As defeat slowly sank in, so did awareness. Of his body pressed against hers, his breath on her neck as he panted, and the beat of his racing heart she could feel pounding against her chest.
As frustrated as Katie was, she had the sudden thought that the situation was kind of…hot. He’d only have to move his face a couple of inches and they’d be kissing.
She didn’t know when these kinds of thoughts started creeping back into her brain or why. After two years, she’d all but suppressed them. She didn’t want to think it, and she didn’t want to want it. But she was. And she did. She wanted Alex to kiss her.
Alex wasn’t laughing anymore. She wondered what he was thinking, if he realized the same thing. Did he want it, too? Or maybe the situation made him feel awkward and uncomfortable, because if he’d wanted to kiss her, he would have done it already.
That thought had her squirming again, wanting to get as far away from those lips as possible. She was supposed to be on a group date with Barista Ben, choosing someone who had chosen her, who didn’t need to think about whether or not he wanted to go on a date with her—certainly not for two years. Katie was supposed to be moving on, not imagining kissing her best friend.
As much as she struggled, she couldn’t move an inch. Alex was still not laughing. He wasn’t even smiling. He was staring at her lips now, biting his own as though thinking hard. After a moment, he let out a forceful breath, his forehead relaxing, like he’d come to some kind of conclusion.
But he wasn’t about to do that. Surely, he wasn’t about to kiss her. Then his head dipped an inch, his lips parted ever so slightly. An inch closer. He closed his eyes, and Katie found her eyes closing, too.
Suddenly, Alex flinched, grunting. His body stiffened and his face kind of twitched like he was in pain. Finally, he let Katie go.
As he shifted off her, Katie spotted Lexi standing over them, only a few meters away. Her gun was aimed at Alex, and three splotches of fresh green paint colored his back.
Lexi blew invisible smoke off the end of her gun. “Looks like I win.”
Katie blushed, as she realized those had been Alex’s exact words. She wondered how much Lexi had seen before interrupting them.
Alex groaned as he rolled onto his back and stared up at Lexi. Katie knew from experience that paintballs hurt—and she’d shot him with not one but three at close range. Katie thought that maybe Lexi was just really into the game, but as she stared down at Alex triumphantly, there was something in her eyes that said it was personal.
Chapter Seven
Alex yawned for the fifth time since he’d started playing with Lexi that afternoon. A moment later, her yawn came through his headset. He glanced across the living room at her. She’d curled up on her parents’ loveseat, so he’d been forced to take the larger sofa. They couldn’t have been farther away from each other. So much for Step four: Get closer.
She looked bored. So was he, really.
He’d asked if she wanted to play with him, hoping it would be another chance to get to know each other better, maybe even check off the next step on the list: Step five: Make sure they’re the one. Ever since he’d arrived, though, she’d seemed almost…let down. But he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.
After three hours of playing, they’d resorted to randomly searching for clues to the whereabouts of the key. They’d ended up in the Bottomless Bogs, getting lost in a maze of rotting trees and puddles of ooze that splashed beneath their avatars’ feet. The occasional whistle of wind whirled through Alex’s headphones, and dead branches scratched all around. The eerie silence made him overly aware of how quiet they’d been all afternoon.
This was the first time they were playing alone together, and it was like they’d run out of things to say. When he and Katie played together, they never shut up. Then again, they’d known each other longer, had been playing since practically the day they’d met.
He recalled the first time he’d ever seen Katie. He sat in a chair next to his brother’s hospital bed. Their laptops were set aside, Conquerors of Caroon paused on the screens, forgotten. The doctor had just been in to see Jason, and the news hadn’t been good. The cancer was spreading.
“Another bout of chemo” … “Stronger dosages” … “More symptoms” … “Time is not on our side.”
They sat together in silence. Jason was near tears, and Alex didn’t know what to say. A squeaking interrupted the quiet. A moment later, a girl walked in, pushing a cart stacked with every flavor of chips, an assortment of chocolate bars, nuts, licorice, and sour candies.
Even though Porterville was a small city, Alex had never seen her before. They obviously went to different schools. Her nametag said Katie.
With her hair pulled back in a ponytail and minimal makeup, he thought she was fairly pretty, even in her red-and-white candy striper uniform. Not the kind of pretty that you’d find on the front of a magazine—especially since those were all photoshopped anyway. She was the approachable kind of pretty, like she wasn’t trying too hard. An inviting smile lit up her face, sucking him in, and her honey eyes made eye contact easy, because he suddenly found he couldn’t look away.
She turned that inviting smile on them. “Did you guys want anything from the cart?”
Jason didn’t answer; he barely seemed to register that there was someone else in the room. Alex wanted to do something to cheer him up, to take his mind off the bad news, so he said, “Yeah, sure. We’ll take it all.”
Jason’s head snapped up.
“Are you serious?” Katie asked.
Alex pulled out his wallet that was full after a week of mowing people’s lawns in the neighborhood. And it was worth every blade of grass just to see Jason’s face brighten in that moment.
He took out a hundred-dollar bill, and after a few stunned moments, she took it. “Okay.”
When Jason gave him a look, he just shrugged. “I figured we could use a pick-me-up.”
“That’s a lot of junk food,” he said.
“We need a big pick-me-up.” He turned back to Katie. “Everything except for the black licorice.”
“Really? Those are the best.”
Alex watched as Katie counted the chocolate bars, bags of chips, and candy. He knew she was smart because she didn’t skip a beat before handing him the change.
When he handed her back two dollars, she frowned in confusion. He picked up the bag of black licorice and handed them to her. “Here.”
“Really?” Her smile was infectious, and he felt himself blush. “Thanks,” she said.
When Alex began unloading the junk food onto Jason’s bed, Katie spotted their laptops. “What are you guys up to?”
“We were playing Conquerors of Caroon,” Jason said, almost in a normal tone of voice. Alex couldn’t fix things or even make him happy, but at the very least, he could distract him with sugar.
“I’ve heard of that,” she said. “It’s an online game, right?”
He sat forward in his bed, always eager to talk to a girl. “Yeah. Have you ever played?”
“No, but it seems pretty cool.” She peeked at his screen, curious.
Alex nodded to her cart. “Sorry, I emptied you out.”
She shrugged. “That’s okay. I’m pretty much done with my shift now, anyway. I was just about to return the cart to the gift shop.”
“Why don’t you come back after?” he said. “We could show you a bit of the game.”
Her eyes flicked to Jason as though making sure it was okay with him, too. When he nodded, she said, “That sounds good. I’m Katie by the way.”
“Alex. And this is my brother Jason.”
Lexi yawned again, pulling Alex from the memory. He eyed her, wondering if she might finally be the one to keep his attention away from Katie. She was certainly cool enough. He only wished that she wasn’t so cool with him. It had him hoping Sugarplum and Pizzalover would hurry up and log on already to fill the silence.
“Where are the others?” Lexi asked, like she
was thinking the same thing.
“They should be logging on soon.”
She sat up straighter. “Katie, too?”
“No. She said she was busy today.”
“Doing what?” she asked.
He frowned, wondering the same thing, and not for the first time. Katie had been oddly secretive about it. “She never said.”
They hadn’t talked much since he’d almost kissed her at paintball. He was still feeling guilty about almost giving in and betraying his brother. It was a good thing Lexi had interrupted them. That could even be why Lexi was acting cold toward him now.
As Lexi sighed and slumped down on her couch, Alex returned his attention to the image on his screen. Just ahead, the dreary maze of dead trees opened up to greet the midday suns. The light glinted off the lush glade floor, shimmering like emeralds.
“It’s beautiful,” Lexi breathed.
Alex moved his elf forward. At first, he thought they’d found a quiet brook dancing in the sunlight, but then his eyes adjusted to the light. The clearing was alive with movement, just not the good kind.
Beady eyes blinked at them from among the dead trees. Branches began to move. No, not branches. Arms. What he’d mistaken for naked trees were actually pale human torsos. Instead of legs, they slithered on serpentine tails, scales glinting in the light. Their hair twisted like dead vines around their faces, blending them into their natural habitat.
“Slythers.” Alex’s eyes swept over his screen. “We’re surrounded.”
“This is more like it.” Lexi grinned and charged her barbarian avatar into the midst of their approaching enemy.
As they dodged razor claws and avoided poisonous teeth, Alex actually felt relief, because it was something to fill their time together. Lexi gave little whoops from time to time, laughing as she beheaded slythers with her God Sword. She was a classic button-masher, but her fearlessness made her deadly, so long as she didn’t get in over her head.
More snake creatures appeared, and the trees seemed to close in on them. Just when Alex worried they might have to retreat, he heard eerie chanting in his headphones.
Pizzalover floated into the clearing, casting her petrification curse. The slythers froze until they hardened into ugly statues. A thunderous holler tore through the glade a second before Sugarplum barreled out of the trees, swinging his mace above his bald head. The petrified slythers burst into puffs of dust beneath his powerful blows.
Alex saw the bushes behind the ogre rustle. He opened his mouth to warn Penny, but before he could, a snake man darted forward, ripping Sugarplum on his arm with razor-sharp fangs.
Penny squeaked, but the poison barely affected her avatar because of his size. He only swayed a little before winding up and clobbering his attacker on the head. It crumpled to the ground and died on the spot.
Sugarplum spun around, looking for more enemies to beat. “Was that it?” Penny whined. “I skipped dessert for this?”
“What are you guys doing here, anyway?” Trevor asked. “I had to use a locator spell to find you.”
“Just looking for a fight,” Lexi said.
“And checking out different regions for possible key locations,” Alex added. “If only we had some idea. Right now it feels like trying to find a dragon’s egg in a rock pile.”
Penny groaned. “It’s been a month. There are only two weeks left to qualify.”
“We might not have that long,” Trevor said. “I hate to break the bad news, but Maxware Studios announced the fourth qualifying team today.”
“What?” Alex sat up. “There’s only one place left?”
Penny gasped. “We have to hurry.”
Alex ran a rough hand through his hair. He stared out Lexi’s window, suddenly wishing Katie were there. She’d come up with some last-ditch-effort miracle plan. She was the idea girl, the strategist of the group. So far, all he and Lexi had managed to do was wander around aimlessly while she pointed at things and asked “What about that?”
He couldn’t blame her. She was too new. She didn’t understand the game like the rest of the team, hadn’t seen all of it before to know it wasn’t going to help them get to the tournament.
“What about that?” Lexi suddenly asked.
“Hmm?” Alex looked away from the window.
She turned her screen toward him and pointed at something partly obscured by the murky swamp fog. As the mists shifted, a single tree stood out in the distance, far beyond the Bottomless Bogs. Towering higher than even a mountain, only the tree’s bottom branches could be seen before it shot up so high that it was lost in the clouds.
“Oh, that’s The Great Tree,” he patiently explained, like he had with everything else that day.
“Which is?”
“It’s the oldest tree in The Woodlands,” Trevor said. “Maybe even in Caroon. It’s been around since the game was created. They say you can reach Valhalla from its top branch.”
Alex watched Lexi’s face as she considered this. “Maybe we should check it out,” she said.
“There’s no time,” Trevor said.
“But maybe that could be it.” Lexi swung her legs off the couch. “Think about it. Everyone probably thinks the key will be hidden somewhere new and unexplored. So the best hiding spot would be the most obvious one, in plain sight, where no one would think to look. You say the tree has been there since the beginning, so people would look right past it.”
Trevor hmmed for a second before casting a levitating spell. His dark sorceress rose to the tops of the trees to get a better look, but if there was anything to be seen, it was miles high, hidden behind the clouds.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We have to be smart about this. I haven’t heard of anyone going up there yet. But I have heard rumors of a soothsayer in Lion’s Gate who speaks of a castle in the Winterlands—”
“But if you’ve heard the rumors, then everyone else has, too,” Penny interrupted.
Everyone was dismissing Lexi as though she just didn’t understand the game, just like Alex had been all afternoon. But she wasn’t deterred. As she continued to stare at her screen, a thoughtful wrinkle formed between her eyebrows.
“The sky’s the limit,” she mumbled.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Remember the royal herald’s message? ‘The sky’s the limit.’ That tree goes beyond the cloud cover. To the sky. He even mentioned Valhalla, and Trevor said—”
“The Great Tree reaches to Valhalla,” Trevor cut in. “Maybe…”
Something nudged a memory in the back of Alex’s mind. It felt like more than four weeks ago that the herald had relayed the announcement to them. “He also said our foe will be like nothing to walk the face of Caroon. If he’s in the sky, he’s not walking on Caroon, is he?”
Here he’d been dismissing Lexi because she didn’t understand the game like they did, but that was exactly why she could see what they couldn’t. Inexperience gave her fresh eyes to see the game with.
He laughed as it all began to make sense. “We thought the herald was sending us on an impossible quest, a wild phoenix chase, but he was really giving us clues all along. It was just hidden in his message.” He beamed at Lexi. “I think you’ve figured it out.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Penny asked.
“Katie,” Alex said. “I’ll text her.”
“Hurry,” Trevor said. “Because the sooner we get up that tree the better. Before someone else beats us to it.”
…
Alex: Where are you? Conqueror’s emergency!
Katie frowned at the text. What kind of emergency? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be more serious than what she was doing now. She texted back.
Katie: At Java Byte.
Alex: Then hop on a computer and meet us in the game.
Katie: Can’t.
She was about to send it, but then added: On a date.
A latte appeared on the table in front of her. She glanced up from her phone to see Ben setting their order
down on the cozy table hidden near the back of the café.
“Thanks,” she said, tucking away her phone. It buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. Just gaming stuff.” She waved it away like “no big deal,” but when the phone buzzed again in her pocket, it was practically screaming at her to read it. She shoved her curiosity aside and focused on the cute guy across from her.
“You’re really into that game, aren’t you?” Ben asked casually.
“Yeah, it’s a ton of fun. Have you ever played?”
“No, I don’t really have time, not with the band.”
Katie leaned forward in her chair. “Right, tell me more about that. What instrument do you play?”
“Bass.”
“That’s so cool.”
He seemed pleased by the excitement in her voice and began talking all about it, but she was mostly excited because it gave them something new to talk about. Katie had thought the tough part of dating was getting a date in the first place, but it was actually coming up with things to say once you were on it.
Maybe it was simply the awkwardness of being on a date, but the conversation had died off a few times, leaving them adrift in long periods of silence that they filled with sips of coffee—they were already on their second cup.
Katie watched as Ben talked animatedly about his passion. His arms and fingers were long and slender, so when he gestured with his hands, it seemed to emphasize his point. Her mind wandered, and she imagined those hands strumming the bass. She pictured herself standing in a crowd somewhere, watching him play with his band. That would be cool.
From the stage, he’d catch her eye and wink, maybe even dedicate a song to her. Katie would lean over to the girl standing next to her and say “That’s my boyfriend.”
All the girls in the audience would swoon over him and his floppy hair. However, after the show, he’d jump off stage and sling his arm around her, showing her and all those groupies that she was his first choice. But maybe she was getting a little ahead of herself.
She shook off the fantasy. “So have you guys ever recorded anything?”
Playing Her Secret Crush Page 8
