Game Over

Chapter 25





ACTUALLY, HIS TONE was probably more embarrassed than threatening. I didn’t feel so much scared as I did guilty—like I’d just seen something that I probably shouldn’t have, like I’d been spying on him. Which, I guess, I had.

There was no way I could use my human-tested Jedi mind trick to convince him I was just another human kid who’d been enrolled here for the past two years. Other than the fact that he seemed to have a superhuman tolerance for bullies, I knew next to nothing about how his alien mind might work. Chances were, if I tried to interfere with his thoughts, the only thing I’d end up doing would be flagging myself as a fellow alien.

So instead, I reached into my bag of superpowers and pulled out my most tried-and-true paranormal ability—playing stupid.

“Uh, hi! Like, I’m Daniel. Who are you?”

“I’m Kildare Gygax. Nice to meet you, Daniel. Want to do me a favor and see if you can help me down from here? There should be a stepladder in the janitor’s closet down the hall over there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me.”

“Those bullies have stuck you up there in a garbage can before?”

“Actually, last time they hung me by my underpants on a climbing peg halfway up the gymnasium wall. But the stepladder was helpful then too.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, grimacing at the thought. “Shouldn’t I go get a teacher?”

“And then have said teacher ask me what happened, and have to implicate Ichi or one of his thugs—or pin the blame on somebody innocent—and deal with all the repercussions of that? No, thank you.”

“But if you don’t, you’re just giving in to those bullies!” I blurted.

He looked at me with a mixture of pity and impatience.

“As I’m sure you know, Daniel, there’s a long history of bullying in high schools. And Japan’s no exception. In fact, some statistics say we’ve got the worst juvenile bullying culture on earth.”

I found that hard to believe. The population seemed so… mild mannered. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “Now, seriously, I’m losing feeling in my feet.”

“I’ll go get that ladder,” I said, and went to retrieve it.

“So,” he said after I came back, as I climbed up and somehow managed to help him out of the can without killing us both. “What’s another gaijin doing in this place?”

“Umm, I just transferred. Parents moved here for work.”

“What do they do?”

“Um,” I said, suddenly realizing there was a danger in seeming too stupid. “They, um, handle personnel training for a nongovernmental organization.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I didn’t think I’d seen you before.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “it’s not like I tend to make a big impression on people anyway.”

“Just the fact that you’re talking to me is all the impression I need,” Kildare said, fishing his book bag out of the bottom of the trash barrel. He put it on his back and made the weirdest noise—it was a like a cross between a sneeze and a cat’s purr.

“Odaiji ni,” I said.

“What?!”

“It means ‘bless you’—you know, what you say when somebody sneezes.”

“I didn’t sneeze,” he said, starting to turn red.

“Oh,” I said, not quite sure how to respond.

“Anyhow, thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, meaning it quite sincerely. Other than making weird sneezing noises and then denying them, he seemed like a nice, grounded kid. I mean, I wasn’t exactly going to let my guard down to a child of two top-ten List aliens, but…

“Say, what class do you have next?” I asked.

“Introductory zoology,” he said.

“Really?” I said, whipping out a class schedule and pretending to read the same course. “Me, too. Can you show me where it is?”

“Sure,” he said. “But I suggest you not walk in with me. Ichi’s in that class. In fact, that’s kind of why he and his friends stuck me in the garbage can. They wanted to borrow my homework.”

“ ‘Borrow,’ huh?” I said.

“Yeah, well, there are worse things,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Well, if you’re still intent on coming to class with me, I’m sure you’ll see them do something worse than that. They’re especially rough on new kids.”