Level 13 Page 2

  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.

  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 our place?”

  “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 873 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 delivered the unhappy message: 11/50.

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

  I was shamefaced. “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 dating Daphne.”

  “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 not flunking,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t have to fail for real,” he reasoned. “I just have to tell everybody 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 ax.

  “Don’t even think about 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 bigmouths 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. On the other hand, what Pavel said made sense. Daphne was great and all that. But 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. Still, I couldn’t risk her exposing Cam.

  Then again … “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 that was, 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 did have 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. 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 at the top: 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 fund-raiser?”

  “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.

  It was a pretty ill plan. I arrived at school on Monday morning, totally amped to spread the word about how I was tanking in my classes.

  The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. I wasn’t a terrible student, but flunking was at least as good a match for me as leading the school. And if it gave me the breathing room to get the stream going, it was the right move all around.

  As usual, Pavel had some advice. “Don’t lay it on too thick about how dumb you are. Remember, the kids in this school think you’re a genius for creating the P.A.G. Focus on the time angle—your grades are suffering because you’re too busy.”

  Chuck had another concern. “I don’t like how Daphne got mixed up in all this. It’s bad enough that we’re not telling her the truth. But now she’s stuck organizing the whole library fund-raiser.”

  “Are you kidding?” Pavel crowed. “Daphne lives for this kind of stuff. She probably lines up sheep in her sleep. Telling other people what to do is her favorite thing in the world. Running a whole fund-raiser is her dream. Chances are, she’ll even figure out a way to work Elvis into it. You know, Support the library and upgrade the beaver habitat to a condominium.”

  “Daphne’s been kind of worried about Elvis lately,” Chuck admitted glumly. “He’s too skinny. Beavers are supposed to fatten up once winter’s over. At least, that’s what it says on Wikipedia.”

  We entered the school. “If having a girlfriend means I have to memorize the Wikipedia page on beavers,” I commented, “then I’m staying single forever.”

  I scanned the crowded hallway, wondering how long it would be before some pagger hit me up for fund-raiser details. That person, I decided, would be the next to hear the sob story about my failing grades.

  In my mind, I counted down: 10 … 9 … 8 …

  Felicia Hochuli ran up to us. But instead of asking about the P.A.G., she threw her arms around me. “We’re with you all the way, Cam,” she said emotionally, then hurried off.

  I was stunned. “What was that?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Maybe you’re getting a girlfriend, too.”

  “No, that can’t be it,” Pavel commented. “She looked—sympathetic. Like your dog died or something.”

  A sixth-grade boy I didn’t recognize was next. He grabbed my hand and shook it, like we were at a funeral. “That’s really rough, Cam. Good luck.”

  From then on, it was a parade. By the time I got to my locker, at least a dozen people had come up to me to pledge their support. A few of them even apologized, as if they were the cause of my troubles.

  “For what?” I said aloud as Tavon Woods disappeared into the crowd outside the library.

  “Cam—I came as soon as I heard.” String sprinted along the row of lockers, sweaty from his off-season football workout. “When I got kicked off the team for bad grades, the P.A.G. was there for me, and The String is going to be there for you. Anything you need—I’ve got your back.”

  “Bad grades?” I echoed. That’s what this was about! Here I was about to start the rumor about my academic problems and it was already all over the building.

  “When Daphne told me you were flunking out, it hit me like an illegal chop block,” String went on. “It was like a blindside tackle—except that the tackler isn’t born yet who can catch up with The String. When Xavier heard the news, he head-bumped his locker. Looks like somebody took a sledgehammer to it …”

  My eyes met Pavel’s and Chuck’s. We didn’t have to spread anything; Daphne had done our spreading for us.

  “Well, Chucky, what did we tell you?” Pavel announced after String had moved on. “Your girlfriend really does have the biggest mouth in Sycamore.”

  “Quit saying that,” Chuck growled.

  “No, it’s a good thing,” I insisted. “Who knows how long it would have taken the three of us to get the word out. But telling Daphne is better than taking out a front-page ad in the New York Times.”

  Chuck couldn’t help looking a little proud. For sure, he was 100 percent behind Daphne, who already had the library fund-raiser half planned by the late bell. Chuck followed her around like an adoring puppy. This was barely week two of the good ship Duckne, and he had already changed. He had a new haircut. He dressed differently; he tucked in his shirt. He wore so much Axe body spray that you could smell him coming five minutes before he walked into a room. He was almost like a mutant version of himself—but as long as he supported my streaming, I didn’t care.

  By the weekend, I was exactly where I belonged, controller in hand, setting up the greatest live game stream in Internet history.

  There were a couple of complications. First, this was a new stream. I had to close my first account, because I couldn’t use my real name anymore. I’d never get away with fobbing off my P.A.G. responsibilities when any idiot could find me on the Internet while I was supposed to be pulling up my grades. All those paggers were picturing me hitting the books, not playing video games online for the audience of thousands I intended to have.

  If my name was a problem, my face was an even bigger one. No point in using an alias if I could be recognized. I had to stream in disguise. I tried on an old Mario getup I used to wear for Halloween, but it didn’t really fit anymore. Besides, it was so hot in there that it might have affected my performance.

  Pavel had a better idea. He took the black mask from my sister Melody’s Zorro costume and tied it around my head. It was comfortable and light, and the eyeholes were big enough for a clear view of the screen.

  “How do I look?” I asked.

  “Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you,” he promised.

  That left just my voice needing a disguise. “There’s only one way for a member of the Awesome Threesome to take care of that,” Pavel announced. He took a gummy worm from a ceramic bowl and shoved it into my mouth, burying it into my right cheek. Then he tucked another one into my left. Zorro looked like he had the mumps. Better still, he sounded nothing like me—garbled and a little slurpy.

  “Keep the bowl close,” Pavel advised. “You’ll need new gummy worms when these start to dissolve. You’re going to put away a lot of candy by the time you get to 50,000 subscribers.”

  “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” I told him with a grin.

  He helped me get set up in front of the console and the webcam, checking to make sure the screen looked perfect for anyone following online.

  It was zero hour. All I needed was a name.

  “How about The Fox?” Pavel suggested.

  “Why fox?” I asked.

  “The mask,” he explained. “Weren’t you paying attention in Spanish class? Zorro means fox.”

  That was how I became GameFox229. It sounded just right for the name of a mega-popular streamer. The 229 part was a tribute to Draja Dubrovnik, the greatest gamer of all time. He was born on leap year day—February 29. If I could be even half as good as him, I’d get to 50,000 subscribers in record time.

  When I clicked the button that took me live, it was like opening the door to a brave new world.

  Because I was starting from scratch, no one was watching at first. My phone was still subscribed to the old stream, so I wasn’t even following myself. Luckily, Pavel ran straight home and logged in on his computer, which brought the counter up to one. Chuck would have doubled that, but he was busy somewhere being half of Duckne.

  I forced myself not to let that get me down. I was a gamer; this was a game, and playing it to the best of my ability was as natural as breathing. “It’s World War Two, and I’m leading a band of Norwegian freedom fighters,” I narrated around the gummy worms in my mouth. It sounded a little garbled, but hopefully people would think it was my Scandinavian accent. “Our mission is to blow up the Vemork heavy water plant. If we fail, the Nazis might develop the atomic bomb first and change the course of history …” Sugary goop dribbled down my chin. But with the controller in my hands, there wasn’t much I could do about it.