by Mike Thayer
“Violin is not lame. How was wasting your time playing video games with Freddie?”
“Actually…” I drew out the word. “I think I discovered how I want to take down Noah, or at least when.”
“Really?”
“There’s apparently a big tournament coming up called the Shoebox Game. More money, more players, more prestige. I’m sure Noah will be pulling out all the stops to win.”
“And that’s where we take him out.” Zak finished my thought. “But how?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “We start with trying to get evidence of Noah cheating, but that won’t be enough. Liars lie their way into things, and they’ll lie their way out of them. Once we have the video evidence on a sticky day, I’ll have to brainstorm with Freddie some more. Even though she’s got the video game knowledge, it’s tough when she doesn’t know the resource she has with the double day.”
“Why don’t you tell her?” Zak asked.
“The tournament’s in a little over three weeks. Even if I was completely confident that I wanted to tell her, we simply don’t have the time.”
“Let’s see, here.” Zak pretended to look at a watch on his wrist. “Hey, Freddie, I live every day twice—here let me prove it. You then say something amazing, and presto. That took all of eleven seconds.”
I clicked my tongue in disappointment. “You do realize that it took me like eight bus rides and two weekends of trial and error before I came up with an approach where you both believed me and didn’t want to turn me in to the insane asylum, right?”
Zak looked at me like I’d just accused him of skipping violin practice to play video games. “You can’t be serious.”
“Serious as a Tater Tot competition at the Idaho State Fair.”
“That’s pretty serious,” Zak admitted. “All right, then. First step to you dethroning Noah is catching him cheating.”
“Oh, one other thing.” I held up a finger. “I don’t want to dethrone him.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I want Freddie to dethrone him.” I went on to explain about Freddie’s need for a bike and her embarrassment about her hand-me-down clothes. “She’s had a rough go, man. I feel like she needs to win as much as Noah needs to lose, and that’s saying something, because he really needs to lose. I want Freddie to win the Shoebox Game.”
Zak smiled and nodded. “Well, look at you. Discard Danny does have a heart. When did you say this Shoebox Game was?”
I switched over to my phone’s calendar. “It’s on the … crud.”
“It’s on the crud?”
“It’s the same day as the football game my dad is taking me to,” I said, trying to do the mental math on when the game started and when the Shoebox Game started.
“I’ll be there, too,” Zak said. “It’s a morning game.”
“Yeah,” I said, still trying to see how I could pull it all off. “I think there’s time. I’m sure other kids will be going as well. It’ll be tight, but I can’t skip the game. He’s been super busy and this means a lot to him.”
“I’m sure you have my dad to thank for that,” Zak said. “I told you he’s a pretty driven guy. He probably pushes his team hard.”
“At least that explains why my dad has suddenly started practicing the violin thirty minutes a day.”
“Makes total sense.” Zak laughed. “So now what?”
“Well, in addition to playing in every Brown Bag Game, I’ll need my skills on point. That means a lot of practicing.”
“So, you’re going to try to get evidence of Noah’s cheating, somehow turn that against him during the biggest tournament of the year, all without him knowing, and set Freddie up to win.” Zak stared at me with a look like he wasn’t sure if he should say what was on his mind. “Isn’t this, I don’t know … unnecessarily elaborate?”
I channeled my best disappointed-father face. “Maybe if I wanted to be totally lame about it. You’re tapped into the double day now. You gotta think big thoughts, man.”
“Don’t look at me,” Zak said. “I was trying to get you to fight crime, remember?”
I rubbed my chin. “You gotta think big thoughts … that don’t have me fighting crime against actual dangerous criminals. Think appropriately proportioned big thoughts.”
“This is going to take some getting used to.” Zak breathed a sigh. “I got your back, man.”
“Thank you.” I gave a single nod.
“Now I’m gonna hang up so I can flush the toilet and get out of the bathroom. My legs are asleep.”
“Forever scarred by the memory, Zak. Over and out.”
CHAPTER 18
RED-HANDED
(Sticky Monday—Sept. 27th)
My alarm clock blared the original Super Mario Bros. theme song as I blindly fumbled to turn it off. I rolled over, grabbed my sticky-day notebook, and scribbled down everything I had memorized from my discard-day notes. There was something to stay ahead of the twins, a few facts for classes, a handful of clever comebacks, and the big one: where and when I could finally catch Noah cheating.
It had been nearly a week since the toilet conversation. A week of taking endgame stats to Freddie on a discard day and then staking out a spot on the game map on the sticky day in hopes of catching Noah red-handed. Even with Freddie’s wizardlike powers of interpreting endgame stats, Noah had frustratingly slipped through my fingers every single day. One time I got stuck in a battle right when I dropped and missed my window. Another time I didn’t have a good spot to hide. The other times my hiding spot wasn’t good enough, and I got jumped by other players before SpudMasterFlex even showed up. We were one week closer to the Shoebox Game and had nothing to show for our efforts. Part of me worried that the cheating weasel simply couldn’t be caught, that whatever cosmic force had me repeating days also kept Noah from losing at Champions Royale.
I ate breakfast, moved the laundry soap before the twins could dump it all over the floor this afternoon, and kissed my mom goodbye before heading for the bus.
Zak sat predictably in the last row, rubbing his hands together like I was a waiter bringing him his long-awaited entrée.
“Okay, what day is it today?” Zak whispered as I sat down.
“Sticky day.”
“You know,” Zak said, twisting his mouth to one side. “Although I totally believe you every time you tell me, it’s still a struggle to like really believe. I mean, what if you tell me it’s a discard day to get me to do something crazy, but then it’s actually a sticky day and I’m stuck with it?”
“Hmmm.” I looked to the bus ceiling. “I hadn’t really thought about that, but that does give me a lot of great ideas.”
“Danny,” Zak said with a look that told me not to even think about it. “We still need to come up with some way that can help reinforce my belief in this whole crazy thing.”
Zak had actually brought this concern up several times, so I was prepared. “Okay, okay. How’s this? Every sticky day, you write down a number. Show me that number on the next discard day. I will then be able to miraculously tell you what the number is on the following sticky day. It doesn’t help convince you that it’s a discard day and your actions won’t matter, but it should help you keep faith that there was a discard day you don’t remember.”
“So for me, you’ll just be able to magically guess a number I wrote down and kept secret from the day before.” Zak paused. “I guess that could work.”
“Of course it could,” I replied. “You came up with it last night.”
“This is still so weird,” Zak mumbled as he took out his notebook and wrote down a number. “So did you and Freddie figure out on the discard day where Noah might be cheating in Champions Royale today?”
I craned my neck to see Noah sitting toward the front of the bus, his bright red, flat-billed hat sticking out like an angry zit on the end of a seventh grader’s nose. “I’m actually feeling pretty good about today. Freddie’s almost positive Noah got the wizard
’s cloak handed to him in a cave on the south side of Joyless Jungle.”
“What do you think?” Zak asked.
“I think the Shoebox Game is in less than three weeks, and we’re running out of time.”
“You running out of money, too?” Zak asked, pulling out his wallet. “I can spot you a few bucks if you need it.”
I waved him off. “Nah, I’m good, man.” I paused, listening to Noah’s grating laughter shoot above the school bus chatter. “For now.”
Later that morning, I sat in Mrs. Marlow’s first-period class and stared across the room at Elise, the pale anime girl in the panda-eared hoodie I had noticed my first day in class. Three hours from now, a photoshopped picture of her and Po from Kung Fu Panda would be at the top of Dud Spuds with the question “Ship or Dip?” By the end of the day, the post would have 113 likes and forty-seven comments. Even though I was focused on taking down Noah, it was getting harder for me to ignore the other things that I could fix, that I should fix. It was gonna be a rough day for Elise.
“Anybody?” Mrs. Marlow asked the class. I hadn’t heard the actual question, but that’s what Discard Danny was for.
I raised my hand. “Fort Hall was established in 1834 by an explorer named Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth.”
“Very good, Danny.” Mrs. Marlow beamed. “The boy from Texas, teaching us a bit of Idaho history. Very nice.”
At lunchtime I made my way to the gamer tables and motioned for Freddie to save me a spot. First, I had some unfinished business to attend to.
“Cool shirt, man,” I said, walking up to Noah. He was wearing the same Double Dragon T-shirt from back when I thought I was going to catch him the first time. I took it as a sign that balance was about to be restored to the double-day universe.
“Do you even know what game it’s from?” Noah asked.
“It’s hard to say,” I said, inspecting his shirt.
“Shows how legit you are,” Noah scoffed.
I looked up at Noah, both eyebrows rising. “Oh, I know it’s from Double Dragon. I was just trying to see if it was for a specific version. I mean, the NES version is a classic, but I much prefer the one released with the Sega Master System. The level designs were a lot closer to the arcade version, but I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Oh, and did you see the movie they made?” I forced a chuckle. “I think it might be worse than the Mario Bros. movie. Actually … I take that back. Nothing’s worse than the old Mario Bros. movie, but Double Dragon was really bad, am I right?”
“Uh … yeah,” Noah said, hesitating just a moment before regaining his composure. “The Sega version is the best.”
I smiled inwardly at the unsure look on Noah’s face. Sticky Danny lived for these low-risk, high-satisfaction burns. They wouldn’t do anything to invite trouble, but they kept people on their toes.
I took my seat next to Freddie and dropped my two dollars in the brown bag. She passed the bag down the row without putting any money in since she was sitting this one out.
“What was that all about?” Freddie hissed, casting a quick glance at Noah.
“A very small taste of some very large things to come.”
Freddie scrunched her eyebrows. “You’re weird.”
“I will take that as a compliment,” I said as I readied my phone and joined the game lobby. Thirty seconds later the game began. I chose to drop into some trees on the south side of Joyless Jungle, just outside where the wizard’s cloak was supposedly going to be handed over to Noah. The last few times I tried this, I got jumped by other players passing through, and since I didn’t have any weapons I either got killed or sent running for the hills. I crossed my fingers it wouldn’t happen this time.
“Why are you just sitting there?” Freddie asked.
“Quit watching my screen,” I said to Freddie a bit more sharply than I intended. My nerves were getting to me. If she caught Noah cheating red-handed, she might do something drastic. I couldn’t afford that. Not on a sticky day. She looked sheepishly at the table, and I was quick to apologize. “Sorry, I’m not mad. It just makes me nervous when people are staring at me. It’s like when I’m trying to take a pee.”
“People stare at you when you pee?” Freddie asked, a disgusted grimace contorting her face.
I just shrugged.
“Boys are weird,” Freddie said blandly as she got up to check out other players’ screens.
After a little more than a minute, I watched SpudMasterFlex move into position, crouching in the tall jungle undergrowth. He wound up and pelted an unsuspecting player in the head with a holy grenade, engulfing him in a flash of blue and gold sparks. It was actually an incredible shot. Despite being a complete turd, Noah was pretty darn good at the game. SpudMasterFlex grabbed the eliminated player’s loot and hid inside a nearby shallow cave.
I held my breath as if Noah’s character could hear my actual breathing and crawled through the undergrowth to get a better view. If he spotted me now, my cover would be blown and another day would be wasted. It wasn’t just that I could feel my heart beating, I could hear my heart beating. The pulsing thump filled my ears, sweat beaded along my forehead. I made to wipe my palms on my pants and nearly dropped my phone to the floor.
“Focus,” I mumbled to myself, starting my video capture.
After a few more seconds, a player with the gamertag FancyPrance approached. Noah held his fire. I held my breath. I quickly scanned the area to make sure I wouldn’t get jumped. This was it, the key piece of evidence I would need to mark the beginning of the end for Noah.
FancyPrance walked straight for SpudMasterFlex and crouched into the small cave. I could still see both of them. FancyPrance dropped the wizard’s cloak and left. Five seconds later, SpudMasterFlex was floating toward Fangthorn Peak, sparks of lightning crackling from his fingers.
“Yes,” I grunted. I looked across the table to Freddie, who now stood peering over the shoulder of another player. She’d stand there and watch Noah torch the entire playing field, curse his name as he took the brown bag yet again, and wonder how he did it. Odd, considering she was the one who had gotten to the bottom of that question during the discard day. SpudMasterFlex was a great player, but I now had proof that he was an even better cheater.
CHAPTER 19
HOG HUNTING
(Sticky Monday—Sept. 27th)
“I bug-chuggin’ knew it!” Freddie stomped so hard on the floor of the Roost I thought she was going to put her foot through the boards. She dragged her finger across the screen of my phone and rewatched the wizard’s-cloak exchange between FancyPrance and SpudMasterFlex. “I can’t believe you actually got this. How did you know where to be? That cheating, rat-bagging, worm-squirming, blister-licking ninny!”
I couldn’t contain my laugh at her string of insults. It was a good thing I hadn’t let her watch my screen as it happened in real time; she would have climbed the lunch table and throttled Noah. “Call it a hunch. So now that we have it, what do you want to do with it? Our end goal is to dethrone him during the Shoebox Game, so how do we use this to our advantage?”
Freddie tapped her lips with a dry-erase marker, her entire face tightly knit with concentration. She walked to her whiteboard, brought up her forearm, and with two broad swipes erased every single one of her chibi drawings.
“What are you doing?” I asked in shock.
“No time for cute little cartoons, Texcalibur. We’re at war. We need to strategize.” On one half of the board, Freddie drew two circles and labeled them SpudMasterFlex and FancyPrance. She connected them with a line before drawing a dozen more circles, labeling each of them with a question mark. On the other half of the board she wrote titles to multiple columns: Gamertag, Real Name, Weakness, Strength, Role. “FancyPrance’s name is Adam Sipherd, known friend to Noah. Head-to-head he’s garbage, but he can be a frustratingly effective third-partier.”
Freddie wrote down the information as she spoke, the strong smell of dry-erase marker filling t
he small room. Under the Role section she wrote down the word gifter.
“So I take it from all this”—I motioned to the whiteboard—“that you want to track down Noah’s entire shadow team.”
Freddie tapped her lips with the butt of the marker. “You’re gut-gobblin’ right I do. If they’re all in this thing together, then they’re all coming down together.”
I looked at the empty circles on the whiteboard. There was no telling who or how many goons Noah had helping him on his shadow team, but Freddie was right. If we couldn’t root out everyone that was propping Noah up, then we ran the risk in the Shoebox Game of falling into the same trap that Noah set each and every Brown Bag Game.
“All right, then, Commander FreddieCougar.” I stood up and held out my hand. “We’re officially at war with Noah and his shadow team.”
Freddie’s eyes sharpened as she grabbed my hand and shook it formally. “Except they don’t even know it.”
“And trust me.” I smirked. “They never will.”
(Sticky Friday—Oct. 1st)
I repeated my strategy of taking the endgame stats to Freddie for evaluation and staking out the most likely spots during the sticky-day Brown Bag Games, but by the end of the week, I’d only managed to discover one more cheater: RigaTortoise, a stocky blond girl named Ophelia Higginson. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find people dropping weapons and gear for Noah, it was just that it was always the same two people: RigaTortoise and FancyPrance.
I knew there were more cheaters out there, but they must have been helping in different ways. Zak had even been secretly keeping tabs on Noah during and after lunch to see if he slipped anyone some money after the Brown Bag Game but had never seen anything suspicious.
Freddie was able to identify a few potential cheaters by seeing who scored kills in close proximity to Noah but never attacked him. While that helped focus our efforts, it didn’t prove anything. There were a thousand different reasons why someone did or didn’t do something in a game like Champions Royale. The more I played the game in the evenings and at the Roost, the more I learned the secrets of the map and the strengths and weaknesses of each item. Even the wizard’s cloak had its downside. You could float around, do crazy up-close lightning damage, and command the dragon, but your defense was totally nerfed, you had no long-range attack, and you were a magnet for alchemical fire. Aside from the weapons, there were like a trillion magical objects ranging from the Vest of Invisibility (which did what you thought it would) to Akbain’s Portal, which would instantly transport you one time to anywhere on the map.