[Sig – 13 years]

  As soon as I'm out the front doors of the school, my shirt and nametag come off and go into my backpack. Connor and Sam do the same and we pull our backpacks back on as we make our way to our bikes. I text Xander as I do to let him know we're out of school.

  [Sig]: School's out! Hope your classes went well!

  Right after sending the text, I take a picture and send it to him so that he can see that I'm out rather than just read about it. If I'm lucky, he might send me back a picture of him and if I'm even luckier, he'll be in his wolfkin form. He still hasn't shown it to us yet and I really want to see it.

  "Think Isaac's day went well?" Connor asks.

  "Texting him now," Sam says. "Oh!"

  Isaac just messaged the old group chat. The one from before we became friends with Xander and had to start a new one. We don't use that one anymore since we don't mind Xander seeing what we're saying. He's a part of our group and we don't want to exclude him from anything.

  [Isaac]: I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU!!!

  "Why not say it in the new chat?" I ask.

  He better have a good reason for excluding one of us from this.

  "I dunno," Sam shrugs. "Let's go meet up with him."

  When Connor and I became friends, we began hanging out after school. His dad always made sure there were snacks for us, and a lot of them. Now that I know his real motivations behind some things, I think it was part of him trying to make sure I was fed even with my parents neglecting me.

  Sam joining our group didn't change the after-school hangouts, though his dad sometimes provided the snacks instead. Then Isaac joined the group, and his dad providing snacks entered the rotation.

  We're still planning on doing this, but at my house. We've got a bigger yard to play in after doing homework and stuff and the dads have assured Aunt Rachel that they all take turns making sure there are snacks for the homework sessions.

  Fruits and veggies, and sometimes baked stuff like cookies. Though with Xander's tendency to gift everyone baked treats, it'll probably just be fruits and veggies, plus chips and pretzels if they're there.

  Rather than the three of us heading to the after-school hangout place and Isaac meeting us there, the three of us join up with him and head there together. We're not sure what Xander's going to do as he didn't really give us an answer when we asked but we're certain he won't join us today. A full day of school probably overwhelmed him.

  Which is probably why he hasn't responded to me by the time we reach the meetup spot. He might just be too exhausted from it.

  Isaac takes another couple of minutes to arrive and when he does, he's looking really amused. We all greet him with fist bumps, then I have a question for him.

  "How come you posted that in the old chat?" Sam asks before I can ask.

  "Yeah," I say. "How come? Also, did you meet Brooks? He was grumpy every time I saw him at his uncle's place, but I think he just needs a friend."

  "That's actually the news," Isaac snorts. "Brooks killed any chance of having a social life."

  "What?" I ask. "How? And why do you find it funny? That's not really nice, Isaac."

  "He had it coming," he shrugs. "When my teacher walked in, she just looked at us and sighed. Then she said 'I had hoped my roster was some prank the office was playing and I'd get the real one today'."

  "You've lost us all," Sam tells him.

  "Nearly my entire class," Isaac says. "Consists of some of the most popular kids in our grade among their groups. I'm literally the most popular kid at my school in any grade. The captain of the cheerleading team. The captain of the football team. The guy who's likely to become the captain of the boys' soccer team. The boy likely to be voted the head of the art club. The girl who was the head of the science club last year and will probably be its president this year. Even Travis King, who apparently spent the summer going from being liked to being popular. The past month or so, actually. That's why we've been seeing him at the park a lot more.

  "Anyway," Isaac snorts. "You get the idea. Whoever decided to put the most popular kids in our grade in the same homeroom was definitely on something. There were a few kids who weren't like that, but they're still decent kids. And then there's Brooks."

  I still don't get why it's funny, but Brooks must have done something really bad that turned the entire roster of popularity against him.

  "Oh, dear," I say. "What did he do?"

  "Yeah," Sam says. "It must've been bad."

  "He's the only kid I didn't recognize," Isaac says. "So I went over. Saw his ID and introduced myself, said I was your friend and that you'd told me about him. Well, he just huffs and says 'I found his uploads, is he always that annoyingly cheerful? I thought it was just him being overly nice to me but he's like that in his streams, too'."

  "Isaaaaaac!" I say. "You can't just kill someone's social life over that. He's just moody!"

  "Oooooh no," Isaac's smile widens. "That was forgivable. What he said after? Boy died faster than a mantis after sex. See, he followed that up with 'and what the-'" Isaac doesn't say the word. "'-is wrong with that Xander kid? He talks weird, like he's being deliberate with what he's saying instead of just saying sh-'" he cuts off there. "'-and flaps his hands and bounces a lot. Is he off in his head?"

  I knew Brooks was moody but that is crossing a line. Everyone has their weird quirks but saying someone is off in the head for it is just not acceptable.

  "Now," Isaac says. "I'm trying to think of what to say that won't get me suspended on the first day when he goes to the teachers, because I'm pissed. Also, keep in mind that I'm friends with basically all of the jocks at my school. My grade and the others. And some of those good friends of mine are in this class, so they can see I'm pissed. And the soccer captain is dating the cheerleading captain, and she's gonna be upset by that, too. And I'm fairly certain the president of the drama club has a crush on Xander, guess he found him via streams. Austin was constantly asking me questions about him whenever we had free time. Which was a lot."

  Why does that name seem familiar?

  "So he's already gotten himself blacklisted by the athletic side of the school," Isaac says. "Because he just insulted a close friend of someone in it. Okay, okay. He could recover. Maybe be friends with the more artsy or creative or smart kids?"

  "What happened?" Connor asks. "Please don't tell me he put his foot in his mouth with them somehow else?"

  "Same thing, actually," Isaac snorts. "Before I can tell him there's nothing wrong with Xander, a very low but angry voice speaks out. 'That's my cousin you're talking about'."

  "Wasn't Matt in the grade above you?" I ask.

  "Matt is," Isaac says. "Travis isn't. And he's kind of popular in that part of the school. And I know at least two girls who are crushing on him who are a bit on the more popular side. Like, say, the probable president of the science club. Oh, and also the probable captain of the girls' basketball team.One of Travis's best friends is also the younger brother of another kid who's popular in her circle… and she's very close to her little bro.

  "Anyway," Isaac continues. "Travis says that and you could hear a feather drop. There's still a chance, even if he just insulted the one kid that you shouldn't insult at Lakeview due to the number of people who will get mad and who they are connected to. I respond after a few moments with 'there's nothing wrong with Xander, he's cool'."

  "Oh, no," Connor says. "He doubled down, didn't he?"

  "Yup," Isaac says. "So his social life is basically dead. I'm not gonna forgive him unless he apologizes. That was just way too much."

  Yeah, I'm not going to, either. I'm also definitely telling his uncle when I go over on Wednesday for my next shooting lesson.

  "I didn't know they knew each other well enough for him to care about Xander," I say.

  Xander's talked with him a few times at the park, but there's no way that was enough for them to become close.

  "They don't," Isaac tells me. "I asked him and he said that he doesn't care, no one insults his family. And in all fairness, it's better that it's Travis that's mad at you than Greyson. Thank the gods that menace isn't at Lakeview this year. Xander must've forgotten to tell us, or he mentioned it and we forgot, but Greyson's apparently going to some school for genius kids now. A boarding school hours away. We're all hoping it tames that kid."

  "From the stories I've heard," Sam says. "That's doubtful. Come on! Let's get going!"

  We hop back onto our bikes and ride to my house, then grab the snacks Aunt Rachel has on the counter and start to head downstairs.

  "Boys," Aunt Rachel says before we make it to the door.

  "Yeah?" I ask as we look over.

  "How was school?"

  "It was great!" I answer. "Was nice seeing everyone again after summer break! Everyone was super cool and talking about their breaks and stuff, and we don't have any homework. They did actually have us do our martial arts lesson today, and we got to frost some cookies in the cooking class. Made the frosting ourselves!"

  Our lesson on proper kitchen protocols apparently comes after making frosting and putting it on cookies.

  "I heard you frosted someone's nose," Sam says.

  "My own."

  "Goofball," Aunt Rachel says. "Don't get kicked out with your antics, alright?"

  "Will do!" I tell her. "Well, I'll not get kicked, not will get kicked out!"

  She rolls her eyes.

  "Xander might not be coming to hang out," she informs us.

  "We know," I say. "He didn't respond to my text. I think he's overwhelmed right now. It's his first full day since May and they probably don't need to do the syllabus and stuff with him and so went straight to lessons."

  "He started streaming a little after noon," she tells me. "He's playing World of Myst and might have his phone muted for the stream. I've been watching, though I can't understand what he's saying. He's speaking English, I think? It seems he's decided to stream for the folks over in Europe since it was the middle of the school day here but the afternoon there."

  "Xander knows English?" We all ask.

  "That's what I think it is," she says. "He managed to find a British streamer who was willing to help him with the settings, and she's stuck with him after while continuing her own stream with her own world. He keeps calling her 'Lexi', and I think it's the one you play with sometimes."

  My friends and I look at each other and I know they're all thinking the same thing I am. We head downstairs and drop our backpacks on the ground, kick off our shoes and socks, and plop onto the couch. The snacks go on the table and I grab the remote. It takes less than a minute for me to pull up the streaming app and turn on Xander's stream and… that definitely sounds like Lexi.

  Huh. She plays this, too.

  "Is it?" Sam asks.

  "Yeah," I answer. "Look, he's got her in the title as 'on call with'."

  Though he has her actual username tagged, so it's in English characters rather than Zrebzialan. I only recognize it because of how many times I've seen it.

  "That is a farm," Connor says.

  "Yeah," I say. "That is a farm alright."

  Xander's made a farm… in a biome I don't know. It looks really pretty, though, especially with the glowing lights floating around. Small glowing particles actually float around, and there are some glowing mushrooms around as well. There's a village nearby and the villagers I can see all have wings.

  I've only played the game a few times before and don't know very much about it other than what Aunt Rachel's told me. This isn't something she's explained, but it looks like Xander has a pair of butterfly wings in his inventory, so it must be something the villagers are equipped with. I really want to check out that biome.

  I'll have to ask Aunt Rachel about it. Or look it up later.

  For now, we're watching Xander… do whatever it is he's doing.

  He has a pen of cows, the pen itself thirteen blocks on each side on the inside. He's decorated the inside a little with some flowers and a hay bale, and also a little pond for water. It's all very simple but cute. Close to that are two nine-by-nine plots of alternating wheat and corn, and then two plots of hay grass. A little bit away from that is a plot of potatoes.

  Then there are nine plots of blueberries bushes and nine of strawberry.

  "He did all this in three hours?" Connor asks. "That's a lot of stuff!"

  "Most of that would've been easy," I say. "The trick would be getting the crops he's planted, but I guess he got lucky. I wanna know what biome that is, lemme look it up."

  I call up the info site for the game and go to biomes and when I manage to locate information on it…

  "Sig?" Connor asks. "What's that look for?"

  "Uh… that's the rarest biome in the game," I say. "And Xander's apparently found it in three hours. Lemme see how rare it is… and how… oh, wow. Wow. Whoa."

  "What?" My friends ask.

  "Uh…" I look at them. "One of the first search results is people debating if this is real or fake. It's that rare."

  We look back at the screen. Xander's happily feeding the cattle some hay right now, then he checks on his farms. He then mutters something and wanders off. He enters the village he's by and makes his way to a bulletin board, then examines the quests.

  At least he's got the game language set to Zrebzialan. Even if we can't understand what he's saying, we can know what his quests are.

  "How do you rate the quest?" Sam asks me. "You did a few with your aunt, right?"

  The quest Xander currently has offered for the village is from the baker and is asking for two stacks of blueberries and the reward is eight blueberry tarts.

  "Okay, I guess I can give you some," Xander grumbles in Zrebzialan as he reads it. "But the tarts better be as good as Katie's."

  That causes us to snicker. In-game food can't match real food because you can't taste it, you goofball!

  "I dunno how good the quest is," I admit. "I haven't made any tarts before so I don't know what they take or provide."

  Xander heads back to his blueberry farm and pulls two stacks of them out of a chest, then goes into the house he built. It's small and cozy and nothing fancy, just a bed, a few chests, a smoker, an oven, a furnace, a crafting table, and a small flowerpot with a purple flower in it.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He makes a villager chest, then takes it to the baker's and sets it down just-outside the door. Xander puts the blueberries into the chest and steps back as he says something, then stares at the door and says something else. He's speaking in English again so I don't know what.

  We continue watching him, and he mostly just works on his farms and "talks" to the villagers. It's kind of fun to watch even though we can't understand what he's saying. I do manage to catch snippets of it, but not enough to really know what's going on.

  Right before four o'clock, it seems like Lexi ends the call, then Xander ends his stream. Almost immediately after, my phone pings.

  "Did he just text you as soon as his stream ended?" Connor asks.

  "I think so," I check my phone, a big smile forming. "Yeah, he did. It's just him saying he played World of Myst and was streaming it and he wants to know if it's okay for him to still come over for the after-school hangout."

  "He looks so exhausted," Connor's leaning over to look at my phone.

  "Oi!" I push him to the side. "Private text! Private text!"

  Not that there's anything inappropriate or actually private in them. It's just rude to look at someone else's texts.

  Xander does look absolutely exhausted in the picture he sent, though. I'm betting he hasn't had a nap at all. I send him a quick response.

  [Sig]: Yeah! We'd love to have you over! But you look like you're going to fall asleep, are you sure you want to?

  [Xander]: Yeah. I'll come over soon, then.

  [Sig]: See you then!

  "He's coming over," I say. "Him looking on the verge of passing out isn't changing that, apparently. Though it means he'll probably teleport over, so he should be here in a few minutes. What should we do? We've still got an hour or so before you guys need to head home, and Xander is probably too sleepy to be comfortable just watching us goof off. Video game? Board game? Just chat?"

  We end up deciding to wait until Xander arrives to see what he wants to do, if he's up for doing stuff. It takes less than five minutes before he's coming down the stairs, Trenton held against his chest with both arms and a really sleepy look on his face.

  "Hi!" I hop to my feet and walk over to him as he walks towards me. "Can I give you a hug?"

  I really want to just hug him, but that would freak him out and that's not something I want to do. It's rude to freak people out.

  "Yeah," Xander nods yawns a little as he nods, and I wrap my arms around him in a hug.

  "You didn't have to come over if you're this tired, Xander," I say. "And you never have to ask about the hangouts, you're one of us! That means you're always welcome, especially for the after-school ones. We usually work on homework or study, then play in the yard for a bit. Though no homework today. We were gonna play in the yard, but you're not following me, are you?"

  Just a gut instinct, since his head's pressed against my shoulder right now and I can't really see his expression. I know that Xander usually struggles if too much is said at once, especially if he's not in a "good" mental state. Being super sleepy is definitely not a good one, in that sense.

  I should've remembered that from the start and broken it up a bit.

  "We're standing still."

  "No, I mean I was saying too much at once for you to understand it all, wasn't I?"

  "Yeah."

  "I was saying," I say. "That you don't have to come over if you're this tired. We know you get really sleepy if you get too stimulated during the day. You're not going to stop being our friends just 'cause you miss some hangouts."

  "But I wanna be here."

  "I know," I pat him on the back. "And we're glad you're here, though we're not sure what to do. Since we don't have homework or something to study, we were going to go out back. Did you want to do anything?"

  "Sleep."

  Connor snorts behind me and I'd shoot him a look, except I'm still hugging Xander, who I think is sort of using me as support for standing, even if he's not holding me.

  "Do you wanna sit down?" I ask.

  "Yeah," Xander nods.

  "Alright," I let go of him and we move to the couch, Xander sitting by the arm with me beside him, his backpack set on the floor beside his feet. "We've got snacks, want something?"

  Xander gives me a sleepy look, then opens up his backpack and pulls out a container of cantaloupe and a box of lemon-blueberry cookies.

  "I didn't say you had to give us a snack," I say.

  "I know," Xander says. "I brought them to share. I baked the cookies yesterday, and cut up the cantaloupe after lunch. You told me that you guys eat snacks at this, and also usually do homework. If you don't do homework, you're just hanging out and chatting or playing a game or something."

  We told Xander about this yesterday in a group call between the five of us. It seems he misunderstood the "we have snacks" bit, but none of us are going to complain. I might have to ask the dads to pass on to his dad how this hangout thing works, though. They do all take turns being the one to provide the snacks so it's only fair for his dad to do the same.

  Hopefully, it doesn't make him feel like we're trying to take advantage of Xander and him being rich. I don't want him to say I can't hang out with Xander anymore.

  "Yeah," I move the containers to the table. "Since we don't have homework, we were gonna hang out outside, but then ended up watching your stream. Aunt Rachel apparently saw you were streaming, and she told us."

  "It was fun," he says. "I talked with Lexi. She was really nice."

  "You speak English?" Connor asks. "We couldn't really understand you because of that, but it was still fun to watch."

  "Yeah, I know English," Xander looks at his hands and frowns for a moment, than a strawberry cookie appears in them and he looks relieved. Okay… I'm not sure I want to ask what that was about. "I didn't expect her to help that much, I just saw she was answering questions on what to do in chat, so I wanted to ask for advice on settings. And she recognized my username and then offered to help me in a voice call. So we did that. Okay. My turn. How was school?"

  I snort a little and so does Isaac. Xander's sleepy brain apparently has him thinking we're taking turns asking questions. That's not really an issue, but it's a little bit funny.

  Especially because he put himself second rather than last. There's no way he wouldn't wait until his turn if he weren't so sleepy.

  "It was great!" I tell him. "We all got to see friends we haven't seen since the start of summer. Classes were easy since our teachers were just telling us the plan for the year and making sure we know the individual classroom rules."

  "What about you?" Connor asks. "Did you not start today? Or only have a half-day? You were streaming when we got home and it looked like you'd started around noon."

  "Yeah," Sam says. "Aunt Rachel said you started around then."

  "Only took a half-day," Xander says. "Then a couple of packets, but they were short. Two pages, only one of which was both sides. So three pages. Then I streamed."

  "You took a half-day?" Connor asks.

  "Yeah," I say. "Your dad let you skip the second half?"

  "Um…" Xander sleepily frowns, then shakes his head a little. Suddenly, he looks a lot more awake as well as a little surprised. "That actually worked. It probably won't last very long, though. I still feel sleepy."

  "Did you just use magic to wake yourself up?" I try not to laugh.

  "Yeah."

  "That's pretty cool," I chuckle. "So you got to skip half of the day? Is your dad sure that's a good idea? Didn't you say foster kids are hard to get permission to homeschool? He might get that revoked if he does that."

  "It's okay," Xander says. "Grandpa Adrian apparently recognizes that not all kids are good for school. In school. So he made it so that at least in North America, a kid can miss classes under certain circumstances. Like if they have a 'qualified' job where they perform actual productive work that meets certain standards and… other stuff. I don't fully understand it, but I do fit that criteria. And Dad said it was okay for me to miss the afternoon classes for today if I at least did the morning classes."

  There's a law like that? I've never heard of it before, which means that it must be insanely difficult to actually meet the requirements. Either nepotism is working in Xander's favor or he actually manages to meet the requirements.

  "That's pretty cool," I say, and Xander's face screws up in confusion. "As in awesome, Xander."

  "Oh, right," he's too sleepy to be embarrassed by that, since his face doesn't turn red. "Um… Sig, Connor, me… so it's Sam's or Isaac's turn?"

  "We don't need to take turns," Sam chuckles. "But sure, I'll go. What was with the big farms you were doing?"

  "Berries," Xander says. "They taste good. But not in-game ones. Real blueberries and strawberries do, especially if they're magic rather than plain. And there were lots of berries in the Fairy Islands."

  "You also had corn, wheat, hay, and potatoes," Isaac says. "Not just berries."

  "Yeah," Xander nods. "Corn to make compost to speed up growth, wheat to make straw for bedding for the cattle, hay to make food for the cattle, and potatoes to make steak and potatoes with the cattle."

  "You like steak and potatoes?" I ask.

  "Yeah," Xander nods. "But I don't know what video game steak and potatoes taste like. I'll have to ask Greyson to make sure the flavors are right."

  Greyson's database was used to make the zombies and other effects for the AR stuff. If Xander wants to make sure the flavors are right…

  "Can your AR do taste as well?" I ask. "Not just sight and sound?"

  "It can do all five normal senses," Xander says. "Taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. But Grandpa Adrian said not to have the normal-release version have that. It'd apparently freak out a lot of people if they could feel a zombie biting them, or smell the rotting flesh, or taste the foul odors in the air, and stuff."

  "Yeah," I grimace. "That'd definitely not be fun. Wait, so did you do that before the first test?"

  "Yeah," Xander nods. "I wanted to make sure the systems were all there before we played with it. But then Grandpa Adrian said I had to exclude them. The ones for the military will have them, though. They want that to help the soldiers get trained against certain things, especially in the magic special forces."

  "That's actually really cool," I say. "Back to the steak and potatoes thing. How do you like your steak? Real ones, I mean."

  "Medium-rare on the more rare side," Xander answers. "Lightly seasoned, but not with pepper. Bleh."

  Xander makes a disgusted face when he says that, so I guess he doesn't like pepper.

  The five of us keep talking until it's time for everyone to leave and Xander has more boxes of cookies and fudge and stuff for us. Something must have really stressed him out if he baked that much yesterday. I really doubt he had another twelve boxes leftover after giving everyone some on Saturday.

  School. It had to have been school which stressed him out so much.

  I get another hug from Xander before he leaves, and he's picked up by Mr. Quinn rather than teleporting. He must be meeting his dad somewhere. Either that, or they're concerned about an exhausted Xander performing a teleport.

  Once everyone else is gone, I go to my computer and look up the law Xander told me about. It's got to be really difficult to meet the requirements for and Xander meeting them has me really curious.

  "Whoa," I say when I find a page that puts the law into easy-to-understand terms.

  The site gives a simple explanation of the law at first, then has different sections to explain and clarify the parts of it. There's even a breakdown of which jobs and job types are permitted for it.

  In the most simple terms, it's just a rule that anyone under the age of eighteen may be exempted from school as long as they received at least $500 in a paycheck from a proper job the Friday of the week before. Their legal guardian and the superintendent from their school have to both grant permission for it.

  That's just the simple version, though. There are strict requirements and a lot of oversight to make sure it's not a case of a kid being taken advantage of. Also to ensure it's not being denied without a good reason.

  For example, their superintendent has to approve it. They cannot, however, deny it on the basis of something like academics. An overseer for this also interviews them regularly to make sure the reasons for denying are legitimate – such as suspecting the kid isn't willing and is just being used by their parents. Said overseer also checks with the family and job regularly for similar reasons.

  They also check to make sure the kid is actually doing the stated work, and can show up announced and request to see said kid immediately. No delays. The slightest delay without a good reason can be used to suspect the kid wasn't actually working and is being moved into a task to make it seem like they were.

  The overseer is also apparently a mind mage, such as the one who came out to make sure I was okay back when Aunt Rachel freaked out over my mind mage friends. They use their magic to know if they're being lied to about what the kid is or was doing.

  While the program is designed to allow students who aren't suited for school but have practical skills an alternative, they want to make sure it's not exploiting children for labor. It also can't be used just to get a poor-performing youth out of school.

  Said youth needs to be able and willing to actually do the work. The requirements for something to be considered "productive work" are both really strict and really broad.

  Shelf-stockers, cashiers, and cart attendants don't count. Burger-flippers and busboys don't, either. That explains why it's pretty hard to actually meet the requirements in the first place. The work can't be something simple or easy, it needs to require an actual degree of skill.

  Which means that Parker wouldn't be able to get out of school to work for his parents' catering. At least, not unless he was actually one of the chefs or bakers. Though since it's his parents' company, it would probably be denied in the first place. I think the only case where working for the parents/family is permitted is in agriculture.

  Mostly.

  While Parker wouldn't be able to, Luke would. He's a magitech engineer and researcher, and he actually produces products. His income must also be much higher than the $500 a week that's required.

  In regards to the $500 on the previous Friday, that's also not an absolute rule. Youth are required to be paid every week for the previous week's work, Sunday through Saturday. That's set by a different law. With this law, it looks like they also check to make sure the checks aren't being adjusted in order to meet those requirements – such as if one week's pay was $1,000, it doesn't get split into two weeks' pay so the kid earns $500 on each.

  However, there are jobs that don't pay on a set schedule, but by commission and such. There are also jobs which hold the pay for a set amount of time – three months – in case of chargebacks. Authors, streamers, and uploaders are specifically mentioned here.

  "Wait," I say when I read that. "Streamers and uploaders?"

  I reread this part and yeah, youth who stream and upload can also be exempted from school. The requirements for that are a lot more strict – they have to earn at least $750 in a one-week period rather than $500, for example.

  Most of those services hold the money for three months before paying it out for safety reasons.

  That's allowed even for youth paychecks, as there's apparently a good chance of fraud going on with them. Money laundering, too.

  When it comes to a content creator like a streamer or uploader, the last two weeks' worth of accrued income must be at least $750 individually. That's also after any chargebacks, declines, etc. The article doesn't say that there's no officially-stated reason for this, but it does mention that it's suspected to be to ensure they still hit the $500 a week when they do get paid three months later.

  Due to the circumstances behind the change for such earners, it's also permitted to be paid only once a month. That's under the full law regarding paying youth.

  With the youth school exemption law, there are also additional requirements for them. It's required that any amount donated over $50 by any given individual in a week is ignored for the $750. So if they have a donation of $50 from a user on Monday, and another on Tuesday, it only counts as $50. Or if they receive fifty gifted subs from one person on a service where individual subs cost $5 and the creator receives $2.50 of that, only twenty of the gifted subs count. Or nineteen, if the gifter subbed that week.

  I'm not interested in getting out of school for this, but it does remind me to see what the requirements are for monetization. One of the reasons Aunt Rachel suggested I start streaming and uploading is to potentially earn me money doing stuff I like doing. I like playing games and goofing around.

  Sure, it does take a bit extra energy to do it while streaming, but it's still fun. I want to try and go for money from it if I can. If I can make enough to reduce how much I do other work, then that opens up additional free time.

  After all, I'm already playing video games and hanging out with my friends a lot, and this doesn't really eat into that time. Most of the time.

  The site I upload the videos from my stream to is different from the site I stream to. That's also the site I'll be posting the video from Friday, once I finish editing it.

  Because they're two different services with two different setups (one is better for streaming, the other for uploading and video sharing), they have different standards for monetization.

  The video-sharing site's requirements… I already meet. It requires me to have at least five thousand subscribers and one thousand five hundred watch hours in the past twelve months. Now that I'm reading the requirements, I remember Carter mentioningthem back when he was telling me about him doing this stuff now.

  I knew I'd blown up a bit in terms of popularity, mostly due to Xander's tests. It's the first time any company within the Lumaria Group has done public beta tests. Also the first time they've happened without strict NDAs involved.

  Not only that, but the first stream showcasing something from the new genius magitech engineer was a hoverboard. Plenty of prototypes exist, but none are functional enough to have been considered "invented".

  Xander blew all of them out of the water with a product which many youth want and the wealthy youth are able to afford.

  Then he created a state-of-the-art gaming system for augmented reality gaming. No other system can compete with it in terms of graphics and how seamless things are. The fact that Lucas Gates participated in the tests, a military general was present, and Adrian King was present only increased their visibility.

  So Carter and I both definitely received a lot of attention from that. However, there's a lot of views and hours on my other videos. I'm talented on my own and can draw in viewers just from that.

  The video of me and Lexi taking down the wyvern with grenades has over one million views. Most of it is on the part with the takedown, but even just one hundred thousand people watching a single minute of that puts me over the hours-watched threshold. And I have over one million subscribers.

  Those hours are from only one video of me, too. It doesn't include the VODs from the testing streams, my other streams, or the people coming in to watch that very lengthy section of my first time playing World of Myst and taking down a pretty powerful boss… while practically naked in-game.

  Looking at the stuff I need to do to get set up for it, I'll need Aunt Rachel since I'm a minor. But I meet the qualifications so I can apply, even if it'll apparently take a month or more for them to approve me. That part sucks since it looks like they do hold payments for three months before releasing them, in case of fraud and such.

  I pull up the streaming site and look at the qualifications for applying to the second tier of streamer, since everyone starts on the first tier.

  "Oh, yeah, I meet those."

  An average of five viewers per stream, a total of one hundred followers, a total of eight streams in the past month, and at least ten hours of time streamed. I'm doing three streams a week not including the beta test, for about five hours between them. Even excluding the testing and demonstration, I meet the requirements.

  Heck, it looks like I'll meet the requirements for the third tier of streamer as long as I continue going for three months total, and there are only three tiers of it with them.

  According to this, I should've already received an email letting me know I can apply for the second tier. Aunt Rachel hasn't said anything so it probably went to my own email rather than hers even though I'll need her to apply.

  Yup, it's in there. I can apply to reach the second tier, which will allow me to run ads, get subscribers, and receive cheers. Payments are held for three months just in case of fraud, but the acceptance/denial notification should come within a week or two.

  I head upstairs to let Aunt Rachel know and find her putting a pot of water on the stove. That means it's probably pasta for dinner.

  "Hey, Aunt Rachel?" I ask once she's set the pot down.

  "Spaghetti," she anticipates the wrong question. "Which sauce do you want?"

  "Any's fine," I answer. "Something Xander said earlier made me curious and I was looking into something, and that led me to looking up if I qualify for monetization yet."

  "Oh, right!" She says. "I meant to ask if you'd gotten the email for advancing a tier yet."

  "Yeah," I say. "Looks like it came in last week. So it's okay for me to apply? You'll have to do some stuff as well, to verify."

  "That's part of why you're doing it," she chuckles. "Yes, I'll help you apply. We can do the garden veggie sauce, there should be a jar of it left."

  "Alright," I say. "And thanks! For the monetization, I mean. It'll be awhile before I can actually get paid, so I wanna get it set up soon. Even if it's just a few hundred dollars a month, that'll be plenty."

  I've looked some stuff up and it seems that the money from ad revenue is super tiny. I'm also not sure the follower conversation rate, but it probably isn't immense. Most streamers and uploaders do it as a side thing, to supplement. It takes the really big and established ones to make a lot of money.

  And I'm just starting out. People will probably wait awhile before deciding if I'm worth dropping money on.

  "No worries," she chuckles.

  "I can make dinner," I tell her. "I can do spaghetti fine. It's just pasta, cooking the meat, then simmering it in a jar of sauce. Unless you're adding something else to it this time?"

  "Not this time," she sas I start pulling out the rest of the stuff for dinner. "We can fill out the application. Make sure to preheat the oven for the garlic bread. Only do half the box."

  "Yes, ma'am!" I salute, and she gives me a light tap on the back of my head.

  "Did you boys watch Xander's stream?"

  "Yeah!" I answer. "It was so cool, even if I couldn't understand what he was saying most of the time. And Lexi being willing to help him like that makes her even cooler, too! It seems like he was happy being a little farmer boy, too. He looked really happy when he was taking care of the crops and the cattle. Him eating blueberries in real life every time he ate something in game was pretty funny, too. It was soooo cute!"