Pwned (9 page)

“No,” I answered honestly.

I may have been nicer than them, but the fact that I went along with whatever Tawny did meant that I was no different from her. I was a passive-aggressive version of the devil herself.

“But you want to be?” he pressed.

I knew what he was doing. Ever since he had brought up the possibility that I might be different in the game, he had been romanticizing me as some pretty girl who secretly wanted out of her life, and he was going to be the hero that helped her achieve her goal.

Unfortunately for him, I didn’t have a heart of gold. Even though I wanted to be a nicer person
, that didn’t mean I didn’t have mean thoughts and tendencies. Ugly thoughts. I did want to be a better person, but I didn’t know if I was capable of it.

I
wasn’t brave enough to face high school without the shield of popularity.

I didn’t answer his question
. Instead I just shrugged and looked down at my very exposed legs, feeling slightly uncomfortable in my short skirt for the first time ever.

“I think you’re better than them,” he said finally, after we had sat in awkward silence for some time. “You didn’t pour your soda on me.”

“How did you know that’s what I was going to do?” I asked, forgetting to mask my voice for a moment and instantly regretting it when he gave me a curious look.

“It was pretty obvious what you were supposed to do,” he explained. “But thanks for not doing it. I know it doesn’t mean anything to you
, but that book was really expensive.”

I stopped myself before I could tell him I already knew how expensive the book was
, because I desperately wanted the same one on my shelf. Instead I stared at him, lost in the feeling that someone could actually think of me as a good person.

Before I could really think about what a stupid thing I was about to do
, I slid my butt off the dusty old box and let my knees hit the floor in front of me. I grabbed Parker by his shoulder and pulled him up so that he was no longer sitting on the floor, but was mirroring my position—and then I did it. The stupid thing I shouldn’t have done.

I kissed him.

I kissed the nerd in the muffled darkness of the dusty cramped closet. And I enjoyed it, which was probably the worst part of it. I wrapped my arms around his neck and his hands shakily found their way to my bare back.

I didn’t really let myself think about how muc
h this was going to confuse him—or me, for that matter. I didn’t think about the fact that he’d want to talk to me about what all of this meant. And I definitely didn’t think about how Tawny would run me over with her car if she saw this. Instead, I just kissed him breathlessly and with more passion than I had ever kissed my stupid, shallow boyfriends.

I pulled back after a few minutes and stared at him
, wide-eyed. I was shocked by what a good kisser he was and had to bite down hard on my bottom lip to keep from kissing him again.

He stared back at me too, stunned into silence. His thick
-rimmed black glasses were askew and his brown hair was a complete mess from how many times I had run my fingers through it. As ridiculously stereotypical as it was, his mouth was even hanging open in shock, and I let out a little giggle over how shocked he seemed to be.

I could still feel his hands shaking on my back as the guilt began to wash over me. I
guess this whole incident proved that I really wasn’t a good person deep down. I was just as horrible as Tawny. Obviously Parker and I weren’t ever going to work out as a couple, so I’m pretty sure kissing him was nothing more than me leading him on. Who knew how long he was going to wonder if I was just a good person trapped in a bad person’s life?

I had definitely done a bad thing, giving him hope like that. I wasn’t nice and I couldn’t change
, and now he’d spend his time thinking I could.

An
d yet part of me wanted to tell him everything. I wanted so badly to tell him that I was actually Xandris, and that I wanted to be a good person instead of the life-ruining snob I had somehow become.

But I didn’t.

Instead I just placed my finger over his lips as he opened his mouth to speak. I pressed the key to the closet into his free hand and then stood up.

“Please don’t tell anyone.
Please
.” I pleaded before sneaking out of the closet and running to my car, trying to escape the confusion Parker brought into my life.

I’d have to make up some excuse to Tawny on Monday about why I left
the party without telling her . . . One that didn’t involve me kissing a nerd in a closet.

I br
ought my fingers up to my still-tingling lips as I sped away from Kimber’s house. I definitely shouldn’t have kissed Parker. I knew that it was wrong, but why, then, had it felt so right?

10.
Intentional Fizzle

“Do you have
a hangover?” I heard my annoying little brother ask from the foot of my bed on Sunday morning. “Because if you have a hangover, that means you’ve been drinking alcohol and you’re not old enough to drink alcohol,” he recited, as if reading this from some parenting brochure.

“Get out of my room
, Cannon,” I grumbled, pulling a pillow over my head.

“It’s one o’clock and you’re still in bed.”

“It’s one o’clock and you’re still in my room after I told you to get out,” I countered grumpily, trying to kick him away.

He just rolled out of the way of my feet, proving to be better than me at yet another thing.

Wonderful.

“Did you drink at that party?” he asked again, though I wasn’t sure where all of this was coming from.
Maybe Mom had put him up to it.

“Ugh, no,
I don’t drink. Now get out, you little monster!”

“Touch your finger to your nose,” he instructed dutifully.

“Get out!” I yelled, finally removing the pillow from over my head and chucking it at him full-force.

He dodged it easily, of course, and ran out of the room yelling, “She’s clean, Mom!”

“Brat,” I muttered as I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

The sun was streaming through my bedroom window and it took me a minute to remember all of the events of last night. I may not have had a hangover from alcohol
, but I definitely had one from stress.

My dreams that night had been overrun with thoughts of Tawny trying to murder me.
And then there were the dreams of Parker—the ones I tried desperately to forget but couldn’t deny no matter how much I tried.

I had kissed him.

And enjoyed it.

And a big part of me wanted to kiss him again.

How could I have been so stupid? I wasn’t going to date him, and I definitely wasn’t about to quit The Squad so that I could prove a point or something. The whole idea was ridiculous.

It was a shame Parker wasn’t on
a sports team. At least then I could plausibly be with him without ruining the years I’d spent weaving my carefully constructed disguise of popularity, however fake that popularity might be.

But as it stood
, I’d just have to relive my one moment of kissing him over and over in my head until I finally reminded myself what a bad idea that had been.

I glanced over at my silent computer. The screen was black and my headset
was sitting on the desk, just asking to be used. Normally by this time on a weekend I’d be neck-deep in gaming mode. As it was, we had a raid at two and everyone in the guild was probably already freaking out about the fact that I wasn’t logged in and making my way to the meeting point.

For a moment I considered
not signing on. I could always avoid it and tell them my computer had died. It’s not like I owed these people who I’d never even met some sort of loyalty.

All right
, so that was a lie.

It was a sad
, but true, fact that these anonymous, faceless people I’d only heard over voice chat were probably better friends to me than my real-life friends.

Great.

I wasn’t just a closet gamer—I was a complete loser too, just like the ones I had made fun of my whole life. I just happened to be a loser who’d weaseled her way onto the cheerleading squad to hide her loser-ish-ness.

I stealthily showered and made a sandwich in the kitchen, trying to sneak back upstairs before Mom could corner me and ask me all sorts of questions about if there were drugs at this party, even though she knew full well I wou
ldn’t do something that stupid.

I
nstead, I would do other stupid things like kiss my guild mate.

Holding my cup of ice water in one hand and my sandwich in the other
, I crept up the stairs, almost making it to the top before Mom said, “Reagan, come back here,” in her warning voice.

I sighed deeply before turning around and meeting her at the foot of the stairs. My wet hair was dripping down the back of my T-shirt and making me shiver. Of course
, the bare feet on the wood floor didn’t help either.

“Care to explain how you somehow got away with wearing
this
to that party last night?” Mom asked, holding up my sparkly teal dress that somehow looked shorter now that she was holding it. I swear she had cut a few inches off the bottom just to get me in trouble. “I noticed you conveniently forgot to say goodbye to your father and me when you left,” she added with a meaningful look in my direction.

“I was late?” I offered unconvincingly.

“If by late you mean ‘grounded from all parties in the foreseeable future,’ then yes, that’s exactly what you are,” she said with a note of finality.

“Fine,” I said sullenly, not mentioning that it was a nice excuse to not spend more time with Tawny than I had to.

Plus, it would be a perfect reason why I left the party. I could say my mom called me and was freaking out.

I gave my mom
a quick hug for this new and wonderful turn of events, and she looked at me like I was crazy, since she’d just grounded me.

“Thanks Mom!” I called over my shoulder as I ran up the stairs and booted up
the game.

It was already two o’clock and I knew Kaydinn was probably throwing
a fit that I was so late. My suspicion was confirmed by the bombardment of speech that hit me the second I logged in and put my headset on.

“Xandris
, where have you been? We’re all here waiting for you and you’re LATE!” he yelled in a volume much louder than normal.

“Sorry I was just . . .
late,” I finished lamely.

I didn’t
have much of an excuse for being so delayed, and I wasn’t about to say I was busy getting grounded. It made me sound like a five-year-old.

“At least she’s close to the right zone,” Parker offered helpfully
.

I shivere
d a little at hearing his voice and tried to suppress a flashback to last night. I needed to concentrate. But I did notice that I smiled involuntarily at hearing his voice again, and I allowed myself one moment of that enjoyment before bringing myself back to reality.

Or at least in-game reality.

“I’m almost there,” I reassured Kaydinn as Xandris hopped on her flying mount and sped away toward our meeting spot.

I pulled up our guild roster to see that Kaydinn, Eilarae, Sovay, and
Rekrap were all waiting in the same zone for me, though Eilarae appeared to be away from her keyboard.

“Why is Eilarae AFK?” I asked, hoping I could shift some of the blame for our late start onto her.

She was the sweetest person ever, which made her an easy scapegoat. Plus, she was forgiving. Another good trait for a scapegoat.

“She was working on her costume for Comic Con while we waited for
you
,” Kaydinn said, emphasizing the last part of the sentence.

“Wait, you guys are going to that?” I asked, suddenly forgetting all about the trouble I was in with The Squad and Parker. “I thought it was impossible to get tickets.”

“Not if you know the right people,” Kaydinn said elusively.

Comic Con was about the nerdiest of all nerd traditions. Thousands of nerds would gather together (many of them wearing costumes of their favorite video game characters) and nerd out all day. It was probably the most embarrassing event ever created.

I would
totally kill to go.

“Who is s
he dressing up as?” I asked, jealous that Kaydinn and Eilarae would get to go.

“She’s go
ing to be her character on here, right down to that spell that gives her angel wings,” Kaydinn said, his voice full of something I could only describe as pride.

“You guys should post pictures on the guild forum!” I said before I could stop myself.

None of us had ever posted pictures of anything that could identify who we really were. I think we were all just waiting for someone else to suggest it so that we wouldn’t look like internet stalkers. But now that I had let that slip out, it was going to be an acceptable practice, which meant they could plausibly ask me to post a picture.

“Yeah, I bet her costume is going to be epic,” Parker echoed, sounding genuinely interested.

I have to admit that after years of talking to these people on the game, I did wonder what they actually looked like, but now that Parker had moved to my school and I had . . . well . . . we’ll say “made myself known” to him, I couldn’t exactly post my own picture. I’d have to be elusive.

“Are you dressing up as your character
, too, Kaydinn?” Parker asked, his voice also holding the same jealousy I felt.

“Sure am. The wife already finished my costume a few weeks ago though.”

“Wow. You guys are prepared. It’s not until July, right?” I asked, wondering if there was any possible way I could buy their tickets off of them.

“Yeah.
We like to be on top of things. You know: costumes, vacation plans, raid times,” he stated, obviously still not forgiving my tardiness.

“Xandris, who would
you go as? You know, if we were lucky enough to have tickets?” Parker asked.

I
pondered it over for a moment, thinking that going as my own character would be too obvious.

“Let’s just say I’d dress as a certain test subject from a game that involves science, white walls, and mass and velocity,” I said with a giggle.

“Would this certain test subject wear an orange jumpsuit and impossibly cool boots?” he asked, catching onto my hints.

“Possibly,” I answered.

“Ha! So you’re a brunette,” he concluded, sounding proud of his deductive reasoning.

“Sure am,” I lied easily, glad to have yet another way to distance my gaming self from my real self. “What about you? Who would you go as?”

“I’d go as my favorite superhero.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed over chat before I could really think about what I was saying.

I was pretty bad at maintaining my cover. Why would I know that unless I had met Parker and knew that he looked just like Andrew Garfield?

Stupid Reagan.

“I didn’t think I talked about
Spiderman
that much,” he replied with a laugh.

It’s pretty much all you ever talk about,
Sovay typed through the guild text chat, unwittingly saving me from a hastily formulated lie.

“Fine
, Sovay, who would you be?” Parker asked, his voice still holding a hint of amusement.

Myself
, she typed simply.

We were all silent for a moment, not quite sure how to respond to that. It was always hard to tell if Sovay was being dry or sarcastic or rude. I
t could have just been how we interpreted her typed words. But I was pretty sure she had an odd love-hate relationship with all of us. Honestly, she kind of gave me the creeps.

“Just entered the zone,” I finally said, breaking up the solid minute of awkward silence.

“It’s about time,” Kaydinn stated emphatically. “Danni, she’s ready,” he called, apparently forgetting to take his finger off the “talk” button.

It was weird to hear
Eilarae’s real name. How was it possible that I had played this game, with these same exact people for years, without knowing more than three things about them? Then, all of a sudden in only a few month’s time, I had details about their lives flooding into my own?

“All right everyone. Try not to die too much,” Kaydinn said, sounding like he expected every last one of us to fail him before the raid was over.

Fat chance,
Sovay said.

+++

The raid was fun. We all ended up dying quite a bit, to be honest, but it didn’t matter. Even Kaydinn was laughing about our terrible performance by the end of the raid. That was why I loved the game so much. Even when you were losing, it was still fun.

With our bags full of the loot we had obtained during the raid, we all went our separate ways in
game to trade and auction everything off. This meant that the guild was actually concentrating and our voice chat was filled with silence.

So I wanted to tell you about something that happened recently,
Parker typed in a private message.

I knew exactly what he was going to tell me about
, and I didn’t want to run the risk of giving myself away on accident.

Or worse . . .
Giving myself away on purpose.

Sorry
, I’m in the city, it’s pretty crazy here
, I gave as an excuse. . . even though that excuse didn’t make any sense.

That’s fine. I just feel like I have to tell
someone, but I can’t tell my friends at school because they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.