SAVE POINT 4
Rosabella
I never knew what to do with Dormouse when he got like this; it was like the kid went into instant comatose. His face was sheet white; his eyes, glossed over and far away. How did one wake someone from shock? Was this shock? Could you really go into shock over seeing a crush? —It felt a little premature…or immature. I wasn’t convinced he even knew the girl. …Probably because he had such a hard time getting up the nerve to say two words to her… I nudged the boy in the shoulder, but the movement did very little except reverberate through his entire body—so much so that he nearly fell over. Had he lost all motor control?! I grasped his arm to steady him back up.
All of which felt incredibly unsustainable.
His eyes were locked.
On the blonde across the crowded room—Maude. She looked slightly older, now, than she had in the Side Mission but no less beautiful. Like she would be the queen of whatever world she stepped into, just based solely on her good looks, she flicked a layer of straight, blonde hair over her shoulder and continued talking easily with the mousy, brown-haired girl next to her. God, to have that kind of confidence. Her friend—the other girl—had freckles, a wide-smile and a bob cut that ended at her pointed chin. I wasn’t much for judging, but, if I’d had to talk to one of them, I'd probably go with the friend and not Maude. Why was Dormouse so hooked on this blonde chick? She had Mean Girl written all over her.
Speaking of Dormouse… I looked over to see he was hyperventilating now. People around us were starting to take notice...which was always a plus....NOT.
"Maude probably saw me come out of the woman's bathroom," Dormouse muttered rapidly, "Oh my God, this is so embarrassing—"
"I'm pretty sure she didn't see anything," I hissed, cutting him off, "She was ordering—"
"How do I look?" the kid blinked down at his torso and, then, at me, running a hand through his tousled, black hair. "If there was ever a moment that I need you to be real with me, it's right now," he whimpered, "How do I look?" His eyes were intense, dark coal.
Distressed.
There was a shine to his forehead: most definitely sweat. His sweater vest, over a black t-shirt, had seen better years and was balling in three places. His ripped jeans were too big for him and made his white arms look even more stick-like while, simultaneously, engulfing his Chuck sneakers. Where was his body armor to save the day when he needed it? Apparently, the portal had changed us into street clothes. …How did he look?
Like a trainwreck.
As white as Casper the ghost?
Like a really bad first date?
I couldn't tell him any of those things; I had to calm him down. I swallowed all of the truth and managed a smile, "You look...fine. Why don't we just go sit down for a minute. I think you should sit down—"
"Sit down, sit down," the boy repeated frantically, his eyes darting between places on the floor and over my shoulder, "yes, let's—oh my gosh, don't let her see me!" He squeezed in front of a nearby chair like narrowly avoiding his own death, and I noticed that the girls had shifted slightly to the pickup counter. Dormouse ducked away, returning to his seat before me.
Exhausted by this entire ordeal (whatever this entire ordeal was), I slithered into the chair facing Sparo, completely forgetting the reason why Dormouse and I had gotten up in the first place. The faux-wood, plastic tabletop was cold under my flat palms, bringing me back down to Earth. ...Oh, right. Sparo was looking for Goran too, and Dormouse hadn't wanted him to be part of our mission... Until I'd convinced him otherwise, and we'd run into his crush. Then, he'd promptly forgot all about it and turned into a trembling toddler... Good lot of guys I was working with…
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"We ran into a bit of a situation..." I started slowly, speaking at Sparo and eyeing Dormouse delicately.
"In the women's bathroom?" Sparo chuckled, "Yeah, I saw you both duck in there. Hell of a place to have a situation—hey, where did you get that donut?" The man snapped the urgent question at Dormouse who'd just opened his mouth to take a bite of a pink-frosted, sprinkled donut that I'd never seen before in my life.
The kid paused, mid-bite, looking around like a chipmunk, afraid that someone was going to steal his food, "They had a free donut sign. I saw it, I took it—"
"Never mind about the donut!" I huffed, plopping my folded arms down on the uneven table which wobbled sharply towards me. I tapped my foot on the hard vinyl floor beneath my toes like it might relieve the aggravation in me. "Sparo, you're here looking for Goran. We're here looking for him too. He's trying to destroy The Game. We're going to stop him—"
"I need a laptop and Wi-Fi to see if he's already tried to hack into The Game security," Dormouse mumbled at Sparo, holding himself in a sort of hug as he rocked back and forth in his plastic chair and glanced over his shoulder at Maude and her friend for the fiftieth time in two minutes.
Sparo nodded, "Consider it done, kid. Rosabella, you know where Goran's hiding?"
"No," I admitted, "That's the problem. We figure he needs the internet to launch any sort of attack. We were going to start checking all of the restaurants and such around here."
"We should split up," Sparo began, but Dormouse didn't let him finish.
"No," the dork protested, "'cause you're gonna disappear someplace with Rosabella, and I'm gonna be stuck on my own in some dark, hellish hole of an internet café somewhere..."
Toche; the nerd wasn’t as daft as he looked. …Though I kind of liked the idea of disappearing with Sparo somewhere. I chewed on my lip, letting myself entertain the thought just for a second.
"Plus, Rosabella knows Goran best," the kid added, "She'll know where he frequents...what his schedule's like. That's gonna help."
I nodded. Dormouse had a point. I needed to start thinking like Goran. Where would he take me if he wanted to lay low? We'd been all over this city, but I knew all his hidey-holes. I could figure this out. I shifted on the hard, plastic chair beneath me, analyzing the thoughts flickering through my head.
"Okay," I said directly, "Let me think about it for a minute. I'll make a list of ideas. Dormouse, if you could—"
"He'll be needing these, I'd guess..."
I turned at Sparo's words, and the dragon-non-dragon was one step ahead of the game again as he handed the boy a shiny, silver laptop. Nice. …Wait, had that just appeared out of thin air?
I gaped at him, “You can do magic outside The Game?”
“You can do magic outside The Game,” he winked at me, “Interdimensional magic, baby—only downside is there’s no system alerts so you don’t know when you’re going to run out or when your HP does, so use with caution. Hey—nerd—wi-fi password is on the napkin holder." He pointed.
And Dormouse's spindly fingers gleefully opened the glossy, new laptop with the elation of a kid at Christmas.
Magic could be used outside The Game? That was cool. …Except that I needed a long rest anyway before I could use more CM; I’d depleted all of it battling Goran at the Temple. …And, yet, here I was again—preparing for battle. It was off to the races. We could do this. We could find him. We could put our heads together and make this happen—err, stop this from happening.
...Except Dormouse didn't look at all like he had his head in the game. His brow was still slick with sweat, and the skin of his face, so pale it was nearly see-through. He'd shoved the remainder of his donut in his mouth, and crumbles of it lingered in the folds of his sweater vest. If he glanced one more time over his shoulder at Maude, he was going to look paranoid.
...And he did...
Oh my God.
I opened my mouth to tell him off—to tell him that no girl was worth worrying about to this degree, but something stopped me: the tinkling of the tiny bell on the cafe door.
I looked up to realize that Maude had left—waltzed out of the shop, swinging her hips and the cafe door shut behind her. ...While her friend lingered after her, twirling an almost-empty coffee in her resting hand at a table by the front window. And it suddenly occurred to me: why were they even here? Why were so many Gamers out of The Game and in this coffee shop?
I moved to leave my chair, "I'm gonna go talk to her—Maude's friend," I whispered.
But Dormouse clamped a solid hand down on my arm, "No. I am."
What?! I hadn’t expected that. My head whirled to find a strange sort of resolve reflecting back at me in the dork’s eyes—something I didn't want to mess with at the moment.
"Rosabella," he pleaded, "I swear, I'll get the code right and have The Game monitoring system up in a few minutes, but first—let me just go talk to her."
And I couldn't say no.
...Because it was the first amount of courage the kid had showed since we'd stepped in here.