Insert Coin to Continue - Hardcover

Anderson, John David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1481447041 ISBN 13: 9781481447041

Publisher: Aladdin, 2016

Synopsis

Bryan Biggins wakes up to find that his life has become a video game in this funny, honest coming-of-age novel from the author of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, Sidekicked, and Minion.

Meet Bryan Biggins. Most of the time he’s a freckle-faced boy, small for his age, who attends a school known for its unwritten uniform of North Face jackets and Hollister jeans. The rest of the time he is Kieran Nightstalker, the level-fifty dark-elf hero of his favorite video game, Sovereign of Darkness.

Until one day Bryan wakes up to find out his life has become a video game. Sort of. Except instead of fighting dragons or blasting bad guys, he’s still doing geometry and getting picked last for dodgeball. It’s still middle school. Only now there’s much more at stake.

Stealing the Twinkie from underneath the noses of those dieting teachers isn’t enough to earn him another life. And battling the creature that escaped from the science lab doesn’t seem to cut it either. And who knew Romeo and Juliet would turn into a zombie bloodbath?!

All the while he’s losing hit points and gaining levels, and facing the truth that GAME OVER might flash before his eyes at any minute. It all seems to be building to something...something that has been haunting Bryan since way before his life turned into an X-Box nightmare, a challenge that only he can face. Will Bryan find a way to beat the game before it’s too late?

About this title

About the Author:

John David Anderson writes novels for young people and then, occasionally, gets them published. He is the author of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, Sidekicked, Standard Hero Behavior, Minion, and The Dungeoneers. He lives with his patient wife and brilliant twins in Indianapolis, Indiana, right next to a State park and a Walmart. He enjoys hiking, reading, chocolate, spending time with his family, playing the piano, chocolate, not putting away his laundry, watching movies, and chocolate. He likes video games where mustachioed plumbers fall into pools of lava and thinks twenty minutes of Dance Dance Revolution counts as a full cardio workout. He has leveled up forty one times, but he hasn’t grown up yet. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Insert Coin to Continue THURSDAY

THE DAY BEFORE FRIDAY

Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

Bryan swept out blindly and missed the alarm clock, floundering for the snooze button before finally shutting it up. He pulled himself up in bed and stared through the open slats of his blinds. It was still dark outside.

That was the worst part about school days. Having to get up before the sun. That and the school part.

Outside, he knew, the leaves had turned, spray-painting branches in bursts of orange and red, contrasted with the emerald carpet of manicured lawns, but this early all he could see were shadows. Bryan stretched and stumbled toward the bathroom, dodging towers of laundry, trying to muster some enthusiasm. It was a Thursday, which at least made it close to Friday. That was something. He could hear his mother banging around in the fridge downstairs. She would already be in her tracksuit, drinking a vitamin shake and watching The TODAY Show. She had a crush on Matt Lauer. Bryan’s dad didn’t seem to mind.

Face washed, teeth brushed, he slipped back into his room and into cleaner-at-least clothes, glancing at his computer, where the title screen for Sovereign of Darkness stared back at him. He had played another couple of hours last night, foregoing his desire for a good night’s sleep in the hopes of uncovering the secret bonus level that he was sure existed.

He hadn’t found it.

Maybe Oz was right. Maybe it wasn’t there. But Bryan had a problem letting things go. It wasn’t determination, exactly. He had given up on lots of things over the course of his life—soccer, piano lessons (he still played the saxophone at least), karate, a perfect complexion, an A in math—but occasionally he would fixate on something, let it nag him, like an itch on the roof of his mouth. Finding the secret bonus level to Sovereign of Darkness was one of those things.

On-screen, Kerran Nightstalker—the character Bryan had nursed from level one to level fifty through a steady diet of Mountain Dew–driven demon-bashing—spun his sword and stared heroically, as if he had spotted a pack of imps on the horizon and was begging Bryan to sit down and give him orders. Come on, Bryan, the dark elf whispered. Play ten more minutes. But Bryan couldn’t be late for school. Not again. He grabbed his backpack and hurried downstairs.

Bryan Biggins was a level-fifty, dual-wielding dark elf ranger only some of the time. The rest of the time he was a freckle-cheeked boy, short for his age, living at the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood known for its high rate of community garage sales, and attending a school known for its unwritten uniform of North Face jackets and Hollister jeans. A place where everything looked the same from a distance. It was disconcerting sometimes, the sameness. The identical mailboxes. The columns of minivans ranging in hue from slate gray to charcoal gray. The flat-topped hedges marking the boundaries between copycat houses. Sometimes it was hard to tell anything apart.

Bryan checked his reflection in the mirror above his dresser; he looked nothing like Kerran Nightstalker. He was scrawnier, for one, and his eyes were blue, not green. His nose rounded into a knob at the end, as if it were always slightly pressed against a window. Bryan didn’t own a flaming mace, though the crop of orange curls on his head sometimes gave the appearance that his skull was on fire. He had never held a sword in his life and had never slain anything, unless you counted the caterpillar he had accidentally rolled over with his Big Wheel when he was five. His mother said he cried for almost an hour.

And unlike Kerran Nightstalker, Bryan had never been in a fight. He had been pushed. Shouldered. Tripped. But he’d never taken a punch. He was no adventurer. Some days he didn’t even feel like the main character in his own life.

“Bryan, you better hurry. You’re going to be late!”

Bryan came down the stairs and snatched a waffle from the freezer. His mother handed him a glass of milk. “You’re not even going to toast that?”

“Nope,” Bryan said, cramming half of the ice-crystal-crusted waffle in his mouth.

“You were up late again playing that stupid game, weren’t you?”

“Mrff wrff frrm frrfrrwr.” He swallowed his milk in three gulps and went in for the hug. “Don’t want to be late,” he reminded her. She tried to sneak in a kiss, but he dodged it. Mom kisses were totally uncalled for.

“Have a good day,” she called out after him.

He said he would, but he really doubted it.

Bryan pedaled hard, still chewing his frozen waffle. It was a two-mile ride to school, which some mornings felt like the Tour de France, but it was still better than taking the bus. On buses nearly anything was fair game, as long as it could be done in secret behind the sticky vinyl seats and out of sight of the driver. On the bus in elementary school, Bryan had once been forced to mash a banana in his armpit—actually peeling it and sticking it underneath his shirt and squeezing—and then eat the sweaty remains. So when he finally graduated to middle school, he begged his parents to let him bike. To his surprise, they agreed. They didn’t know about the banana-armpit incident, but they had heard other horror stories. Plus, like all parents, they insisted that exercise was good for you.

Bryan arrived at Mount Comfort Middle School with sweaty but bananaless pits and five minutes to spare. He chained his bike and sped through the halls to his locker, where Oz was dutifully waiting and shaking his head.

“Almost late again.”

“I know,” Bryan said.

Bryan had lots of friends—at least fifty or so online, half of whom he recognized and at least ten that he could remember having spoken to in real life. Mostly, though, Bryan had Oz: the self-proclaimed Wizard of Elmhurst Park and unconfirmed holder of the world record for Pixy Stix slamming (twenty-three in one minute) and the only kid at Mount Comfort who looked up to Bryan. Oz was second generation. His parents had come to the country from Puerto Rico, packing little Oswaldo in Mrs. Guzman’s belly, only two months from delivery, ensuring he would be 100 percent American when he arrived.

Oz was born to be a magician. You don’t name a kid Flash and then not expect him to try out for football. Or name your daughter Moonbeam and then act surprised when she pierces her nose. And since there were no such things as wizards—not in real life—magician seemed the next-best thing. Oz had a whole trunk full of magic paraphernalia in his closet: top hats and disappearing coin boxes, weighted dice, little red balls, and an array of colorful scarves. Strangely, having a trunk full of silk scarves didn’t up his cool factor any at school.

Bryan couldn’t endure life at Mount Comfort Middle School without him, though. They had been best friends since they were six years old and both of them peed on Mrs. Bucherwald’s maple tree together. It didn’t matter to Bryan that Oz was always too loud and a little overweight. It didn’t matter to Oz that Bryan had pasty vampire skin and seldom wore matching clothes. They had marked their territory, and that was enough.

“Okay, so I was watching episode fourteen of The Firelight Chronicles again last night, and I think I know who’s behind the Enigma Virus,” Oz began breathlessly.

“No you don’t,” Bryan said, opening his locker and finding his books. The Firelight Chronicles was a show he and Oz watched that featured space pirates, aliens, androids, and female actresses dressed in black leather. Bryan was pretty sure he and Oz were the target audience. “They’re not going to tell you who’s behind it. They want you to speculate.”

“It’s Dr. Raznor,” Oz continued.

“Too obvious,” Bryan said.

“Which is why it is Dr. Raznor.” Oz nodded, winking. “Because they know that you know that it’s obvious, so they know that you know that it’s not him, which means it has to be him.”

Bryan rolled his eyes and fished out his math book. He had math first period. Who in their right mind decided that dividing fractions was best done at eight in the morning?

“Let me guess. You were too busy playing SOD to watch. Did you get any closer to finding the secret level?”

“Not for lack of trying,” Bryan said, digging through the discarded candy wrappers for his social studies notebook—the one he should probably have been studying last night. “I’ll try again tonight, provided Old Man Jenkins doesn’t overload us with reading.”

Jenkins was Bryan’s social studies teacher. He was only in his early forties, but he already had gray hair and his breath smelled of butterscotch. He was better than Fossil Frieda, the senile art teacher who refused to retire and croaked like a frog from too many years of smoking. She insisted that Lady Gaga was the name of a French Impressionist painter and worried that Elvis Presley was still a corrupting influence on America’s youth. She had probably never even played a video game in her life.

“I think you’re wasting your time,” Oz said matter-of-factly.

Bryan looked at his friend, eyebrow cocked. “Excuse me? Playing the same game over and over again in order to unlock a secret level that may or may not exist is not a waste of time,” he countered. “Besides, do I even need to remind you of the time you spent sixteen straight hours playing Super Plumber Seven? At least I didn’t leave my butt print permanently engraved on the couch in my basement.”

“I was in the zone,” Oz protested. “And you can’t even tell it’s my butt. And that’s not the point. The point is . . .”

Oz didn’t say what the point was. His voice trailed off. He pointed behind Bryan. “Girl,” he whispered. “And she’s coming straight for us.” Oz looked down at his feet. Bryan turned around.

It wasn’t just a girl. Or not just any girl. It was Jess.

“Oh. Hey,” Bryan said, suddenly conscious of what the bike ride had done to his hair. It probably looked like a giant orange starfish had suckered to his skull and then died there. He tried to smooth it down, all casual like. He only made it worse.

“Hi, Bryan. Hey, Oz,” Jess said.

“Uh. Um. Wuhuh?” Oz said, using the vocabulary he reserved for all female encounters. Not that Bryan blamed him. This was Jessica Alcorn. Just Jess to anyone who knew her. The same Jess that Bryan had sat next to in third grade. The one he wasn’t allowed to talk about anymore because Oz had gotten tired of hearing about her. She stood an inch taller than both of them and had what Bryan’s mother would call an olive complexion, though it looked nothing like any olives he had ever seen, closer to the color of a walnut. Today her black hair splayed out over her shoulders and stretched to her elbows. Her long legs were tucked into knee-high black leather boots. She wore a white patterned sweater that reminded him of snowflakes. But mostly it was her eyes that struck him. Chocolate-hued with flecks of orange. Like late autumn. Bryan blinked twice.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” Jess asked, tucking her hair behind her ear the way all girls somehow learn to do. Bryan cleared his throat.

“No. Um. Actually, I was just telling Oz about this video ga—” Bryan stopped himself before diving headlong into total, hopeless nerddom. “I mean, I was just headed to class,” he amended.

Oz nodded dumbly. “Headed to class,” he repeated.

“Oh,” Jess said, adjusting her backpack, “because I wanted to ask you if you had anything going on tomorrow night. Missy Middleton is having one of her little get-togethers at her place.”

Jess paused. Oz licked his lips. Bryan stared. He had never been to Missy Middleton’s house. He had never gotten so much as a casual wave from Missy Middleton, let alone an invitation to come over.

“Sooo . . . ,” Jess continued, stretching the word like taffy, “she said I could invite whoever I wanted.”

Bryan put a hand on his locker door. His tongue felt like a sponge left out in the sun. He tried to stay calm, taking a deep breath without looking like he was taking a deep breath. He felt Oz scoot next to him so that their shoulders were touching, as if he were trying to attach himself permanently, like conjoined twins.

“Practice,” Bryan heard himself blurt out. Beside him, Oz grunted. Jess cocked her head. “Baseball practice. Like, all night. Sorry.”

“I didn’t know you played baseball,” Jess said.

“Yeah,” Oz said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t know you played baseball.”

“Right. Just started. This year,” Bryan said sheepishly.

Jess smiled. It was her polite smile, not her real one. Bryan knew the difference. He had all her facial expressions cataloged, knew when she was angry or annoyed or upset or proud of herself. He’d been watching her for years.

“It’s all right,” she said. She didn’t sound disappointed, exactly, which was disappointing. “Well, if practice gets canceled and you change your mind, here’s Missy’s address.” She held out a scrap of paper filled with her hurried handwriting. Bryan took it, and for a very brief moment their fingertips almost touched.

Oz turned and punched Bryan in the shoulder after Jess walked away. “Baseball practice?”

“What did you want me to say?”

“Oh. I don’t know. How about, ‘Um, yeah, we’ll be there’? I mean, is that so hard? The girl you can barely shut up about just asked you out!”

“She didn’t ask me out,” Bryan mumbled. “She invited us—me and you—along with probably a hundred other people, to a party where, undoubtedly, we would get stuck in a corner wishing we were somewhere else, while she hung around with someone much cooler. Besides, if you wanted to go so badly, why didn’t you say something?”

“You know I can’t talk to women,” Oz said.

“You can talk to Myra.”

“Myra doesn’t count.”

Bryan sort of knew what he meant. Myra Felton was their lunch buddy and sometime gaming companion. A friend first and a girl only as an afterthought, though Bryan was pretty sure she secretly (and somewhat inexplicably) had a crush on Oz. Oz didn’t know this, of course. He sometimes had trouble figuring out which shoe went on which foot, so expecting him to pick up on the little flirty cues Myra dropped was asking way too much. “Besides, Friday night’s game night,” Bryan reminded him.

“Every night is game night,” Oz said, almost making it sound like a bad thing. He glanced at his watch. “Whatever. We really are going to be late now.” Oz grabbed his backpack and looked Bryan straight in the eyes. “Seriously, though. Reconsider. You can still cancel your imaginary baseball practice. I haven’t been to a party in over a decade.”

“You’re only twelve.”

“I know. Think about it.” Oz put a finger to his skull, then turned and disappeared into the crowd—the one magic act he was actually good at. Bryan looked down the hall to see Jess talking with some of her girlfriends.

Oz was right. He should have just said yes. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. After all, this was the same girl who had sat at his table in the third grade and shown him how to make a second layer of skin out of Elmer’s glue, peeling it off in strips so they could examine the prints. The same girl who had personally given him a special valentine with one of those little candy hearts. The same Jess who las...

About this edition

• Publisher: Aladdin
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1481447041
• ISBN 13: 9781481447041
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336