Entry Two

  Fail Number Five

  Fittingly, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth over the ATO party channel. And swearing. Oh, and a healthy amount of finger-pointing.

  “Why weren’t you protecting Jan?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of my voice.

  “I was trying to,” Thomas retorted. “Where were you, Hero?”

  “I was killing the mega archdemon that would have cremated both of you in about thirty seconds. That was fail number four, dude.”

  “Five,” Jan corrected sweetly. She was probably right. I had lost track of how many times Mr. Train Wreck had derailed us. Pun so very intended. “Guys, we just have to try harder next time.”

  “Thomas just needs to do what I freaking tell him to do.”

  “I was!” he shouted, his pre-pubescent voice cracking a bit at the end.

  I took a deep breath and counted to three. I wasn’t going to continue the debate since Thomas was, as usual, oblivious to his own screw-ups. “Look, I know what I’m doing. We’re wasting too much time on this quest when I already know how to beat it.”

  Thomas replied by abruptly leaving the in-game party, which cut off our comms with him. A message flashed on the bottom of my vision. “Dirk the Devastator Has Left the Game Session.”

  “Sorry,” Jan said. “I let you down.”

  I pulled my VR goggles down around my neck. My bedroom was on the second floor, and Jan’s bedroom window was directly across from mine, only about twenty feet away. She looked over at me and made a sad face. Her VR headset had left red marks around her eyes that made her look more raccoon than chipmunk.

  Jan was pretty, even in raccoon form. Her Korean heritage granted her acne-free, light mocha skin and she had long, night-black hair that she never put in a ponytail. Her slight, chipmunkian overbite and delicately rounded cheeks were geekily adorable, and her big, amber eyes were almond-shaped and made you think of elven princesses.

  I sighed and gave her a smile. “Negatory, Chip. You didn’t let anyone down. You did really well.” I meant it too. Jan and I had met within days of my moving into Chateau du Marge after my adoption and we instantly became gamer buds. Jan was more of a cozy-anime/couch co-op kind of player. We played lots of those games together, but she always insisted that we throw in some of my RPGs, mostly to appease my bloodlust, I suspected. Despite ATO not being in her genre of choice, she tried hard and was already pretty good at it. “All Thomas had to do was stick to my plan. He taunts the little baddies, I kill Grimchar the big baddie, and you cast healing and provide fire support. That’s it—we win.”

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  Jan was nodding but also biting her lip, looking pensive.

  “What?”

  She looked like she didn’t want to answer, but she shrugged and said, “I just think…”

  Right then, a loud knock echoed through the comms from Jan’s room. She spun around, simultaneously tossing her headset onto her computer desk. Her dad stormed into her room, and I dove for cover away from my window. He didn’t like me for some unknowable reason. As my friends in the international diplomatic community would say, I was persona very non grata.

  That was fine—the feeling was mutual. Daddy Kim had never not been rude to me. Condescending facial gestures were his light attack form. If those failed to drive off his enemies, he dual-wielded insults and sarcasm in a heavier, one-two combo attack. To make matters worse, he was a “6th dan” Taekwondo black belt and a Gukgung archery master. After all the horror stories Jan told me about him, I had no earthly clue why her mom, a very quiet and very sweet lady, hadn’t already dumped him.

  Plus, I wasn’t totally sure, but I thought Jan hadn’t even told me the worst of the things her dad had done. I’ve seen some suspicious bruises on her arms a few times, and the reasons Jan gave for them were implausible at best.

  I reached over and stealth-lowered my window shades, hoping Taekwon-dad wouldn’t see me do it. It was past midnight, and he was probably yelling at her to go to bed. I put my headset back on and waited a minute, but sure enough, her bedroom light winked out.

  “You didn’t hear any of that, did you?” Jan asked, whispering over our ATO comms.

  I peeked through the blinds at her house but couldn’t see her. “No, I had taken my headset off.”

  “Not through ATO, I meant through my window. He was really screaming,” She sounded bummed.

  “Look, everyone, Weasley’s got himself a howler!” I said in my best English accent. It was admittedly a very lame attempt at cheering her up.

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a chipmunk giggle, and it sounded forced. “Ta-ta for now. I better log out before Daddy Tornado comes roaring back in. Lunch?”

  Jan was a senior like me, but our only class together was in the afternoon. “Sure thing. And… sorry, Chip. Try to cheer up?” I hated when our nights ended on such a down note, and it seemed to be happening more and more often. The worst part was that I was helpless to do anything about it.

  “Yeep,” she said a little too brightly, “Will do. You too, crestfallen Rabbit.” She was always attaching apropos adjectives to her pet name for me. It was kind of a game she played. Why she called me Rabbit, I had no idea. I’d asked many times and never got an answer from her. “We’ll get Grimchar someday,” she said, probably so that we could both pretend that we were down because of ATO. “Sixth time’s a charm.”

  With that, Jan logged out and Jantastic disappeared from my game lobby.