The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 22]

My mom drove me to school the next day. I had that important paper, the proof, in my hands. I was ready to show it to Mr. Adams the very moment I saw him.

My mom was usually talkative while driving. She was strangely quiet that morning. She finally began talking about half way there. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

I didn’t know what she was sorry about. I didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry that I had Mr. Adams keeping tabs on you,” she added. “At least, I should have made sure you knew why you were going to him. I should have let you know he was telling me how your meetings went. Or really, I should have been asking you about how school was going myself. You showed me yesterday that you can stand up for yourself.”

I was still mad about her and Mr. Adams spying on me. I didn’t want to say anything. If I said something, it was like me accepting her apology. My main focus was bringing Kyle to justice, anyway.

We both ended up in the office, waiting for Mr. Adams to come out and meet us. The lady behind the desk made a few calls, too. Just a little way into first period, Mr. Tate came by, and then Kyle himself a little bit later. He looked at me and my mom but didn’t say anything.

When Mr. Adams finally came out of his office, he greeted everyone nicely. Even Kyle the liar. Then a fancy-looking woman came out from the other side of the office.

Mr. Adams greeted her too. “Principal Jones will be joining us today, just so we can make sure we’re all on the same page,” He said to the rest of us.

Principal Jones was older and super skinny, with kind of wrinkled skin. She didn’t look like she smiled much. Instead of Mr. Adam’s office, the lot of us went to the Principal’s office. We filled up every chair before everyone could sit. Mr. Tate and Mr. Adams stood at the sides of the room.

“Well, Mr. Tate,” the principal began, “I’ve been filled in a bit about this situation so far. Mike here has asked you to come along to offer your insight. After all, you’d be the best person to speak on this technology business.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Mr. Tate said. He looked at me and Kyle. Kyle seemed a little scared. I was glad he was scared. “You have that printout still, Mike?”

I had it in my hands, ready. I handed it to him.

Mr. Tate folded it out on the principal’s big wooden desk. “So, the personal account belonging to Mike here was broken into and virtual belongings were stolen. We can see from the records here that Sunday afternoon, around one in the afternoon, someone had been using his account.”

“A video game character, I’ve heard,” The principal said. She shook her head and glanced at me. “It’s sad what some people will fight over.”

Mr. Adams cleared his throat. “It’s safe to believe, Jodie, that the items belonging to Mike had sentimental value. It would be like if you had one of those digital cameras, and someone deleted important vacation pictures off of it. Or if someone had read your diary. And ripped out pages, on top of it.”

“Fine, I’m listening,” the principal said. “Mr. Tate, do you have more to add?”

“Yes. Now, Mrs. Shepherd,” Mr. Tate said to my mom. “Can you tell us if Mike was using his computer at this time? Sunday afternoon?”

My mom shook her head. “We were raking leaves and pulling weeds in the yard all afternoon. Then Mike helped me make dinner.”

Mr. Tate nodded. “So, it could not have been Mike using this account. On top of that, it is not the usual IP address.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is,” the principal said, glancing at the paper again.

“An IP address, like a house address, is unique to every internet connection. The school has one, as well as anyone who has an internet connection at home. No two are alike. Every time a person logs into this game, the IP address is recorded.”

The principal picked up the paper and looked over the bits of information. “This is the one that is different, Mr. Tate. Am I correct?”

“That’s right,” he said, reading along with her.

She turned the paper around and waved it at Kyle. “So, is this your internet address?”

Kyle had only been sitting and listening. He was all the way shrunk down in his chair. He glanced at the paper and shook his head. “I don’t know! I’ve never seen that before!”

“Jodie,” Mr. Tate said to the principal. “One’s own IP address isn’t common knowledge. And before you ask, I can’t personally check whether it is his or not. But it is an address from this city.”

Mr. Adams cleared his throat again before talking. “So, we know that Mike’s account was… accessed by someone else. Mike, there must be some sort of password that you use? Do you know how someone could have known it?”

“His password is stupid!” Kyle shouted, interrupting everyone else. “It’s jakeandme123. I saw him type it in when I was over there last.”

I wanted to punch him again. Pretty much everyone else was looking at him, so that was probably a bad idea. He started crying. They were probably to make other people feel bad.

“It was Max!” Kyle said between sobs. “I didn’t take Mike’s stuff! But I played with Max this weekend on Rune Quest! He doesn’t have his own account, so I gave him Mike’s login info.”

Mr. Adams hummed and shook his head. “I see. Looking back, was that the best idea? Giving away something that wasn’t yours in the first place?”

Kyle shook his head. He buried his face down by his legs. “Max and I were just going to play and go around the world. But then he started dumping Mike’s stuff on the ground. He thought it was funny. Then he went through his storage and dropped more stuff! I grabbed some of it, but a lot of other people online grabbed it up too! I tried telling him to stop, but it was too late!”

Mr. Tate shook his head. The principal was sitting back, shaking her head as well. She definitely didn’t understand.

“Should we get this Max in here, then?” Mr. Adams sighed and asked.

I didn’t know Max. I didn’t want another kid to have to talk to. On top of that, I realized that my stuff wasn’t just stolen, but it was gone completely. I slumped down in the chair, hiding my own despair. My mom rubbed at my back.

“It sounds like Max is just a poor bystander who didn’t know better,” Mr. Tate sighed. “Mike, the best I can do is tell you to change that password, buddy.”

The principal’s chair creaked. “So, is that it? First thing, let’s call this poor Kyle’s parents in here so it doesn’t seem like we’re harassing him. Mr. Adams, I’ll let you figure out something to do with Kyle when his family gets here.”

“Something to make it up to Mike, I presume,” Mr. Adams asked.

The principal stood up from her seat. “That’s all we can really do, with all of this internet, virtual computer game business.”

“Don’t call my mom,” Kyle pleaded loudly from his seat. He was crying a little bit. “She gets mad if you call her while she’s working! I’ll make it up to Mike!”

“Yes, perhaps we can avoid that, Principal Jones, Mr. Adams,” My mom spoke up suddenly. She moved her chair closer to Kyle’s and patted at his shoulder. “I have a good relationship with Kyle’s mom, Chrissy. I’ll give her a call and we can figure something out. That would work for you, right, Mike? Kyle?”

She looked at me hopefully. I really had wanted Kyle to get in super big trouble. I was still mad at him. But having to make him wait for his mom and hearing him cry more was going to be annoying. I also believed that he might have been telling the truth for once. I nodded. “Yeah.”

“That would be wonderful, Patricia,” Mr. Adams said. “Now, let’s get you both back on the way to second period.”

“We’ll figure something out,” my mom concluded. “I’m terribly sorry we had to use up school time for all this.”

Kyle left the office first with his note. I definitely felt like he hadn’t been punished enough. It was almost like he wasn’t even punished at all. But he did say that he did try to get some of my stuff before it was taken by. I was going to have to get on with him once more before I could get at least some of my stuff back.

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The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 19]

Did I mention before that sleepovers planned ahead of time are the best? Not long after waking up, Kyle and I started smelling breakfast being cooked in the kitchen. It was the smell of bacon, something that we rarely had in my house.

When we came out to eat, we also found pancakes, eggs, and orange juice to wash it all down. We ate like kings that morning. I mean, since we had defeated the Goblin King, we were kind of taking his place. Not that my parents knew that.

We returned to the den after breakfast.

“There’s something we should download now that you have fast internet,” Kyle said.

“Another game?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s called I-M. Short for instant messenger.”

I hadn’t heard of it. “What does it do?”

“You know how you talk to people on Rune Quest?” Kyle said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s like that. But you don’t have to be on a game. You can just talk to people.”

“Random people?” I said, confused. I rarely talked to other people on Rune Quest outside of Jakey.

“No, like you can add friends. Like I chat with Max sometimes. Here, this is the site.”

I let Kyle do his thing. I thought that I could just remove anything that he installed after he left. After downloading the strange program, he set it up. It was just a little window where you could type in someone’s name.

“My name on here is the same as I use in Rune Quest,” Kyle said. “FirePlay3r. You can see when I’m on the computer. That way we can let each other know when we’ll be on Rune Quest.”

I suddenly understood. “So I don’t have to call your phone? That’s kind of cool. We should get Jakey on this, too.”

“Yeah, why not?” Kyle said, nodding. He typed in his username so we could be connected right from the start. “When I’m back at home later I’ll send you a message so you can trade me some of the gold.”

“Sure thing.”

The End of it All

Kyle went home just before noon. I wanted to spend more time with him, but obviously, he had to leave at some point. That’s the worst part about a sleepover, the part where you have to go your separate ways. No, wait— the worst part of the end of a sleepover is when your mom makes you clean up.

“Alright, Mike, it’s time to get off the computer,” my mom said to me from the den doorway. “You two were on that all night. Ice cream bowls need to go in the sink. Get the sleeping bags rolled up. And you know where the DVDs and board games need to go.”

That was far from the last chore I had to do that day. Between that stuff, homework, and being made to do ‘other’ stuff, I didn’t get any more time on the computer.

I kind of wanted to try out that instant messenger thing with Kyle, but I knew he would understand if I wasn’t able to get on. I wondered if his mom would make him do boring, busy stuff after a sleepover too.

It was Sunday night before I was able to finally sneak off back to the den. I knew I was sitting on a pile of Rune Quest money from defeating the Goblin King. I thought about how much I had in total. There were so many possibilities for what I could buy. I might have been able to get a new set of armor and be almost as strong as Jakey. But he also had gotten money too, so he might have bought better stuff, too.

My character was in a strange place when I logged in. I remembered that Kyle had been on my character last. The location still seemed off. On top of that, none of the armor or gear I had been wearing was in my inventory. I wondered if Kyle had let my character die before he logged off.

I ran to the nearest town storage. That would be where all my other stuff was. All of that, including the piles of money, should have been safe. It was not.

My storage boxes had been cleared out. All that remained were some piles of junk that pretty much had no use. It was like I was a level one character again. My hands were shaking. My eyes filled up with tears. I wanted to slam on my keyboard with my fists. I wanted to punch the screen and push it off the desk. I almost screamed.

I flung myself onto the den’s couch and pounded my head into the cushion. I punched at the armrest. Everything that I had worked for was gone. I hoped that if I logged off and logged back on, it would all be suddenly back. Maybe it was just a game bug. Maybe it was just a bad dream. It was none of that, of course.

I opened up the instant messenger program. Kyle had accepted my friend request, but he wasn’t online then. If he was online, I would have been typing every bad word I knew at him. It was definitely Kyle. Somehow, he had figured out my password and logged in to my character, and stole everything.

I wanted to say something to my parents, but I knew it wouldn’t make sense to them. I thought about how they might say that it was stupid, that I was upset over just a game. All of those things I earned and made took real time and real effort. There was no getting that back.

I barely slept that night. I couldn’t help but think about what I was going to do to Kyle the next day. The things I was going to yell at him. When my mom woke me up the next morning, I was more tired and more mad.

I managed to hide my mood from my mom and my sister. But Jakey would be at the bus stop, and he had to know. When I saw him, he raised his hand in the air for a high five.

“Dude, Friday was awesome! We took down the king!”

I kicked at the ground and shook my head. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t let Jakey see me crying. “It doesn’t matter! It’s all gone. Kyle hacked me, bro!”

Jakey lowered his hand. “What? How did that happen?”

“He must have seen me type in my password or something! I don’t know! But when I logged in last night, everything was gone!”

“Even from your storage boxes?” Jakey asked.

“Everything!” I said. I cried a little bit.

“What a little thief,” Jakey said with a grumble. “And after he helped guide us through the stronghold.”

On the bus ride to school, Jakey kept talking about how to get back at Kyle. All I could think about was seeing Kyle’s stupid, smiling face in first period.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Jakey said as we were parting ways at school. “Maybe we can ask Mr. Tate at lunch about what we can do.”

That would have been too late, I said to myself. The bell rang. I marched myself through the quad and to Mrs. Carpenter’s class. My feet were nearly worn out by the time I got there. Kids were already heading inside the classroom. Kyle was among them.

He looked up at me with a smile as I came up to our shared desk. I flung my backpack off my shoulders and tossed it at him. It bounced off his shoulder and fell with a clunk to the ground.

“What the heck, dude,” he hissed at me.

I glanced up at the front of the room to make sure Mrs. Carpenter wasn’t watching. “I hate you,” I whined at him, kicking at the leg of his chair.

“Chill, dude,” he said back, pulling away. “Why are you mad?”

“You know what you did,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “You stole everything from me.”

“Mike, take a seat for me,” the teacher said from the front of the room. “I’m going to take roll.”

I flung my chair back and slumped myself down. I didn’t want to look at Kyle in the eye.

“Seriously, what happened, dude?” He tried to say lowly. The teacher was distracted by the attendance paper.

I knew he was playing dumb. “Quit lying!” I shouted. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the class, looked back my way. “You hacked my account!”

“Mike, save it for later,” Mrs. Carpenter called back.

A few people laughed. The laughter made the hairs stand up all over my arms and body.

“Yeah, Mike,” Kyle scoffed lowly at my side. It was low enough that only I could hear.

I felt my teeth squeezing against each other. I swung back and sent my hand into Kyle’s shoulder, nearly pushing him off his chair.

Mrs. Carpenter stomped around to the side of the class and jutted a finger at the door. “Mike, office, now! This is ridiculous!”

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