Insert Coin to Continue

by John David Anderson

  Hit points?

  Hit points like health? Like in Sovereign of Darkness? Had he really lost a hit point for being late to class? If so, how many did he have to start with? And what did that even mean, losing one? Was that, like, a day off of his life or something? For being a few stupid minutes late? What happened if he ran out of all his HP? How many had he started with? Bryan thought about Kerran Nightstalker. The dark elf had well over a hundred hit points, but Bryan had also leveled him up over days. Weeks. At the start of the game the ranger had had only ten.

  This was ludicrous, Bryan told himself. That was Sovereign of Darkness, a charred wasteland infested with demons and monsters, all waiting to bite your head off. This was middle school. There had to be some difference.

  “Finding the area of three-dimensional spaces, like this room, for example . . . ,” Tennenbaum droned.

  Calm down. Relax, Bryan reminded himself. It was just one hit point. And he didn’t feel any different, except maybe his stomach was queasier than before, and his head had started pounding. But he hadn’t gotten a “game over,” and he hadn’t been asked to insert a coin this time, which meant that whatever was happening, it wasn’t all or nothing, win or lose. Different games had different rules. He could figure this out.

  There was pause in the background noise. Then Mr. Tennenbaum’s voice came in sharper.

  “Mr. Biggins. Since you must know all of this already, perhaps you can come to the board and enlighten us.”

  Bryan snapped out of his daze and looked around at the two dozen faces staring at him. Then he looked at the SMART Board at the front of the room. It was full of drawings of three-dimensional objects. Cubes, cones, pyramids, all with arrows and numbers going every which way. Tennenbaum stood next to it, scowling, his stylus in hand.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I said, why don’t you come up and show us how it’s done, since you don’t feel like you have to pay attention to what I’m saying.”

  Another twitter ran through the class, but a hiss from the math teacher squelched it. Tennenbaum motioned for Bryan to come up front. Reluctantly Bryan pulled himself out of his desk and walked to the board, like a prisoner shuffling to the gallows. He took the stylus and stared blankly at the screen.

  “Start at the top,” Tennenbaum commanded.

  Bryan faced the board again, keeping his back to the rest of the class, certain they were all laughing silently at his misfortune. The screen looked like a big jumble. Along the top sat a bunch of formulas that he was vaguely familiar with, stuff they’d been working on like: V = 1/3πr2h and SA = Ph + 2B Though now they looked more like hieroglyphs or alien inscriptions.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” the math teacher said in a smug voice. Bryan held the stylus in his sweaty hand and pressed the tip up against the screen.

  He paused. He thought he heard music. Coming from out of nowhere. Voices humming, softly, barely audible, but steadily growing in volume. It sounded exotic, foreign—Russian maybe?—like something men in fur-lined caps might kick-step to. Bryan whirled around to the class, but as soon as he did, the humming stopped. Everyone was just staring at him.

  “We’re waiting,” Mr. Tennenbaum said.

  Bryan turned back to the shapes drawn on the SMART Board, and the humming started up again, as if on cue. Dum. Da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-dum-da-dum-dum-dum. He was sure he had heard the tune somewhere before. He turned again and it disappeared, but as soon as he faced the board, it began again.

  “Any day now, Biggins.”

  Then Bryan noticed that the shapes weren’t normal either. They were no longer frozen on the screen. They were moving. They were, in fact, dropping. Inching toward the bottom edge of the board. It was a slow and steady march—cones and cubes and spheres incrementally making their way down to the bottom of the screen to the beat of the folksy Russian humming.

  Whatever was happening to him, whatever had started this morning with the alarm clock, this was obviously part of it. He needed to solve this problem or risk losing more hit points or getting another continue. Beside him Tennenbaum was tapping his foot impatiently but not in time to the song, meaning either that the math teacher had no sense of rhythm (likely) or that the music was only in Bryan’s head (equally likely). Bryan licked his lips and zeroed in on one of the falling shapes. He looked up at the formulas at the top of the screen and then at the cone that was about to drop right off of it. He quickly did the math in his head and used the stylus to scrawl in the answer. As soon as he’d found the volume of the cone, it vanished with a satisfying flash.

  Bryan smiled and turned to Mr. Tennenbaum, as if to say, Got it.

  “Next,” the math teacher said.

  “Next?”

  Tennenbaum glanced sideways at the screen. The other shapes continued their steady decent.

  “All of them?” Bryan asked desperately.

  “We don’t have all day,” Tennenbaum said with a shrug, looking up at the clock.

  Behind Bryan, the humming grew louder. Da-dum, da-dee-dum, da-dee-dum, da-dum-dum-dum.

  Bryan turned back to the screen, beads of sweat prickling his forehead, the stylus slippery in his hand. He picked a sphere and found its surface area, scrawling the answer on the board. It, too, disappeared, but just as soon as it did, a new one took its place at the top, pushing the rest down. A multitude of shapes filing in columns down the screen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bryan said under his breath. Then he quickly puzzled through the formula for the volume of a cube, causing it to vanish and another shape—a pyramid—to drop in place above it. The Russian dance music picked up tempo, grew louder, more frenetic. Bryan hunched over, solving one problem after another, the answers coming easier to him now, but the shapes dropping faster and faster. He let one slip by and heard Mr. Tennenbaum click his tongue disapprovingly.

  “Missed one.”

  Bryan tried to ignore it, worked the problems as fast as he could, trying to clear the board, but he couldn’t keep up. The shapes didn’t change, but the numbers grew more complicated, harder to calculate.

  “Time’s almost up.”

  Bryan wiped his forehead on his sleeve with his free hand. The objects were growing fuzzy. He couldn’t keep them straight. There was no way he could clear the board of problems. How many hit points would he lose if he couldn’t? Would he have to insert another coin? Was this really what this craziness was all about? Geometry? Really?

  He was about to give up when he noticed a flashing cube at the top of the board. It looked different from the rest. Where the other shapes had simply been outlined in black, this one was multicolored and pulsing. Bryan stopped working on the pyramid that was ready to fall off the bottom of the screen and aimed his stylus at the cube. He needed to calculate its volume. Each side was seven centimeters. Bryan struggled to do the math, his brain in overdrive. Seven times seven times seven. Forty-nine. Three, carry the six. He could feel Tennenbaum’s eyes burrowing into him. The humming had reached a fevered, frantic pace.

  “Three hundred forty-three cubic centimeters!” he shouted.

  Bryan wrote it in and then pushed down on it with the stylus. Suddenly the rainbow cube vanished, taking all the other shapes with it, as if by magic.

  The board was clear.

  The soundtrack of Russian folk humming suddenly stopped.

  Bryan turned around to look at Mr. Tennenbaum. The math teacher didn’t look happy, his whole face pulled downward. But Bryan couldn’t help from smiling.

  There, hanging in the air above the math teacher’s head, was another message written in blue. Two messages, in fact. The first said: +100 XP.

  And the second said: LEVEL UP.

  Bryan stood there, at the front of the room, staring at the blue letters as they faded, his whole body shaking. Level up. One hundred experience points. That had to be good, right? It had to mean something. Did it mean he was done? That whatever was happening to him was over? He looked expectantly at Mr.
Tennenbaum, as if the math teacher had the answer.

  “That will do, Mr. Biggins.” Tennenbaum coughed. Then he turned to the rest of the class. “Would anyone else like to try?”

  Bryan looked around the room. Half of the students were nearly asleep. The other half were only feigning interest. He wondered if they had even been watching. Wondered why they hadn’t cheered him on or at least shown some small sign that they were impressed. Were they really such mindless zombies that they hadn’t detected anything weird going on?

  Asia Delaney raised her hand to take a turn, and Bryan took his seat, slumping into it, sweaty, heart thumping, watching the board, waiting for her to start. Let’s see how she does, he thought.

  Except Asia Delaney was given only one problem, and it just stayed in the center of the board. It took her almost as long to finish the one as it had taken Bryan to finish all of his. When she sat back down, Bryan leaned over to get her attention.

  “You didn’t hear anything strange while you were up there, did you? Like . . . I don’t know . . . humming Russians?”

  Asia Delaney rolled her eyes. “You are so weird,” she said.

  Bryan nodded and turned back around.

  That’s what he’d thought.

  9:15 a.m.

  Romeo, Juliet, and the Zombie Apocalypse

  When the bell rang, Tennenbaum tapped Bryan on the shoulder on his way out and held him back. The man’s morning breath was nearly suffocating. When he spoke this time, it wasn’t in his usual voice but a low, husky growl meant for Bryan’s ears only.

  “When the bell for the third hour tolls,” he said, “meet me in these chambers, among the smoke and shadows.”

  Bryan gave the math teacher a questioning look. “So you’re saying I should just come back here for third period?”

  Tennenbaum nodded. “I shall be waiting.”

  Bryan nodded back politely—he didn’t want to get in any more trouble with the math teacher today—and retreated into the hall. He looked to see Tennenbaum watching him with a disturbing grin. Then the man winked, which was even more disconcerting. Forty-year-old math teachers shouldn’t be allowed to wink at their students.

  Bryan took a swallow from a drinking fountain and then leaned up against the wall. The day was getting even weirder. Now he was losing HP and gaining XP. He was hearing folk music and imagining falling shapes. He was leveling up, which he took as a positive, except he didn’t feel particularly level. He felt really unbalanced. Completely out of control.

  And to top it off, now he had detention.

  He needed Oz’s help. But to get that, he had to make it to fourth period.

  Bryan merged with the herd and shuffled toward English, keeping his eyes on his Boots of Average Walking Speed, shouldering his Burdensome Bag of Knowledge, made even more burdensome by all the books he’d added, afraid of looking up to see more blue letters sparkling in the air telling him that he had lost this or gained that. He’d made it halfway to C Hall when he finally looked up to see Jess, of all people, standing at the end of the corridor, talking with two of her friends. She had her hair up today, a few strands snaking down either side of her neck. He could see she had earrings on. Dangly silver ones. Her face seemed to glow, as if she had two tiny suns tucked into her cheeks.

  Bryan stood back and watched her, half-hidden behind a wall of people, afraid she might see him, or even worse, say “hi” to him. It was hard enough trying to talk to her on a normal day. Finally she ducked into a classroom, and he had to jog to make it to English on time. He sneaked into class just as the bell for second period rang.

  Ms. Zinn, the English teacher, sat on top of her desk with her legs crossed like she always did. She was the youngest teacher at Mount Comfort—twentysomething, with bright eyes and long, straight blond hair and a wardrobe full of short skirts, making her maybe the one teacher in the whole school you wished would wink at you.

  Today, though, Bryan tried not even to make eye contact with her. He tried not to make eye contact with anyone. In fact, he wished he could just spend all of English class with his eyes shut. If you can’t see it, it must not be happening. Whatever “it” is. Ms. Zinn waited for everyone to sit before she began.

  “Today we’re going to continue with Shakespeare’s classic tragedy.” She paused to accommodate the groans from the class, most from the boys, but some from the girls, too. “To recap from last time, Romeo and Juliet have just met, and it was, of course, love at first sight.”

  “What a load,” came a voice from the back of the room, followed by laughter.

  “Just because you’ve never experienced love at first sight, Mr. Simmons, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Ms. Zinn chided.

  Bryan thought about the stick of lip balm tucked into his dresser, hidden among the rolls of socks. The first day he’d met her—way back in the third grade—she’d sat next to him at their table and said, “I’m Jessica. But everybody calls me Jess.” He said his name was Bryan and everybody called him Bryan. She said he was kind of funny. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet. But close enough.

  Ms. Zinn continued, “Unfortunately, there are numerous obstacles standing in the way of their love, not the least of which is the long-standing feud between their two houses.”

  “And the fact that nobody can understand what they are saying,” someone else added.

  “I’m sure everyone in Shakespeare’s time understood perfectly well,” Ms. Zinn replied. “So open your books to act two, scene two. Perhaps the most famous scene in the entire play. And can I get some volunteers?”

  Predictably, nobody raised a hand. Ms. Zinn began scanning the room. Bryan lowered himself into his seat, careful not to look up. Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me. Not today, of all days. Oh please, gods of not-getting-called-on, if ever there was a time you saw fit in your mercy to—

  “Bryan. How about you be our Romeo today?”

  He knew it.

  “And . . . Gina. You be our Juliet.”

  Gina Ramirez looked like a possum trapped between a pair of high beams, shriveling in her seat. It was clear from her horrified expression that she had no interest in even pretending to fall in love. At least not with Bryan.

  “Let’s start with you, Juliet. Page forty-two, about five lines from the top.”

  Gina cleared her throat. Someone in the back whispered, “This should be good,” and got an evil eye from Ms. Zinn.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Gina took a deep breath, then let it all out in a train wreck of syllables smashed together. “Oromeoromeo. Whereforeartthouromeo. Denythyfatherandrefusethynameor—”

  “Excuse me, Gina,” Ms. Zinn interrupted. “Maybe you could read slower and with a little more passion. Juliet is pining. She is in agony and ecstasy. She finally knows what she really wants, and of course it’s the one thing she can’t have, and she’s torturing herself to find a work-around. Let’s try it again.”

  Gina took another breath. Ms. Zinn nodded and smiled encouragingly. Bryan buried his face in his hands but peered through the slats of his fingers. He felt bad for her, but not as bad as he felt for himself. When Gina spoke again, the words were at least comprehensible.

  “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father, and refuse thy name; / Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

  There was a pause.

  All eyes shifted from Gina to Bryan. “Romeo?” Ms. Zinn prodded.

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” Bryan said. The class laughed, because anytime a teacher calls you out, it’s hilarious. He smiled weakly at Gina and then looked down at his book, an anthology with pages so thin you could see right through them.

  Bryan shook his head. Looked again. Thumbed through a couple of pages. He glanced over at the book of the person sitting next to him. Same cover. Same page. But the type in the other person’s book was black.

  The type in Bryan’s book was blue.

  And not just any blue. The same color as the messa
ges that appeared from out of nowhere, the ones only he could see. It didn’t look like any kind of Shakespeare he had ever seen before.

  “Wherefore art thou?” Ms. Zinn prompted, earning another chuckle from the class.

  Bryan licked his lips and held his book close to him so no one else could see, though it didn’t seem like anyone else cared to. “Ms. Zinn, I’m not sure I can do this.”

  “It’s all right, Bryan. You’ll be fine. Just read the words on the page,” she said reassuringly.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think it will be the same as anyone else’s,” Bryan explained, still staring, wide eyed, at the different-colored font in his book.

  “Well, of course it won’t,” Ms. Zinn cooed. “We infuse the words with our own experience. We make it personal. That’s the beauty of great literature: its ability to transcend its own circumstance and speak to us on our own terms. Now come on, Romeo. Come woo your Juliet.”

  Bryan cast his eyes over to Gina and then back down to his page. He could hear the second hand on the clock over the door ticking away. He read silently to himself first. Right below Juliet’s lines was written:

  YOU STAND AT THE EDGE OF A GARDEN. THE CUTE GIRL YOU’RE SMITTEN WITH STANDS UP ON THE BALCONY, BATHED IN MOONLIGHT. DO YOU

  A. HIDE IN THE SHADOWS AND LISTEN TO HER DRONE ON ABOUT YOU SOME MORE BECAUSE YOU LIKE TO HEAR HOW GREAT YOU ARE?

  B. JUMP INTO THE LIGHT AND PROCLAIM YOUR UNDYING LOVE FOR HER, KNOWING THAT ALL HER KINSMEN ARE DETERMINED TO KILL YOU?

  C. SHOOT HER WITH AN ARROW COATED IN A POWERFUL SLEEPING DRAUGHT, KIDNAP HER, AND DRAG HER BACK TO YOUR CASTLE UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS?

  “C would probably be easiest,” Bryan mumbled.

  “What?” Ms. Zinn asked. “Speak up. We can’t hear you.”

  “Um . . . hang on.” On a whim Bryan settled his finger on the first choice. Suddenly, at his touch, new words appeared in his book. These words were in black, however, in the font he was accustomed to, the same font shared by the rest of the books in the class. They were new lines, attributed to Romeo. Bryan’s lines.