These Deadly Games(40)
“Don’t put that on Crystal,” said Akira.
“—an accident,” he finished. “I’m not saying it was her fault. But that’s all it was. An accident.”
Of course, he had no clue An0nym0us1 forced me to make those brownies. That they’d driven me from my house, leaving the brownies unsupervised, supposedly burning in my oven—yet when I got home, they were miraculously perfect.
What a fool I’d been.
“I, uh…” I fiddled with the lightning bolt necklace Caelyn made for me, too terrified to speak. But I needed my friends to piece this together. I clamped down on my phone in my jacket pocket, hoping to muffle my voice. “I was upstairs while the brownies were in the oven.”
“Why are you whispering?” Randall said loudly. I shushed him, and Dylan watched me like I had an antelope growing out of my neck.
“Kiki, what’d Crystal say?” Zoey asked.
“She was upstairs when the brownies were baking.” Akira gnawed at her lower lip for a moment, considering this. “So, what, you think someone came in and tampered with them or something?”
Randall laughed. “I’m sorry, but that’s insane. You know that’s insane, right?”
I shook my head. His denial was staggering.
“Is it, though?” said Zoey. “Even Sanchez seems to think it has to do with MortalDusk.”
“He also said it was a different MO. I was serious before,” Randall said pointedly to me, “maybe whoever called in the tip got the address wrong.”
“That’s not it,” I said quietly. “Zoey’s right. This isn’t a coincidence.”
“Okay. Let’s say, for the sake of argument”—Randall waved his hands around as if he were casting a spell—“it’s not a coincidence. Let’s say it’s about the tourney. What the hell’s the point of picking us off? We’re not the only legit competition. What, is someone going to take out the entire Vermont leaderboard?”
“We are at the top,” said Akira.
“I still say it’s Fishman,” said Dylan.
Akira nibbled her lip again, looking unsure.
“But maybe it’s not someone who wants to win,” said Zoey. “Just someone who wants to keep us from winning. Someone with a grudge.”
Akira nodded, but Randall shook his head. “No. No way. Nobody’s picking us off—”
“Well, how do you explain Matty’s missing EpiPen?” said Zoey. Yep. Connect those dots. I wanted to hug her through the screen. Though something niggled at the back of my mind …
“It fell out of his backpack,” said Randall.
“Or someone took it out,” said Dylan. I made a mental note to hug him later, too.
“Jeez,” said Randall. “I didn’t realize you guys had been training.”
I pouted. “For what?”
“For goddamn mental gymnastics.”
“Oh my God, Randall,” I said, frustrated. “Why are you in such denial?”
“I’m not! Nobody would do this.”
“You thought nobody we knew would troll us, either,” Akira said bitterly. “But that happened. And you know what? Maybe it’s the same person.”
* * *
A few months ago, someone started leaving crude comments and slurs on our videos. Deleting and blocking didn’t help; they kept creating new accounts. Randall laughed it off, but Zoey obsessed over it, keeping a file of screenshots, reverse-image-searching their profile pics, tracing them back to stock photo sites. One day while Randall and Zoey livestreamed our MortalDusk game, Zoey snapped her fingers and tapped her headset, signaling for us to mute ourselves. “Our troll’s back at it.” She threw Akira a wary glance.
Akira stiffened. “What? Did they say something about me?”
“About us.” Randall patted down his disheveled waves. “It’s no biggie. I’ll ban them again—”
Akira leaped up, then hesitated. “Is your camera off?”
“Hang on—there, paused the stream.”
She leaned over Randall, clasping his shoulder as she read the chat pane, and winced. “Ugh.”
My heart sank. “What’d they say?”
“I don’t even want to read it out loud.”
Matty turned his baseball cap backward and read over Randall’s other shoulder. “Oh, geez. Whoever said that’s a steaming sack of horse vomit.”
“Social media sucks.” Dylan cracked his knuckles. “Can’t we just play without streaming?”
“No way, man,” said Randall. “We’re finally making some cash here.” We’d made about $800 between YouTube and Twitch last month, our best month yet, and he wanted to be able to quit his cashier gig. Too bad $800 split six ways barely made a dent in our mortgage. “Guys, chill, alright? I’ll just delete and block. It’s probably some Russian bot or something—”
“The Russian bots don’t care about our stream,” said Zoey. “They’re on Twitter attacking Democrats. This is personal.”
“D’you think it’s Fishman?” said Matty as Akira plopped down next to me again.
I shook my head. “Fishman gets off on hunting us in the game. He wouldn’t bother with this.” My stomach twisted as I read the comment on my phone. “Wow. It’s gotta be someone who knows you’re together. I’ll bet you ten—no, twenty—bucks it’s someone from school.” People said things online they’d never say IRL. Just like that snotface brat Tessa in Caelyn’s grade who bashed her on Insta, but apparently never said more than two words to her at school.