Insert Coin to Continue

by John David Anderson

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: Defeating the Demon King . . . Again

  Thursday—The Day Before Friday

  Friday, 7:00 a.m.—The First Coin

  7:42 a.m.—Need for Ten-Speed

  8:07 a.m.—A Question of Sanity

  8:23 a.m.—A Puzzling Turn

  9:15 a.m.—Romeo, Juliet, and the Zombie Apocalypse

  10:27 a.m.—Lounge Raider

  11:20 a.m.—Call of Dodgeball

  12:11 p.m.—Angry Chickens

  12:37 p.m.—The End of the World

  1:30 p.m.—The Beast in the Darkness

  2:24 p.m.—Band Hero

  2:49 p.m.—The Boss

  3:15 p.m.—Crossing the Line

  4:37 p.m.—Middle School Kombat

  5:32 p.m.—Father Knows Best

  7:33 p.m.—The Wizard Appears

  8:16 p.m.—The Final Confrontation

  8:23 p.m.—The Last Coin

  Saturday—The Day After Friday

  Epilogue: Defeating the Demon King . . . Again. Again.

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOR FUN

  PROLOGUE:

  DEFEATING THE DEMON KING . . . AGAIN

  “Greetings, chosen one. I have been expecting you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Pass me the chips, will ya?” Oz asked.

  Bryan shook his head. “Not your waiter, man. Or your mom.”

  “I had hoped you would join me, but now I see that your heart is impure. I have no choice but to—”

  “Destroy me, yes. Got it.”

  Oz stuffed his face. “His voice sounds like that guy from the movie previews. Movie preview guy. I have no choice but to destroy you! Bwa-ha-ha!”

  “You sound nothing like that guy.”

  “You sound nothing like that guy. Bwa-ha-ha!” Oz repeated, trying to sound even more like that guy and failing.

  “Just keep eating and be quiet. Here comes the big speech, all about how I journeyed through the twelve gates and drank the dragon’s blood, on and on and on.” Bryan started clicking. “ ‘Do you choose to confront the Demon King?’ Oh, heck yeah.” Bryan clicked yes.

  “Then let us begin, warrior, so I can wallow in a bath of your cruor.”

  “What’s cruor?” Oz wanted to know.

  “I think it means guts and stuff.”

  “This is so awesome.”

  “I know, right?”

  On the screen the Demon King raised his bloody ax and started attacking. Bryan clicked much more frantically.

  “You should have totally used your Potion of Alacrity,” Oz chided.

  “Nah. I’ve already got Lord Romlor’s Blessing of Infinite Graces cast on me; it wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Dude, he’s summoning zombies.”

  “Got it, thanks.”

  “Oh man, Lightning Fists. See how they glow like that? Quadruple damage.”

  “I am looking at the same screen you are, Oz.”

  “Whatever. Watch out for that pit. And those spiky boulder things. Really, you equipped your Mace of Flaming Vengeance over the Vorpal Blade of Bloodletting?”

  “The Sovereign of Darkness has a weakness to fire.”

  “I did not know that.” Oz was impressed. It didn’t take much.

  “That’s ’cause you’ve never gotten this far. And try to chew with your mouth closed. You’re dribbling.”

  Oz brushed the crumbs from his shirt onto the carpet.

  “Now we just switch to the Rod of Annihilation to bring down his force field like so. . . . Then hit him with a level-fifty death incantation wrapped in a big burrito of spiritual wrath. . . . Stab him through the heart for good measure and . . . voilà. The Demon King is toast.”

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

  “Dude. You disintegrated him.”

  “I know.”

  “[Cough, cough, cough] . . . You have acted bravely, hero. Your quest is complete.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What a loser.”

  “Total lamoid. Okay. Here’s the part I keep telling you about. See just back there, right behind the credits. Right . . . there. Do you see it?” Bryan paused the screen and pointed.

  “No.”

  “You don’t see it?”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “That tiny little flashing spot there in the corner that looks sort of like a key?”

  “That chunk of the burning dark lord you just exploded?”

  “No, that one. Right . . . there.”

  Bryan Biggins moved his cursor to the speck in question, then spun around in his chair and looked at his best friend. “I think that’s it. That’s the thing that unlocks the secret bonus level. But I don’t know how to get it. I’ve tried everything. Checked all the guides. Read all the posts. Nobody’s found a way.”

  “You mean the secret bonus level that doesn’t exist,” Oz said.

  “Say what you will. I know it’s there. These guys put one at the end of all their games.”

  Oswaldo Guzman licked his fingers, then wiped them on Bryan’s bedspread. “I don’t know, dude. Maybe that little flashy speck is just something they put there to tease pathetic dweebs like us that have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than sit around a computer and play the same game all the way through for—what does this make for you—the eighth time?”

  “Ninth.”

  “Right. See? That’s what I’m talking about.” Oz fell back on Bryan’s bed and stared up at his ceiling. “So dweeby.”

  “I’m telling you it exists. I’m going to find it. I’m going to unlock it. And I’m going to beat it.”

  Oz looked in the bag of barbecue chips to confirm it was empty, then let it fall to the floor. “And even if you do, then what?”

  Bryan picked up the empty bag, crumpled it, and tossed it on the overflowing metal trash bin under his desk. He didn’t know “then what.” He hadn’t really thought about “then what.” The point was beating the game. Completing the quest. Figuring out the secret. There really was no other reward. Was there?

  “I don’t know,” Bryan said. “I’ll just . . . win, you know? Winning? Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

  Oz shook his head. “I’ve heard of it. Listen, do you think maybe we could take a break from video games and watch a movie or something? I’m starting to go cross-eyed.” Oz rolled off the bed and onto the floor, landing with a grunt. Bryan stared at the computer, where Sovereign of Darkness finished its theme music, zooming in on the remains of its title villain, now just a pixilated puddle on the screen.

  The Demon King’s reign of madness had ended. The credits rolled. For the ninth time.

  But Bryan didn’t think it was over. He didn’t want it to be over. He still felt like he was missing something. He stared at the mysterious little flash in the background for a second more and then shut down the computer.

  He couldn’t begin to guess what came next.

  THURSDAY

  THE DAY BEFORE FRIDAY

  Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

  Bryan swept out blindly and missed the alarm clock, floundering for the snooze button before finally shutting it up. He pulled himself up in bed and stared through the open slats of his blinds. It was still dark outside.

  That was the worst part about school days. Having to get up before the sun. That and the school part.

  Outside, he knew, the leaves had turned, spray-painting branches in bursts of orange and red, contrasted with the emerald carpet of manicured lawns, but this early all he could see were shadows. Bryan stretched and stumbled toward the bathroom, dodging towers of laundry, trying to muster
some enthusiasm. It was a Thursday, which at least made it close to Friday. That was something. He could hear his mother banging around in the fridge downstairs. She would already be in her tracksuit, drinking a vitamin shake and watching The TODAY Show. She had a crush on Matt Lauer. Bryan’s dad didn’t seem to mind.

  Face washed, teeth brushed, he slipped back into his room and into cleaner-at-least clothes, glancing at his computer, where the title screen for Sovereign of Darkness stared back at him. He had played another couple of hours last night, foregoing his desire for a good night’s sleep in the hopes of uncovering the secret bonus level that he was sure existed.

  He hadn’t found it.

  Maybe Oz was right. Maybe it wasn’t there. But Bryan had a problem letting things go. It wasn’t determination, exactly. He had given up on lots of things over the course of his life—soccer, piano lessons (he still played the saxophone at least), karate, a perfect complexion, an A in math—but occasionally he would fixate on something, let it nag him, like an itch on the roof of his mouth. Finding the secret bonus level to Sovereign of Darkness was one of those things.

  On-screen, Kerran Nightstalker—the character Bryan had nursed from level one to level fifty through a steady diet of Mountain Dew–driven demon-bashing—spun his sword and stared heroically, as if he had spotted a pack of imps on the horizon and was begging Bryan to sit down and give him orders. Come on, Bryan, the dark elf whispered. Play ten more minutes. But Bryan couldn’t be late for school. Not again. He grabbed his backpack and hurried downstairs.

  Bryan Biggins was a level-fifty, dual-wielding dark elf ranger only some of the time. The rest of the time he was a freckle-cheeked boy, short for his age, living at the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood known for its high rate of community garage sales, and attending a school known for its unwritten uniform of North Face jackets and Hollister jeans. A place where everything looked the same from a distance. It was disconcerting sometimes, the sameness. The identical mailboxes. The columns of minivans ranging in hue from slate gray to charcoal gray. The flat-topped hedges marking the boundaries between copycat houses. Sometimes it was hard to tell anything apart.

  Bryan checked his reflection in the mirror above his dresser; he looked nothing like Kerran Nightstalker. He was scrawnier, for one, and his eyes were blue, not green. His nose rounded into a knob at the end, as if it were always slightly pressed against a window. Bryan didn’t own a flaming mace, though the crop of orange curls on his head sometimes gave the appearance that his skull was on fire. He had never held a sword in his life and had never slain anything, unless you counted the caterpillar he had accidentally rolled over with his Big Wheel when he was five. His mother said he cried for almost an hour.

  And unlike Kerran Nightstalker, Bryan had never been in a fight. He had been pushed. Shouldered. Tripped. But he’d never taken a punch. He was no adventurer. Some days he didn’t even feel like the main character in his own life.

  “Bryan, you better hurry. You’re going to be late!”

  Bryan came down the stairs and snatched a waffle from the freezer. His mother handed him a glass of milk. “You’re not even going to toast that?”

  “Nope,” Bryan said, cramming half of the ice-crystal-crusted waffle in his mouth.

  “You were up late again playing that stupid game, weren’t you?”

  “Mrff wrff frrm frrfrrwr.” He swallowed his milk in three gulps and went in for the hug. “Don’t want to be late,” he reminded her. She tried to sneak in a kiss, but he dodged it. Mom kisses were totally uncalled for.

  “Have a good day,” she called out after him.

  He said he would, but he really doubted it.

  Bryan pedaled hard, still chewing his frozen waffle. It was a two-mile ride to school, which some mornings felt like the Tour de France, but it was still better than taking the bus. On buses nearly anything was fair game, as long as it could be done in secret behind the sticky vinyl seats and out of sight of the driver. On the bus in elementary school, Bryan had once been forced to mash a banana in his armpit—actually peeling it and sticking it underneath his shirt and squeezing—and then eat the sweaty remains. So when he finally graduated to middle school, he begged his parents to let him bike. To his surprise, they agreed. They didn’t know about the banana-armpit incident, but they had heard other horror stories. Plus, like all parents, they insisted that exercise was good for you.

  Bryan arrived at Mount Comfort Middle School with sweaty but bananaless pits and five minutes to spare. He chained his bike and sped through the halls to his locker, where Oz was dutifully waiting and shaking his head.

  “Almost late again.”

  “I know,” Bryan said.

  Bryan had lots of friends—at least fifty or so online, half of whom he recognized and at least ten that he could remember having spoken to in real life. Mostly, though, Bryan had Oz: the self-proclaimed Wizard of Elmhurst Park and unconfirmed holder of the world record for Pixy Stix slamming (twenty-three in one minute) and the only kid at Mount Comfort who looked up to Bryan. Oz was second generation. His parents had come to the country from Puerto Rico, packing little Oswaldo in Mrs. Guzman’s belly, only two months from delivery, ensuring he would be 100 percent American when he arrived.

  Oz was born to be a magician. You don’t name a kid Flash and then not expect him to try out for football. Or name your daughter Moonbeam and then act surprised when she pierces her nose. And since there were no such things as wizards—not in real life—magician seemed the next-best thing. Oz had a whole trunk full of magic paraphernalia in his closet: top hats and disappearing coin boxes, weighted dice, little red balls, and an array of colorful scarves. Strangely, having a trunk full of silk scarves didn’t up his cool factor any at school.

  Bryan couldn’t endure life at Mount Comfort Middle School without him, though. They had been best friends since they were six years old and both of them peed on Mrs. Bucherwald’s maple tree together. It didn’t matter to Bryan that Oz was always too loud and a little overweight. It didn’t matter to Oz that Bryan had pasty vampire skin and seldom wore matching clothes. They had marked their territory, and that was enough.

  “Okay, so I was watching episode fourteen of The Firelight Chronicles again last night, and I think I know who’s behind the Enigma Virus,” Oz began breathlessly.

  “No you don’t,” Bryan said, opening his locker and finding his books. The Firelight Chronicles was a show he and Oz watched that featured space pirates, aliens, androids, and female actresses dressed in black leather. Bryan was pretty sure he and Oz were the target audience. “They’re not going to tell you who’s behind it. They want you to speculate.”

  “It’s Dr. Raznor,” Oz continued.

  “Too obvious,” Bryan said.

  “Which is why it is Dr. Raznor.” Oz nodded, winking. “Because they know that you know that it’s obvious, so they know that you know that it’s not him, which means it has to be him.”

  Bryan rolled his eyes and fished out his math book. He had math first period. Who in their right mind decided that dividing fractions was best done at eight in the morning?

  “Let me guess. You were too busy playing SOD to watch. Did you get any closer to finding the secret level?”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Bryan said, digging through the discarded candy wrappers for his social studies notebook—the one he should probably have been studying last night. “I’ll try again tonight, provided Old Man Jenkins doesn’t overload us with reading.”

  Jenkins was Bryan’s social studies teacher. He was only in his early forties, but he already had gray hair and his breath smelled of butterscotch. He was better than Fossil Frieda, the senile art teacher who refused to retire and croaked like a frog from too many years of smoking. She insisted that Lady Gaga was the name of a French Impressionist painter and worried that Elvis Presley was still a corrupting influence on America’s youth. She had probably never even played a video game in her life.

  “I think you’re wasting y
our time,” Oz said matter-of-factly.

  Bryan looked at his friend, eyebrow cocked. “Excuse me? Playing the same game over and over again in order to unlock a secret level that may or may not exist is not a waste of time,” he countered. “Besides, do I even need to remind you of the time you spent sixteen straight hours playing Super Plumber Seven? At least I didn’t leave my butt print permanently engraved on the couch in my basement.”

  “I was in the zone,” Oz protested. “And you can’t even tell it’s my butt. And that’s not the point. The point is . . .”

  Oz didn’t say what the point was. His voice trailed off. He pointed behind Bryan. “Girl,” he whispered. “And she’s coming straight for us.” Oz looked down at his feet. Bryan turned around.

  It wasn’t just a girl. Or not just any girl. It was Jess.

  “Oh. Hey,” Bryan said, suddenly conscious of what the bike ride had done to his hair. It probably looked like a giant orange starfish had suckered to his skull and then died there. He tried to smooth it down, all casual like. He only made it worse.

  “Hi, Bryan. Hey, Oz,” Jess said.

  “Uh. Um. Wuhuh?” Oz said, using the vocabulary he reserved for all female encounters. Not that Bryan blamed him. This was Jessica Alcorn. Just Jess to anyone who knew her. The same Jess that Bryan had sat next to in third grade. The one he wasn’t allowed to talk about anymore because Oz had gotten tired of hearing about her. She stood an inch taller than both of them and had what Bryan’s mother would call an olive complexion, though it looked nothing like any olives he had ever seen, closer to the color of a walnut. Today her black hair splayed out over her shoulders and stretched to her elbows. Her long legs were tucked into knee-high black leather boots. She wore a white patterned sweater that reminded him of snowflakes. But mostly it was her eyes that struck him. Chocolate-hued with flecks of orange. Like late autumn. Bryan blinked twice.

  “I’m not interrupting, am I?” Jess asked, tucking her hair behind her ear the way all girls somehow learn to do. Bryan cleared his throat.

  “No. Um. Actually, I was just telling Oz about this video ga—” Bryan stopped himself before diving headlong into total, hopeless nerddom. “I mean, I was just headed to class,” he amended.