Pwned (14 page)

14.
LFG PST

“Fighting, Reagan?” my mom asked incredulously as she drove me home from school.

“I’m sorry,” I answered dully, holding an ice pack to my swollen cheek.

It had stopped bleeding
, luckily, but the bruises on my cheekbone only proved how inhumanly evil Tawny was. Who could do that with their forehead and not get hurt at all?

“Suspended for fighting,” my mom repeated in disbelief.

It seemed that if she kept saying it over and over again, she would suddenly understand how her perfect cheerleader daughter had suddenly gone berserk on a fellow member of The Squad.

In Mom’s defense, she hadn’t ever seemed too thrilled about the idea of her daughter becoming one of the zombie-eyed cheerleaders but she wanted me to choose my own path
, so she’d kept quiet about it. Now she was probably wholeheartedly regretting that decision, thinking that The Squad had turned me evil.

Honestly
, that was pretty close to the truth.

“First the dress and the party, now fighting.”

“Mom, I promise I’m not going crazy. I won’t be that after school special where the daughter suddenly gets a tattoo and starts doing drugs because she hates her mom or something,” I promised, already seeing the wheels turning in her brain. She thought I was losing it. “I’m not a bad person, I just have crappy friends.”

“No
, Reagan,” my mom interjected. “Your friends can influence you, but they can’t make your decisions for you. Everything you’ve done has been your own choice.”

Ouch.

That was a bit harsh, if not painfully true.

It was quickly becoming obvious to me that my cowardice was a well-known element of my personality. Parker had pointed it out to me online, Tawny was well aware of it, and now my own mother was letting me know I had no backbone.
I could only hope Cannon hadn’t heard that his sister was a coward. He was the only one who still sort of respected me.

“It goes without saying that you’re most definitely grounded for this week
-long suspension?” my mom asked rhetorically as we pulled into the driveway.

“Yes Mom,” I answered dutifully.

Entering the house that would be my cell for the next week, I contemplated just what Tawny might do to me when I got back to school. Would she go back to pretending everything was normal, or would she eat me alive for the black eye I had given her?

Somehow
, I didn’t exactly think Tawny would be the forgiving type.

I walked up the stairs to my room, wondering how
I had let my anger get the best of me. For the past few years I’d been so good at pretending Tawny didn’t bother me, and now I was sentenced to solitary confinement because of  her.

“Oh
, and Reagan?” my mom called up after me.

“Yeah?”

“No gaming while you’re grounded.”

+++

I knew I was in a lot of trouble and that it wouldn’t kill me to listen to my mom and stay off the computer, but somehow that didn’t stop me from waking up at midnight and logging on.

Secretly, I hoped Parker would still be on and I could talk to him about everything that had happened that
day—as Xandris, of course, not as Reagan. I still wasn’t quite ready to let my identity slip to him.

Shoving a towel under my
door so my parents wouldn’t see the light from my computer, should they happen to wake up, I sat in my well broken in desk chair and spun around to face the screen that was now informing me I had to wait for a patch to update before I could play the game.

I sighed in annoyance as I scrolled through the patch notes, hoping that this inconvenience would at least yield some cool new features in the game, but as I scrolled, my mind wandered.

Tawny had apparently noticed how different I was feeling ever since Parker moved to our town. Did that mean that she was on to my little secret? If she was, was there really any point in hiding my inner geek any longer? Chances were I’d be ostracized from The Squad upon my return to school anyway, especially since Tawny had somehow managed to only get suspended for two days whereas I was suspended for a whole week. That would give her plenty of time to poison The Squad against me.

The whole thing just—
oh! They added new hairstyles to the game in this patch!

Right.

Focus.

I had to prepare myself for the worst when I went ba
ck to school the next week. More importantly, I had to decide what I would do in my worst-case scenario. Really, this could be my ticket out of plastic purgatory. I would most likely get picked on at school, but I’d probably be even happier than I was when I was a part of The Squad.

As soon as I logged in
, I checked our guild roster to see if Parker was on. Kaydinn and Eilarae weren’t playing (though I hadn’t really expected them to be so late at night), but Sovay and Parker were both logged in, so I was happy.

Hey you,
I typed to Parker, feeling a particular fondness for him today, since he had been sweet enough to try to pull me off of Tawny.

That’s what true friends did—
pulled you away from someone who could definitely beat you up if they wanted to.

Why are you on so late?
he asked.

I could ask you the same thing
, I pointed out.

Touché.

So, how was your day today?
I asked, trying to be casual when, in all honesty, I was desperate to see what he thought of Reagan (aka me) now that she had “grown a backbone.”

My avatar walked into the city barbershop so I could try out some new hairstyles while waiting for Parker to respond. I didn’t want to seem too desperate by holding my breath while he typed.

“Oh, cute pigtails,” I said out loud before quickly looking over my shoulder. It was probably better if I didn’t talk to myself when I was supposed to be asleep and grounded from gaming.

It was good,
he replied neutrally.

Good?

That was all he was going to say to his best online friend? Had my little display of courage done nothing? It was like he was trying to nerf my whole scheme to win his heart while never really admitting to him that I liked him.

Did you finally talk to your little cheerleader?
I asked, hoping I sounded like I was joking and not like I had suspiciously good insight on the events of his day.

This whole double life
thing was seriously starting to make me feel like a stalker.

I didn’t
, he typed.

Ugh.
Liar.

But I talked to her friend
, he went on.

That made
me slightly less mad at him for being so hesitant to talk about how awesome it was that I actually stood up to Tawny.

Okay, maybe I was unjustified in feeling so good about my
self for not being a total sellout anymore.

You’re never this hard to get information out of! What happened?

So that probably seemed a little desperate, but I was sick of trying to coax information out of him.

My chat box was silent for a long time
, and I tried to concentrate on picking a new hairstyle when all I wanted to do was ask Parker what was taking him so long to respond. We seriously needed our own private voice chat channel.

Her annoying friend (who we’ll call The Troll) called me over and was trying
to make me look like an idiot, and I was just so sick of her controlling everyone that I didn’t let her push me around. It was kind of fun actually, to see the look on her face when I insulted her. Of course, it was terrifying as well, since her nails are long and I’m pretty sure she could inflict some massive damage with those. But anyway, the blonde cheerleader (heretofore known as Elite Cheerleader) must have been inspired by the sight of her Troll leader losing to a nerd because she definitely . . .

His message cut off there. Apparently he’d used his maximum allotted typing space
, and so I was left to wonder what he was going to say next as I stared at the screen like a nerd waiting for Comic Con tickets to go on sale.

Not that I had ever done that.

Well . . . I hadn’t done it more than twice, at least.

Punched her right in the face! Well, that was after she tackled her to the ground and told her she hated her. I do feel bad
, though, because she got knocked in the face pretty hard by The Troll. But Elite Cheerleader can handle anything!

He made it sound like
I was a superhero in a comic book.

Are we seriously calling her Elite Cheerleader now?

Is that all you got out of that story?

I laughed at the screen before quickly covering my mouth. I was pretty awful at sneaking around when I was grounded.

So she earned some major faction points with you?
I teased.

You’re impossible to talk to.

Oh, you’re so amazing Rekrap! How did you manage to bring out the pure heart buried deep inside of one so evil? Only you could be that amazing. Is that what you wanted to hear?
I joked.

Laugh it up, but I’m pretty sure Elite Cheerleader is a lot cooler than we thought she was at first.

Wait. I thought we knew she was cool and that was the problem,
I pointed out.

As much as I felt guilty for not telling Parker who I really was, I had to admit
that it was nice to witness his feelings firsthand. It was like having the ability to read his thoughts. Who else got this kind of insight into their relationship?

Sorry
, let me rephrase. I guess she’s a lot less cool than we thought. How cool is that?

You make no sense sometimes,
I told him.

Hello!
he typed, as his avatar appeared right beside mine.
I see you wasted no time in taking advantage of the new hairstyles from the patch.

You know it! My character is so cute now.

You play this game like a girl,
he told me.

I guess at le
ast you know I’m not some forty-year-old man playing the game in my mom’s basement and pretending to be a girl, right?

That happens way too often to joke about,
he responded.
Anyway, your character looks good.

Something only a lonely guy would say,
I teased.

Hey
, I’m not alone, remember? I have Elite Cheerleader.

+++

“Match!” Cannon yelled triumphantly, though I wasn’t quite sure why he seemed so triumphant; it wasn’t that difficult for him to beat me at a game that required so much intellect.

“You’re such a cheater,” I mumbled as I scanned t
he cards, trying desperately not to be outdone by my little brother.

“I can pretend not to see the matches if it’ll make you feel better,” he offered, sounding much sweeter than he was being.

“Do you want me to play this stupid game with you or not?” I asked.

“Okay, sorry! Don’t punch me or anything,” he responded with a laugh, making me roll my eyes at his poor sense of humor.

“That’s not funny.”

“But it is kind of accurate,” he said.

“Just play the game and be quiet,” I warned.

We were silent for a moment as Cannon got three more matches in a row and I sat h
elplessly by, not even sure how he had found those.

“Hey Reagan?” he asked, instantly making me sigh.

“What, Cannon?”

“Why did you hit that girl?”

I stopped searching for matches for a moment and looked up at Cannon. I definitely needed to make sure I gave him the responsible older sister response.

“Because she was being mean to my friend,” I answered neutrally.

In all honesty, if I wanted to be a truly good sister, I probably should have said, “fighting is never the answer,” which is kind of true. But Cannon was smart, and he’d know my heart wasn’t in that response. So I gave him the real answer.

“Really
, you shouldn’t ever hit people,” I amended, “and I feel bad that I did it. But I’m not sorry that I stood up for a friend.”

“There’s a girl at school that people pick on,” Cannon said.

I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but I didn’t want to ruin a potentially nice brother-sister moment, so I kept my mouth shut.

“She’s really nice
, but I already get made fun of, so I feel like I can’t be her friend,” he continued, making me feel pretty awful.

Cannon was like all of the people Tawny and I had terrorized over the years. My little brother was
a sweet and seriously cute little boy, but because he was so freakishly smart, people wouldn’t see that. It made me furious to think that people were being mean to Cannon just because he was smart, but I couldn’t really be all high-and-mighty about it, since that had been my default setting ever since I met Tawny.