FROM LEVEL 13

CHAPTER ONE

CAMERON BOXER

 

Flying in on a battle bus – it didn’t get much more ill than that.

The setup: On the wide-screen TV: the map – meaning the island – ready to be invaded by fifty battle royale players, including me. The me part was important, since this was my live game stream. A webcam captured my every move. On the coffee table, a laptop showed exactly what my online followers would be seeing – my amazing gameplay, and in a window in the top corner, a view of me working the controller like I was born to do it. Which I was.

The far side of the stream page was reserved for viewer comments. Right now there were none, because I hadn’t gone live yet. Another possible reason for that was the fact that I only had eight followers, and one of them was my own phone. Everything has to start somewhere. Top gaming streamers could have hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of subscribers. Their every move was eagerly watched by hordes of fans all over the world.

My father always told me, “I know video games are your hobby, Cam, but they’ll never be a real job.” Wrong, Dad. If you had enough subscribers, you could make truckloads of cash. Besides, I always found the word hobby a little insulting. Gaming was a lot more than a hobby for me. It was my lifestyle. And if I could start up a successful stream now – while I was still in middle school – I might never have to get a real job.

My guidance counselor, Mr. Fan-something, said that it was important to choose a career that gave you pleasure and satisfaction. Well, that was a slam-dunk for me. I’d be getting paid for playing video games!

It would all start with the flip of a switch. My thumb reached for the button on the controller in my hands.

Ding-dong!

I ignored the doorbell. There were no doorbells on the island.

The bell sounded a second time and then a third. This was followed by loud persistent pounding on the door.

“Somebody get that!” I shouted, before remembering that I was alone in the house.

Next, my phone began to ring. That bothered me. With my phone tied up, the number of my followers went down to seven.

I answered it. “What?”

“Cam – I’m at your house!” It was Jordan Toleffsen, one of Sycamore Middle School’s student government types.

“Yeah, It sounds like you’re about to bust the door down.” We had a history of door problems at our house, so I was kind of sensitive about it. It was mostly my fault – and the fire department’s. But that was another story.

“You’re home?” He was incredulous. “String’s party started half an hour ago!”

“String knows I might not be able to make it.” At least he’d figure it out when I didn’t show up.

“Don’t you know anything about optics?” Optics was one of Jordan’s favorite political words. “You’re head of the Positive Action Group. You have to be seen there!”

Positive Action Group. I had no one to blame but myself for that. In my own defense, I only invented the P.A.G. to make myself look like a student leader so Mom and Dad wouldn’t ban me from video games. It was never supposed to become a real club.

But there was no way to tell that to the 874 kids who joined, eager to pick up garbage, walk old ladies across the street, paint the orphanage, and do all kinds of other community service.

Not that there was anything bad about community service. We helped a lot of people. I even got kind of into it toward the end. The problem was community service took up a lot of prime gaming time.

The happiest day of my life was when the principal disbanded the P.A.G. last fall. Suddenly, I had my life back, and nobody could even blame me for it. It was Dr. LaPierre’s fault, not mine. It was paradise.

Then the P.A.G. got reinstated – just when my streaming career was about to take off.

Paradise lost.

“Tell String I can’t get away,” I told Jordan over the phone. “Better yet, don’t tell him anything. There are going to be a zillion people at the party. No one will ever notice I’m not there.”

“Are you nuts? Everyone will notice! You’re Cam Boxer!”

The kids in this town – they really knew how to hurt a guy.

“Listen –” A click signified that I was getting another call. “Hang on a sec –” As soon as I switched over, I could hear loud music and a lot of excited chatter.

“Cam?” I instantly identified the deep voice over the background noise. Xavier Meggett – another big-time pagger. And judging by the music, he was definitely at the party. “Where are you?” Xavier demanded. “You’re coming, right?”

My heart sank. It was one thing to blow off Jordan, but Xavier? He was two years older than the rest of us. He got held back a couple of times, because his family sent him on “trips” – code for another stretch in Juvie. For him, the P.A.G. wasn’t just community service; it was Community Service – the kind you got sentenced to by a judge. In Xavier’s eyes, the club had straightened out his whole life.

“Xavier – hi! How’s the party?”

“It’ll be better when you get here,” came his deep baritone.

Another click. “Sorry, Xavier. Gotta take this.” I switched to the third call, which was from Pavel Dysan, one of my two best friends. Along with Chuck Kinsey, we made up the Awesome Threesome – or at least that’s what we called ourselves on the gaming circuit.

“You’d better sit down, Cam. This is technically huge. And if you’re eating anything, spit it out. You’ll choke when you hear this.”

The background music was a perfect match for Xavier’s. I couldn’t believe it. “Are you at String’s party?” I challenged. “You’re supposed to be watching my stream! I go live any minute!”

“You’ve got to reschedule, man. This is an emergency. Chuck –”

Someone cranked up the volume, drowning out Pavel’s voice.

“What about Chuck?” I shouted into the phone. “Is he there with you?” Pavel and Chuck were two of my eight followers. If they were both at the party, that left only six – and one of the six was me. Even if my entire fan base showed up online, I’d be streaming for, at most, five people. Eight was nothing to write home about, but five was pathetic.

Obviously, I couldn’t start streaming until I put in an appearance at this party

I shut off everything and headed upstairs, shrugging into a jacket. I threw open the door and rushed outside, slamming pretty hard into Jordan and sending the two of us rolling across the lawn. Who knew the guy would still be there after I blew him off? If I’d gone out the back way, would he have still be standing on my stoop tomorrow morning?

“Sorry,” I mumbled as we brushed ourselves off.

We walked the four blocks to the home of Freeland “First String” McBean, star wide receiver and flankerback of the Sycamore Middle School Seahawks.

Jordan talked nonstop every step of the way. “I want to go into politics when I grow up. That’s why I joined the P.A.G. in the first place – I thought it could help me get elected student body president. But elections are all about beating the other candidate. And in the P.A.G. we learned that cooperation is what gets things done and makes the world a better place …”

He went on and on. The closer we got to the McBean house, the harder it was to hear him. The music was blasting through the whole neighborhood. Halfway up the front walk, he stopped, regarding me expectantly.

“What?” I asked, mystified.

“So what do you think I should do?”

I hadn’t listened to a single word for the past three blocks. I remembered something about politics, but after the first couple of minutes of boringness, my mind automatically filed it under Who Cares? Part of my lifestyle was filtering out all the white noise so I could keep my focus razor-sharp on video games, where it belonged.

But Jordan looked so serious, so anxious to hear my viewpoint that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d tuned out. “Why would you ask me about – you know – that?”

My answer seemed to baffle him. “Because you’re Cam Boxer. The P.A.G. is your baby. If anybody’s got his head screwed on straight, it has to be you.”

I was staring at him when the door burst open. “Cam!” String reached out his long receiver’s arms, locked them around my neck, and hauled me into the house. “Hey, everybody! Cam’s here!”

The roar of “Cam!” drowned out the blaring music. I was pulled through the crush of bodies, my back pounded, my hands high-fived, and my shoulders slapped. I was very nearly hugged breathless. It was a perfect example of why I hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. It was nice to be loved, but not to be loved so much that you didn’t have five seconds to get your streaming career off the ground. I almost started to wish people would hate me a little bit – or at least leave me alone.

String gave me a numbing chest-bump. “Is this fire or what?” he roared in my ear. “Nobody throws a party like the String!” He always talked about himself like he was talking about somebody else – somebody really great.

“Yeah, fire.” Looking around, I had to admit it. The living room was packed with kids dancing, bouncing up and down to the beat, because there wasn’t enough space to move side to side. Every hand held a soda can or water bottle, filling the air with a fine spray that came down like mist. Half-eaten pizza slices covered every surface in the house – tables, chairs, couches. I could feel, but not see, the layer of chip crumbs covering the carpet. The McBeans were going to have a major cleanup on their hands once this party ended – if it ever did. It showed no sign of slowing down. And now that the head of the P.A.G. was here, things could really go off the chain.

I followed a conga line into the kitchen, where the pizza boxes were stacked to the ceiling and kids were starting to help themselves to slices of a six-foot hero sandwich. The clock on the microwave provided a depressing reminder that I should have been eleven minutes into my stream. What if the five followers I didn’t know got discouraged and stopped following me? Gamers weren’t very patient. They were used to nonstop action.

My eyes fell on the kitchen door, which led to String’s backyard. Escape – that was the plan. I could be home in five minutes and online in another two. This party was so jam-packed and crazy that no one was going to notice that I’d walked in, walked through, and walked out. All they’d remember was that they’d seen me.

I fist-bumped Kelly Hannity, slipped between two girls who were eating half-melted ice cream cake with chopsticks, and stepped through the door.

Grass under my feet. Freedom.

A very large hand closed on my shoulder. “Hi, Cam.” The deep voice moved air.

Xavier. What was he doing outside the party instead of inside it?

He thrust a shoebox into my arms. “This is for you.”

“Shoes?”

In answer, he tipped open the lid so I could see into the box. It was piled high with sugar cookies, each one decorated with a little flower drawn in pink and white icing.

“Uh – thanks,” I managed.

“I baked them myself,” he informed me proudly. “My mom had to help crack the eggs.”

Who knew that cracking eggs was so much harder than cracking skulls? “They’re great. But I’m going to get pretty fat eating through all these.”

“They’re not for eating,” Xavier explained. “They’re for the P.A.G.”

I was mystified. “Why does the P.A.G. need cookies?”

“To sell,” he insisted. “For the fundraiser. Remember, Mr. Fanshaw said –”

That explained a lot. If Mr. Fan-whatever had said it, for sure I’d paid no attention at all. Whenever the P.A.G.’s faculty advisor opened his mouth, my brain went into hibernation mode. Although I did remember something called The New Approach. If you sent all 874 paggers out to do community service, so many middle-schoolers had a fifty-fifty chance of wrecking the place they were supposed to serve.

So the P.A.G. was switching to fundraising for good causes. Instead of helping people directly, we would give them money so they could help themselves. For example, the Sycamore Public Library needed a new building on account of the fact that the old one had been condemned by the town engineers. It was really just an old mansion, built in the 1800s. The fact that it hadn’t collapsed decades ago was a miracle. In my opinion, the part that really should have been condemned was their video game collection, which was so old that if you wanted a system to play it on, you’d have to dig it out of a time capsule.

Xavier’s cookies were to meant to be sold at a P.A.G. fundraiser for the library. There was a chance that I was supposed to be planning the fundraiser, since I was president of the P.A.G. That’s why Xavier gave the cookies to me instead of someone who had the faintest idea what to do with them.

There was no way I could escape now – not with Xavier breathing down my neck. So I thanked him and headed back into the house to search for another exit.

Navigating the crowd while holding the shoebox in front of me,was practically impossible. I barely managed to get the box down on a kitchen counter so it wouldn’t get battered and crushed. One thing I never wanted to have to do was to tell Xavier that his hard work had never lived to earn money for the library.

Almost everyone I bumped into asked about the big fundraiser I was working on. The more people I talked to, the more depressed I became. It just served to remind me how the P.A.G. was holding back my streaming career.

Pavel grabbed me by the arm. “Dude, where have you been?” he hissed. “Wait till you hear this–”

I cut him off. “Can’t it wait? I’ve got to get home to my stream!”

“No!” he insisted. “Technically, this is world-changing.”

“Will you cut it out with the ‘technically’ –”

Then I spotted it, and my entire chain of thought disappeared in a puff of smoke. The lid of the shoebox sat beside it on the kitchen counter. A small crowd had gathered around, a forest of arms reaching inside. Pink flowered cookies were disappearing into mouths at an alarming rate. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Xavier stepping in from the backyard. If he saw this …

I turned my back on Pavel and lunged for the counter.

“Where are you going?” Pavel wailed.

There was no time to answer. Xavier was only one long stride away. And the cookie box? Empty.

All I could do was get the lid back on to hide the fact that the cookies were gone. At the last second, I tossed my phone in there just in case Xavier nudged the box and didn’t feel his cookies rattling around. Yes, I know – one phone didn’t equal a load of baked goods. But there was no time to think it through. Anyway, it had to be better than nothing.

With Xavier a few people behind me in the kitchen, I had no choice but to push out into the mobbed living room. Now that I didn’t have any more cookies to worry about, I used the shoebox as a battering ram. More high-fives and hugs, but the good news was that String was nowhere in sight. A Plan B formed in my mind: I would plow straight through the heart of the party and out the front door.

I almost made it. By the time I hit the front foyer, I had the shoebox out in front of me like a cowcatcher. The front door yawned open directly in front of me. Only two people blocked my way.

“Cam – we’ve been looking all over for you!”

Chuck – my other best friend, the third member of the Awesome Threesome. With him was Daphne Leibowitz, who’d been the first person to join the P.A.G. without knowing it was a fake club. In my mind, I always blamed her for what had happened. But I also gave her credit, because the P.A.G. wasn’t all bad; it was just all bad for my lifestyle.

“We’ve got big news,” Daphne announced with a wink at Chuck.

It was never good when Daphne had big news. Chuck knew that as well as I did, but you couldn’t tell from the goofy grin on his face.

“We’re a ship,” he said, beaming.

“What – like the Titanic?” I asked.

“A relationship,” Daphne corrected. “We’re going out.”

Chuck put an arm around her, looking as proud as I’d ever seen him.

It took me a split second to realize that the crash I heard was just in my head. It was the sound of the entire world turning upside down.

At that very instant, the cookies rang. I was so stunned by the Chuck and Daphne bombshell that I fumbled my phone out of the shoebox. As it fell, I read the caller ID – Pavel, probably trying to warn me about the big announcement and save me a nasty shock.

The phone hit the tile floor with a bang. I scrambled to pick it up. Distorted by a jagged screen crack, Pavel’s caller ID disappeared to be replaced by the picture of my streaming setup. The gaming part was blank, but there was a new posting on the comment feed. I squinted to read it: Why isn’t anything happening? This stream stinks!UNFOLLOW!

If there was a word no streamer ever wanted to see, it was that one.

I had to do something about the P.A.G. My lifestyle depended on it.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

CHUCK KINSEY

 

Why couldn’t Pavel and Cam be happy for me? If one of them had been the first of the Awesome Threesome to get a girlfriend, I would have been happy for him.

Just jealous, I guess. I could relate. Having a girlfriend was so amazing that I could totally see how not having one could make a guy crabby. I wouldn’t have known that a week ago – before Daphne and I started going out. But I’d changed a lot in those seven days.

I wasn’t mad at them. They couldn’t help it. Besides, if it hadn’t been for Cam and the P.A.G., I never would have gotten close to Daphne in the first place. I’d never forget that big snowstorm in February when she’d brought a bunch of paggers to shovel off the beaver habitat we’d built for Elvis. The P.A.G. had still been banned back then, so we couldn’t get a bus to take us. We had to walk the whole way, and it was, like, twelve degrees. We cleared away the snow, but Daphne was afraid that Elvis might have frozen to death in his lodge. Beavers don’t hibernate, but they’re really low energy in the winter months.

She used her finger to make a peephole, but she couldn’t see anything because her glasses were all fogged up from the cold. So she raised the frames to peer inside, and for the first time, I noticed that she had beautiful eyes.

“Oh, barf!” was Pavel’s opinion when I explained how it had happened. “I’ve seen Daphne without her glasses too. They’re eyes, same as everybody else has.”

The last part he mumbled past a mouthful of Gummy Worms. We were at Sweetness and Light, our usual after-school hangout.

“Come on, guys,” I wheedled. “Don’t be that way. You like Daphne.”

Cam made a face like his Gummy Worms were turning into real worms halfway down his throat. “Okay, we like Daphne – from a distance. Never forget that she was the first one to tell Mr. Fan-whatchamacallit about the Positive Action Group.”

I was blown away. “How could you, of all people, complain about that? Sure, it wasn’t what you originally planned, but the P.A.G. turned into the greatest thing ever. You can’t blame Duckne for that.”

Pavel choked. “Duckne?”

I could feel my face reddening. “It’s our ship name. Daphne came up with it. You know, Daphne and Chuck – Duckne.”

“You poor slob,” Pavel said sadly. “Your life is technically over.”

“Does she at least let you play video games?” Cam asked.

“Of course I play video games!” I exploded. “Who knows that better than you? You’re the guys I play them with. We’re still the Awesome Threesome. Nothing’s changed except that Daphne will be around a lot, so we’ll be more like a foursome.”

“Not going to happen,” Pavel said with conviction.

“Sure it is.” I checked my watch. “She should be here any minute.”

“Here?” Pavel’s eyes bulged. “You invited her here? To ourplace?”

“I had to,” I reasoned. “It’s our weekaversary. We’ve been going out for seven whole days.”

Pavel was furious. “Do our traditions mean nothing to you? I’ve spent three-quarters of a million dollars on Gummy Worms in this place.”

“What difference does it make?” Cam told him wearily. “If I can’t get my streaming career going, who cares if Daphne comes to Sweetness and Light?”

“Fine,” Pavel muttered. “She can come. But no Gummy Worms. She can have any other candy, but Gummy Worms are off limits. Some things have to stay sacred.”

I looked to Cam for confirmation and got nothing. He’d been in a weird mood all day. The streaming thing was really getting him down. He was the best gamer of the Awesome Threesome, so he probably figured that his stream would take off and be an instant success. But it was turning out to be a lot harder than that. With 874 paggers all looking to him to be their leader, there just weren’t enough hours in the day. Building an online following took time.

I tried to make him feel better. “Having a girlfriend isn’t all fantasticness either. I mean, it’s fantastic, but that’s the problem. It’s distracting. You know that science quiz we got back today?” I took the test paper from my jacket pocket and laid it on the table between our three cups of candy. My grade said it all, and it wasn’t a happy message. 11/50.

Pavel, who never got a grade below A-plus-plus, snorted. “Didn’t you study?”

I was shame-faced. “Daphne wanted to go ice-skating.”

“You should lend your test paper to Cam,” Pavel told me sarcastically. “With grades like that, he’d be ineligible to be P.A.G. president.”

“Yeah,” Cam agreed glumly. “Too bad I’m not as dumb as Chuck.”

“Nobody is,” Pavel insisted. “He’s datingDaphne.”

“Hey –!”

I was about to stick up for my girlfriend, when suddenly Cam was on his feet, wild-eyed, babbling so excitedly that I could barely understand him. He kept repeating, “That’s it! That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Pavel demanded.

He was chortling with glee. “If I was flunking, I wouldn’t be allowed to be the head of the P.A.G.!”

“Yeah, but you’re notflunking,” I pointed out.

“I don’t have to fail for real,” he reasoned. “I just have to telleverybody I’m failing. Then somebody else will be forced to run the P.A.G. And I’ll have the time I need to get my stream up and running.”

Pavel looked at him with respect. “That could work, you know. Technically.”

“It’s genius!” I approved. “You’ll have the perfect excuse to disappear if you’re bringing your grades up.”

“Chuck and I will help,” Pavel put in.

“And Daphne,” I added.

You would have thought I’d threatened them with an axe.

“Don’t even thinkabout telling Daphne what I’m doing,” Cam said in a voice like cold steel.

“Why not? She can help! She’s smart!”

“She may be smart,” Cam retorted, “but she’s got a big mouth. Like if she got laryngitis, all the other big mouths in the world would move up one space. If she spills the beans that I’m lying about bad grades so I’ll have extra gaming time, my name will be mud.”

I was offended on Daphne’s behalf. “You’re calling my girlfriend a rat! And for something she hasn’t even done!”

“The thing is,” Pavel explained, “Daphne’s not a gamer like us, so she won’t get why streaming is so important. She’ll see this plan as us tricking everybody.”

“And she has a big mouth,” Cam added feelingly.

I definitely should have stuck up for Daphne a little better. But what Pavel said made sense. Daphne was great and all that. Once she made a decision about something, though, you couldn’t stop her with a bulldozer. It was a good quality – most of the time. Look at what she’d done for Elvis. He’d been the town pest, abandoned by the beaver colony, chewing on people’s fences and siding. By the time she got through with him, he had a nicer habitat than the mayor. Her heart was always in the right place. But I couldn’t risk her exposing Cam.

On the other hand – “Daphne says there should be no secrets in a relationship,” I told them.

“This isn’t a secret,” Pavel reasoned. “It’s a covenant that binds the Awesome Threesome.”

I didn’t know what thatwas, and I didn’t want to know. “So long as I’m not keeping secrets,” I said.

The bell over the door tinkled and there she was. My girlfriend. Those words still seemed strange and wonderful. She beamed at me and I couldn’t help noticing that she really didhave kind of a big mouth. You could probably fit a hockey puck in there. Then I remembered that the reason her smile was so wide was because she was seeing me. That made me feel warm all over.

“Hi, guys!” She rushed to our table, but before she could grab a Gummy Worm, Pavel slid my cup just out of her reach.

“A girl you have!” announced Mrs. Backward, owner of Sweetness and Light. Her real name was Mrs. Bachman. We called her Backward because of the way she talked – with everything in reverse, kind of like Yoda. She approached our table, smiling at Daphne. “I should bring you what?”

“Oh, I’ll just share with Chucky,” Daphne replied airily.

Pavel shot me a look that would have qualified as a deadly weapon in most civilizations.

“You know, Mrs. B,” I put in quickly, “I’m not feeling Gummy Worms today. Bring us an order of Gummy Bears.”

Pavel nodded approvingly.

Mrs. B’s eyebrow shot up. “Adventurous you are today. Your mind you changed.”

“Just felt like a little variety,” I managed stiffly. The Awesome Threesome had been strictly Worms-only at Sweetness and Light since we’d started coming in the third grade.

Daphne sat down, sharing half my chair. I loved it.

“So, what’s new with you guys?” she asked.

Pavel spoke up, his expression tragic. “The news is not good. Tell her, Cam.”

“No!” Cam shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not telling anyone. If people find out, they won’t let me be president of the P.A.G.”

Daphne’s smile disappeared. “What are you talking about?”

I couldn’t stand to watch those guys setting her up for the big lie. So I just blurted it out: “Cam’s flunking eighth grade!”

“What?” Her horrified eyes fell on my science quiz on the table. Pavel had his thumb over my name. But you could see the grade plain as day: 11/50.

“Oh, Cam, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s the P.A.G.,” Pavel explained. “His duties as president monopolize so much of his day that there’s no time left for anything else.”

Daphne leaped up, which caused me to tumble off my half of the chair onto the hard floor. “Well, not anymore!” she stated decisively. “Cam, I’ll take over the P.A.G. work until you get your academics in order. Where do we stand on the library fundraiser?”

“We had a box of cookies,” Cam confessed. “but they got eaten by mistake –”

“Don’t say another word,” Daphne interrupted. “I’ll handle everything. It might cut into my time with Chucky, but I’m sure he won’t mind.”

As I hauled myself up off the floor, Pavel snuck me a wink.

I minded a lot.