The Overworld Games

by Greyson Mann

  So I guess it’s going to take more than Cate’s dreamboat zombie pigman—and a lucky mushroom—to get me out of this mess.

  DAY 9: WEDNESDAY

  This morning after school, I went looking for Mom. I usually try to steer clear of the backyard. I mean, those chickens have it out for me—especially the rooster. He stares at me with his beady little eyes, watching my every move.

  Plus, the chicken feed Mom scatters all over the yard gets stuck to my feet.

  And did I mention that Sock the Sheep and our neighbor’s cat, Sir Coughs-a-Lot, are suddenly best friends? (The other day, I even saw that cat take a NAP on Sock’s back, which made my own back itch like crazy.) So Sock and I are kind of on the outs.

  Yeah, there’s lots of reasons to avoid the backyard. But that’s pretty much Mom’s favorite hangout these days. So if I want to talk to Mom, I gotta brave the yard.

  I couldn’t see Mom, but I followed the clucking sound all the way to the chicken coop. Dad built it for Mom in two days flat. I have to duck to get inside, and the smell is pretty nasty. But there was Mom, pulling eggs out of a nesting box.

  Man, was she proud of those eggs! I don’t really get it. Chicken eggs are kind of boring—brown like mushrooms, not green like creeper eggs. But Mom put them in her basket super carefully, as if they were made of glass.

  Then she showed me a different set of eggs that she was keeping warm with an overhead torch. “These ones are going to HATCH,” she said. “In about 21 days.”

  “More chickens?” I asked.

  She nodded, all happy like. And then she looked back at those eggs all moony-eyed, the way Sam gets around Willow. Before she could tell me more about her precious eggs, I told her about my idea—getting a coach for Pig Riding.

  “Great!” she said. “One of the spider jockeys maybe?”

  “NO.” I shut that down right away. I was hoping Mom could help me think of someone else—ANYONE else.

  But she had already crept out of the chicken coop and was starting to scatter chicken feed on the ground.

  Well, you’d have thought it was raining emeralds, the way those chickens took off after her. Mom was leading the chicken parade, round and round the yard. So I could tell she wasn’t going to help me come up with a Pig-Riding coach—her head was too full of chicken feathers.

  Watching those chickens race after Mom, I started picturing Zoe Zombie on her pet chicken. AGAIN.

  I shook my head. I shook my whole body, trying to shake off the idea. Getting coached by a baby zombie? How low can a creeper go?

  But Mom’s eggs weren’t the only thing that was going to hatch in 21 days. The Overworld Games were coming up in exactly 21 days, too. And so far, I wasn’t doing so well on my 30-day plan.

  So it was time to do one of those things that every creeper hates to do.

  It was time to invite myself to Ziggy Zombie’s for a sleepover.

  DAY 11: FRIDAY

  Well, I tried to keep an open mind.

  That’s what Dad calls it when you REALLY don’t want to do something, but you have to do it anyway. “You never know,” Dad usually says. “It could be fun!”

  Let’s just be clear about one thing: the sleepover at Ziggy’s house was NOT fun. But I did pick up a few tips from Zoe the Chicken Rider.

  See, while Ziggy was trying to show me his latest blister, Zoe kept zooming in and out of the living room on her chicken. So I asked her how she holds on tight. And how she steers. And what she’d do differently if she were riding a pig instead of a chicken.

  Well, that last question kind of stumped her. “A pig?” she asked, slurping on her thumb. “Why would I WIDE a pig?”

  Good question, I wanted to say. Why would ANY mob ride a pig? What in the Overworld did I get myself into?

  But I didn’t want to dump all my problems on Zoe. I mean, she’s just a kid. And anyway, she had lots of good answers for my other questions.

  She said she holds on tight by squeezing her legs. She hopped off her chicken to flex her muscles and show me how strong she was.

  And she said she steers by leaning. She showed me how if she kept leaning the same way, her chicken would go around in a circle. Sure enough, she rode in circles around the living room—until she turned even greener than her usual green and had to run for the bathroom.

  But I’d gotten some good info by then. So when Ziggy asked if I wanted to have a rotten-flesh-dog eating contest, I told him I wasn’t feeling so hot either. (Which was kind of true. Just thinking about Ziggy stuffing flesh dogs in his face makes me want to hurl.) So I made a big show about holding my stomach. And I made a run for it.

  Now I’m back at home with a whole night ahead of me, and I’m back to being a creeper with a plan.

  When I get to the farm tomorrow for more Pig Riding, I’m going to try Zoe’s chicken-riding tips. (Maybe they’ll help me out more than my lucky mushroom has lately.)

  I know, I know . . . Zoe is a baby zombie, and I’m a creeper. She rides a chicken, and I ride a pig. But trust me—I have a good feeling about this one.

  Face plants? Nose dives? Mud baths? Nope. Uh-uh. I’m staying on that bucking bronco—er pig.

  That pink mob doesn’t stand a chance.

  DAY 13: SUNDAY

  Turns out, pigs are a whole lot tougher than they look. In fact, if I could time-travel back to Mr. Carl’s planning meeting when he asked about new school mascots, I’d vote for the pig this time around. For SURE.

  Let’s just say that in the Gerald vs. Pig showdown, I didn’t exactly win.

  Oh, I stayed on the pig for a few seconds. Maybe even half a minute. But you know how mobs say that when they’re in danger, time slows down? And somehow, there’s enough time for their whole life to flash before their eyes?

  Yeah, that happened to me. That half a minute of pig riding felt like an eternity.

  Everything started out okay. Sam and I were the first ones to show up at Pig Riding, so the farmer helped me onto one of the pigs. So far, so good.

  The pig grunted and grumbled, as if I weighed a ton (which I know is NOT true, especially after Dad’s lousy cooking lately).

  I squeezed my legs to hold on, just like Zoe told me to do.

  And that’s pretty much when the pig squealed—and took off like a shot.

  WOAH!

  I tried to lean. I figured if I could lean in one direction, that pig and I would just run around in a circle in the pen. Like Zoe on her chicken. Easy peasy.

  But that’s not how it turned out.

  See, my good old buddy Sam chose THAT moment to come into the pen with his camera. Sam’s kind of a wide dude. So thanks to him, the gate was wide OPEN.

  When the pig took off running, it raced right through that open gate and headed for the hills—taking me with it.

  We veered around Whisper Witch and that skeleton kid from seventh grade, who were walking toward the pen.

  We did a couple of loops around the chicken coop.

  We flew past cows and horses and sheep.

  We trampled right through the wheat field and the garden.

  That was when time did its weird slow-down thing. And I suddenly noticed how GREEN all those garden vegetables were. The tops of the carrots were lime-green and bushy, and a ripe emerald-green melon had rolled to the edge of the garden. Now why does a creeper think about things like THAT when he’s about to meet his doom?

  Then I realized WHY the garden was so green. It got lots of water—from the pond nearby. The pond that looked way deep and way cold. The pond that my pig was racing toward as if he hadn’t had a bath in a gazillion years.

  “Go right!” I hollered, as if the pig knew its right foot from its left. I leaned my body so far to the right, I could almost touch the ground.

  But I’ve gotta say, Zoe’s leaning tips didn’t really pan out for me. In fact, when I was staring death in the face, I thought of a much better question I should have asked her: “How do you make your chicken STOP?”

  Turns out, I didn�
�t need to know. That pig was a perfectly good stopper. When it came to the edge of a pond, it stopped. Just like that.

  But I didn’t.

  Nope. I soared through the air like a fireball.

  SPLAT! I hit the water hard.

  GLUB, GLUB . . . I sank like a melon.

  PFFFT! That was the sound of my hope, popping like an air bubble at the surface of the pond.

  I hung out in the muck at the bottom of the pond, wishing I never had to come back out. But a creeper’s gotta do what a creeper’s gotta do.

  I mean, first, he’s gotta BREATHE. So I swam up and did that. And as I walked home dripping wet beside Sam (who kept telling me what GREAT video he got of my pig ride), I had to face reality, too.

  See, I know it now: I’m not going to make Dad proud at the Overworld Games. There’s NO WAY.

  And it won’t even be the zombie pigmen that take me down. It’ll be the roly–poly critters that every mob in the Overworld thinks are SO cuddy and cute.

  PIGS.

  DAY 15: TUESDAY (MORNING)

  You know those daymares you have where things keep getting scarier and scarier—until you finally wake up? And then you’re so happy to be awake and ALIVE that you do a happy dance and kiss your squid on the lips and maybe even offer to do your twin sister’s chores for a whole MONTH?

  Yeah, that kind of happened to me at school last night (minus the “kissing my squid’s lips and doing Chloe’s chores” part—PHEW!).

  See, after my swim with the pig, I thought I’d sunk as far into the mucky pond as I was going to go. But I was wrong. Because Monday night at school, I sunk even lower.

  There was an announcement over the loudspeaker during first period that our Overworld Games jerseys were ready. We were all supposed to pick them up in the cafeteria at lunch.

  Well, every mob around me started cheering and grunting. But I slid down in my seat, wishing the wooden bench would just grow up around me and swallow me whole. Because I knew what was on those jerseys: a dumb dopey squid drawn by none other than moi, Gerald Creeper Jr.

  I didn’t know WHICH squid Mr. Carl had gone with. See, when he asked me for my drawings, all I had was those messy pages in my journal. So I sent him pictures of them, thinking he’d take one look and shoot down all my lame ideas. At least I’d still get credit for my work, right?

  But I should have figured out eons ago that Mr. Carl does exactly the OPPOSITE of what I think he’s going to do. Like, if I said “Good night, Mr. Carl,” he’d probably say “Good morning, Gerald.” And the lousier my ideas, the more he LOVES them.

  So who KNEW what was going to be on those jerseys? Not me. And I didn’t ever want to find out.

  But at lunch, Sam bounced me along toward the cafeteria. He was blabbing and blubbering about my awesome pig ride on Saturday. Yup, he was bragging me up to all the mobs waiting in line for their jerseys, as if I’d actually stayed ON that pig. As if I’d had a BLAST and couldn’t WAIT to go for another ride.

  Sometimes I think that slime is blind as a bat. But he’s pretty much the president of the Gerald Creeper Jr. Fan Club, so I try to cut him some slack.

  When he said something about squids, though, I knew he was going to blow my cover as the artist of the dumb squid logo. So I changed the subject. QUICK.

  “Sam, how’s your cat Moo doing these days?”

  Genius. It worked like a charm.

  By the time we’d reached the front of the line, Sam was telling Whisper Witch how he didn’t need to wash his face before school, because Moo usually licked it clean.

  I shut my eyes, trying not to picture THAT. But when I opened them, Mr. Carl was handing me my jersey. And when I saw it, I kind of wished I could go back to picturing Sam getting his face washed by a giant cat tongue.

  See, it wasn’t just Sticky on the front of that jersey. No sirree. Mr. Carl had picked the absolute WORST drawing off my journal page—the one of ME riding Sticky like a spider jockey. The drawing that was supposed to be a JOKE! Did the creep have NO sense of humor at all???

  The whispers started right away.

  And when I tried to creep out of the cafeteria, there were these blinding flashes. I thought it was a blaze from the Nether, come to put me out of my misery. But it wasn’t.

  It was Mrs. Enderwoman, my history teacher, taking a picture of me for the school newspaper. (I didn’t even know we HAD a school newspaper.) Then she made me put on my jersey so she could take ANOTHER photo—of our new school jersey, with our new school mascot, designed by Gerald Creeper Jr.

  Well, let me tell you, Mr. Carl must have gone all cheapo on the jerseys, because as soon as I put mine on, I started to itch. Did I mention that I have itchy skin ANYWAY? So while I stood there posing for Mrs. Enderwoman and trying NOT to itch, Bones and his gang of spider jockeys walked by.

  I heard the tinkly bones before I saw them. Then Bones said something like, “Well if it isn’t Itchy, the star squid jockey of Mob Middle School.” He held up his bony fingers in the shape of an “L” for loser—behind Mrs. Enderwoman’s back, where she wouldn’t see.

  When one of his bony buddies jokingly asked for my autograph, Mrs. Enderwoman thought he was serious and said, “What a FANTASTIC idea.”

  So next thing you know, Mr. Carl and Mrs. Enderwoman had me sitting at a table in the cafeteria signing jerseys. Luckily the line of mobs who wanted my signature was pretty short. But it was FOR SURE the most humiliating twenty seconds of my Mob Middle School career.

  So as I said, last night was like a daymare that just kept getting worse, and worse, and WORSE. But this morning, at the very end of the school night, I WOKE UP.

  Well, not really. I mean, I was never sleeping. But all of a sudden, things got WAY better. I was at an Overworld Games planning meeting with Sam, and Mr. Carl made a very important announcement.

  I wanted to plug my ears, because those announcements hadn’t exactly been GOOD news lately. But this one was. In fact, it was the BEST news I’d heard in days.

  Mr. Carl said he had decided to include Firework Crafting in the Overworld Games.

  WHAT?!

  Well, I was so happy I cried tears of joy. Mom said that happens sometimes, but I never believed her. Not until I was sitting there with salty tears welling up in my eyes and a huge SMILE on my face.

  When Sam noticed, I wiped a tear away real quick and said I had gunpowder in my eye. But then I started hissing a little . . . HAPPY hissing. I almost pulled off my baby sister’s famous move and exploded from happiness!

  So now I’m thinking that I might just win that gold yet. I might make Dad proud. And the best part is, I never, ever, EVER have to get on a pig again.

  DAY 15: TUESDAY (NIGHT)

  Tonight, when I told Dad about Firework Crafting, I thought HE was going to cry tears of joy too. He was already kind of crying over the burnt apple crisp he’d made, which he’d forgotten to put the apples in. (REALLY? How is that even possible?)

  But when I mentioned Firework Crafting? I swear I saw fireworks explode in Dad’s eyes. Sometimes I think he’s just a boy creeper in a man creeper’s body. And that boy wanted to get going on fireworks right away.

  “Meet you in the garage after dinner?” he said.

  Chloe snorted into her smashed potatoes. “We have to go to school, Dad,” she reminded him before I could.

  Dad looked crushed. “Oh, yeah. Tomorrow morning then?”

  Before I could jump on that, Chloe was all like, “But don’t you want to come watch my Strategic Exploding class after school, Dad?”

  Well, Chloe has NEVER invited Dad to watch Strategic Exploding. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even want him there. Dad is totally embarrassing at sporting events—he’s all hollering and cheering and stuff.

  But I could tell that Dad’s obsession with getting me a gold medal was kind of wearing on my Evil Twin. She’s super competitive. So, if Dad was going to help me with my event, she probably thought he’d better help HER too.

  Dad looked kind of tor
n, but before he could say anything, Cammy got a piece of carrot stuck up her nose. Sometimes that little creeper sure comes in handy. Dad ran outside to get Mom, and by the time they got the carrot out, Chloe had already left for school.

  So I think Dad dodged a fireball on that one.

  And tomorrow morning? He and I will be making fireworks. GOLD MEDAL–winning fireworks.

  I don’t even mind going to school tonight. Bones and his gang can bully me all they want about the squid logo and the jerseys. Because the next time I sign autographs in the cafeteria, the line is going to stretch out the door and all the way to the Extreme Hills, let me tell you.

  I used to think I’d be a famous rapper someday, but now my dreams are kind of changing. (I guess I’m growing up and getting more realistic.) Forget rapping for a living. I’m going for the GOLD.

  DAY 16: WEDNESDAY (MORNING)

  I just got back from school, and Mom’s got Dad spreading hay in the chicken coop. I can tell that Dad is DYING to get back into the house to work on fireworks, because that hay is FLYING.

  But while he’s working, I’m going to take a sec to review my 30-Day Plan.

  Well, I think I blew that first goal right out of the mineshaft. I planned THE BEST event for the Games—Firework Crafting. (I mean, there’s also that Pig Riding thing, but I’m going to try to get out of that. Why bother?)