Pwned (5 page)

“Has to be a total coincidence,” I assured myself as I went down the stairs to try to outsmart my genius little brother in the lying game.

I was in for a losing battle.

6.
Epic Fail

The next Monday
, back at school, I tried to ignore the nagging feeling that Tawny was behind this latest attack on Parker. Of course, the ability to keep my mouth shut had never really been a strong point of mine, so it only took a few minutes before I confronted her.

“So
, what did you do Saturday night?” I asked, using all of my willpower to keep from adding, “after you flipped out at me for no good reason.”

“Went out and had some fun
, since you didn’t want to,” she answered with a pout.

At least she was posing and pouting, that meant she wasn’t too mad at me anymore.

“What kind of fun?”  I persisted, trying to get her to tell me so I wouldn’t have to straight up ask.

“The kind of fun where Zane and I go teepee that little nerd’s house as part of
Operation Haze Prep
,” she said, a grin now spreading slowly across her full lips.

“Wait
, you and Zane alone?” I asked, forgetting for a moment that I was trying to call Tawny off the nerd hunt.

W
hen Parker said more than one person had teepeed his house, I thought that meant a group of my friends, not just my best friend and boyfriend. That wasn’t okay.

“Yeah,” Tawny answered
, throwing me a look that said “So what?”

“I thought you guys hated each other,” I said slowly, trying to find a place in my mind where it would ever be okay for my best friend and boyfriend to hang out together.

Alone.

Without telling me.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures and
you
didn’t want to come out with me,” she said purposefully. “Remember?”

“All too well,” I answered, feeling huffy that she was making it seem like I was the one taking this too much to heart
, when in actuality she was the one hanging out with
my
boyfriend.

“Oh
, don’t act all offended. If you would be a good friend like you’re supposed to and hang out with me when I ask, I wouldn’t have had to hang out with Captain Idiot,” she said with an eye roll.

I wasn’t sure if I felt like agreeing with her that Zane was kind of an idiot for hanging out with her or if I wanted to stand up for him. Neither option
felt satisfying, so I just sat in silence, crossing my arms over my chest and staring straight ahead.

“Hey babe,” Zane said, suddenly
appearing beside me at the lunch table.

Speak of the devil.

“I’m not talking to you right now,” I answered, fully aware that I sounded like a 5-year-old.

“That’s okay, we don’t need to talk,” he replied, leaning
over and placing his mouth on mine.

I only kissed him back for a second because really, he was my boyfriend and he happened to be gorgeous. I was allowed to have a moment of weakness. In my defense
, though, I pushed him away after a few seconds.

“Still in trouble,” I stated.

“For what?” he asked, his eyes roaming down to my short black cheer skirt.

He was in trouble so often that it was probably difficult for him to keep track of exactly what he had done this time.

“Why were you and Tawny hanging out last night?” I asked him, once Tawny had moved on to terrorizing other members of The Squad.

“Because you never want to hang out on Saturday nights.
Sue me for having a life,” he said defensively, running his hand over his short, dirty blonde hair.

“That’s not the point
, Zane,” I countered angrily. “You can’t just hang out with another girl on a Saturday night without telling me.”

“Oh
my gosh, Reagan, do you really have to be in control of everything? I told you it wasn’t a big deal. Will you just drop it?” he asked, looking irritated that I thought this whole thing mattered.

Maybe I was getting
worked up over everything that had been happening lately, but somehow I didn’t feel like it was okay for Tawny and Zane to hang out without me. It was always hard to tell if you were being irrational when none of your friends were on your side.

“Okay,
fine. It’s not a big deal,” I mumbled, feeling like this was anything but “all right.”

+++

Yeah, that’s not okay,
Parker typed to me as I recounted the situation to him that night.

Obviously I had left out the fact that Tawny and Zane were the ones who were trying to destroy Parker’s life
, and I changed teepeeing to simply “pranking” in order to hide any evidence of who I was really talking about. But it was nice to have someone on my side. It made me feel more sane.

I had tried talking to my mom about the whole thing
, but just as I sat down to talk to her, Cannon dropped a jar of paint off of the ladder he was climbing to get at our ceiling fan. How he had managed to drag a ladder clear into the living room without anyone noticing was far beyond my understanding, but the boy was a genius.

I’m pretty sure it’s never okay for a boy and girl to hang out together alone when one o
f them is . . . attached.

That’s exactly what I’m saying! They looked at me like I was a crazy person for being upset!
I typed, feeling completely justified in my reaction now that I had someone I could talk to about it.

It was nice knowing that Parker was
only a mouse click whenever I needed a sounding board. He was a good friend, even if I wasn’t such a good friend for being involved with all of the bad stuff happening to him lately without his knowledge.

In fact, that made me kind of a scummy friend and I probably didn’t deserve to have someone as nice as him to talk to. But
since I wasn’t about to give up my one normal contact, I’d just continue to be selfish.

As usual.

I say you dump them both and find some people worthy of your friendship,
he finally responded.

Like you?
I asked with a little smile.

Exactly
.

+++

It only took a few days for Tawny and Zane to stop treating me like an irrational freshman, and when they finally came around, they were as talkative as ever. Tawny was going on and on about routines for the infamous pep rally where we’d haze the varsity potentials, while Zane was busy ranting about some soccer thing that I didn’t understand.

It was nice to have life back to normal after a crazy couple of weeks.

I didn’t understand how I could go years without anyone finding out about my closet gaming, then suddenly have to cover my tracks at every turn. It was pure madness, and it was turning me into a paranoid person. One lunch period, Tawny said something about a game and I instantly freaked out, asking her what game she was talking about and insisting that I didn’t know about any games. It turned out she was just asking what cheers we should do for the school’s first basketball game and I instantly regretted my overreaction.

I was definitely losing it.

Tawny had started to spend every lunch period staring intently over at Parker’s table like a woman possessed. I had never seen her latch onto a target like that, and it was kind of frightening to witness. The way her sharp brown eyes flicked back and forth between Parker and his friends was unsettling, like the gears in her head were working overtime to come up with some horrible new punishment for him.

I wasn’t quite sure why his mere existence seemed to bother her so much
, but I decided not to get involved. I had made a pact with myself that from now on I would stay out of any “Parker Plans” and wash my hands of the situation so that I didn’t have to spend my days feeling guilty for lying to both sets of friends.

“Reagan
, I need you to do something,” Tawny said suddenly, interrupting my mental pat on the back for not getting involved anymore.

“Okay,” I agreed,
not bothering to ask what the “something” was.

Big mistake.

“Nerd boy over there has been holding onto that stupid book for days,” she said suspiciously.

I wasn’t quite sure what she was suspicious of. It’s not like the book contained her deepest
, darkest secrets and that he was just waiting to unleash them on the school. I glanced over at Parker, who was wearing yet another
Voyager’s Quest
shirt.

“Oh
, that book is . . . ” I began, my voice trailing off slowly as I caught myself before I could finish explaining that it was his massively expensive new
Voyager’s Quest
book. “Uhhh . . . hard cover. And probably expensive,” I finished lamely. Not exactly the best recovery, but not bad either.

“Oh good,” she said, clapping her h
ands together happily. “Go pour soda on it,” she instructed, never losing the glee in her voice.

“Wait, what?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t heard her correctly. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m your friend and I asked you to,” she stated simply, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“Tawny, I’m not some junior varsity cheerleader. We’ve already established that we’re friends. You don’t have to haze me,” I pointed out, my palms beginning to sweat.

I had to get out of doing this.

“Yeah
, but we always used to do this kind of stuff before you got all weird a few weeks ago. Now I feel like you don’t even like hanging out with me anymore,” she pouted, laying the guilt on pretty thick.

I looked over at Parker,
who was talking to his friends but never quite taking his eye off of his new prized possession. I tried desperately to think of a good excuse I could give Tawny as to why I couldn’t destroy his very expensive book, but nothing came to mind.

Instead of waiting for me to take the initiative
, Tawny pulled me up from the table and placed her soda in my hand.

“It’s for the good of The Squad that we keep everyone else in their place,” she said reassuringly, even placing her arm around my shoulders like a mother comforting her child. “It’s time we brought the old Reagan back. Go get him, hero.”

I gave her a weak smile and began my slow walk over to Parker, thinking of any possible way I could get out of this. I mean, there was always the very obvious “tell Tawny you don’t really feel like being a jerk anymore” way. But standing up to her would almost be worse than the guilt I’d feel over ruining Parker’s book.

I think.

I could feel my hands shaking as I neared his table and heard his all-too-familiar voice above the din of the cafeteria. I could see a few people from other tables looking at me curiously. They were probably wondering what this cheerleader was doing over at the geek table.

I smoothed down the
front of my black and white cheerleading skirt and held the drink out in front of me, positioned in just the perfect way for me to spill it over Parker’s shoulder. He wouldn’t even see me coming while he was sitting at the lunch table with his back turned. I could even pretend to trip and make it look like a total accident.

But of course
, my head wasn’t quite working fast enough to do any of those things before he saw me. Instead, all of his friends went quiet and stared at me as I stood there looking at Parker, until he finally turned around as well to see what had killed their conversation.

Slight recognition passed over his face when he saw me and his cheeks instantly reddened. He didn’t really look mad. It was more like he was embarrassed and worried that I’d do something else to humiliate him. Only this time
, it would be in front of all of his new friends.

I opened my mouth to speak but realized that if he heard my voice he might recognize me as Xandris from the game and then I’d be in a world of trouble. Quickly closing my mouth again
, I looked down at the book he held in his hands and then back up at him, our eyes locked on each other.

“Are you okay?” he asked in a worried voice.

I was surprised that he was actually talking to me. I thought he was too scared of me to actually speak, let alone wonder if
I
was all right. After all, he was supposed to hate me, not worry about my well-being. That wasn’t okay. It made it even harder to be mean to him.

“
Uhh,” was all I managed to say for a moment. All of the other nerds stared at me, awestruck, unable to comprehend why a cheerleader had decided to visit their table.

By this time
, half of the cafeteria was staring at my moment of complete and total idiocy and my brain had decided to stop working, preventing me from formulating a decent plan.

“Here,” I said hurriedly, handing Parker the soda and turning away from t
he table to quickly retreat toward the safety of The Squad. I could see Tawny staring at me with a look that could burn a hole in my head, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

“What is your problem?” she whispered furiously when I made it back to her. “Why
are you such a spaz?”