Insert Coin to Continue Page 4

  “What the heck?” Bryan screamed at him, waving. “Go around! Go around!”

  As if the idea hadn’t occurred to him, the man with the sinister-looking mustache swerved left and changed gears, accelerating past Bryan, who inched right to make room. Up ahead he could see the turnoff for the school parking lot, right next to the baseball diamond. More bikers continued to pass him on both sides, riding recklessly, leaning into one another, forcing one another off the bike path and onto the curb or out into the street. Bryan saw one of them spin out of control and go down, but he just as quickly brushed himself off and remounted. Another biker skidded in front of him, causing a spray of muddy water to kick up into Bryan’s eyes. He bent his head down to his shirtsleeve to wipe his eyes, afraid to let go of the handlebars with either hand. He blinked rapidly, clearing his vision, then looked back up.

  Mustache man’s head was turned. He was smiling. In his hand he held the now-empty banana peel.

  Bryan watched it fly through the air. Saw it hit the ground right in front of him. Felt a strange sensation as his front tire caught it, the bike’s handles twisting, everything sliding out from beneath him, his stomach somersaulting as he veered hard right into the school parking lot, desperately trying to keep control. The bike toppled sideways and crashed hard, it and its rider coming to a skidding halt on pavement still damp from the previous night’s rain.

  Bryan cursed and looked back at the column of riders, who raced on, careening wildly down the street. He gingerly inspected his elbows and knees, the former only slightly scraped up, the latter protected by his Breeches of Enduring Stiffness. His bike helmet had protected his head. His palms had bits of loose gravel pressed into them. His bike seemed to be in one piece still, though its front wheel was twisted a full 180 degrees, and there was half a banana peel woven into its spokes.

  But the scrapes on his elbows and the damage to his bike were nothing compared with the thing he was looking at.

  There, in the blacktop of the parking lot, itself a web of cracks and fissures, was a perfectly rectangular slot about an inch long. And hanging above the slot, suspended in midair, were familiar blue words.

  INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE.

  No, Bryan thought. This wasn’t right at all. He hadn’t just imagined it this morning. Unless he was also imagining it now. But the slot in the pavement looked real enough, and the words didn’t go away no matter how many times he shook his head. Either he had more hormones than any kid in Mount Comfort Middle School or he was going insane. Or maybe his hormones were driving him insane!

  Bryan groaned.

  One thing he knew for sure: This day was turning out to be a disaster.

  8:07 a.m.

  A QUESTION OF SANITY

  Bryan let the timer count all the way down to three this time before fishing in his pocket for a coin. In part he was waiting for help, for another student to see that he had nearly face-planted off of his bike in the middle of the parking lot. But this was school—either kids were too caught up in themselves to notice or they’d noticed and just didn’t care. Nobody came to help him up, so there was nobody to confirm that what he was seeing was really there.

  But that wasn’t the only reason he let the timer tick down. He was testing it, thinking that if it got down far enough, it would just go away. Maybe, he thought, it if goes down to zero, the slot and the mysterious blue writing will vanish and nothing will happen. Everything will go right back to normal.

  Maybe.

  That’s what he thought when it hit six.

  When it hit four, he got nervous and reached for his pocket anyway, grabbing the first coin he found and dropping it quickly into the slot, then panicking even more. It was a penny. Who ever heard of anything costing a penny? Even the old arcade machines his dad told him about always took quarters. But the second Lincoln’s face disappeared, so did the words. One coin, it seemed, was as good as another.

  Bryan sighed in relief and rolled over, pressing his back to the pavement and looking up at the sky. He made the right choice, surely. Continuing was better than not continuing, wasn’t it? If you didn’t continue, you had to, what, start over from the beginning? The beginning of what? Or maybe you were just finished—whatever that meant.

  He thought back to this morning, not being able to move his legs. To the words in the mirror. The warnings and messages flashing all around him. He had no idea what any of it meant, why it was happening, but he wasn’t ready to test it by letting that timer hit zero. Not yet. Better to feed the slot. At least until he figured out what on earth was going on.

  Bryan got unsteadily to his feet and then pulled up his bike to lean against, straightening out its nose. He stood there for a moment, adding it all up in his head. At the other end of the parking lot, kids filed off of buses and moped their way into the building just like normal, sleepwalking to their lockers, meandering, oblivious, to their first class. The popular kids loitered on the steps, congregating like geese, pointing and laughing. Little pockets of kids traded phones and gawked at photos and messages, gulped down caffeinated sodas, frantically crammed for first-period quizzes. It still seemed like the same Mount Comfort Middle School, not some alternate, parallel, alien dimension—though most of these kids could be aliens, as far as Bryan knew. He looked at the street, but the cavalcade of ferocious bikers had ridden out of sight. He looked back at the slot in the blacktop. It had disappeared too.

  Obviously, he was the only one going crazy. For everyone else it was just another Friday. Bryan watched the hundreds of students filing through the doors, going about their routines. Just following the program.

  The program.

  Insert coin to continue.

  Press any key.

  No, he thought. Absolutely not. Couldn’t be. Totally ridiculous. Bryan pressed his head between his hands as if he were afraid his brains were about to come bursting out his ears, a ludicrous idea taking shape: What if something happened last night, something way beyond weird? What if the two things—the secret level in Sovereign of Darkness and the bizarre start to his day—what if they were related somehow?

  Impossible, of course.

  More likely he was just nuts.

  He needed a second opinion.

  He found Oz right where he expected to, waiting by their lockers, looking nervous, like a gazelle listening for a rustle in the plains. “I’ve been waiting forever. What happened to you?” He pointed to the worn, wet knees of Bryan’s jeans and the skinned patches on his arms.

  “Slipped on a banana and fell off my bike. But that’s not the half of it. We need to talk. I have something important to tell you.”

  “I know. Me too. I rode on the bus today with Mike McGregor, and he said he overheard Stephen Eldner talking yesterday after school, and—”

  “Whatever, my turn,” Bryan said, trying to remember who the heck Stephen Eldner was and immediately not caring. “I think my life is a video game.”

  Bryan stared at Oz. Oz stared at Bryan.

  “Huh?”

  Bryan took a deep breath and then took Oz by the shoulders. “Okay. Last night I was playing Sovereign of Darkness, and I unlocked the secret bonus level.”

  Oz’s face lit up like a fireworks display. On Christmas. In Times Square. “What? Are you serious? Get out!” He offered a high five. Bryan didn’t take it, just kept holding on to Oz, afraid he might fall down otherwise. The whole world seemed off balance. The tiles of the floor seemed to spin.

  “No. Listen, Oz. I unlocked it, and then my computer crashed, and then I woke up and everything was haywire, like messed up to the extreme.”

  “You mean the game.”

  “I mean my life,” Bryan said.

  Bryan watched Oz’s eyes. Saw the glimmer of recognition wash over them. Oz nodded.

  “I get it.”

  “You do?” That was a relief, because Bryan didn’t get it at all.

  “Of course,” Oz whispered. “Role-play. It’s Friday, right? A little LARP action to kick off our wee
kend. We should have dressed up, though. I’ll be Secret Agent Yin Kai from the Silent Stalker series. And who are you again?”

  Bryan reached up and grabbed Oz by both cheeks, stretching them, pulling his face so close that their noses almost touched. “You don’t get it. I’m not playing a game. I mean . . . maybe I am, but that’s not what I’m saying. This isn’t make-believe. I think my life is a game.” Bryan held his friend in place, ruddy face squished between his hands.

  “Ew er whurting my chiks,” Oz murmured through fished-out lips.

  Bryan let go, looked around, and then pulled Oz even closer to their lockers so nobody passing by could eavesdrop—not that anybody had ever cared what the two of them said to each other before. “Okay. So when I woke up today, I seriously couldn’t move my legs, and there was this message, right, in these glowing blue letters hovering above my alarm clock, telling me to insert a coin,” Bryan whispered. “So I did.”

  “Wait . . . insert a what?”

  “A coin. You know. Like in those ancient arcade games that old people like our parents used to play?”

  “Oh,” Oz said, still obviously confused. Bryan kept going.

  “So I did, but that wasn’t the end of it, because more strange things started happening. Like my clothes are like armor, but not really, and these shoes are, like, average walking shoes. And the orange juice gave me points or something. And then on the way here these bikers tried to run me off the road, and one of them had an evil mustache and threw a banana at me, and I got the coin message again. Like I lost or something, and the game was over, but it wasn’t, because I stuck in a penny before the numbers could reach zero, and everything was back to normal, except not normal because I have no idea when it’s going to happen again, or even if it’s going to happen, only that I’ve continued twice already, and I’m having a hard time catching my breath, and is any of this making any sense to you?”

  As he talked, Bryan watched Oz carefully. His best friend’s eyes widened in wonder, then narrowed in suspicion, before settling into a look of calm understanding.

  “Yes,” Oz said when Bryan had finished. “I think I’ve got it. You hit your head when you crashed your bike and you have a concussion.”

  “I didn’t hit my head,” Bryan insisted. “I mean I did, but that’s not what this is about.”

  “Well, in that case, you’ve gone right off the deep end.”

  Bryan shook his head. “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “Is crazy.”

  “But I’m telling you it’s true. It’s really happening. And I don’t know what to do.”

  “About the mysterious coin slots.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the magically appearing electric-blue text messages floating in the sky.”

  “Yes.”

  “That apparently only you can see.”

  “So far.”

  “And the bikers that want to kill you.”

  “I don’t think they wanted to kill me. Well. Maybe the guy with the mustache wanted to kill me.” Bryan ran a hand through his hair. Oz sighed.

  “Know what I think? I think you seriously need to cut down on the Mountain Dew,” Oz said solemnly.

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Maybe you should go see the nurse. Or the school counselor. This is probably stress related. You might need medication.”

  “Oz . . .”

  “My older sister had a similar problem. Started seeing gnomes everywhere. Turns out it was all anxiety. Though I still think she’s battier than a baseball game.”

  “Oz!” Bryan grabbed his best friend by his shirt this time, pulling him so close that he could smell the strawberry Pop-Tart on Oz’s breath. “I promise you. I am not making this up. This is happening. To me.” He locked on to Oz’s eyes and held him there, paralyzed.

  “Okay,” Oz said. Bryan let go.

  “So you believe me?”

  Oz put his hands up, not quite ready to commit, but probably afraid of what Bryan would grab hold of next; his cheeks were still pink from being tugged on. “All right. Obviously some strange things have happened to you this morning, and they are clearly freaking you out.”

  “But do you believe me?” Bryan prodded. Because if he couldn’t count on Oz, then it was painfully clear that he was on his own. And he couldn’t handle this—whatever this was—on his own.

  Oz took a deep breath, leaned up against the lockers. A small flock of students shuffled by, uncaring. “Okay. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument here, that you are not a hallucinating, flipped-out nutjob, and that your life is now a video game—which is impossible, of course, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, a little pathetic, even for us—how do you get it back to normal?”

  “I don’t know,” Bryan said. “I don’t even know why this is happening. Maybe there’s something I’m supposed to do. Some, like, I don’t know, quest or something I’m supposed to complete.”

  “A quest?” Oz repeated.

  Bryan nodded. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Something great I’m supposed to accomplish.”

  “You mean here? At school?” Oz said, clearly not buying it.

  “Do you have any better ideas?”

  The bell clanged just above their heads, warning them that they had three minutes to get to first period.

  “All right,” Oz said. “Gym is in, like, three hours. Just try to relax, and see if this whole blue-writing stuff doesn’t just go away on its own. If everything hasn’t gotten back to normal by lunch, we will figure it out together. Or we will visit the nurse and see if she has any Xanax. My dad takes those when he comes home from work and starts talking to my mom.”

  Bryan nodded. “Right. Just relax and see if it goes away.”

  “Are you seeing any words now?” Oz asked.

  Bryan shook his head.

  “Any coin slots? Counting numbers? Gnomes?”

  “I never said anything about gnomes. The gnomes were your idea.” Bryan decided if he started seeing gnomes, he would definitely go see the nurse.

  “All right. You better hurry. You don’t want to be late to Tennenbaum’s again.” Bryan looked up at the clock. Only a minute left. Math was on the other side of the school, but he could still make it.

  “I’ll see you in gym!” Oz called after him. Bryan nodded. Gym was only three class periods away. He could make it. After all, it was only school. Familiar, boring, mindless, tedious school.

  How bad could it be?

  8:23 a.m.

  A PUZZLING TURN

  “Late again, Mr. Biggins.”

  The class let out a collective snort as Bryan tried to slip unnoticed through the door, but Mr. Tennenbaum caught him anyway, sporting a serious scowl. Bryan glanced at Tara Timmons, who gave him a sympathetic shrug. Though they never talked outside of school, he and Tara often copied each other’s homework, at least on the days Bryan managed to show up on time. Neither of them was a big fan of first-period math.

  “Sorry, Mr. Tennenbaum,” Bryan said, trying to sound remorseful, though he only sounded out of breath. He had been forced to take a roundabout way to math, having spotted Tank blocking his usual path. Normally, Bryan would have merged with the crowd and tried to slink by, but Wattly had had that look in his eye. Purposeful. Calculating. Or as calculating as someone with six brain cells could be. Given how Bryan’s day was going so far, skirting around Tank seemed prudent, even if it did make him extra late to math for the second day in a row. Mr. Tennenbaum was making Bryan reconsider.

  “It would be one thing if it only impacted your learning, Mr. Biggins. But your tardiness and interruptions affect everyone in the class.”

  “I understand. I really am sorry,” Bryan murmured.

  Mr. Tennenbaum eyed him from behind his gold-rimmed glasses, looking down at him past his graying beard. He was wearing the tweed jacket with the button missing and the coffee stain on the sleeve. The math teacher picked up his grade book and clicked the pen that he kept tucked in his shirt pocket, quick
ly scrawling something down. Bryan couldn’t see what it was, of course, but he could see the message that appeared from out of nowhere.

  -1 HP.

  Bryan blinked. There it was, hanging right next to Mr. Tennenbaum’s tufted fuzz of hair, almost sitting on his shoulder, except this time instead of iridescent blue, the letters were red, bright as a new stop sign, impossible to miss. They flashed briefly, then vanished.

  “What the heck?” Bryan blurted out.

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Tennenbaum’s face glowed, matching the color of the letters that had disappeared, his eyes now sharp slits. Someone in the class murmured a wincing “ooh,” and Bryan quickly backtracked, realizing he had said what he did out loud even though he hadn’t meant to. “Sorry. It’s just . . . I thought I saw something.”

  The letters were gone. Nobody in the class made any indication that they had seen them. Maybe Bryan had just imagined them again, but he wasn’t imagining the look on Tennenbaum’s face. Strained and purple, like a toddler holding his breath.

  “You enjoy disrupting my class, Mr. Biggins?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You have a free period this morning, don’t you?” Tennenbaum said, biting off each word.

  Bryan nodded. “Third period, sir.” That was supposed to be Bryan’s study hall. He knew where this was going.

  “Not anymore,” the math teacher said, then proceeded to fill out a detention slip. Someone in the back of the class whispered something about “trouble in the Shire”—the joke that never got old, apparently—and the kids around him laughed. Bryan took his blue slip and found his seat, slumping as far down as he could, still picturing the message that had shone briefly above the math teacher’s shoulder.

  “Today we will be continuing with our lesson in geometry,” Tennenbaum said, stifling his irritation and putting on an air of enthusiasm that he would sustain for all of thirty seconds. Bryan looked at the man, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen. He was grappling with those red letters floating in the air.

  HP? Horsepower? Harry Potter? A brand of printers?