MEG
I WALTZ UP TO GRAYSON’S LOCKER AT THE END OF THE DAY AND TUG AT the red-and-gold-striped scarf his older sister gave him for Christmas.
“Ready for awesomeness?” I ask as I drape the end of it around his neck.
“Awesomeness?” he echoes, like a parrot.
“Yeah, let’s go somewhere. All-day breakfast at Smitty’s or something. Or we could rent skates and go on the ice rink at West Ed Mall. I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“I can’t,” he says, shrugging his backpack on. “I need to practice.”
“All you do is practice lately. Come on, it’s ice-skating! I can be Tessa Virtue and you can be . . . did she have a partner or was she just singles?”
“Meg!” he says, then pauses as if I should know what’s coming next. When I don’t say anything, he sighs. “I have that competition, remember? I need as much range time as I can get.”
Right, competition. Is it this week? Next week? Regionals? Finals? I can’t quite remember, but I know it’s a big deal.
Grayson has already started striding down the hall, and I rush to catch up to him, the anvil on my back slowing me down just a little. I don’t know why I’m taking so many books home. I don’t think I have any homework to do. Well, maybe math. It’s probably in my planner.
“Okay, I’ll come with you,” I say as I draw up next to him and slip my bare hand into his mittened one. “I’ll be your own personal cheerleader. Prepare you for having an audience. There’ll be lots of people at the competition, right?”
He turns to look at me, brown eyes sparkling with hope for just a moment before his caterpillar eyebrows drop and crush the twinkle. “Nah, you’ll just get bored.”
“I won’t,” I protest, feeling suddenly like a three-year-old. “I’ll be your own Jenna Matheson. You know, that girl who wears her cheerleading uniform around school like she’s in Glee?”
He laughs, deep and perfect. “Well, all right then. Let’s go.”
I’ve always pictured Grayson’s archery club as full of boisterous Robin Hoods, but the place is empty and painfully quiet. Aside from the targets on the far wall, it just looks like a boring old community hall, with beige walls and beige floor and beige ceiling. While Grayson fetches his bow from the probably-beige locker room, I study the posters on the bulletin board. There are ads tacked onto ads tacked onto ads, like those layers of rock my teacher was rambling on about in geography. They should come here to date dinosaur remains. Peel back the layers until an advertisement announces, “Dinosaur in need of new home. Rarely bites.” Then rip off one of those slips, call the number, and ask how long ago it was posted.
I tear off one of the slips at random—it’s satisfying, like popping Bubble Wrap—just as Grayson walks up, bow dangling casually from his left hand as if to say, “Yeah, I’m über strong. Deal with it.” He leans over to look at the board. “You’re looking for a . . . ‘tidy, middle-aged male roommate’?”
“You never know.” I shrug and tuck the number into my pocket.
There are no chairs in the range area—I know people shoot standing up, but what if someone wants to watch?—so I grab one from the table at the entrance and drag it across the hall. I lean, standing, against the back of it while Grayson prepares his first shot. His arm muscles bulge as he pulls his hand back to his ear, pauses, then releases.
Kat can hit a speeding wingling between the eyes from miles away, but I’m sure real-life archery is way harder, so I throw up my hands and cheer. My foot hits the chair and sends it skittering forward.
Grayson whips around and glares at me.
“What?” I drop my hands to my sides. “I thought I was here to be your cheerleader.”
“Yeah . . . just . . . maybe save the cheers for the bull’s-eyes.”
“As you wish,” I say, waving my hand with a flourish and bending at the waist in a dramatic bow. I pull back my runaway chair with a scrape as Grayson turns to stare down his stationary enemy.
It would be wicked if the targets moved, darting about like winglings in LotS. Maybe four at once. They could flash with alternating lights, and if you hit the lit-up one, you’d get bonus points.
“Did you see that?” Grayson is beaming at me. I glance at the bull’s-eye. Two long stalks poke out from the outer rings, one from the padding behind the target, and, at last, one smack-dab in the red center.
“Wooooo!” I throw my hands up. “Good job, bae!”
Grayson’s smile melts off his face. “I knew you’d get bored,” he mumbles.
“I’m not! You look badass,” I tell him, but he’s already turned his back on me again.
I wonder if something like that rotating light show of an archery contest actually exists. That would be epic. I pull out my phone to look it up. As always, the browser opens on LumberLegs’s YouTube channel. There’s a new video I haven’t seen yet, so I mark it to watch later.
I glance up just in time to see an arrow slam into the middle red, just at its edge.
“Wooooo!” I cheer again, and this time, Grayson grins at me, running his hand through his wavy hair before reaching for another arrow.
LumberLegs has an email address on his info tab. I’m sure that wasn’t there before. I click on it, wait for my email to open, swipe my finger across the tiny keyboard.
Dear LumberLegs,
I am your biggest fan. You probably think it’s that girl who calls herself Mrs. LumberLegs, but it’s not, it’s me.
Just thought you might enjoy a hello from your biggest fan.
HELLO!
Ta-ta for now
With love from your biggest fan,
Meg
P.S. By biggest I mean #1, not fattest. I’m not fat. But also not anorexic or a stick or anything. Just regular size, with curves and stuff. Like someone who exercises lots but still eats cookies. Because cookies are an important food group. obvs.
I tap send, then open my messages to text Kat.
Guess what! Legs has—
I stop and delete the text. Right. Kat and I aren’t talking, and I don’t know how to stop not talking. Last time, Kat showed up with video games. Maybe she’ll do that again this time.
Another arrow plunges into the red with a thunk. I whoop, and Grayson grins at me for like the umpteenth time. At least I’ve got this girlfriend thing down. I put my phone to sleep and wedge it back into my pocket.
KAT
“I GOT YOUR EMAIL,” SUNIL SAYS TO ME AS SOON AS OUR ANCIENT CIV teacher releases us to finish our group essay, which is due next class. “Your section looks great. I loved the joke about the plow.”
Heat rises up my neck and into my cheeks. Maybe getting assigned to this group wasn’t such a bad thing. “You don’t think it was too corny?”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “No, it was funny. Did you get a chance to look over mine?”
I nod. “It was good,” I say, relieved that I don’t have to lie. Actually, it was beautiful. I couldn’t even find a typo to complain about. Eric’s, on the other hand—good substance, but awful execution. So many misuses of its and it’s that I gave up on cringing. I’m not sure how to broach the subject, though. Eric keeps nodding his head so optimistically along with us, eyes wide as a basset hound’s. How do I tell him his writing’s crap?
“Okay,” Sunil says, “so I’ll just do a good edit of Eric’s section tonight, then combine them all together.”
“Oh, I did that.” I grab the paper—complete with my fully revised version of Eric’s section—out of my binder and set it down in front of Sunil.
He flips quickly through the first few pages—his section and mine—then slows to read Eric’s, nodding as he goes. “Good. Good. This is great.” When he gets to the end, he holds it out to Eric. “Want to see?”
My chest constricts. Eric’s section is barely recognizable as his, though all his research is still there. I just . . . gave it a makeover. A really intensive makeover.
But Eric just flips through the thing once, too quickly to actually read anything, then hands it back to Sunil. “Looks good.”
“Let’s hand it in now, then,” Sunil says, then gets to his feet and strides over to the teacher’s desk and back again, empty-handed, before I can even stop him. I was going to give it one more edit.
If I don’t, though, that gives me one more hour to spend on our science project. One more hour to figure out how not to flunk out of grade ten science. How not to flunk out of life.
“Do you guys—” At my words, Sunil and Eric break off their gesticulating about some game—hockey, probably—and turn to look at me, expectantly. Not exactly killer stares, but still, my mouth becomes a desert, arid and hot and empty.
One sandy dunes . . . two blazing sun . . .
“I mean—” The words come out as a rasp. I swallow, breathe, try again. “Do you guys play LotS at all?”
“Sometimes,” Eric says.
Sunil shrugs. “I’ve seen my brother play. Do you?”
“Yeah. And I just—I’m doing—for science, you know the science fair project? We’re—I’m doing LotS. I mean, speed runs. We’re testing speeds. In LotS. After eating sugar, I mean. To see if you’re faster, you know, after eating sugar. Anyway, test subjects. We still need some test subjects.” I force the words out before they disappear wherever my saliva went, but I can’t get them right.
Somehow, Sunil seems to understand me anyway. “That’s cool. Way better than my power source testing. Can we do them at school? My house is out in the boonies.”
The librarian hasn’t complained about me playing LotS for fun, so surely she’d be okay with us playing it for science. “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”
“Sweet,” Sunil says. “Lunch today, then? Where should we meet you?”
And just like that, somehow, I have two more subjects.
I just need three more. In ten days.
And then ten more, plus all the analysis and write-ups and poster-board design in the following month. Maybe let’s not think about that.
MEG
Dear Lumberlegs,
Did you know that archers are supposed to engrave their initials on their arrows? They should add that into LotS. I wonder if there’s a machine here at the club that does it. My bf just used a Sharpie.
I saw your video last week where you tried to gather all the ingredients to make a hellspawn cake, and I swear I almost peed myself laughing when you died to that shadowbeast. Thanks for the laugh! I needed it!
Love your biggest fan,
Meg
Dear LumberLegs,
Did you know that the world’s first UFO landing pad was built just outside Edmonton (that’s Alberta, Canada, if you don’t know)? I just learned that and was going to tell my friend, because she’d think it was amazing, but then I remembered she’s not talking to me, so I’m telling you instead. Pretty cool, eh?
That is all.
Love,
Meg
Legs,
I almost forgot to tell you that I bought tickets for LotSCON! I’m so excited to see you there! Of course, my mom noticed I used her credit card and tried to make me return them, but they’re nonrefundable, so all she could do was make me clean the toilets for a month. And pay her back, of course, but I was planning to do that anyways. She thinks it’s ridiculous I bought them, since LotSCON is across the country, but I think she’s forgotten planes exist. I’m going to wait until she’s in a better mood before I remind her.
I can’t wait to tell my friend I bought us tickets. I can’t tell her now because we’re fighting. But that’ll sort itself out soon. I hope.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing you!
SO EXCITED!
Meg
KAT
“ROMAN!”
I duck out into the hallway in front of him, cutting him off with my ninja-like swiftness.
“Kat, hey! You’re not dead!”
“Dead? No, I—did Meg say I was dead?”
“What? No. I’m joking. You just haven’t been around at lunch for a while. I was starting to wonder if you switched schools or something.”
Well, at least I know Meg hasn’t been bad-mouthing me to everyone at lunchtime. Or if she has, Roman hasn’t been listening.
I shake my head. “No, just busy with my science project.”
Meg’s imaginary protest shrieks in my head. “Your science project! When did it stop being our science project?”
There are so many ways I could answer that, but I’m too busy talking with actual Roman to argue with imaginary Meg. “I need more subjects,” I say. “Meg hasn’t tested you yet, has she?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. Unless she stole my saliva or urine or something.”
I laugh—one quiet, airy burst. Asking Roman is a lot easier than asking Sunil and Eric. Maybe because I’m practiced at it now. Or maybe just because I actually know Roman. My heart isn’t even pounding. I press my fingers to my wrist to make sure it’s still beating at all. It is. “It’s not a DNA test or anything. We just need you to do some LotS speed runs.”
“Oh, phew,” he says with mock relief. “That’s easy. When do you need me?”
“Tomorrow at lunch. Does that work?”
He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”
“Great. Meet me at the library at the start of lunch tomorrow, then. Don’t eat anything before you come.”
He nods, and I turn to leave, then spin back toward him. “Can you bring your girlfriend, too? And her friend Tanisha?”
He’s already several steps away, but he gives me a thumbs-up in reply. Then, just before I slip around the corner into ninja mode, he calls out, almost as an afterthought, “Hey, Kat, I’m glad you’re not dead.”
MEG
Dear Legs,
I didn’t know until I watched your video from last night that box turtles are often captured from the wild in super-big numbers and then die in captivity. I have a turtle. How do I know if he’s a wild box turtle? And if he is, should I set him free in the woods or something? I’m worried that if I did, he’d be lonely.
With love from your biggest fan,
Meg
LumberLegs,
Love your vids! Watching your livestream on the weekend by myself was so ugh-fest, though. I kept expecting my friend to show up like she did last time we fought, but she didn’t. Maybe she’s even angrier than I thought. I could ask her, but I don’t really want to know the answer. I haven’t even tried logging on to our LotS server in case I find out she’s banned me or something. How about next time you just invite me onto your server to play with you? Deal? Deal.
—Meg
Legs,
I am sick of cleaning toilets. But it’ll be worth it because Kat and I will make up soon and then we’ll go to LotSCON together. Won’t we?
What if we don’t?
Meg
Dear Lumber Legs,
If someone ever invites you to his archery practice, I recommend saying no. Otherwise, you’ll end up going to every single one with nothing to do except write emails to your idol. Also, stick to LotS archery, it’s more exciting!
Putrefying with boredom,
Meg
KAT
THE QUESTIONNAIRES LIE ACROSS MY LIVING ROOM FLOOR IN A GLORIOUS blanket of perfection. All twenty of them, all ready for Monday’s class. Five from Meg. Three from my family. Seven from Sythlight. And five that I did—that I did!—on Sunil, Eric, Roman, Leila, and Tanisha.
It wasn’t hitch-less. There wasn’t time to fit Roman, Leila, and Tanisha into one lunch period and still have the proper amount of time for the sugar to wear off for the third test—or kick in, I guess. I’ve got to do more research to determine which one. But Roman came back the next lunch period, without protest. And Leila and Tanisha came too, to see if Roman could beat their scores. (He did.)
Easy.
I still have ten more questionnaires to finish in the next month, but it doesn’t matter.
You know that moment when superheroes—the ones who gain their powers, not the ones who are born with them—realize what they are, and what they can do? Like when Spider-Man wakes up from the spider bite to discover he can shoot laserlike webs from his hands and scurry up a wall, impervious to gravity pulling him down?
This is that moment.
I can do anything.
LEGENDS OF THE STONE
KittyKat: go go go!
[]Sythlight: I lost him. Where’d he go?
KittyKat: that’s like the fifth one. do you lose your keys as often as you lose wereboars?
[]Sythlight: Hey, you lost the first one.
KittyKat: no way
[]Sythlight was slain by a venomous wereboar.
KittyKat: bahahhaak
[]Sythlight: Found him!
KittyKat: ha ha I can’t believe you died to a wereboar
[]Sythlight: A venomous wereboar
[]Sythlight: Can you get to my stuff?
KittyKat: yeah I think so
KittyKat: give me a min phone keeps ringing
[]Sythlight: K
[]Sythlight: Made it back to my stuff. You back yet?
[]Sythlight: Kat?
KittyKat: got to go ttyl sorry
[]Sythlight: Is everything okay?
KittyKat has logged off.