The Shipwreck: An Official Minecraft Novel

by C. B. Lee

  “The plan sucks!” Emily throws her hands up in the air.

  Tank has to agree. Jake tends to overprepare, and it takes forever to get the enchantments they keep having to replace. Emily had to engineer a skeleton farm for them to level up quickly, but everything about this week has been tedious, frustrating, or boring.

  The community center is also the cleanest it’s ever been. They’ve stopped pretending that it’s why they’re here, because the rooms are all neat and tidy, all their contents carefully organized, labeled, and boxed away. All of them have been brought to Ellen’s doorstep, all of them except one empty box for the last three computers. There’s no need to be here anymore, aside from finishing this game. Tank supposes they could just pack up the last of it and bring the gate key back to Mrs. Jenkins, but once that’s done, they won’t be able to come back.

  “It wouldn’t suck if you stopped charging in headfirst and then dying! Look, we’ve got it timed: as soon as you walk down the pathway you have three minutes before the Leviathan wakes and comes up from the trench. As long as we are far enough away, we can avoid the blasts!”

  “There’s no way to avoid the blasts, they go forever! We don’t need to plan out every single detail, Jake!”

  “We do have to plan in order to figure out how to defeat this Leviathan! We’ve got to be missing something.”

  Tank sighs. “Hey.”

  The two of them ignore him, their voices getting louder and louder as they argue about melee versus ranged weapons.

  “All we have to do is coordinate the attack so we do enough damage over the long run!” Jake throws his hands up in the air.

  Emily shakes her head, spinning in the computer chair. “I still think we’re missing something. I feel like the Leviathan can’t be taken down using any of our normal weapons.”

  Scratch that, this is the worst. Tank never thought his friends would treat him like this, like what he has to say doesn’t matter.

  “Hey!” Tank stands up, pushing the chair back. He towers over the two of them, and he folds his arms together.

  “Do you have a better idea, Tank?” Emily scowls. “Wanna build a maze so the Leviathan gets stuck in it?”

  The jab hurts far more than Tank expects, and he bristles. “Look, who says we have to finish this game?” He gestures at the clean computer room around them. Everything aside from the three computers they’ve been using has been stacked against the wall, and the room is bare. “We’re done with the service project.” They don’t have to solve the mystery just because it’s here, tied to the server. They can start their own world or even continue playing this one and build new things. There are endless possibilities. That’s the fun of Minecraft.

  Emily blinks. Hurt and confusion flash across her face for a moment before they disappear. She stands up a little straighter and sniffs.

  “You’re right, Tank,” she says, flipping her hair behind her with a certain finality. “We are done. We don’t have to finish this, and I can’t believe I wasted so much time with you two anyways.” She disconnects and then stands up without looking at them. She smooths her dress and flounces out of the room.

  Jake casts one horrified look at Tank before running after her. “Why’d you say that, man!?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Jake’s already out the door.

  Tank groans and follows him.

  The empty lobby echoes with his footsteps. The furniture has already been taken away, the floor bare and the windows scrubbed clean. It’s strange how Tank has come to think of this place as something he’s looked forward to, this lobby a portal on his way to adventure with Emily and Jake in Minecraft or hours spent laughing and enjoying lunch together.

  Emily pushes open the glass doors and walks through the construction site to the fence separating them from the courtyard.

  Jake has his arms spread out, blocking Emily from the gate.

  “Get out of the way, Jake. I’m going home.”

  “You can’t leave! You’re the one who said we started this together and we’re going to finish it together!” Jake’s voice is pitched high with desperation. “Emily, please! Come on! I know the Leviathan is hard, but it’s the very last boss and we can win this together!”

  Emily taps her foot on the ground, her shoes clicking impatiently with a staccato rhythm. “What do you think is going to happen when we finish the game in the server, Jake?”

  “I—” Jake looks at Tank like he has the answer.

  We can start our own world, Tank has on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say anything, Emily jumps right back in.

  “You think when high school starts that I can hang out with the two of you?” Emily laughs and shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s not the way it works, okay.” She pushes past Jake into the courtyard.

  The words sink like a heavy stone. Tank’s been dreading this the whole summer.

  He knows she’s right. It’s going to be just like middle school, but worse. Everything he’s heard about high school is that it’s rough, that all it takes is one misstep and you’re the one being made fun of in the hallways.

  Jake follows her and gestures at Tank to come with.

  He steps through the gate, his shoulders slumping with defeat. No matter what Jake says now, Emily’s already made her decision.

  “Oh my gosh, Emily! It’s been forever!”

  Tank pauses at the excited squeal coming from the courtyard. A girl is waving excitedly at them—no, at Emily—and another girl is pushing her way through the south entrance gate. The two of them practically run across the courtyard, flinging their arms around Emily, whose eyes widen in shock. Tank recognizes the two of them from school—Pattie and Nita, part of that popular crowd he’s learned to avoid, kids who spend lunchtime holding court in the cafeteria and making fun of guys like Tank.

  Emily’s eyes widen in shock. “Pattie, what are you doing here?”

  Pattie toys with a stray curl that’s fallen out of her bun. “My mom called your mom to see if she wanted to be in the PTA and there’s gonna be a welcome-back-to-school bake night, and I was so surprised because I thought you were still grounded, but your mom said no of course we could come over anytime! And then funnily enough when I got your address it was different, did you move?”

  She’s speaking so fast that Tank has to wonder how she’s even breathing.

  Pattie’s eyes flick from Tank awkwardly hovering in front of the construction site to Jake standing stiffly behind Emily, and she wrinkles her nose like she’s smelled something sour. “What’s going on? Who are these guys?”

  Emily’s eyes meet Tank’s, and he doesn’t see the funny, courageous girl he’s come to know. There’s a wall she’s thrown up between them, and she’s a million miles away.

  “No one,” Emily says. “Just some guys I was doing my community service with.” She laughs, throwing her arm around Pattie’s shoulders, and walks directly past Jake.

  “Whatever! It’s not like I wanted to be friends with you anyway,” Jake says, his lip wobbling. “I had a much better time playing on my own anyhow. I don’t need to be babysitting a reckless fighter with no impulse control or a guy who just wants to build pretty mazes.”

  “I thought you…” Tank takes a step back. He thought Jake said he didn’t care that was what he liked, making pretty things. He thought they would never make fun of him for what he liked to do.

  Apparently he was wrong.

  It seems like Emily heard Jake, too, her shoulders stiffening as she quickens her pace and disappears across the courtyard and into her tower without another look back.

  Jake seems to return from whatever embarrassed dimension he was transported to, and he looks at Tank and then back at his feet. “I—”

  “Okay. Yeah. You’re right,” Tank says, feeling defeated. “We just played Minecraft togeth
er. It’s not like we could be friends. And we couldn’t even do that well. Some team we were.” The past couple of days they’ve just been going in circles, trying and failing to defeat the Leviathan. Maybe it’s better this way. The service project is over, and the community center is going to get torn down. The server was just something interesting they were doing to pass the time, and now that time is over.

  His phone buzzes in his pocket.

  Shark 11:21 A.M.

  We’re hanging out Friday. Remember what I said. I’ll see you at your place.

  Tank looks up at Jake. He’s spent this whole summer avoiding the reality of who he is, who people see him as. It would be pointless to pretend he could be anything else.

  Tank shakes his head. “Emily’s right, you know. People like us—we all have a specific place where we belong. This wouldn’t—” Tank clears his throat. “It wouldn’t have worked. We’re all too different, and yeah, hanging out while working on the community center was fine, but now that’s over.”

  Jake’s mouth falls open, and then he closes it, his eyes glittering.

  Tank gives Jake one more look before he heads home. “When school starts, it’ll be better that we pretend we just don’t know each other.” He looks down at his phone and walks away from Jake, from the community center, from everything he was pretending he could have.

  Tank taps out a simple Yes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JAKE

  Jake can’t believe this. He keeps turning over the morning’s events in his head, lying down in his bed. It feels like it happened so fast, the way Emily and Tank just left. Jake had felt the blood rushing to his head and he found himself knocking on Ellen’s door. She’d answered with a smile that Jake couldn’t return.

  “We’re done,” Jake said, the words heavy and final and awful. He hands her the key. “There’s uh, three computers still, and a box for them. And that table. I can—I can get it for you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. The recycling crew is just gonna come by my place anyway, they can go get that stuff directly from there.” She smiles at him kindly, looking like the grandmother Jake thought she was when they first met. “So you’re all done, huh? Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah.” Jake’s voice sounds even more hollow than he feels.

  “Oh?” Ellen says. “That’s great—I baked cookies, if you and your friends—”

  Jake wanted to throw up, and all he could manage was a brief shake before he found himself running all the way home.

  It feels weird to be home during the day, weird to be here and not in the community center. He sits in his bedroom, opening his laptop. He has Wi-Fi. The cable company connected it a while ago, but it didn’t seem important when the best game he’s ever played is on a rinky-dink server in a building about to be torn down.

  He buries his head in his pillow and groans.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  Jake looks up. Dad hesitates in the doorway of his bedroom, holding his clipboard and a thick sheaf of folders.

  “I heard from Ellen that you’re done with the community service project. That’s great!”

  “Yup. We’re done,” Jake says with finality.

  Dad steps inside, sitting on the bed beside him. “You know, I’m really proud of you. You dealt with the consequences of breaking the rules, and you went above and beyond in helping a senior citizen.”

  Jake doesn’t look up from his pillow. He wants to just disappear and pretend nothing else exists outside of the soft cotton dinosaur-print sheets.

  Wait, he can disappear. “Dad, are you done with Pacific Crest? The project? We can move now, right?”

  Dad shakes his head and smiles. “I told you, I’m staying put for you, buddy. I want you to be able to finish high school without worrying about making new friends every year.”

  “But—”

  “I’m keeping my promises.” Dad sighs. “I know I haven’t always been here for you, but this has been a good summer, right? We’ve had a good time, and you know, those baseball games happen every year, and you’ve been telling me all about your new friends. I think that’s great.” He smiles, looking around Jake’s room. “This place looks good, Jake.”

  Jake glances around his bedroom. His desk is cluttered with notepads and scribblings, drawings of the Leviathan and the underwater kingdom, pages with coordinates scattered across them, a Polaroid Emily gave him of the three of them having lunch in the courtyard. His clothes are in the drawers because he kept getting tired of rooting through his suitcase, and the bookshelf is full because it was easier than going through the boxes every time he and Tank exchanged comics. Somehow without realizing it, he’s settled in here.

  But it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over. Tank and Emily are just going to ignore him when he starts school, and he’s going to just be the new kid again.

  Or maybe it’ll be worse. Worse now knowing that they had a good time together, that every time he sees them he’ll just remember the way Emily looked at him when she walked off, like he was no one, the way Tank shrank away from him when he said those awful things. He regrets it now, of course. It’s annoying playing with them sometimes, but it was good. They were a good team.

  “Hey. I know what might cheer you up. You always wanted to swing a sledgehammer at a wall if it needed to come down, right? I bet when we do the renovation I can bring you on the site and you can take a few swings, eh? How about that? Isabella told me they’re starting on Monday! Isn’t that exciting?”

  Right. The renovation.They came so close to solving the mystery. They found the city. Jake thinks about the poor mermaids in their underwater kingdom, cursed to be besieged by an awful monster every day with no one to help them.

  Now no one ever will.

  * * *

  —

  After Dad goes back to work, Jake plods around the apartment listlessly, staring at the TV, flipping channels idly, attempting to watch a movie, and not enjoying any of it. He opens his phone to text Danny to see if he wants to play Minecraft in their server, but he realizes that Danny never responded to his last message from two weeks ago. Jake sighs. He’s been worried they’ve been drifting apart for years now, but it’s one thing to suspect it and another thing to see it confirmed. Jake boots up Minecraft and opens his old worlds, going back to them for the first time in a long time.

  It’s not the same.

  Every single achievement he’s made, the cool worlds he’s built, he just wants to show them to his friends. He misses going on their adventures, he misses the way Emily yells when she recklessly charges right into a mob of monsters, and Tank’s blunt comments that are just so weirdly funny.

  Apparently the renovation is starting Monday and it’ll all be over.

  Maybe there’s something Jake missed. Maybe there’s a way to defeat the Leviathan.

  He makes his way toward the community center. Now that their service project is officially complete, technically he shouldn’t be in there, but he hasn’t seen the construction crews back yet and Grant usually doesn’t start until ten P.M., so Jake’s got time. He can slip between that crack in the fence.

  The weeds in the courtyard rustle as Jake pushes through the overgrown mess, and he pauses as an annoyed voice rings through the air.

  “I’m not hungry, and you can’t keep doing this, Mom. You can’t keep showing up where I work.”

  “I didn’t show up, I live here, too, and I manage this building! Where else would I be?” That’s Mrs. Jenkins’s—Ellen’s—voice. It’s weird, calling adults by their first name, but she’s not as scary as she thinks she is. And she brought them lunch that time, which was nice.

  She’s walking with another woman—her daughter? Jake ducks behind a shrubbery.

  Heeled shoes tap against the pavement with sharp clacks as they walk past Jake’s shrubbery. He recognizes the
woman in the sleek business suit walking away from Ellen, holding a clipboard. Isabella Reyes, the new owner of the building.

  Wait. Mom? She’s Ellen’s daughter?

  “Come on, you have to eat. You said it yourself, you’re really busy all the time, and I’ve already made the food, you don’t have to—”

  “Look, I see what you’re trying to do here, and I don’t want it.” Isabella grips the clipboard to herself like a shield. “It’s too late, okay? I don’t need you to nag me about dinner or anything. I’ve got my own life and my own business—”

  “I know, I know, you’re really successful. I’m real proud of you, you know—”

  “You don’t get to be proud of me,” Isabella hisses. “You had nothing to do with this. Just leave me alone.”

  She stomps off, the sound of her heels fading away into the distance.

  Ellen watches her go, her chin wobbling. She wipes hastily at her face, and Jake scoots back, trying to slink into the shadows. Something behind him topples over and clangs against the pavement—an empty soda can.

  Ellen whirls around and spots Jake in the shrubbery.

  He gulps. He wishes he had an Invisibility potion or some easy way to disappear, but there’s nothing he can do except run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  EMILY

  “Your room is so cute! I can’t believe we’ve never been here!” Pattie’s voice is a high trill as she flounces into Emily’s bedroom. She reaches for Emily, a wide smile on her face.

  Pattie wraps both her arms around Emily and pulls her close, giggling. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “Good to see you, too,” Emily says, smiling in spite of herself.

  Nita joins the hug, pulling them both close with a soft smile. “It’s been way too long,” she says. “We gotta post a reunion pic!” She extends her arm and it’s like no time has passed, the three of them smiling for the camera.