“A lot,” I say. “Now hurry up and get your butt over here. Syth and I are both ready to go.” I draw up beside Sythlight at the rift. His dragonlord does a little dance. My elf warrior dances back. Just like normal, but with voices in our ears instead of words in the chat log. It’s okay. Meg was right; it’s just VoiceChat.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be there in a sec,” Luke says. “Should I bring anything special?”
Planning over VoiceChat is definitely easier than planning over regular chat. I advise Luke on what to bring, we talk strategy as he runs over, and we enter the shadowy rift in record time.
“How’s the science project going?” Luke asks once we’ve established our positions and descended far enough into the rift that we have time to talk about more than just strategy. “Have you figured out who your guinea pigs are going to be?”
My hand spasms at the unpleasant reminder, and I miss my shot. The mutant shadowwolf gallops toward us. I steady my bow, aim, and release a second shot. The arrow pierces the wolf right between his beady eyes, and he falls down dead.
“You mean besides Mom and Dad? No.” If only our test subjects actually were guinea pigs instead of people. That I could manage.
“What’s the project?” Syth asks. As I explain, he executes his tank role flawlessly, rushing in and taking several sword slashes to the face—our human shield—then withdrawing to the shadows at the perfect moment. In other words, he can’t possibly be listening to me. I keep my explanation short.
“Sounds like fun,” Syth says as he dodges a venomous wereboar, ducking out of the way just in time for me to fire an arrow into its back hoof.
“Yeah, except we have to test actual humans. The horror,” I say, aiming for sarcasm, but not quite reaching it. An idea comes to me as Luke slices the maimed beast open with his ax. “Hey, Luke, do you think you could recruit some of your friends to do speed runs?” I’ll have to check with Mr. Carter to make sure it’s okay, but I think it will be. I mean, we’ve created detailed instructions, which would allow for self-testing, and it would be good to get a variety of ages and locations anyway.
Another venomous wereboar creeps out from amid the rocks. Green poison-slime drips from its nostrils as it stalks toward Luke, backing him into a murky corner. Luke’s battle-ax ability is still on cooldown.
“Um, yeah, probably?”
My fingers pulse with adrenaline at his response and I hit the beast with an arrow, right below the neck, where its armored skin is weakest. It crumples to the ground. If Luke tested four friends plus himself, I could be halfway done with my share before Christmas break even started. Meg said she could do fifteen, leaving me only five, but if I can find a way do my fair share, then I will.
I start to explain the steps—the multiple tests, the importance of randomization, the timing—to Luke as we loot the corpses and head farther into the darkness, but he cuts me off. “Just send me an email.”
Well, of course. The tests have to be done right or there’s no point, and there’s something about the way he’s holding his battle-ax in one hand and a glittering, freshly looted sword in the other that makes me think he’s not taking notes.
“Shall we head into the depths?” Syth asks, obviously bored with my science project rambling. Obviously having no interest in me and my boring life.
I tighten my grip on my mouse. “Mm-hmm,” I say, and Luke and I follow him into the dark forest.
MEG
WHEN MRS. BROWN SETS MY MATH TEST ON MY DESK UPSIDE DOWN ON THE Monday before the holidays, I know it’s not going to be good. I flip it over immediately. Across the top is a big, red 47/100.
I stick my hand up in the air.
“Yes, Meg,” Mrs. Brown says. The jingle bells on her red sweater chime softly as she hands a test back to Chris beside me. She’s worn a different Christmas top every day this month. She must have an entire closet devoted just to snowmen and reindeer.
“Have you ever thought of marking in a different color than red?” I ask. “Red is so demoralizing. The color of blood and all that. Maybe you could mark in purple or green. I have like a million green pens at home. I could bring one in for you if you like.”
She clutches the rest of the tests to her chest and sighs. “Meg, just—be sure to study next time, would you?”
I flip my test back over to hide the angry red, and she continues up and down the aisles, bells jingling cheerily. I lean over and whisper to Chris, “She should study how to dress fashionably,” and he laughs.
Actually, I love her sweater.
And actually, I did study. Or at least, I tried. I mean, I’ve been doing my homework. I have to or Mom will never let me leave the house again. The problem is that my math textbook might as well be written in Egyptian, so I had to start just writing down random numbers, because what else was I supposed to do? But of course, since Mom thinks I’m stupid, she started looking at my notebook and eventually figured it out, and I ended up grounded for even longer.
I shove the math test into my backpack. When I get home, it’s going straight into the shredder.
“Okay, so I asked Mr. Carter,” Kat says when I stop at her locker between classes. “He said it’s okay to have Luke do some of the testing for location diversity purposes, as long as we’re doing the majority ourselves.”
“Have Luke what?” I don’t know what she’s talking about half the time.
“I told you. I asked Luke when I was VoiceChatting with him and Syth—”
“Wait. Wait! You were VoiceChatting with Syth? I thought you were just—”
“The bell’s going to ring,” she says, cutting me off. “I’ve got to get to class.”
“But—”
“Talk to you at lunch,” she says, then disappears into the mass of students flowing by. She is basically the worst. And the best. And the worst.
At lunch, I catch up to her in the hall and punch her in the arm. “Dude,” I say, “I can’t believe you made me wait an entire class to find out what happened with you and Syth. That’s mental cruelty.”
“What do you mean?” She frowns at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about. “What did happen with me and Sythlight?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to tell me!”
We’re in the hall by then, at Kat’s locker. She opens it and starts sorting through her books, casually, as if she didn’t just tell me that she went on the forbidden VoiceChat with a guy she doesn’t like to talk about, but who, even though she refuses to admit it, she is clearly head over heels in love with. She doesn’t say anything.
“You are infuriating!” I say as dramatically as I can, then march off to our lunch spot, leaving her to sort her boring textbooks in peace.
KAT
I TAKE A MINUTE TO ORGANIZE MY STUFF BEFORE I FOLLOW AFTER MEG.
The thing is, I know exactly what she’s talking about. But I refuse to make a big deal of it, for multiple reasons:
1. It actually isn’t a big deal. Like she said, it’s just VoiceChat. It was just a rift raid. We’ve done dozens upon dozens of rift raids.
2. Syth lives near Toronto, which means he’s not here.
3. When things become a big deal, my chest constricts, and I can’t remember how to breathe.
4. Syth didn’t listen to my science project explanation.