Straight ahead of me, Anton ran through one more of the endermen while Esme had moved to hand-to-hand combat with the final two. Anton spotted me across the cave and came running over.
“This isn’t supposed to happen.” He looked wildly around the cave. “We didn’t even really look at them. Why did they attack?”
I looked away.
Esme stood over the last enderman, watching it disappear. She collected another ender pearl, then came to where Anton and I were standing. “That was unlucky,” she said, glancing at me.
“We got some good stuff from the fight, though,” I said, pulling up my inventory and taking stock of what I had.
My pulse picked up speed as I realized that we would finally have enough ender pearls for the eye of ender, one of the key items that would show us where the End was. Now we just needed to collect blaze sticks from the Nether to activate it.
I quickly constructed my diamond pickaxe and swung it around for good measure.
“Next stop, Nether!” I said, feeling triumphant.
“Where are you going?” Esme asked.
“The village,” I said. “We need more supplies, and they have supplies. Seems like a good place to stock up for our trip to the Nether.”
“You mean you’re going to raid villagers?” Esme said. Then she tilted her head. “I approve.”
“The two of you would make great mercenaries,” Anton said. “You seem well suited to that kind of work.”
Esme and I laughed as we set off around the hill. Lonnie stumbled after us, and the wolves bounded around us. Across the river, the village still looked about the same as the last time we’d seen it. Esme crafted boats for us and we took off across the water. I smiled at a wolf pup who was looking at me, then turned to Lonnie.
“Remember that time we crawled under the fence and into your neighbor’s yard to pick their strawberries?” I asked.
Esme and Anton both looked back to see if Lonnie would respond.
“Remember how we made it all the way to their strawberry patch, but instead of picking them and running like you told me to, I started eating them on the spot, and then their tiny dog came out of the back door and chased us all around the yard? Remember that?”
Lonnie turned away from me and looked out over the water, his boat drifting a few feet away from mine.
“It’s good to know that following directions has always been a problem for you,” Esme said as she paddled.
“It wasn’t a solid plan,” I said.
“It sounds like you ignored the plan,” Esme said. “And how did that work out for you two?”
“When we ran, we dropped a bunch of the strawberries, and the rest of them squished against our shirts as we crawled back under the fence.”
Esme went, “Huh.”
Anton chuckled. “Worst. Recon. Ever.”
“We were eight and ten,” I said. “It’s not like we were an elite team or anything.”
Anton laughed again. “No. Hardly.”
Esme pulled up to the shore near the village, and all of us clambered out. This time, there were no villagers to greet us.
“Weird,” Anton said.
“All the buildings seem to be fine,” Esme said.
“Let’s just go in and look around,” I said.
We went up the small embankment and found the garden to the south side of the village.
“Leave your friend here,” Anton said. He pointed to a fence we could tie him to. Then he looked more closely at my face, and added, “I mean while we check things out. Not permanently.” He rolled his eyes.
“He’s not a pet,” I said. “We can’t tie him to a post and go off on our own.”
“You don’t think he looks like a pet with you leading him around?” Esme asked. “This will make things go faster. We won’t leave him behind or anything. Really.”
I grudgingly tied Lonnie to an end post, and the pups happily kept him company while Howl came along with me, Esme, and Anton. Esme spotted the butcher inside the shop and went in to start making trades, but the villager didn’t have anything that would help us. We tried the blacksmith, but there was nothing to trade there either.
“What is going on with this crazy game?” Anton said.
“These are all new glitches,” Esme said, turning to me. “Bianca, you need to start talking.”
“Listen, I don’t have anything to confess,” I said. “I’m just here to help Lonnie fix his avatar.”
“What about you in the real world?” Esme said. “I know you don’t want to go back to your hospital bed where you’ve been mashed to a pulp and your best friend is probably…” At this she paused, and Anton herded her down a path that was a little bit away from me. The two of them put their heads together like they were talking. I was totally uninterested in what they were saying. I was sick of being blamed. I had no more control over the game than they did.
A few moments later, Anton and Esme came back.
“Listen, I’m sorry that we’re on your case all the time about this,” Anton said. “But we’ve been doing this awhile now, and this is the best way we know to work through our problems—by sharing.”
“Then what about yours?” I asked. “Why do you have to build traps all around your house like that?”
“Me?” Anton asked, surprised by my question. “Ha, where to even begin? Okay, if I tell you why I build the traps, will you promise to exit the game with us when we ask you to?”
“Depends on how bad your problems are, I guess,” I bluffed. I had no plans to leave the game without having fixed Lonnie first.
Anton kicked around some dirt blocks.
“Before all the brain injury stuff, I was on track for a basketball scholarship,” he said. “It was a huge deal for my parents. They’re so proud, you know? They want me to set an example for my brother and sister. And basketball was my ticket to college. But now, I don’t know anymore. It’s all up in the air. I’ve missed too many practices and too much school. And…” He paused for a long while. “There’s also the fact that while I’m good at basketball, I don’t really love playing. There was a part of me that was glad when I took the hit and woke up in the hospital.” He looked away from me and Esme before finishing. “So skeletons like to attack my house a lot when I start worrying about what I’ll do when I have to go back to school. But I’ve learned to anticipate and manage it with all the traps.
“They’re easier to deal with than Esme’s mobs, at least,” Anton finished. “They’re only interested in tearing my house apart.”
“What are their names?” I asked. “Your siblings, I mean.”
“Oscar and Tara,” he said.
“Older or younger?” I asked.
“Both younger. I’m supposed to be taking care of them.” Anton paused. “That hasn’t been true in a while.”
“My little sister is Carrie,” I said. “Carolyn. I miss her, too.” I felt a wave of sadness rising through me. Carrie was no gamer. But she actively tried to get into every game Lonnie and I played, just so I’d pay attention to her. I always shooed her away, but now I wished I hadn’t done that. I took a breath, surprised at the sting behind my eyes. I was glad avatars didn’t cry. When Lonnie and I were done taking down the ender dragon, I promised myself, I’d exit the game and tell Carrie I was sorry for being mean and ignoring her. “What do they do when you’re in here? And by ‘here’ I mean the hospital, not this game.”
“They do their regular stuff, tae kwon do, ballet,” Anton said. “My parents don’t want them to think I’m the focus of all their attention or anything, so they try to keep them doing all the stuff they were already doing before I got sick.”
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“About a year,” Anton said. “It’s a long time to have my life on pause.” He took a deep breath before continuing. �
��Now what do you say, Bianca? How about we meet in real life? Esme and I can come to your room.”
I turned to look at Esme, and noticed an exit portal behind her. While Anton was telling his story, Esme had created one that all of us could travel through. It was a carbon copy of the one that was broken at Anton’s place. The sight of it made my stomach knot with worry.
“We need to go now, Bianca,” Esme said, gently, as if she were trying to calm down a rabid animal. “It’s probably almost morning. I have a chemo treatment first thing. You should come with us.”
I knew I should. It was the logical thing to do. But out there—in the real world—there were real-world things to deal with. Questions I’d have to answer. But in here, no one was asking anything. No one but Lonnie knew, and he wasn’t talking.
“I don’t want to leave without fixing Lonnie first,” I said. “I’m going to make my way to the Nether.”
“What for?” Esme asked. “What’s the point?”
“We had a plan,” I said. “Get everything we need to get to the End and take on the ender dragon to fix Lonnie.” My voice cracked a little, but I forged ahead. “We’re supposed to go on a run to the Nether now, that’s the next step. You said we’d stick together.” I looked at Anton, and then Esme. “We made a plan, and I’m going to follow it.”
“By yourself?” she asked. “That’s total insanity.”
“Come on, Bianca, we’ll come back later and play it through with you.” Anton was edging closer to me. I noticed that Esme had a rope in her hands now, the same kind that we’d used to tie up Lonnie. If they thought they could drag me through the portal, they had another think coming.
I backed away from them slowly. Before I could turn to run, Esme had lassoed me, pinning my arms.
“No! I’m not leaving! You can’t make me!” I screamed. I thought about the TNT I had in my inventory, and how I needed a distraction. It suddenly appeared and detonated instantly in front of us. We were blown back in different directions. My health bar took a major hit. The rope disintegrated from around my avatar, as Anton and Esme were thrown back into the exit portal. They disappeared behind the diamond blocks. Just when I thought my troubles were over, the portal began to shake and turn completely black. It wasn’t inky like an obsidian block, but like someone had pressed delete on all the color in the world. To my horror, the darkness began to surge toward me, swallowing up the wolves in a yawning chasm. Pixels were falling away and disappearing into the black. The game was closing.
I knew there was nothing I could do if the game shut down, but I admit, I panicked and reacted with the first thing I could think of. “Lonnie!” I called. “We have to get out of here.”
Lonnie turned to look at me.
“Lonnie!” I screamed. “Run!” I waved my hands and pointed toward the boat.
He took a slow, uncertain step in that direction.
“Right. Run!” I shouted.
Then I noticed everything around me was turning dull. In some places the pixels all but went out, leaving behind tiny square holes with nothing behind them. The entire village, the few villagers, the wolves, all of them started losing their color, pixel by pixel. The edges around the game had blackened to char and were beginning to fall away like perfectly square panes of glass. The entire world faded from view. I felt alone in a vast space of nothing. It felt like a void—no color, no sound, no feeling. It was like a blank test space that no one had coded yet. I couldn’t even see myself. I wasn’t sure if I was really there—wherever there was—or not. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I didn’t even know what I would have said. My mind felt dull, too, like even it had been wiped out.
A moment later a blinding light appeared. I squeezed my eyes shut, then tried to open them again slowly. The light was still too bright, but it was reminiscent of the goggles’ lobby menu. I didn’t want to leave the game! Just as I was about to say something, I was plunged back into the void.
After several minutes everything started to come back into view. The world around me populated slowly: a few blades of grass, the brown of the shore of the river, a few cubes of blue popped up and were joined by others in varying shades. A moment later the ground appeared, and my feet with it. I was standing on a patch of green next to a few squares of brown. The fence slowly solidified next to me, and then my hand, and the rope I was holding. I didn’t even know when I had managed to grab it. The end of the rope hung in midair a moment, and then Lonnie slowly appeared.
The garden came back. I wasn’t sure if anything had changed there, so I turned to the village. The butcher’s shop appeared, and the butcher. I looked across to the stone road where Esme, Anton, and I had stood moments before, but they didn’t reappear.
I waited, hoping with every moment that my friends would show up and everything would be fine. If I had fingers I would have crossed them. Instead I held Lonnie’s rope, and looked around feverishly as the village repopulated. But even after everything had reappeared—the river ahead of me, and the hills beyond—Esme, Anton, and the wolves I had tamed never came back.
I pulled Lonnie back to the boats, which had miraculously respawned in the same place, and took him across the river. Night was coming and we needed to go somewhere safe. We got out of the boats and started to wander upstream, around the other side of the hill. On the way, I gathered supplies from a couple of chickens and a passing cow. It was enough to manage our hunger levels for a while, but I knew I’d need to get more. A couple of zombies dotted the hillside, and I sidestepped them rather than fight. They seemed content to lumber on without much fuss, and I let them. We trudged through flowers and dirt and made it to a stone ledge on a hill. I cut a little farther into the ledge and put up a shelter on the overhang. The stone of the hill was to our backs, and the front of the house faced the river. To get to us, mobs would have to climb up the face of the hill, and I’d hear them coming with enough time to mount a defense if I needed to.
There were enough supplies to make a single room with a bed. I’d break it down in the morning for wood, and craft a bow and arrows. Without Esme and Anton, I would have to get through the game alone.
I left the bed to Lonnie and looked out the window at the village lit up downstream. I hoped Esme and Anton weren’t too mad at me. But there was a part of me—and it was a bigger part than I’d ever admit to anyone—that was glad they weren’t around to nag me about opening up with my feelings.
I pulled up the inventory. There was enough material to make an exit. I could do it, I could exit the game, too, and see how they were doing. But then what about Lonnie? What about the plan he had so meticulously laid out, the plan that I was trying now to follow?
“Prepare, plan, power through,” I said aloud. I decided that I would see this through to the End. I racked my brain to remember what the next steps in Lonnie’s plan were. There was a fortress I needed to find in the Nether, one made out of nether bricks. Once I got there, I had to kill blazes and collect their sticks. I felt like I was forgetting something key. Didn’t Lonnie say there was a trick to this?
“Lonnie, can you remember how you wanted to take down the blazes?”
Lonnie lay flat on the bed, eyes staring up at the ceiling. I’d come to expect no response by now. But there was something about Lonnie’s pose that made my stomach knot. I didn’t want to linger on it too much.
I walked outside the hut, opened my inventory, and placed all the obsidian blocks in the shape I needed—a window four blocks wide and five blocks high. Stepping back, I used my flint and steel. The pane of the window glowed purple.
The nether portal stood before me, beckoning me to walk through.
I stepped toward the portal when a little memory niggled in the back of my mind—the image of Lonnie shaking his head at me, smiling.
I looked back in the direction of where Lonnie was. Was he reaching out to me somehow?
“L
onnie?” I asked no one in particular.
“When we get to the Nether, it’s going to be fire-and-brimstone levels of epic,” Lonnie’s voice floated into my head. “We’re going to need this.”
The memory sucked me in like a vortex. The sensation of falling in midair overcame me for a second. Before I could even open my mouth to scream, I was back in my own body from weeks ago. I was looking down at my computer screen at a digital snowball.
I tried to jump up, but nothing happened. I was stuck in a movie version of my life, watching everything happen in playback mode. Lonnie’s face appeared in another window on the screen, his bright red headphones pinning down his short afro. He needed a haircut. He almost never let it get that long. We were video chatting that day because Lonnie was sick with the flu. Sickness never stopped us from playing Minecraft, though.
“A snowball?” I heard myself ask.
“Yeah, they are going to deal the most damage to the blazes,” Lonnie said. “Get it? Ice cools off the flames.”
“And let me guess, we’re going to need to build another crazy contraption to make snowballs.”
“Bingo!” A ping went off in my email inbox. I opened the latest message from Lonnie. It was a guide to creating snow golems, which basically looked like blocky snowmen with pumpkin heads. These were the mobs that could produce snowballs for us.
The instructions read: “In order to create snow golems, make snow blocks by stacking the snowballs into groups of four, and putting a pumpkin on top.” Seemed simple enough. There were also rules about where we could build snow golems and where we could keep them. We would also have to stack the snowballs into snow blocks so that we could transport more arsenal into the Nether.
The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 9
