Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

And another day went to hell

When the lesson ended I almost ran out of the classroom. Just having the mask in my bag made me feel like I was once again shoplifting in the local candy store. Sure, I only shoplifted once — another dare from Hannah and Mark, my part-time enemy, that I regret agreeing to do — but that fear of being caught redhanded wasn't something I could forget.

The fact that our whole area was threatened also played a part in my distress. I simply couldn't believe that this new villain was stupid enough to take on Maximum Fury. As greatly as I disliked our prick of a protector, I'd rather not have my home destroyed because of a stupid wannabe bad guy.

It all just felt like it was made to go wrong. Like, really, really wrong.

I stashed the mask in my locker, hiding it as well as possible so that no one would notice it when I went back there to get my books and so that you couldn't see it easily if you happened to open the locker.

Not that anyone would suspect me, but you could never be sure. Alex Henderson, the same Alex who accidentally dropped slime on Hannah's hair in the year 3 play, was said to hold knowledge of all the locker codes and Mark, my sworn enemy, probably knows my code and might go looking for sweets or something. I wasn't taking any risks.

So I kept it in there until school finished for the day, which was at half past four that particular day.

"Are you already heading home?" Hannah asked me as I was gathering my things from my locker, including the mask. "Don't you have club on Thursdays?"

Hannah was right, Games Club was my home on regular Monday and Thursday afternoons.

We had a chess piece as a logo even though we never actually played chess. Mostly, we played video games on the old and shitty TV that the AV Club let us borrow permanently, we had a monthly Worms tournament since that and Ratchet and Clank were two of the few games that worked on the PS2 that our budget had allowed us to get.

That, or we arranged for a long roleplaying adventure to kill time.

One time Celia Brown, our usual DM and easily the most chill person on earth, suggested poker as a possible addition to our list of games but we stopped playing that after Darwin Hart, our club president, lost a game to Mary Anthler, captain of the lacrosse team, and since then there was a strict no-poker rule in the club.

It was quite funny, actually, because the School Paper covered the whole thing. "President of Games Club loses poker game to the lacrosse captain," "Games Club deems poker a 'stupid-ass overrated game' after a humiliating defeat to the lacrosse captain," and "Games Club's pride takes a blow — bans poker after one loss to the lacrosse captain," were only some of the titles. Then some days later the AV Club made a short documentary about how poker shouldn't be allowed and how literature and media, especially news papers, often mislead people to think of it as an intelligent game. That was the start of the AV Club vs School Paper feud, which had just had its one year anniversary.

"Not today, half of the club couldn't make it to school so Darwin let us have the day off," I answered her.

"Can we, ehm, talk for a minute then?" she carefully asked me, suspiciously checking our surroundings.

I knew where that was going. Anyone would and I won't pretend that I was stupid. "Hannah, I won't tell and I'm sure no one heard, just don't post the classified things on your blog. I really don't want you to get in trouble."

She grinned. It was typical Hannah, really, taking such a serious thing with a laugh and switching from serious to far from it in a matter of seconds. "I'm not that idiotic, Jamie, and either way, it's not like they're gonna find me just by looking at my blog."