“We’re going to need better protections,” Esme said.
“And where are we going to get that?” I asked.
She pulled up her inventory and showed us how much diamond she had collected.
“Wow,” Anton said
“It’s not enough for all of us,” Esme said. “But it will give one of us a really good chance.”
Anton smiled. “You mean it will give the one of us who is going to be bait a really good chance.”
Esme’s face could barely contain her smirk.
“Bait?” I asked. “What do you mean by ‘bait’?”
* * *
—
Moments later, I was suited up in diamond armor, walking ahead of the group with my sword up. If this had been real life, I’d expect a little clinking in the joints where diamond rubbed against diamond, but this wasn’t real life. I wasn’t even sure if all the diamonds in the world would make up one single diamond suit of armor.
I moved slowly and looked around, expecting the enderman to appear right in front of me at any moment. But after I had gotten all the way past the portal and to the edge of the water without anything showing up, I relaxed. A rabbit hopped past me, and I lowered my sword.
“All I see is this attack bunny,” I called back to Lonnie, Esme, and Anton.
“That’s weird,” Anton said.
“Yeah, its ear twitches are particularly threatening,” I answered.
“No, I mean,” Anton jogged up close to me, still in his iron armor, and sighed. “I meant that the enderman wouldn’t stop last time. It was everywhere. And now, poof, it’s missing in action?”
“He’s right,” Esme said. “Maybe it’s set a trap for us.”
“All the more reason to stop trying to lure it out, and just move on with our original plan to go through the portal,” I suggested. “If it’s really not here, we’re wasting time.”
Anton and Esme both shook their heads.
“No,” she said. “It’s going to continue harassing us unless we deal with it. Keep going, just to those boats over there.”
We walked cautiously along the shore, huddling close, our backs facing in, so that we could see in all directions. Even though Lonnie wasn’t much of a lookout, we gave him a position in the group, between Anton and me.
After what seemed like a few minutes, we approached the boats that were perched on the shore, nestled between some gray rocks. “Are these the ones we left before?” I asked.
Esme looked at Anton, then said, “No, I don’t think so.” They moved toward the boats without any further hesitation, and Lonnie followed suit.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Wasn’t the plan to trap him on land?”
“But there are boats,” Esme said. “Somebody left them here for us to find.”
“And how are you so sure this isn’t a trap?” I asked. “You said we needed to stick to the plan, and the plan was to lure the enderman out and blow him up, right there on shore. Why change now?”
“Okay, fine. We didn’t tell you the whole plan,” Anton said. “We have a working theory. A logical one, not a conspiracy theory,” he added after I gave him a hard look.
“Okay,” I said cautiously. “What is it?”
“We think the enderman is yours—something from your brain,” Anton said, rushing to get through the sentence before I could stop him. “Think about it. We never saw it before you showed up in the game, it keeps coming back every time you’re around, and it targets you every time.”
“And everyone you’re with,” Esme added. “We thought that if we could get you somewhere with no distractions, we could get you to start talking.”
“Like the middle of a river,” I said.
“Yup,” Anton said.
I felt awful that they thought they had to trick me for my own good. After all we’d been through together, I felt that I owed them some sliver of the truth.
“I understand,” I said, already feeling the weight of the secret lift off my chest. “I think maybe you’re right.”
Esme looked surprised.
“You agree?” Anton said.
“The enderman has a scar across his face that looks like the guy whose car we collided with,” I said. “It’s probably just a PTSD thing lingering around in the back of our heads. I’m sure Lonnie has it too, which is why the enderman is so strong.”
“What’s PTSD?” Esme asked.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” I said. “It’s when you experience something terrible like an accident or an attack, and you have a hard time living your life normally afterwards.”
“Huh,” Esme pondered this. “What if your entire life is stressful?”
I’d never thought of that before, but it made me wonder about kids like A.J. who never had it easy to begin with.
“Do you still really think Lonnie is still in there?” Anton said.
“Are we really back on that?” I asked.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe you’re not the one manifesting this enderman.”
All three of us looked at Lonnie. But just beyond Lonnie was a much larger boat, a ship, really, in the middle of the water. It was such an elaborate build that I don’t know how it could have appeared out of thin air, unless…
“Where did that come from?” Esme asked.
As we stared, I got hit from behind. I turned, and the scarred enderman was right on me. Anton took a swing at it as Esme pulled me back and pushed me into one of the boats.
“Move!” Esme roared, jumping into her own watercraft. Anton turned and ran toward us with Lonnie at his side, each of them taking Esme’s lead and beating a hasty retreat.
The scarred enderman stared at us from shore as we headed straight for the ship. I could see rows of endermen bustling on board. The enderman with the scar stood on the boat’s prow like a captain.
“How?” I asked.
“You were right,” Anton said. “It is a trap.”
“Are those pirates?” I asked, feeling dread form in the pit of my stomach. I remembered the stories from my dad.
“Someone’s mind is really turning this place into their personal nightmare,” Anton said, pointedly.
I had to admit that what I was looking at wasn’t likely to have been made by anyone else in the game but me. I understood why I’d been chosen as the perfect bait. But it made me wonder what else I was controlling. I took a furtive glance at Lonnie.
“How do I stop them?” I asked, trying not to panic. “Shouldn’t I be able to control them then, turn them back somehow?”
“We don’t have time to puzzle that one out right now,” Anton said. “We have a pirate ship to attack, head-on.”
“I don’t…” I began, then stopped.
“They’re not real pirates,” Esme said soothingly.
“They’re ender pirates,” I said. “Worse! How’s the plan going to work now?”
Anton shrugged. “Same explosives. Same circle the scarred enderman has to get into. But now we have to use boats for a fast getaway.”
“So we’re doing this,” I said.
“We’re doing this,” Anton said.
“And I’m going to have to board a pirate ship.”
“Correct.”
Esme led the way, steering her boat parallel to the ship, then led us on board, scrambling up the side and stopping on the rail just above a group of endermen. They immediately attacked. I clambered aboard and started swinging my sword nervously even before I got up to the rail. Anton was to my left, and Esme to my right. Lonnie was still making his way up.
I jumped onto the deck of the ship, and started slashing my way across. Lonnie took my place between Esme and Anton, wielding a diamond sword that he brought down with enough force to bash holes into the deck. Suddenly
I could feel a force from something behind me, and I looked up into the stern where the enderman with the white scar across his face looked down on the fighting. My heart beat wildly as he jumped down onto the deck and made three wide strides, not toward me, but to where Lonnie had just appeared at the side of the ship.
I pushed one of the endermen out of my way and ran across the deck to cut off the one with the white scar. Before I could get there, it extended its hand and knocked me over. I fell on the floor, but I didn’t seem to have taken much damage. The fighting continued around and over me for a second before I regained my footing. By then, the one with the scar had reached Lonnie and jumped into the air, coming down hard with both of its arms reaching out. Lonnie was going to be pulverized. I ran again, and jumped up and over Lonnie, turning my chest to the scarred enderman as its long arms came down across me, and despite the diamond armor, I could feel the hard crash of it into my ribs as if I had collided with a car again. For a moment I forgot where I was, and an image of the dashboard pressing against my chest and the other driver’s face just inches in front of me came into view.
I screamed.
The driver’s face disappeared, replaced by the scarred enderman as it hit me again.
I was back in the moment, back in the game, fending off attacks from this scourge.
I tried to remember the plan. Anton was supposed to be putting down the explosives, and I was supposed to get the enderman into the center. Then we were all supposed to run. But where would we run on a ship?
My brain couldn’t work that question out as I was being pummeled. I held an arm out to stop the blows, but I could still feel them against my chest. Lonnie pried the attacker away, taking the next hit.
“No!” I called out, but it was too late.
The enderman stopped trying to eradicate me and turned his attention to Lonnie. I scrambled to my feet. To the right of me, Anton was making his way around the ship. I knew what that meant. He was doing his part. I had to do mine. On my left, Esme was fighting endermen and gathering the ender pearls they dropped when they were killed.
I shoved Lonnie out of the way and picked up my sword, pointing it at the enderman. I whipped it around, bringing the point into its chest as I stepped forward. Then I turned and whipped the sword around the other way, bringing the full edge of the blade across the enderman’s arm.
It staggered back.
Anton whistled, catching my attention and signaling that it was my turn. I stepped toward the enderman again, pushing it farther and farther back as I came at it with my sword. I didn’t stop, even when I felt exhausted and like my legs wobbled like Jell-O. We only had this one chance and I wasn’t about to blow it.
I got the enderman into position.
Anton jumped onto the deck from the captain’s perch and helped Esme with the few remaining endermen and the pearls. Then both of them ran past me at full speed, grabbing Lonnie and pulling him down off the ship.
I only had a couple of seconds.
I made one last pass at the enderman with the scar, a spinning jump that gave more force to the sword I was holding in my hand. But as I came down, the enderman jerked just out of the way, and the sword hit the wood of the deck. Before I could recover, it straightened up and flailed, forcing me into the center of the ship, right where I had been trying to get it to go.
It lurched toward me, its limbs moving jerkily. I wanted to get up, but I was paralyzed. My entire body was frozen there. This was it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the first explosion detonate. The yellow and orange of the bomb was bright against the early morning sky. The enderman turned to see it too. Somehow I summoned up enough energy to get my feet under me and run. More bombs went off in a timed cascade that left only one possible opening at the side of the ship—the opposite side from where we’d left our boat.
I jumped up onto the rail, and dove into the water as the pirate ship blew up behind me.
I was going to drown. Pixels of char and fire floated in the air far above me, then splashed into the water, drifting as I sank. I felt my chest burning for air. This was not the way I wanted to go. I would be locked out of the game. And suddenly I knew why I didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t just having to finally tell what my part in the accident was. It was the truth I’d been trying to hide from myself. One I could not accept: The reason why no one would tell me anything about Lonnie was because he was no longer capable of being saved. I would never see Lonnie again.
A rising tide of despair seemed to swallow me up from the inside. I pushed back against that thought like I was fighting for my life all over again. I looked around for something that would get me out of there.
Something splashed in the water above me and then sank down near where I was, and then it heaved me up. I hurtled toward a long brown spot on the water. The bottom of a boat, I figured out as I got closer. The bottom of my boat.
Lonnie’s face hovered over the side of his boat as I was being hauled up. He and Esme waited as Anton pushed me up. When I was close enough to the surface, Esme reached in and scooped me out, depositing me in my vessel. I lay in the bottom of the boat, coughing.
“Are you okay?” Esme asked.
I nodded, sputtered, and tried to say yes, but coughed instead.
“Well, we did it.” Anton climbed into his boat. He looked around and seemed very pleased with himself despite being soaked through. “And you thought it wouldn’t work.”
“It almost didn’t,” Esme said. She took a sidelong glance at me.
“But it did,” he insisted.
I pushed up to my elbows, spat out more water, and looked around. The pirate ship was gone and there was no sign of the creepy enderman with the scar.
I didn’t want to spend time dwelling on the fact that I had created my problems in the game—just like Esme and Anton had told me from the beginning. All I wanted now was to fulfill my promise to Lonnie, especially if this was going to be the last time I did. It was more important than ever.
“We need to move on,” I said finally, when I’d caught my breath. “There’s nothing stopping us from getting to the End now.”
“That thing seems to really hate you,” Anton said. “Every time, it goes right for you and him.” He jerked his head toward Lonnie. “Why do you think that is?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said flatly. “It’s gone. It’s not coming back.”
Esme shook her head. “Maybe not right this minute,” she said. “But the things we don’t deal with always come back. There’s no escape in the game, not really.”
“Anton mentioned that,” I said. “Can we just get to the End? I’m tired of talking.”
Anton shook his head. “No. You’re holding something back. That’s obvious enough. But what you don’t understand is that you’re only hurting yourself.”
I swear, all that was missing from Anton’s little self-help speech was the whole help me help you bit. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, angry heat rising in my lungs. “You think you know everything there is to know about this game, but you can’t even figure out how to deal with your own skeletons—literally! I saw your house, it was going to get annihilated if I didn’t do something to ward off the mobs. You’re trying to get me to talk when you obviously have your own issues you’re not dealing with!”
“You’re only trying to mess with me because you’re trying to deflect, so you don’t have to deal with your own problems. There’s nowhere to hide. So what is it, Bianca?”
Esme looked away and said, “Maybe we should just tell her, Anton.”
He shrugged.
“Bianca, we just want to help,” Esme said. “We already know the truth…”
“No, you don’t! Whatever you think you know, you don’t.” I could feel my breath hitching in my chest.
“Then tell us what we don�
��t know,” Anton pleaded.
I knew it would help. I knew it. But the words literally would not come out of me. “I…I can’t,” I said softly. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, but continued on anyway, saying, “We just need to get to the End. Please.”
“Okay,” Esme said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go find the end portal.” She turned and paddled toward the shore and said nothing else.
I sniffled and wiped my eyes, glancing at Lonnie. He looked at me and smiled gently.
When we hit land, Lonnie and the others walked toward the trees, leaving me in my boat alone.
I watched as Esme and Anton worked on making a new structure to serve as home base. How many bases did we have so far? How many times had we started over? At least we had some of our supplies. Esme had the shulker boxes from A.J.’s house. And each of us had a few supplies in our inventories. No more explosives, though; we literally blew those on the pirates.
Eventually I made my way over to the house. It was one large room. Esme and Anton looked up as I walked in.
“We’re going to need health potions,” Esme said. “Bianca and me especially, since the whole wither thing.”
“We’re going up against a dragon, so fire resistance would be handy,” I said, happy to be back to planning.
“I can take care of the potions,” Esme said. “But we’re going to need some food. It’s been a while since any of us ate.”
She was right. Even without the health and food bars, I could feel how weak I was. Esme, for all her fierce fighting, looked even weaker. I knew it was from the wither skeleton attack, but I also knew she wasn’t going to complain about it. Anton was crafting weapons as Esme worked on the potions, so I left to find some neutral mobs that could increase our food and health levels.
I half expected to see the scarred enderman again. But as I walked over the hills and through some forested area, there was nothing but me, some chickens, and a couple of cows. I managed to get some milk, and felt infinitely better after I had some. I got some more for Esme, and returned with a lot of supplies, feeling a bit calmer after some time alone.
The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 19