One Password to Rule them All

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 12]

Thursday afternoon came around. The last bell of the day rang, excusing me from the endless toiling that was math class. I had reminded Kyle at lunch to find us by the bus area, even if he didn’t need reminding. The bus area wasn’t far from the parent pick-up zone, so I didn’t he would get lost.

When the bus for our route arrived, number 30, we made sure to be the first people in line so we could all sit together. Jakey went first as he always did. I allowed Kyle, my guest, in after, and I followed up last. Even though there was space, we all squeezed into one of the seats. I wasn’t quite as wide as Jakey, so it wasn’t too bad sitting out in the aisle seat and having people push past me.

“Our neighborhood isn’t too many stops in,” I explained to Kyle after the bus departed the school. “Do you have to drive far to get to school?”

Kyle was trying to look past Jakey and through the windows. He was probably trying to find out where we were in town. He probably didn’t know the area that well since he had just moved.

Even though it was getting closer to fall, the bus still got hot during the afternoon. There was no air conditioning on buses, I guessed. Having the windows down was the only choice. As the air rushed in, Kyle suddenly jerked back into me.

“Jakey, you smell,” he said stuffily, holding his nose.

“We ran in P.E. today,” Jakey said with an annoyed tone. He slumped himself further against the wall of the bus.

“You can run?” Kyle continued.

Jakey rolled his eyes and huffed. “I only run when they make me. And Mr. Birch knows not to make me run.”

“Yeah, dude, you seem like you’d have a heart attack.”

If that was Kyle’s type of joke, I didn’t really get it. I felt like pepping up Jakey in case he didn’t think it was funny either. “I should see if Mr. Birch will let me walk too. I also hate running.”

“At least you don’t hate taking a shower,” Kyle let out another one of his jokes.

Jakey let out a long sigh and leaned his head against the ripply, metal wall of the bus interior. “Whatever, dude.”

None of us talked until the bus finally pulled into our neighborhood. “Well, here we are,” I said back as I led the three of us down the aisle and off the stairs. Don’t forget to log in when you can, Jakey!”

He was already beginning his walk back to his house. Kyle pulled on my arm. “Come on, man, show me where you live. What kind of snacks does your mom buy?”

To my surprise, my mom’s car was in the driveway when we came by. I showed off my very own house key to unlock my front door, but Kyle didn’t seem terribly impressed by it. Not long after we were inside, my mom was trotting up to us with a warm welcome.

“Hey, boysss,” she said with a playful tone. “You must be Kyle.”

“Hi there, Mrs… Patricia,” he said in a voice I had never heard from him before. “Nice house. It… smells good in here.”

“Well, thank you, Kyle. Only thing you should know is that we have shoes off in the house. Other than that, make yourself at home.” My mom said back, her hands on her lap. “I just got home, too. Dinner will be at 5:30, like usual, Mike. But I imagine you two must be hungry after a long day of school, so help yourself to the stuff in the pantry.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Kyle nodded.

I had never needed permission to raid the pantry before. I think my mom was showing off, and it was a little annoying. Despite that, once our shoes were off, I led Kyle to the land of spicy chips and creme-filled cookies. I also glanced at my mom as we opened the fridge to find cans of soda, but there was no resistance in her eyes that day, even with my recently discovered cavity.

“Just don’t spoil your dinner, boys,” she called back.

Logging In

I waved a hand at Kyle to make him follow. “Come on! Let me show you the computer room. I just got this new computer at the beginning of the summer and it’s super fast.”

“Yeah, let’s hop on it.”

“Oh yeah, and just like at school,” I added, “don’t spill anything or make a mess. That really could mess things up.”

I pressed the power button on the computer tower. It made a big clunk like it did all the time. The fans on the computer spun up and were really loud, but only for a moment. The clicking of the hard drives began as it loaded into the operating system. The whole process allowed us to crack into our sodas and open a sleeve of cookies.

When the computer itself had done its thing for us, I went straight to connecting us to the internet. I wiped my hands of crumbs before I opened the browser window and told it to connect us.

The sound of the computer dialing up had become almost nice for me. It was a sweet serenade that I listened to every day before I escaped the real world and entered the realm of Rune Quest. I got up and did a little dance every time I heard the beeping sounds playing. I guess it was like a little exercise before I would just sit for hours.

“Eww, what the heck?” Kyle said like he had discovered something gross in his sandwich cookie or something.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. I saw there was nothing visibly wrong with him or any of our snacks.

“You still have dial-up?”

I shrugged. “Oh. Yeah. It’s not as fast as the school’s internet, but it works for Rune Quest.”

“Yeah, and it takes forever to load. And my mom would always make me get off so she could make a phone call. Talk about stupid.”

I raised my finger to the air like I was going to tell Kyle the news of the century. “Oh, but we have two phone lines. One for calls, and one for me just to get on the internet. It used to be my mom’s work line before she changed jobs.”

“We have DSL at my new house,” Kyle declared.

“What’s that mean?”

“High-speed internet,” he said. “It stands for… Direct Speed Line.”

I believed his definition at the time even though that was two-thirds wrong.

“There’s no dialing you have to do,” Kyle added, still proud. “The internet is just there, all the time, like at the school. And you can talk on the phone when you use the internet, too.”

“I wonder if it’s expensive.” I said, not really expecting an answer.

“My dad got it for us. You get special deals when you move into a new house. That’s the law. My dad would know, he’s a businessman. And he didn’t want us to have to use dial-up anymore.”

“Lucky,” I said. I kind of said that just to stop him from talking more about it, even if it sounded nice to have. It didn’t matter since my internet had finally connected. Leaning over the back of my desk chair, I went straight to the link to the game in my bookmarks. It didn’t take as long as other sites to load. It was probably because I went there a lot, the computer had some of it in its memory. Just when everything was almost ready, I noticed something was wrong.

“A chair!” I said loudly. There was only one spinning desk chair for the both of us, and sharing it was out of the question. Despite all my preparations, I had forgotten to get a chair for my guest. “Be right back!”

After dragging one of the dining room chairs across the carpet and into the den, I caught Jakey already settling into the first seat. The Rune Quest home page was awaiting us. Something was typed into the ‘username’ section.

I leaned across the hard dining room chair. I was close enough to read what had been typed in.

“IcyMike203, right?” Kyle said, repeating the username that had been typed in.

“Yeah, you remembered?” I asked. I was surprised that he had remembered, and that he was planning to jump right away to my account.

“What’s your password?” He asked.

“Uh, I’ll type it in,” I said quickly. I had never said my password out loud. I don’t even think my parents knew it. There was no way I was going to say it to Kyle.

“Come on, dude, what do you think I’m going to do?” Kyle whined. “It’s just a password.”

“Then tell me your password,” I said back to him.

Kyle shrugged. “Eh, whatever, you’re slowing us down.”

I leaned in his way a bit as I typed my password in. I couldn’t tell exactly if he was looking at my fingers on the keyboard, but I knew how to type it fast, faster than he could have kept track of. Finally, the game was welcoming us.

We joined exactly where I had left off- in the mining pit in the desert area. There was a collection of other players already at work, hitting the rocks with their pickaxes and getting scraps of metal.

“Ugh, this place,” Kyle said. He grabbed the mouse and keyboard and started clicking away. My character and anything that was done in game was under his control. I wanted to pull the controls away from him. I had to hold myself back and try to be a good friend who would let his guest play first.

“I hate the scorpions that pop up around here,” Kyle added. He seemed to be clicking and guiding my character to the nearest town where there were no enemies.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re awful when you’re trying to mine, too. I’ve seen people sticking around and defending the people who just want to gather, though.”

“Why would they do that?” Kyle said, glancing my way.

“I dunno. Cause they’re cool?” I said, guessing aloud. “Hey, I probably have some iron to drop off in my storage box. Can you do that before we go anywhere else?”

“Yeah,” Kyle responded. He moved like he was going to do what I asked, but he was also wandering a bit. The more he played and focused, the less he seemed like he wanted to talk to me.

“Uh,” I began to say. Trying to share one computer with one screen and one game and one set of controls was tough. “Check my friends’ list. Let’s see if Jakey is on. We can do something together.”

Kyle finally did something when I asked. My friends list only had three people on it. There was MakeMeJake88— that was Jakey. He was online. Under his username, I had the recently added FirePlay3r, Kyle, who was not online for the reason of being in person right beside me. There was also XmegakittyX, who was someone I had met like in my first week of playing. They had given me a sword. I thought they were the best person ever, so I added them as a friend. I don’t think I ever saw them online after that.

“Why don’t you have many friends?” Kyle asked. “I mean, in-game.”

“I mean, Jakey is enough,” I answered. “Message him, dude. We can find something to do. Oh, make sure you tell him it’s you.”

Kyle began typing away to Jakey. He didn’t type as well as me. I gloated silently in my head and he hunted and pecked for the letters. He said out loud what he was typing as well.

IcyMike203: het

IcyMike203: hey*

IcyMike203: its me kyle

IcyMike203: mike is here to

MakeMeJake88: o k

MakeMeJake88: u want 2 do smth?

IcyMike203: idk

IcyMike203: let me ask

I had watched the slow, text-based conversation go by. I shrugged. “I don’t know what we can do,” I said. “I actually thought we were going to jump on your character before you had to go.”

“Oh, well, your house, your character,” Kyle shrugged.

“Yeah, that’s fine. We can maybe check out your guy after dinner,” I suggested. “Have… you been to that island area before? You have to take a boat there.”

“No,” Kyle said with a shake of his head. “What’s there?”

“Uh… coconut trees. And monkeys!”

He laughed. “Monkeys? What do they drop? Bananas, right?”

I shook my head and laughed a little bit. “Well, you can’t kill them. But I’ve heard there’s one you can talk to somewhere on the island. Tell Jakey… maybe ask him if we can meet up in the first town. Then you can follow him there.”

Kyle sighed. “Sounds kind of boring. Maybe we can take on the Goblin Stronghold again?”

I shook my head. “No way! I’m still trying to get stronger armor before I go to that place again. I would need more food, too. Plus there’s no way we would have time to get to the Goblin King before dinner time.”

Kyle slumped his shoulders and leaned closer to the screen, eyes low. “Ugh, what a waste of time. I’m not that hungry with all these snacks. We can wait for dinner.”

I felt the rules of my house were on the verge of breaking thanks to my first guest in… forever. “No way, my mom doesn’t wait for people to come to the table. And she’s probably making something good, too. She’s never home this early.”

“Ugh,” Kyle sighed. “Fine. Let’s just go fight some of those desert enemies for people. Maybe they drop something good.”

<– Previous Chapter | Next Chapter –>

The Invite

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 11]

I added Kyle’s user name to my friends list in Rune Quest that night. I hoped to catch him online even if my mom didn’t end up calling. He never showed up, so I had to assume that he was still being forced to do homework or some other junk. To my surprise, the next day in Literature, Kyle didn’t even mention me not calling his phone.

While I was working on my story and Kyle was fiddling with his mechanical pencil, I whispered to him. “My mom wants to call your mom.”

“Why?” He tried to whisper. He wasn’t good at it. “Does she want to be my mom’s friend?”

“No,” I said back, shaking my head. “So you can come over.”

“Oh yeah,” he said like he was surprised. “Can I come over today?”

“Probably not, my mom has to call yours first,” I said, repeating myself. I don’t think Kyle was a good listener. “My mom should be at home earlier too. If you hear the phone ring, it’s probably her. Have your mom answer it. What’s your mom’s name?”

“Chrissy,” Kyle said.

“My mom’s name is Patricia,” I said back. I felt as if we were getting a few of the first steps out of the way so our moms could come to an understanding quicker.

My mom must have been excited about me having a new friend. She offered to take the call soon after getting home that afternoon. I made the first step in calling Kyle’s number myself. Again, since nobody really had a cell phone during that time, you just called a person’s one single phone number and hoped for the best. That was called their landline, and anyone at their house could have answered. For those really wondering, yes, that is also the same line that made dial-up internet connect.

The phone rang a few times. Then it picked up. There was a woman’s voice on the other end.

“Hello?” She said.

“Hi, uh, this is Mike Shepherd. I go to school with Kyle…” I said, but quickly stopped. I realized I didn’t know his last name.

“Mike? Oh, you must be the kid who Kyle wants to go and visit so badly,” she said. Her voice was high-pitched, and she seemed like she didn’t really want to talk with me directly.

“Yeah, I sit by Kyle in first period. And… I hang out with him at lunchtime,” I said, hesitating again. I didn’t want to reveal to her and my own mom that we were always at the computer lab. “But… uh, my mom wants to talk to you.”

I heard Kyle’s mom say something, but I was already handing over the phone to my mom. She was sitting at the dining table, leaning on her elbows, ready to put the phone handset up to her ear.

“Hey there, this is Patricia, Mike’s mom,” she began nicely. I could faintly hear the sound of the other side of the conversation. I wanted to stand there and keep listening, but my mom waved me away with her hand.

I heard little bits of what my mom was saying. She said stuff about how I didn’t have many friends. It was true, but a little bit embarrassing. She also said she was glad that someone like Kyle came along and ‘brought me out of my shell,’ whatever that meant. I was just in the other room, still trying my best to hear when my mom finally said her goodbyes.

I crept back to the kitchen as my mom was hanging up the phone. She smiled at me. “So, Thursday. Since Jess is going to eat at her friend’s house on Thursday, I told Chrissy that would actually be the perfect day for us. Kyle can come over and eat and hang out until it gets dark. Turns out, he also really wanted to just ride on the bus right over here when school gets out. I let his mom know to sign off something he can bring to school for the bus driver. And… I told her our address and everything for when he needs to get picked up. How’s that for your mom’s organization skills, Mike?”

I wanted to jump around, but I held myself on the ground. “Yeah. Yeah! He’ll be psyched. I should… clean my room… and the den. Uh… thanks, mom!” I added, hastily.

“Slow down there, buddy,” My mom interrupted with a laugh. “If you’re going to decide to do those things on your own, then how am I supposed to do my job as your mom?”

Kyle, of course, already knew all the details come that next day, Wednesday. Jakey ended up hearing everything that day at lunch. He was going to find out anyways since Kyle was going to come home on the bus with us. I kind of wanted to invite Jakey as well, but I didn’t know if I wanted to make my mom feed an additional friend. Jakey didn’t seem to mind either way.

“We’ll start up Rune Quest,” I said to the bigger of my two friends. “One of us will be on. We can meet up somewhere and do some quest or something.”

“Yeah, I’ll probably be around,” Jakey said back.

<– Previous Chapter | Next Chapter –>

Coming Over

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 10]

Kyle never found a way to log into Rune Quest that day. He didn’t even manage to get to the game’s loading screen. He thrashed about more and more in his chair and against the keyboard every time he saw the words ‘blocked’ pop up on screen. When he was fed up, he decided to push the keyboard across the desk and just stare at me and Jakey doing our own things. I didn’t try to talk to him much and just let him cool down. Because of that, I didn’t even manage to learn his username so I could add him as a friend in game. That was a Friday. I promised myself that I would ask him right away when I saw him that Monday.

Mondays in Mrs. Carpenter’s class were for popcorn reading through our class book. I couldn’t focus on much of it. Even though Kyle was right beside me, I just wanted to talk about Rune Quest and playing with him and Jakey. I wanted to see his Mythril armor. I wanted to plan another adventure into the Goblin’s lands to take on their King. I imagined how strong we would be with a party of three.

When Mrs. Carpenter excused us at the end of the period, I immediately leaned into Kyle to remind him. “Hey, don’t forget about the computer lab today. You remember where it is, right?”

“Duh,” he said back. “Yeah, I’ll come by. I know there must be a way to get into Rune Quest.”

I laughed. I didn’t know if he was joking about that, but it seemed silly to keep trying. I definitely was daydreaming about our new, unbeatable team of three for the rest of my classes until lunch.

Kyle joined me and Jakey at the computer lab that day. He had already memorized his username and password for the school computers. I think he was really determined to find a way into Rune Quest. I was more patient.

“Hey, Kyle,” I called out to him. “Jakey and I were talking about this while we played together this weekend. We definitely need to get a team going on Rune Quest. All three of us.”

Jakey swallowed a bite of the sandwich. “Yeah, Mike says you’re strong. With Mythril armor. And you fought the Goblin King and won.”

Kyle didn’t remove his eyes from the screen or his hand from the mouse the whole while. I saw him searching various things; Rune Quest unblocked. how to unblock a site. how to get onto any website. I poked him in the arm. “What!?” He shouted and jutted his elbow out my way.

I glanced over at Mr. Tate’s corner of the room to make sure we weren’t going to get in trouble. “What’s your username? What server do you usually play on?”

“Oh,” Kyle hummed. “Yeah, we can get on together. I’m FirePlay3r. Player is spelled with the letter three instead of an e. I do whatever server has the least people.”

I yanked open my backpack at my feet and pulled out my notebook. I began scribbling on the back cardboard cover so I wouldn’t forget it. “Fire…play…three…er,” I said to myself. “Okay, so if you get a friend invite from IcyMike203 or MakeMeJake88, that’s us. I’m IcyMike.”

“That’s what I guessed,” Kyle responded with a mostly fake laugh and a roll of his eyes. “My freaking mom makes me do homework and reading before I can go on the computer, though. Can I just come over to your house?”

I didn’t believe what I was hearing. I had never heard those words put together that way before, even from Jakey. “Uh… I can ask my mom!”

“And she can pick me up, too?” Kyle said. He finally pulled his eyes away from the computer screen.

“We actually take the bus,” I said, nodding to Jakey as well.

“Then can’t I just ride the bus with you or something?”

I tried to wrap my brain around what he was asking me. I didn’t even think I could answer that. “I don’t know if the bus driver would be okay with some new kid on his bus. And how would your mom know where you are?”

Kyle shrugged. “I can just call from your house and let my mom know.”

If you need some more reasons about why this was not going to work, let me explain phones back during this time. Cell phones were things that really only adults had. They didn’t even have the internet yet. There was no way for a kid my age to just text someone with a simple question and get a simple answer back. I knew everything was wrong with Kyle’s request.

“Uh… it will be close to dinner time, and my mom likes to know if she has to feed someone else,” I said, making up a half-true excuse. “My mom has a big job now, and it tires her out a lot.”

“So you can go home and then tell your mom about me coming over?” Kyle asked. “Please, man? I don’t even have any homework, it’s a Monday. But I’ll get forced to sit and do junk anyways.”

I sighed and nodded. “I guess. What’s your number?”

Mom to Mom

Me and Jakey rode the bus home the same as usual that day. I had already forgotten about Kyle’s impossible request. Instead, I was mostly just imagining how the world of Rune Quest could be taken on with a party of three.

“I could work on my magic,” I said to Jakey in the seat to my side.

“I already have good magic,” he said, looking out the window.

“Kyle said he has Mythril armor. Didn’t you hear?”

“Uh huh,” Jakey said. It seemed like he was barely listening.

I continued, hoping I could put together a battle plan that he would like. “So, since he has strong gear, he can be the tank, right? Then with magic, we could have some range. Dang, maybe I have to finally try out archery. Then I could still carry food to keep us all healthy.”

Jakey sat up, getting ready as our stop was approaching. “You know that sort of thing doesn’t matter in Rune Quest, right? We can just all hit stuff with our swords. And if Kyle has strong armor like he says, that just means he won’t need as much healing. There’s no reason for us to even play with him.”

I didn’t know how to respond. For once, Jakey didn’t seem interested in talking about Rune Quest. The bus finally pulled into our neighborhood. I grabbed my backpack tight. I stood up and flung it over my shoulder as we stopped at the drop-off area.

“See you tomorrow, I guess,” I said as I waved goodbye to Jakey. He waived back but didn’t say anything as he went his own way.

I got home and opened the front door with my key. I was the first to return to the empty house that day. My mom was at work most likely. She had been working more days and longer hours. Jess would be home about thirty minutes later if she wasn’t going to a friend’s house instead. Regardless of who came home first, I wasn’t alone for very long.

I would usually take that time to get a snack or rush through any homework that I had. After that, I would start up the computer, log in, and then connect to the internet. If my mom didn’t hear that loud dial-up sound from the computer, then she would forget I was even on the internet and playing games back in the den. I could be online and leveling up all the way until dinner time.

That day was different, though. I kind of wandered about the house, lying on random furniture. Waiting around wasn’t part of my usual practices. I heard the front door unlock, followed by the rusting of plastic.

I met my mom in the front hall. She was carrying grocery bags across her arm. “Do you need any help?” I asked.

My mom stared at me like she hadn’t seen me before in her life. “Uh, sure. There are still a few bags out in the car.”

I had brought the remaining bags of groceries to her in the kitchen just a little bit later. She said a short ‘thank you.’ She seemed distracted and was looking around a little bit instead of putting things away. “Nothing is broken, I hope?”

“Huh? No,” I said. “What would be broken?”

“Well I was considering my son was what’s broken,” she said, finally looking me up and down. “I’d say I’ve never seen you outside the back room at this time of day. So, spit it out. What’s the matter?”

I failed to hide my grinning. “Can I invite a friend over tonight?”

My mom jerked back just a little. She thought about it for a little bit while putting cold things into the freezer. “A friend? Jakey, you mean?”

“No, his name is Kyle.”

My mom nearly slammed the freezer door. “A new friend, is it? And you want to invite him over right away?”

I shrugged. I guess I had learned the vague gesture from this new friend. “Yeah, he’s actually a new kid at school. Well, he’s been there a week. He started out sitting by me in Literature.”

“I see, so you’re the welcoming committee for this new kid, too?” My mom said like she was overflowing with pride. “Isn’t that great?”

“Yeah, he plays Rune Quest like me and Jakey.”

“Ah, I see now,” my mom nodded. “That’s the game you and Jake play on the internet. I assume since you wanted to invite him over today, you got his number and everything?”

“Yeah!” I confirmed. I had written it down beside his in-game name on the back of my notebook.

My mom nodded. “Well, I’d love to have this… his name was Kyle… over some time. But if his mom is anything like me, then she’d want to know where she’s sending her son. Plus, we’d have to plan something a little more special for dinner, huh?”

I smiled a little bit. I remembered that it was Kyle’s idea to come over in the first place. I thought about him having to sit and do homework instead of coming over to my place to have fun. All that would have to wait for another day to get the mom-to-mom formalities out of the way.

“So can I give you his number?” I asked my mom who was still unloading groceries.

She paused just for a moment. “I’d love to, Mike, but I don’t think I have the time to sit down on a phone call right now. I’ve got to get dinner going. But maybe tonight or tomorrow when I have less stuff on my plate. I’m sure Kyle will be able to wait, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

At dinner, both my dad and my sister learned about Kyle. My mom wouldn’t stop asking about him. I repeated the same things I had said before at least a hundred times. They heard that he had just moved here and that he said he was from a smaller town. They heard that he thought this was a big city we were in. My dad asked if we were just going to play on the computer. I said that was most likely the plan. My sister asked if he was an only child. I said that I didn’t know. I asked if my mom was going to call him after dinner. I didn’t get an answer.

<– Previous Chapter | Next Chapter –>

The New Kid

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 9]

The first month of school had passed. I guess it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I had just tricked myself into getting used to everything, even the schedule. The strange thing about having a different class and teacher each hour is that it makes time seem to go faster.

Mrs. Carpenter had us beginning on our stories. We followed the drafts we made and had to decide how we would get to the main conflict. She called this the rising action. The first half of class, she would talk about the structure of a story, how to describe a character, how to write characters talking, or even how to use a thesaurus to find better words. Uh, more… enlightening words, if I wanted to practice what I had learned.

It was a Thursday when a new kid came to us. He had a buzz cut like my cousins had. That’s when the hair is super short and it all sticks right up in the air. People in the military have that kind of haircut. I think people like it because it’s easy and you can’t wake up with bed hair when it’s cut that short.

This new kid wasn’t super tall or short. He wasn’t thin like me, or big like Jakey either. I guess he was just average. The big thing about him I noticed, though, was that he didn’t seem nervous, even being at a new school. That’s what surprised me.

“Good morning, everyone. I want you all to welcome Kyle to Northview,” Mrs. Carpenter said for his introduction. She had her hand on his shoulder. He just stood there, backpack still on, looking back and forth at everyone. “He just moved here, and as you all probably know, that can be hard. So let’s give him a warm welcome. Some of you might even be seeing him in some of your other classes, too. I imagine some of you can serve as a great guide for him at our school. While I get Kyle a class number and tell him about what we’ve been doing, how about all of you pull out your story papers and do a little bit of writing to start off the day.”

A few minutes passed. I was so absorbed in my writing that I didn’t see the new kid and the teacher come up behind me.

“Alright, Kyle. We’ll put you here right beside Mike. Mike,” Mrs. Carpenter said. She was talking to both of us there at the back of the room. “I was just telling Kyle about our story project. I was hoping you could tell him what we’ve been learning, and show him what you’re writing. You seem to have the most progress, after all.”

“Uh, sure,” I said. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice either. The free seat behind me was going to be filled up anyways.

The buzz-cut kid looked at me with blank eyes. He finally hung up his backpack and sat down after Mrs. Carpenter left. “The teacher said your story is cool,” he said. I don’t think he cared if it was cool or not.

“It’s good enough,” I said. I wanted to hide my writing paper under my arms. I knew I had to be one of those good students and help out the new student. “It’s about a knight and his squire.”

Kyle leaned in and tried to pull the papers out from under my arms. “Really? Do they fight with swords and stuff?”

I jerked forward to keep the papers under my control. “Yeah!” I said. I wanted to make sure he heard it from me and not my paper. “They fight goblins and defend their kingdom. The conflict— that’s the challenge that the characters go against—“

“Goblins?” Kyle interrupted me explaining the details of the assignment. He was still trying to look at my writing, half hidden under my arm. “I kill those guys all the time in this game, Rune Quest.”

“Rune Quest?” I almost shouted. Some of my classmates turned around like I had just screamed that the room was on fire. When everyone had turned back around, I said the words again, this time in a lower voice. “I play Rune Quest too!”

“Really?” Kyle said. I think he smiled for the first time I had seen that morning. “Oh yeah, then do you know about the new area that just came out?”

He was testing me. I answered perfectly. “The Goblin Stronghold,” I said proudly.

“Yeah!” Kyle said back. “The Goblin King is hecka strong. But he drops a lot of gold, too!”

“Oh…” I said, deflating. “I haven’t had a chance to fight him once, yet. Me and my friend are still training to take down his guards. Well, mostly me. I’m a lower level than him…”

I wanted to talk so much more with Kyle about the game. He was the only other person beside Jakey who not only knew about Rune Quest, but was just as excited about it as us. Unfortunately, Mrs. Carpenter called us to attention.

Since she had given us the first part of the class to write, she talked for most of the rest of the period. When the bell finally rang, I turned to Kyle again. “What classes do you have?”

“Uh…” He pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and smoothed it just enough to read the words. “I have math next. I think I saw the classroom on the way here…”

I looked at his schedule. “We don’t have any other classes together,” I said with a sigh. “But if you know where the computer lab is, you should come there during lunch. You can meet my friend who also plays.”

Kyle nodded. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

We went our different ways, heading to our next classes. I couldn’t wait to tell Jakey about another person we could play with.

I didn’t see Kyle that day at lunch. I just figured that he wasn’t able to find the computer lab. I guess he was like me during my first day. He wanted to make sure he was following each and every rule, even if he didn’t really know any of them.

That next morning in our Literature class, Kyle was in the same spot as the day before. Mrs. Carpenter did her teaching and then we got our work time. Kyle and I turned it quickly into our talking time, which I think the teacher was okay with because I was telling him about the assignment.

“Do you know what conflict your story is going to have?” I asked. I wondered if he might have a story like mine.

Kyle was scribbling in the margin of his notebook instead of writing. “I don’t think I’m going to do it. Mrs. Carpenter said I didn’t really have to since I just came here.”

I shook my head and tried to pep him up. “No, we just started, actually. You have plenty of time!”

“Meh. Writing kind of sucks. This school is really huge, though” He suddenly changed the subject.

“I guess it’s bigger than my old elementary school,” I said back.

“Yeah, my elementary school had like not even 100 people.”

“No way!”

“Yeah,” he explained. “Even this whole city here has a whole lot more people and places than the town I just moved from.”

“This isn’t a city,” I said back. I was shaking my head. “I moved here like four years ago from a real city. Sacramento. There are real skyscrapers in the city there. You have to wear a suit just to go inside of them.”

“I couldn’t get in, then. I don’t own a suit,” Kyle said. “I’d have to ask my dad if he has one.”

“My dad still has some,” I replied. “They just stay hung up in his closet. He doesn’t like wearing them. That’s why we moved. Oh yeah, speaking of suits, what armor does your Rune Quest character have? I want to make sure I don’t die when fighting the Goblin King.”

Kyle shrugged. “I have full Mythril.”

“What!” I almost shouted. It was like my words were forcing a lot of air out of my lungs, but it wasn’t actually loud. I didn’t want a repeat of the day before. “That’s a whole level of armor better than mine. You’ve got to come by the computer lab today! Jakey will want to know what skills your character has leveled up.”

Kyle shrugged again. He did that a lot. “I think I might be able to find it. I’ll try and meet up with you there.”

“Yeah. If you see the big building at the center of the school, that’s the library. It looks like it has two floors, but it’s actually just taller than normal. Off to the side near the front of the school is the computer lab,” I said, explaining the best I could. Before I could add more details, I saw Mrs. Carpenter wandering about, looking over people’s work.

I kept looking around for Kyle on my way to the computer lab that day at lunch. I even went slower than normal in case I saw him being lost. I was pretty much dragging my feet by the time I was at the door. Jakey was inside already. He didn’t take his time.

I realized I had forgotten to tell him about Kyle. “Jakey, guess what?” I said as I sat down beside him in my usual spot.

“Huh?” He huffed. He was already absorbed in a flash game and a soggy-looking sandwich.

“I forgot to tell you, but there’s this new kid in my English class. He plays Rune Quest too!”

The door opened right at that moment. The bright daylight glared from outside and invaded our sanctuary. I noticed the short haircut right away. Adults would say the words ‘speak of the devil,’ for things that happen right as you’re talking about them, but I think that sounds a little bit evil. I waived my hand up in the air. Kyle noticed right away.

“I found it,” he said proudly as he came up to meet me. “Easy-peezy.”

I pulled out the chair beside me as an invitation. “Welcome to our domain,” I said, ready to tell him everything I knew. “Mr. Tate over there probably wants you to hear the rules, like not making crumbs or pouring water on the computers. Also, this is Jakey. He’s my neighbor up the road a little ways. He’s in eighth grade. Also a veteran of Rune Quest.”

Jakey leaned back a bit in his seat and scanned Kyle. “Greetings and welcome,” he said simply before returning to his game.

“Dang,” Kyle said. He clicked his tongue. “You’re like huge, dude.”

“Yeah, I have a mirror at home,” Jakey said back without moving his eyes from his screen.

“Like, really massive,” Kyle added.

I leaned in between them as a distraction and spoke up. “My mom says it’s an extended growth spurt. Hey, pull out that paper with your schedule. We look at your school log-in stuff.”

“Can we play Rune Quest here?” Kyle asked, looking about the room.

“No!” I said quickly. I wanted to answer before Jakey. “But we can do the next best thing. Here, do you know what a wiki is?”

Kyle looked at my screen while I logged in and pulled up the game’s Tomes of Knowledge. “Behold,” I said with a swipe of my mouse.

“Eww,” was his response. “The wiki? That’s noob stuff. Just learn from the game, man.”

I stopped. I looked at Kyle for a bit, then over to Jakey. My old friend had stopped his game, but he didn’t seem like he was going to say anything.

“I mean…” I muttered. I didn’t know what else to say. “I mean, we can’t really play here, so we kind of just kind of plan out our adventuring for when we get back home.”

“Everyone knows all this stuff already. I wrote some of those pages forever ago,” Kyle said plainly.

“Which ones?” Jakey finally spoke up. “I mean, that is the power of the wiki. The average person can add their own bits of knowledge.”

“I don’t know, man, it’s been a while,” Kyle said with a shrug.

I recalled suddenly what he had said that morning. “You said writing sucked. You didn’t want to write the story for Mrs. Carpenter.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re writing stupid stuff like that. That sucks. I wanted to write the pages on the wiki because that’s not boring. It’s stupid that you can’t get on the game here. Help me log in, Mike. There must be a way.”

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Beyond the Office Doors

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 8]

It was later that same day. I had mostly recovered from having to speak in front of the class. Science with Mr. Jones was wrapping up, and I was looking forward to lunchtime and settling into the refuge of the computer lab.

I was mostly ignoring the lesson. Instead, I was building up the courage to tell Jakey about the story of the Knight and the Squire. Mrs. Carpenter had given us homework to come up with a scene including the main character that could be used to illustrate the conflict in our stories. I thought that talking about it with Jakey would be perfect for putting it together. After all, the characters were pretty much the both of us.

Mr. Tucker’s classroom phone got a call at the very end of class. He answered. “Tucker here. Yeah. I’ll tell him.” Across the classroom, I heard my name. “Mike. Could you head by the office before going off to lunch? Just a quick meeting, it seems.”

My heart stopped. I nodded at Mr. Tucker to make sure he knew I heard, but that was all I was able to do. Soon I was on my way to the front of the school. I wondered if it had to do with my story. Maybe they thought my story was going to be too violent for school. Maybe it was too good, and they thought it was stolen from somewhere. Maybe they thought my parents wrote it for me. I had heard of some parents doing their kids’ homework. That seemed pretty stupid. I don’t think my mom knew much about knights or squires either.

The door to the office was heavy. Inside it smelled like papers that had just been copied. There was also a flowery smell, like one of my mom’s candles or maybe some woman’s perfume. There was a woman behind the desk. She smiled at me.

“Are you Mike?”

“Yes,” I said. I was stuck deciding whether to keep standing or sit in one of the cushy seats.

“Perfect, right on time. Did Mr. Tucker tell you about where you were going?”

“No.”

“Alright, then. Well, Mr. Adams wanted to have a moment to talk with you. His room is right down the hall, number 5.”

“Okay.”

I had seen the office before, back when my sister Jess was a student here and I was just visiting with my mom. I had never gone that deep inside of it, down the gray hallway that seemed like the opposite of a place where a student was meant to be. I found the door number five open like it was waiting for me. It had the word ‘counselor’ beside it. The word made me instantly nervous.

The room was kind of an office, with a desk and a computer and messy folders full of papers and a file cabinet like my dad had. There was also a blocky couch that didn’t look very soft. It was bright, too, with most of the light coming through a wide window. Oh yeah, there was also a guy.

Mr. Adams had one of those haircuts where there wasn’t any hair on the top of his head. All his other hair was short, except for one of those goatee beard things around his mouth. He swung his spinning office chair around to face me. “Ah, there he is! Thank you for coming by, Mike. You may close the door behind you.”

I closed the door. I pushed it hard enough to close all the way, but not too hard like I was slamming it.

“Well, our first meeting,” he said. He drummed on his knees. He seemed excited, but I didn’t know what for. “Though I have met your mom and sister before. I’m Mr. Adams, as you might have heard. Sit, sit, put that stuff of yours down.”

I didn’t say anything as I put down my backpack and sat back on the couch. As I had guessed, it wasn’t soft. It was like it was forcing you to sit up straight. Sit up straight and listen.

“I’m sorry this ended up happening during your lunchtime. I just wanted to ask a question or two, so we should get you off to play. Oh, you’re free to pull out your lunch and eat here if you want. You bring a lunch?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to pull out my lunch. I wanted to eat without being looked at.

“Okay, then,” Mr. Adams said. “You know, my first name is Mike, too. Well, my mom always insisted I be called Michael. It was more proper. But to avoid any confusion, Mr. Adams is fine. Oh gosh, I’m just holding us up, though.”

He was beginning to do the thing my parents did. He was having a discussion with me, but not having me say anything.

“So, I just wanted to make sure of something. Just to make sure everything is going right with you. So, this Monday, seems you had an appointment or something. You left at lunchtime.”

I shook my head. It probably seemed like a no, but I wanted it to mean yes. “My mom… she said she signed me out. Up here at the office.”

Mr. Adams waved one of his hands lazily. “Oh no, that’s all fine. Everything was done by the book. Did you maybe forget about this appointment, though?”

“Yeah…” I said back. I tried to look at him in the eyes. My dad had said that was a sign of respect. My eyes just kept wandering to the posters and decorations on the walls. There was a little table-sized sandbox in the far corner, with a tiny rank for making lines in it.

“I get it,” Mr. Adams said with a chuckle. “Busy Jr. High schedule, homework, friends, girl’s numbers you have to remember. I guess your mom came up and had someone send out a call for you. No problem. The yard duties help out in the cafeteria during lunch, and make sure no food fights get started up. We had one, once. I’ll tell you, those get gross. And the custodians, they get all sorts of mad. So, anyways, we used our radios, those walkie-talkies, to call one of those yard duties and call your name there in the cafeteria.”

I remembered the yard duty women from the cafeteria from the one and only day I ate there. I nodded along with Mr. Adams and his words, pretending like I knew what he was going to say next.

“So anyways,” he continued, “seems like you weren’t there. It was right at the start of lunch, too. And like, the yard duties didn’t even seem to know much about you. So we used the loudspeaker that, you know, the whole school can hear. And that’s no problem, of course, that’s what it’s for. Might be a little embarrassing, having your name called for the whole school to hear. So, since you got signed out, you must have met up with your mom, I’m assuming, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It was for a dentist appointment.”

“Okay, good. So, no cavities?”

His hopeful look made me want to lie. “Yeah.”

Mr. Adams made two claps with his hands. “Good. So, really, the big deal— I guess not even a big deal— is that you just seem to be falling off the radar during lunchtime. You are eating lunch, right?”

“Yeah.”

Mr. Adams leaned on his knees. “Sometimes, you know, some kids have a hard time with school or other people. Lunch can feel super crazy to them. That cafeteria can seem so packed and noisy, I get it. So some kids hide out in the bathroom, in one of the stalls, to eat their lunch.”

The idea seemed kind of gross to me. “Why would they do that?” I asked.

“Maybe they just want to be away from everyone else. It also could be their way of avoiding a bully, too. There’s no bullies in your life?”

“No.”

“Good,” He sighed and nodded. “So, there must be another place you’re running off to for lunchtime, then?”

I felt the secret of the hideout wanting to escape from me. “You… won’t tell my mom about this, will you?”

Mr. Adams looked up at me through narrow eyes like he was going to do exactly that. He shrugged and sat back. “As long as whatever you’re doing is safe and reasonable, there’s no need for anyone beside the two of us to know.”

I took in a deep breath. “I go to the computer lab.”

Mr. Adams grinned. “Well, that is a problem, isn’t it?”

“What!” I said. I nearly fell out of my seat.

“It means that Mr. Tate doesn’t have his walkie-talkie on to listen for any calls, like the one we sent out to find you.”

I felt like a balloon deflating back into its limp, stretchy state. “Don’t get mad at Mr. Tate, either! He’s nice. I’ll… remind him to have it on.”

Mr. Adams laughed. “Sure thing, that would be great. No, the computer lab is a perfect place to get away from that noisy lunch room. There isn’t anything you’re avoiding by being there, right? Nobody wants to pick any fights with you?”

I shrugged. I just wanted to stop answering his questions and head off and play games. Mr. Adams probably saw it as something else. “Hey, Mike. If school feels like a scary place, or there is someone making it uncomfortable for you, you can always tell a teacher or another adult.”

“There is this Brett guy and his friend,” I spoke up after thinking for a bit. I kind of just wanted to give him an answer to make him feel better.

“Yeah, and what does Brett and his friend do?”

I realized I had said too much and couldn’t take it back. “Well, they show up in the computer lab too. Sometimes. They laughed at me and my friend Jakey and called us the Goblin King and Queen. It was just a stupid joke. But Mr. Tate told them to shut up.”

Mr. Adams nodded a whole lot. “Well, that’s one way to handle things, huh? Did they come by after that?”

I shrugged. “I see them sometimes. Sometimes they’re laughing in the background. I don’t know if it’s at us, though.”

“Well, at least Mr. Tate is there,” Mr. Adams said. “If it happens over and over, that’s when we here at the school start to call it bullying. But definitely talk to someone before it turns into that, okay, Mike?”

I nodded. I didn’t dare say anything else that would keep him talking.

“I’m glad I got to check in with you today, Mike.” Mr. Adams said, moving his desk chair back to the spot beside his computer stuff. “Would it be alright if I asked you to come back another time? Like in two weeks or something like that? Just to see if Brett and his friend are still being butt-heads.”

I almost laughed at his choice of words. I wanted to say no to his offer, but I felt bad if I didn’t. “Sure….” I said even though I wanted to answer the opposite.

“Great. Doesn’t have to be any particular day. I can just ask your 4th-period teacher again to send you here. It won’t even cut into your lunch that much. Oop, which is what I’m doing right now. And I need to eat my lunch, too.”

Mr. Adams finally stood up. He opened the door to the hall. I stood and slung my backpack over my shoulder. His hand pointed the direction back out. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded at him and left.

“Hey, well, enjoy the rest of your day!”

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