The Good War Read online

* * *

  It was raining, so they stayed inside for gym. Ms. Patrick had them all sit on the floor. She was dressed in a blue tracksuit, a whistle hanging around her neck.

  “I hear that money is going missing from gym lockers,” she said. “How many times do I have to remind you to lock your lockers after you change into your gym clothes? That’s why they’re called lockers, folks. Because you’re supposed to lock them. Now choose captains for capture the flag.”

  There were four captains in capture the flag, and Caleb was one of them. For as long as he could remember, whenever kids chose up teams, Zach was always among the last to be picked. It didn’t matter that he was agile and fast. No one wanted him. It was true that sometimes Zach spaced out and appeared to forget what was going on. But as soon as Ms. Patrick called him out, he’d get right back into whatever game they were playing.

  So today, instead of letting Zach be one of the last chosen, Caleb made him one of the first. To his surprise, Zach winced unhappily. Caleb was perplexed. He thought getting picked early would make Zach feel good. Why was the kid acting like he wished he had not been picked at all?

  * * *

  Some girls didn’t like gym because they got sweaty or it messed up their hair and makeup. Emma didn’t care about that, but she did care about being compared to her sister, Sarah, who was six years older. Sarah was now a freshman at college on a soccer scholarship, but she could have excelled at any sport. As a result, Emma had spent most of her school career being compared to her remarkable sister, and not always in a good way.

  And Emma had a particular dislike for capture the flag. It was a game in which punchers, trippers, and shovers were on the loose, and Ms. Patrick’s eyes couldn’t be everywhere at once. Emma had seen kids hurt others when the gym teacher wasn’t looking. She anxiously scanned the players, trying to spot the ones she’d need to avoid. Fortunately, Mackenzie, who almost always found an excuse for not dressing for gym, was one of half a dozen kids sitting in the bleachers still wearing their school clothes. So that at least was good news.

  The game started, and everyone raced around trying to steal flags. While the quick, athletic kids tried to dodge their way to the flags, others hung back, waiting for an opening to sneak in. Or, if they were like Emma, they only pretended to wait for an opening, while they really waited for the period to end.

  Suddenly, Ms. Patrick blew her whistle. A girl named Carrie was sitting on the gym floor, clutching her knee, tears running down her face. Ms. Patrick told someone to get a cold pack from her office and then squatted beside the girl, offering her comfort. It seemed like the whole class was watching, but when Emma glanced away, she saw Crosby and Tyler backing Zach against a wall.

  * * *

  Nathan waited for his mother to pick him up after school. He knew he should have been happy. Emma’s squad won again, and for the second week in a row he’d had a massive kill streak. And a local TV crew was there to record the match, so that meant he was going to be on TV! Plus the whole match had been streamed live on Twitch. Anyone who watched it had seen how well he’d played.

  But Nathan wasn’t happy. Even though he was clearly the star player on Emma’s Allied squad, the TV crew’s camera had focused mostly on Caleb. And it galled Nathan that Emma had made Zach the squad tactician. Why do we need a tactician? he wondered. All they needed to do was keep playing better than Gavin’s Axis squad. And something else bothered Nathan. Anyone who watched ITV was going to see him sitting next to Zach the Wack. A guy like Caleb, who everyone already knew, didn’t have to worry if people saw him sitting next to a weirdo like Zach. But most kids at Ironville Middle School still didn’t know Nathan. So if they saw him with Zach, they were liable to label Nathan a wack by association.

  Does that sound cruel? Nathan thought. Well, sorry. It’s just the plain truth.

  “Hey,” someone said.

  Nathan turned. Two kids were coming toward him.

  “Good game,” one said.

  “You had some awesome headshots,” said the other.

  “You watched the stream?” Nathan asked, surprised.

  “Yeah,” said the first. “Magic: The Gathering ended early. Our friend Alex was doing the cast for your match, so we watched.”

  “It was cool,” the second kid chimed in. “You’re, like, the kill.”

  A car pulled up, and the two kids got in. As Nathan watched the car turn toward the school exit he felt a lot better. He was the Kill Streak King!

  * * *

  Walking from school after the match, Zach pretended to be a caster: “Caleb ‘Xtra Cred’ Arnett has suddenly become the multimillionaire face of The Good War, the impossibly popular boots-on-the-ground World War II video game with more than 100 million active players every day. A former star gamer on the Allied squad at Ironville Middle School’s eSports club, Xtra Cred’s parents recently let him drop out of school to grind TGW for ten hours a day while interacting with fans who pay to watch him play.”

  He and Caleb were feeling giddy after their squad’s second straight win over Gavin’s squad.

  “Xtra Cred also competes in tournaments around the world and has numerous endorsement deals,” Caleb added.

  “Right!” Zach cried. “Xtra Cred’s reach is staggering. More than twelve million followers on Twitch, almost twenty million on Instagram, and nearly four million on Twitter.”

  “He’s been featured on the cover of ESPN The Magazine. Wherever he goes, he is mobbed by adoring fans,” Caleb added. “Rumor has it that Nike will name its newest eSports shoe the Xtra.”

  “Xtra Cred for Nike!” Zach guffawed. “The complete clothing line.”

  “The gaming jacket,” Caleb suggested.

  “The athletic briefs!”

  They both cracked up.

  When they got to the old stone wall, Zach didn’t want Caleb to leave. They’d had so much fun pretending to be casters. Part of Zach wished they could keep going, all the way back to his place. But another part of him was uncertain. It was true that Caleb had been nicer to him for the past month than practically any kid Zach had ever known. Not only had Caleb picked Zach first for capture the flag today, but when Tyler and Ratface Crosby had ganged up on him, Caleb had come over and told them to lay off.

  But it was still hard for Zach to accept Caleb as a true friend. He’d had too many bad experiences. As a result, Zach had learned to be extra careful.

  The boys stood beside the stone wall without speaking for a few moments. Then Caleb said, “Sorry about what happened in gym today. Tyler and Crosby are total jerks.”

  Zach shrugged. It wasn’t that he’d gotten used to being picked on. Getting picked on was something no one ever got used to. But he had gotten to the point where it was just another burden like vaccinations and the dentist, another fact of life, and something he preferred not to be reminded of. Zach changed the subject. “What’s it like having them do a TV show about you?”

  “Not just me,” Caleb said. “About the eSports club.”

  “But they spent a lot of time talking to you,” Zach said.

  “Guess we’ll see when it’s on TV,” Caleb said. Then he glanced off in the direction he usually went when they parted. Zach didn’t want Caleb to go, but he figured the kid probably had other things to do. But then Caleb said, “I saw what you did today in the last round. With the smoke grenades.”

  Zach was surprised and pleased. He hadn’t been sure anyone had noticed. “Yeah, after last week, I figured we needed to do something a little different.”

  “Control the ground,” Caleb said.

  “When Gavin’s squad watches the match tonight, they’ll figure it out,” Zach said. “So we’ll need to come up with something else for next week.”

  Caleb studied him for a moment. Feeling Caleb’s eyes on him made Zach nervous. He began to blink and fidget.

  “You really think ab
out this stuff a lot, don’t you?” Caleb said.

  Zach stared at the ground. “That’s what makes it fun, right?”

  “Especially when you beat jerks like Gavin and Crosby,” Caleb said.

  Zach grinned. He and Caleb shared a fist bump. And he made a decision.

  * * *

  “No way,” Caleb muttered in disbelief. Zach’s bedroom was a shrine to skateboarding, surfing, and gaming. Three skateboards were lined up in a wooden rack. Helmets on pegs jutted from the wall. On a small desk sat side-by-side monitors. Posters of surfers and skaters hung on the walls.

  Almost everything in the small room had a homemade feel. The desk looked like it was once part of a door. The bookcase was built out of mismatched pieces of plywood. Even the skateboards looked like they’d been constructed by hand.

  Caleb had never been in a trailer home before. Truth was, he didn’t even know there was a trailer park in Ironville. He could tell that Zach was nervous about him being there. The kid was blinking fast, one finger under his hair digging at his scalp, clearing his throat loudly over and over. Caleb had learned that getting Zach to talk helped calm him down. His eyes traveled to the ceiling, where an honest-to-God surfboard hung in an overhead rack with a rope attached to a pulley.

  “You surf?” he asked.

  Zach shook his head. “Found it in someone’s garbage. But maybe someday.”

  Caleb reached up and touched the rack holding the board. “How’s it work?”

  Zach untied the pulley rope from a cleat and let the rope slide through his fingers. The rack slowly dropped until it was waist high. Now Caleb could see why the board had been thrown out. One of the fins was broken, and the fiberglass deck was cracked and peeling away from the foam underneath. Zach pulled the rope, and the rack rose back up to the ceiling. The design was both homemade and ingenious.

  “A month ago, I would have asked who made this rack,” Caleb said. “But now I’m pretty sure I know.”

  Zach stopped blinking and smiled. Strangely, now it was Caleb who felt stressed. He turned to the homemade bookcase stuffed with paperback books. The paperbacks were old, with cracked spines and tattered covers. Caleb checked the titles: Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Feed, Ready Player One, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? He’d never heard of any of them. Nor did he recognize them as required reading for school.

  “You read for fun?” he asked.

  Zach nodded. “Mostly cyberpunk. I get ’em used.”

  Caleb pulled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? off the shelf and flipped through the stiff yellowed pages. “I would have figured you for ebooks,” he said. He expected Zach to say that he liked real books because his eyes needed a rest from screens. Or that ebooks were too expensive. But Zach said, “I like to look at them. Sometimes I don’t even take them off the shelf. I just look at the spines and daydream about a scene I really liked. Know the movie Blade Runner?”

  Caleb nodded. He’d heard of it.

  “It’s kind of based on the book you’re holding,” Zach said. “Philip K. Dick is probably my favorite author.”

  Caleb slid the book back onto the shelf. How many kids had a favorite author? Did he know any? What he did know was that most kids had an act, a front, a face they put on for the rest of the world to see. One was a tough guy. Another wanted to be everyone’s friend. In language arts, Mr. Parnes once read them a quote from Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

  Deep down, Caleb knew that was true of him. He spent most of his time trying to act like the person he thought he should be. But Zach was different. Once he got to know you, a lot of the weird stuff faded and the real Zach started to show through. The kid who really knew what was going on when they played TGW. The kid who gave himself up for his squad. And this room, with its skateboards, surfboard, and books. It all felt sincere and authentic. It wasn’t for extra credit. Zach wasn’t trying to impress anyone. This was who he was.

  Zach gestured to the rack of skateboards. “You ride?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Tried it a few times.”

  A smile crept across Zach’s lips. He pulled a couple of boards from the skateboard rack. “Grab a helmet. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Emma assumed that she was going to hate being streamed. The idea of other kids watching her play, seeing her make mistakes, unnerved her. To make matters worse, the casters had set up a camera in the computer lab to show the players in real time. So that afternoon, Emma played very cautiously, afraid to do anything wrong. But after the first round, she heard Zach’s voice in her headset: “Just go for it, Emma. Don’t hold back.”

  At first, Emma was startled that Zach noticed the way she was playing. But then she remembered what Caleb said about Zach knowing almost everything that happened during a match. Most players were so busy trying to improve their KD ratios that they didn’t pay attention to what their teammates were doing. But Zach was different.

  Emma began to play more aggressively. And in the end, she did fine and contributed to their win. And the funny thing was, for once she didn’t have to worry about being compared to her perfect older sister. Because Sarah had never been into gaming.

  It was still early evening and Emma had finished her homework. There were other things to do—YouTube, Netflix—but instead she turned to Google. A week ago, on her own, she’d begun to read about the Nazis and the millions of people they’d killed during World War II. Now she read that Adolf Hitler believed that the Jewish people were an inferior race and a threat to German racial purity. Hitler believed in the superiority of the Germanic peoples, whom he called the Aryan “master race.” For Hitler, the ideal “Aryan” was blond, blue-eyed, and tall. This seemed ironic, since Hitler himself was short and had very dark hair. And yet, he’d insisted that the German race had to remain pure in order to one day take over the world.

  Emma’s phone vibrated. That was strange. She hardly ever got a notification. She went to Instagram…and froze. It was a photo someone had taken at that afternoon’s match of her looking dreamily at Caleb between rounds. They’d made Emma look like a dog with her tongue hanging out. The caption read: Oh, Caleb, you are my master.

  * * *

  Crosby drummed his fingers impatiently while he waited for his computer to boot up. It sucked that the Axis squad lost again today, but he reminded himself that it was just a dumb middle school club. And speaking of middle school, what annoyed him even more than losing the match was what happened in gym during capture the flag. He and Tyler had Zach the Wack cornered while Ms. Patrick was distracted helping some girl who’d hurt her knee. They were about to have a little fun when Extra Credit Caleb got involved. The next thing Crosby knew, Ms. Patrick blew her whistle and ordered him and Tyler to go to her office and wait for her.

  Would she have noticed what they were doing if it hadn’t been for Caleb? Why couldn’t that jerk mind his own business?

  Later in her office, Ms. Patrick chewed out him and Tyler for picking on Zach.

  “We didn’t mean anything by it,” Crosby had said. “We were just having some fun.”

  “We weren’t going to hurt him or nothing,” Tyler said.

  “How many times do you have to be told that you don’t have to hurt someone to bully them?” Ms. Patrick asked irately. “Intimidation is a form of bullying. Ganging up on someone is a form of bullying.”

  The period was ending, and Ms. Patrick had to go back out to the gym. She let Crosby and Tyler off with a warning that if it happened again, she’d send them straight to the principal’s office.

  Later, at lunch, Crosby told Gavin what had happened. “That’s twice that Extra Credit has ratted on me. He told Ms. B about me cheating on the geometry test. And now this thing in gym. I swear, bro, the time’s come to do something about him.”

  Gavin unwrapped a piece of brown candy and popped it into
his mouth. He didn’t say anything, but Crosby had to believe he agreed.

  Now, at home, Crosby’s computer finally booted up. He was glad to see that Dave was online. He’d been out of touch for the past few days, and Crosby had gotten worried. Had he said something that had ticked Dave off? Talking to Dave made him feel good. It made him feel like he was part of something. Dave listened and respected him. Not like his aunt Mary and Ms. Patrick and those other soy-milk-drinking feminazis with their stupid politically correct ideas.

  “Hey, Dave,” Crosby said.

  “Hey, Croz,” Dave said. This was new. Dave was giving him a nickname. Crosby immediately liked it. Giving each other nicknames was exactly what good friends did. They started talking, and Crosby forgot about losing that day’s eSports match, and about Caleb the snitch.

  “Where you been, bro?” Crosby asked.

  “Gun show,” Dave said. “Picked up an Anderson AM-15 and a double-drum magazine. You throw a rifle stock and moly steel barrel on it, and you got yourself one hell of a cannon. And the whole thing’s as legal as the day is long. What do you carry, Croz?”

  Crosby’s mind went blank for a second. “Uh, a Bren.”

  Dave laughed. “I’m not talking about a video game gun. I meant your day-to-day piece, bro.”

  “Oh, uh, a Glock.” Now Crosby managed to remember a name.

  “Right. Old reliable,” Dave said. Their connection went quiet for a moment. “How old did you say you were, Croz?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Where’d you get the Glock?”

  “Gun store,” Crosby said.

  Once again Dave was quiet. Crosby wondered if he’d said something wrong. Did they not make Glocks anymore?

  “Well, you know what they say,” Dave finally said. “Use it in good health.” He chuckled as if that was a joke, so Crosby chuckled, too. “But seriously, on a fundamental level,” Dave went on. “It’s all part of the struggle, Croz. Not just the right to bear arms, but the right to maintain our personal and religious identities, okay? The right to preserve our country as the forefathers intended. For too long the snowflakes have been taking it away. I mean, right now, Croz. Right under our noses. It’s everywhere you look: gay marriage, abortion, Muslims in Congress. At some point you gotta take a stand. ’Cause if you don’t, what’s next? Know what I mean?”