 11 million active users. There had to be at least some other people in Albany who played it, right?

  What do you mean? I asked, still holding onto the hope that his message was a crazy coincidence and it wasn’t him I had seen.

  I was just getting my food and a blonde one distracted me, trying to act all nice while a brunette dumped my food tray all over the ground. I hate cheerleaders, was his simple explanation.

  Oh yeah. They’re the worst, I replied, completely dumbstruck by the whole conversation.

  Like I said, what were the odds?

  “I’ve decided we should invent a plague that only affects snotty cheerleaders,” Rekrap said over our guild voice chat channel.

  “Agreed,” Eilarae chimed in happily.

  Done, typed Sovay, since she never used voice chat.

  “Just not the hot ones,” Kaydinn said. I heard a stifled, “Ouch!” over the micr
ophone before he quickly said, “Just kidding” with a laugh.

  Apparently Eilarae didn’t like that comment.

  I didn’t say anything to the remark, feeling slightly indignant that he would stereotype cheerleaders like that, even though Tawny and I had given him a good reason to hate us. But it wasn’t fair that he thought I was trying to distract him. All I did was smile at him for wearing a shirt from a beloved game and for looking like my celebrity crush from a very nerdy movie.

  Was that really so horrible of me? Smiling at a boy, just to be polite?

  My silence over the voice chat channel didn’t go unnoticed, and soon Rekrap said, “Uh-oh. I think I’ve offended Xandris.”

  “Maybe she’s a closet cheerleader,” Eilarae giggled.

  Fat chance, Sovay typed.

  I pushed my chat button and laughed nervously into the microphone. “Sorry, I was getting attacked by a high-level mob. Had to concentrate,” I lied.

  “Death to the cheerleaders.” I added that as an unenthusiastic afterthought, completely against my will. It seemed like no matter what side I was on, I was always a reluctant hostage. College couldn’t come soon enough.

  I would be the first person to admit that Tawny could be a bit . . . we’ll say, abrasive. I knew it, Zane knew it, and the entire school knew it. But that didn’t mean she was a horrible person who needed to die from the plague.

  She was just misunderstood.

  You had to know how to take her sense of humor, and obviously Parker was not the type of person who understood that she only yelled at him because it made her happy and— . . . well . . . even as I thought that whole sentence out, it sounded like a pretty weak argument.

  You can’t blame me for trying though, right?

  +++

  School was back in session the next week, returning with a vengeance and clearly out to get us for having dared to take a winter break.

  I made my way through my classes that Monday, ready and waiting for the axe to fall. I just knew that—since I had been unlucky enough for Parker to move into my hometown (which I still couldn’t believe had happened. That had to be the most amazing coincidence ever)—he would happen to have every class with me.

  As luck would have it, however, I didn’t seem to have a single class with him. At least, no classes before lunch period.

  At noon, I walked over to The Squad’s table with a proud smile plastered on my face, feeling relaxed and relieved by my Parker-less day, even though I shouldn’t have been so proud about something I had no control over. But what did that matter? I was triumphant as I sat next to Tawny.

  “The maroon in our new uniforms looks good with your teal eyes,” she said offhandedly, not wanting to make too big of a deal about giving me a compliment, I assumed.

  “Thanks,” I answered, giving her a genuine smile.

  I was definitely overly proud of my ability to remain seemingly normal, despite the fact that my ugly little secret life had decided to start going to school with me. Zane took a seat next to me and draped his arm lazily over my shoulder. I quickly pushed it away, giving him a stern look.

  “This uniform is brand new. I can’t have you wrinkling it with your giant arm,” I said in exasperation.

  For some odd reason, everything Zane did made me mad.

  I know, I know, that sounded like a bad premise for a relationship, but somehow it worked out for us. We loved having an explosive, volatile relationship. He would purposefully make me mad and I’d yell at him over everything.

  It was fun.

  Sort of.

  “Are these skirts shorter, or is that just my imagination?” he asked, placing his hand on my perfectly tanned bare leg.

  Tawny insisted on not having any “pale corpses” on the team, so sunless tanning was mandatory. That, of course, meant less time for Voyager’s Quest, where I could battle against actual pale corpses.

  She was such a fun sucker.

  “You’re a pig,” I remarked, swiping his hand away and shaking my head at his primitive behavior.

  It may be true that we only wore our uniforms to get attention, but it was our job as The Squad to flatly refuse any attention that came our way as a result of our good looks and well-tailored uniforms. It was one of the unspoken rules that Tawny ended up “speaking” quite often.

  Looking around at the various cliques at each lunch table in an attempt to blatantly ignore Zane, my eyes found Parker. He was sitting with a group of nerds (it didn’t surprise me for one second that he had found his tribe so quickly) and laughing about something. Today he wore another Voyager’s Quest shirt—this time dark blue—with his same fitted jeans he had worn the day of “the incident.”

  At least he had managed to wash all of the chocolate shake off of his pants.

  His light brown hair was messy and sticking on end again, and his pale skin looked like it could use a few good hours in Tawny’s tanning bed, but other than that, he was kind of a cool nerd. If there was such a thing.

  Tawny took a seat next to me and crossed her legs, letting her foot bounce off of mine repeatedly in an attempt to get my attention.

  “You’re worse than me,” she said suddenly and without any explanation as to what in the world she was talking about.

  “That’s not possible,” Zane replied, half sarcastically. “There’s no one worse than you when it comes to the Booty Squad,” he finished, using the very unflattering nickname the football team had given us since our mascot was a pirate.

  He and Tawny didn’t exactly get along on the best of days, so it made hanging out all together difficult. I usually had to pick between the two of them on weekends.

  “Shut it, moron,” she shot back. Zane rolled his eyes at her.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, finally deciding I should interject before this little exchange got uglier than a flyer’s ankle after her supports released her too early.

  “I was just thinking that Zane might like to know why his girlfriend has been staring at that dork all lunch period,” she explained, nodding to the table where Parker sat with his friends.

  “Huh?” Zane answered, sounding about as intelligent as a stereotypical jock should.

  “Reagan is scoping out our next target for hazing the potential varsity girls,” Tawny stated with a proud smile, even though I had never agreed to making Parker our target.

  In fact, even though I didn’t technically “know” this boy, he was in my guild and I was pretty sure bullying someone from your own guild was a big no-no. That meant I had just been given the almost impossible task of changing Tawny’s mind.

  Tawny wasn’t exactly an easy contender to take on.

  She had once gotten a brand new car out of her parents by refusing to eat or drink anything for a few days. When she had to be taken to the hospital because she’d passed out at practice, they came to visit her with a car catalog, asking her what color she wanted.

  “Actually,” I began slowly, trying to pick my words carefully. “I don’t know that he’s really our guy.”

  Tawny looked at me like I had completely lost my mind, but didn’t say anything yet. Instead, she uncrossed her legs and sat up straight, no longer posing but focusing all of her attention on me. That was never a good sign.

  “It’s just that, he seems to have quite a few friends over there already. So he’s like a popular nerd, which means he’ll probably have some nerd girlfriend in a week or so and wouldn’t take the skinny dipping bait anyway. You know?” I asked, finishing my argument off pretty pathetically.

  “Reagan, I think all that blonde hair dye is starting to sink in a bit too much,” Tawny said slowly.

  “I’m a natural blonde,” I protested. “Mostly.”

  “Do you really think that boy would turn down one of us for some frizzy-haired nerd girl?” she asked, obviously not really wanting an answer. “He’s perfect and he’s the target. So shut it and do your job.”

  5. Initiating Stealth Mode

  For the next few days, I
spent my time trying not to look at Parker in the hopes that Tawny would forget her vendetta. Honestly, the only reason she was so intent on ruining him was because she had seen me smile at him and now thought I had somehow lost my mind and was having a change of heart about the whole “being a soul sucking cheerleader” thing.

  Which, by the way, I wasn’t.

  I mean, no one wants to be described as “soul sucking,” but in high school, it’s better to be mean and in charge of things than nice and squished under the weight of the overwhelmingly cruel girls. If you can’t beat them, join them, right? Plus, I wasn’t really joining them . . . just tagging along on their awful rampage.

  It was bizarre to see Parker at school after having talked to him for years over the game. It was almost like meeting a celebrity; someone you were so familiar with, yet had never met.

  The weirdest thing was when I passed him in the hallways and heard his voice, in person, without any microphone static muffling his laugh. And of course, the fact that I knew who he was but he didn’t know that I was “the blonde cheerleader who had distracted him” made me feel like some sort of creepy stalker each time we talked in game now.

  It was weird to listen to him talk about my school while I pretended that I had no idea what he was talking about.

  You’ll never guess what happened, he typed to me one day in a private chat while I was working on my in-game profession to get enough gold to buy my new armor set. Yeah, I had the nerd lingo down. I never said it was something to be proud of, but it was definitely quite a feat.

  Did you finally decide to stop trying to auction off Kaydinn’s stuff out of the guild bank when he’s not looking? There are only 5 of us in the guild. I think he’s going to catch on at some point, I replied with a little laugh at my computer screen.

  I’m not actually auctioning it off. I just want him to think I am to see how mad he gets. And no, that’s not it, he answered only moments later. I just got this really nice copy of Voyager’s Quest: The Ultimate Guide from my mom for my birthday.