“We all know why we’re here today,” Hazel said. “Jackie Stone, daughter of Jared Stone, needs our help. Jackie will now tell us her tale.”
Hazel had prepared Jackie for this—that she would need to tell her story to the guild. She had even written an introduction for her. Jackie copied and pasted it.
“Good people of Azeroth, members of the guild, I come to you with a heavy heart and ask that you hear my song.” After that, Jackie just started typing in her own manner of speech, and pretty soon, everyone else reverted to the idiom of the early twenty-first century. She told them about her father and his disease, thanking them for the money they had raised for the eBay listing. She told them about life on the set of the television show. She introduced them to Max and explained how the two of them had made The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon. And she told them about Ethan Overbee, and how he had turned her home into a prison and had confiscated her phone, and how he and his minions were watching Jackie and her family twenty-four hours a day.
“What we need is a rescue,” someone said. Others agreed.
“No,” Hazel answered. “Jackie’s request is simple. We need to get her a camera.”
For the next hour, and spilling into the next two nights, the guild discussed various plans to get Jackie a camera. In the end, they settled on the simplest plan of all. Throw her one over The Wall.
No one was more surprised than Jackie to learn that the knight chosen for the task was her awkward, pimply-faced classmate, Jason Sanderson—the boy who had told her she looked nice in her Easter dress all those years ago.
It made perfect sense to Jackie that Jason lived in this world. When the real world treats you like garbage, why not find a better world, one without prejudice, judgment, and cruelty? She was only sad that she hadn’t discovered this world for herself years earlier.
Jason was known in Azeroth simply as G. Ranger, and was now known to the guild as a hero among men.
***
Ethan knew the younger Stone girl would be easy prey. Hell, most of America would have known. In her interviews with the producer, the short segments that aired each night, Megan tried too hard. She fawned for the camera, used her hand to brush her hair back a little too often, and used the producer’s name too emphatically. It played well enough with America because she was so young—Megan was cute, and she knew it—but overnight polling, which peeled away all nuance and stripped things down to their bare essence, said that her unfavorable numbers were on the rise; America was starting to see Megan as a stuck-up and self-absorbed brat.
Of course, those poll numbers were never shared with the family lest it affect their performance. But Ethan had seen them. In fact, Ethan was counting on them.
“Hello, Megan,” he said as she climbed into the limousine. Megan, overwhelmed by the opulence, muttered hello in response. “Would you like something to drink?” Ethan motioned to the bar stacked with soda, juice, and milk. “We have Nantucket Nectars. You know, that’s Jo Garvin’s favorite.” Ethan had no idea what Jo Garvin liked to drink, nor did he care. But he had seen how Megan adored Jo, and he was all too happy to exploit it.
“Oh, yes, please, Mr. Overbee. I would simply love a Nantucket Nectar.”
Even here, Ethan thought, the kid can’t dial it down.
“It’s a shame about Jo,” he said, passing her a bottle.
“Why? What happened?” Megan’s concern was, Ethan could tell, genuine. His face betrayed no hint of the delight he was feeling inside.
“Your sister’s video, Megan. It probably ended Jo’s career.”
Megan sighed. Written in that lone syllable of exhalation was a lifetime of frustration with Jackie, exasperation at why her sister had to be so weird. “End her career?” Megan asked.
“Yes. Jackie’s video made Jo look like a fool, and America doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” Ethan didn’t really think either statement was true. Jo would rebound, the tenacious ones always do, and America, he believed, was populated by cud-chewing cave trolls.
Megan felt bad for Jo—she was a star after all—but she wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with her. “Didn’t you take Jackie’s phone away?”
“We did. But Jackie’s video is only half the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell that your mom is upset with the show, upset with me.” Ethan leaned in and dropped the volume of his voice, turning Megan into a coconspirator. Megan had used this same trick on Jackie countless times but didn’t immediately recognize it on the receiving end. She nodded and leaned in, too, completely unaware that she was being played.