Pwned

by Shannen Crane Camp

Genres: Young Adult; YA Romance

Synopsis

A Gamer Girl/Gamer Boy Romance

Reagan West has the perfect life. She’s gorgeous, she’s popular, and she’s at the tip-top of the high school food chain as co-captain of the cheer leading squad. She’s also best friends with the most evil girl in Albany, Tawny Perez, which means she’s never on the receiving end of Tawny’s wrath. 

The only trouble in Reagan’s perfect life comes from the constant threat of her fellow classmates discovering her dirty little secret—Reagan West is a closet gamer. 

What’s more, Reagan absolutely hates her role as the evil cheerleader. But, as any teenager knows, it’s better to suppress your own nerdy tendencies than to submit to a lifetime of being shoved into lockers. So, Reagan bravely soldiers on as a reluctant bully . . . until a cute boy from her guild moves to her school and becomes Tawny’s next target. The good-looking newcomer threatens to reveal Reagan’s nerdy little secret and force her to come to terms with who she truly is. Now Reagan has to decide if she’s going to defend her fellow geeks, or if she’ll continue to be a total troll.

Readers of LitRPG will enjoy this high school gamer romance.

Release date: October 19, 2015

Publisher: Future House Publishing

Print pages: 189

Sample

Hairspray permeated the air and pom-pom strings littered the girls’ locker room like the aftermath of a particularly bad hurricane—if that hurricane happened to hit the Miss USA pageant, that is. The mood was dismal, considering that it was halftime for our school’s homecoming game. Normally at this time, Tawny and I would be pumping up the rest of the Squad and prepping them to run back onto the field.

But not today.

Today, our team was epically failing and needed more than just a few screaming girls in short skirts. They needed a miracle. A full-blown $40.00-expansion-pack-where-they-introduce-flying-mounts type of miracle.

“Well, I’m not going to lie to you and say we’ll win for sure, but I will tell you that if we do all we can, we might actually stand a chance,” I said to the group of sullen cheerleaders lining the benches. The sea of drooping blonde heads showed a less than enthusiastic reaction to my rallying attempt. They had even stopped applying their lip gloss.

Things were serious.

“Reagan, our yelling some bogus cheer isn’t going to make our team suck any less. It’s just going to make us look like idiots for cheering for a sinking ship,” Ashleigh whined from the back of the group. She wasn’t helping my little pep talk at all.

“Shut it, Ashleigh.” Tawny threw back at her icily. “You’re just mad because you gained too much weight to be a flyer this year, fatty.” Ashleigh shut up—she wasn’t stupid. Even Seniors like her wouldn’t get on Tawny’s bad side.

I was definitely losing them. The chilly November air wasn’t brightening our spirits in a big way, but I was co-captain and I needed to fix this, since Tawny was obviously not taking her responsibility seriously.

I was like the last DPS Ranger in a raid full of Healers. They were cute, but they were also squishy, and right now they needed someone to bring the power back to the guild. Or squad. Whatever you wanted to call it.

Right, I needed to focus.

I could be a butt-kicking level 85 hunter on my own time, when I was in the privacy of my own room. There was absolutely no way I wanted to let that little secret slip out accidentally while I was trying to rally the troops. Friends or not, the Squad would eat me alive if they knew I played nerdy online games, and that would be the end of me. I would have committed social suicide.

Luckily, I was kind of a pro at hiding my nerdy little secret.

You see, there was the normal, pretty, popular cheerleader “me,” who got manicures and spent two hours doing her hair in the morning, and then there was the other “me,” who could kick your sorry noob butt in two seconds flat using only a keyboard and mouse.

At times, I wished I wasn’t so obsessed with something as completely dorky as a video game. I mean, what self-respecting member of the Squad would call herself a true Pirate when she spent her weekends farming for gold and raiding with people she had never met?

But in all fairness, it wasn’t my fault. The game—Voyager’s Quest—was so incredibly addicting, and it was slightly possible that I was a nerd at heart. I had just been fortunate enough (unlike most nerds) to learn at an early age that life isn’t like a movie. When you embrace what you love, you end up getting stuffed into a locker; you don’t suddenly become popular because your peers realize they’ve been wrong about nerds all along.

This wasn’t some after school special.

I had an excellent sense of self-preservation and that meant being a mean girl by association. I was what I liked to call a “passive plastic.” I wasn’t a mean person myself, but because I stood by and let Tawny get away with whatever she wanted, I was just as guilty as she was.

It was kind of a cop-out on my part, and it did suck a little, but you know what sucked more? Being shoved in a locker with gum in your hair.

It could be pretty difficult balancing two lives, but I actually managed fine unless I was under a lot of stress—like being the co-captain of a cheerleading squad rooting for a losing team.

I shook my head until my tight blonde ponytail swung back and forth, trying to clear my thoughts.

“All right, we need to focus, not sit here and insult each other or our team. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to cheer like we mean it, because even if we lose, we’re going to a party at Tawny’s house after the game. So stop being a bunch of whining babies and cheer!” I yelled at them.

The mention of an unsupervised party seemed to get them pumped, or at least made the situation seem less dire. With that, they all grabbed their pom-poms and ran out the double doors onto the field, screaming like they thought we’d win.



We didn’t, of course.

We got completely murdered.

The final score of our oh-so-memorable homecoming game was 45-10, and from what I saw, the quarterback got sacked at least six times. That didn’t bother me too much though, since I had never really cared about our football team and its legendary losing streak. The Squad was awesome, and that was all that mattered. The fact that our team sucked so much only meant that more people watched us instead of the massacre happening on the field.

So, in a way, I guess I was glad they were awful. More airtime for us, right?

As my boyfriend Zane and I drove up to Tawny’s house in his new black truck, I gave him a play-by-play of the game. He claimed he couldn’t make it because he had homework to do, but we both knew that was a lie. Zane couldn’t stand football. He had a chip on his shoulder about football because it stole the name of his game—soccer. He felt that soccer was a real man’s sport and the soccer team were the ones who deserved to have the Squad cheering at their games, not the heavily padded babies on our football team.

His words, not mine.

Even though he was pretty childish about it most of the time, I had to admit that I did sort of agree with him. It would be nice to cheer for a winning team for once, although that didn’t excuse him from refusing to come to the games to watch me cheer. He was definitely always going to be in the doghouse for that one.

Some supportive boyfriend.

The thick beams of Zane’s headlights cut through the fog of the chilly Oregon night, but the thought of dipping into Tawny’s parents’ hot tub made the chill so worth it. It was one of the only ways to stay warm in Oregon, plus showing off my cute bikini always made me happy.

“Rae, which swimsuit did you bring? The red one or the blue one?” Zane asked, acting more interested in that topic than he had in my whole speech about the football team.

“It’s not blue, Zane, it’s teal,” I corrected, slightly irritated that he obviously hadn’t listened to a word I’d said. “And yes, I brought the teal one.”

“Awesome,” he replied with a grin. I shook my head at him in annoyance. He was such a boy.

We ended up having to park pretty far away from Tawny’s house, thanks to the tons of uninvited guests who had suddenly decided to make an appearance. I could see kids from school running up the lawn in their flip-flops and bikinis even though it could only be forty degrees outside, at the most.

Tawny’s parents lived in a huge house surrounded by even bigger pine trees. I always joked that her parents pretty much owned the whole forest, which was kind of true. Her dad was some sort of contractor, and her mom was what we called a “professional writer,” although the only writing she did was writing her name on the back of a check.

The good thing about her parents’ ridiculous amounts of money was that they were gone most of the time to different exotic places. They would just leave Tawny the credit card and say, “Be reasonable,” which meant, “Don’t spend more than $1,000 on a shirt.” I would be jealous if I didn’t benefit so much from it.

I slammed the truck door, wanting to get into the hot tub before I turned into a human icicle, but my actions apparently upset my overly sensitive boyfriend.

“Rae!” Zane whined. “How many times do I have to tell you not to slam the doors? This truck is brand new!”

“Oh my gosh, Zane. It’s a truck. It doesn’t have feelings. Now hurry up before we freeze,” I threw back at him.

Zane and I had kind of a love-hate relationship. We’d bicker all the time like an old married couple, but deep down we were really happy together. He’d get mad at me for spending too much time doing my makeup and correcting his names for colors, and I’d get mad at him for talking about his truck like it had feelings . . . which it didn’t.

Honestly, though, his dad bought him the truck as an early graduation present, and it had been love at first sight. I had to remind him which of us was his girlfriend sometimes.

Once Zane and I made our way through the throngs of high school students into Tawny’s backyard, we set our stuff down and I quickly stripped down to my teal bikini. I spotted Tawny almost at once, without even seeing her face. She was standing with one hand on her waist, her hip jutting out to the side like a supermodel.

Tawny always stood like she was posing. In fact, it was the only way I could tell she was having a good day, most of the time. She was pretty awful to the majority of people around her, except for Zane and me, of course, so it could be hard to tell if she was in a sour mood or just being herself. The model pose gave it away most days. If she was really upset about something, she’d stop posing and start thinking, although that rarely happened.

As soon as Tawny caught sight of me, her dark brown eyes lit up and her generous lips parted in a wicked smile. She tossed her black hair over her very tan shoulder and bounded over.

“Ohmigosh Reagan, it’s about time you got here!” Tawny squealed. “Oh, cute bathing suit! Teal is definitely your color.”

I shot Zane a look to say, “I told you so,” before turning my attention back to the party.

“Mom sent over a bunch of this spicy Mexican candy from wherever they are. Something about getting in touch with my heritage,” Tawny said. She rolled her eyes as if this was as pathetic as the time her mom hired a tutor to teach her Spanish. “So I’m throwing it in the cups of all the losers who shouldn’t be at my party,” she finished with a triumphant smile, indicating that I should be proud of her for this petty bit of cruelty. “I’ll do it when they aren’t looking, of course. Maybe you can distract them?”

“Sounds like fun,” I said with a semi-fake smile.

I loved Tawny—I really did—and most days I was happy to pick on the underlings with her, but standing out there in the freezing night air, all I wanted to do was jump into the hot tub.

But of course, since I didn’t have a good excuse to forgo the de-geeking, my relaxing night looked like it would turn into me aiding Tawny on her personal vendetta against the nerds. This only solidified my resolve to keep my popular life and gaming life separate. The last thing I needed was Tawny as an enemy.

She could be a complete troll.

Saturday was a welcome relief from the long week at school. I had told Zane I would be busy most of the day, which suited him just fine. He wasn’t a hovering kind of boyfriend. He was more than happy spending a day with the guys doing whatever guys did.

Well . . . doing whatever popular guys did, anyway. I knew exactly how nerdy guys spent their Saturdays, since I was with them most of the time.

Tawny was a bit harder to convince. She had apparently tried to plan out a whole day of fun for us, but I informed her in the morning that I had some chores to do. Technically this wasn’t a lie, since my mom had asked me to put the dishes away only minutes before Tawny called.

“Your life is a bummer,” she said very seriously on the other end of the line. It sounded as though she’d come to this conclusion after many hours of pondering and was now revealing it to me like a doctor telling a patient they had some awful disease.

“I know. My mom’s a real slave driver, huh?” I responded sarcastically.

“I’m just saying, haven’t they ever heard of a maid?”

“I don’t know. Have your parents ever heard of a vacuum? Supposedly they’re not that difficult to use.” I heard Tawny snort a suppressed laugh over the phone.

“Touché,” she responded. “Well, call me when you’re done being the family servant, all right?”

“’Kay, I will,” I said as I slid my phone shut.

I did feel a little bad telling Tawny I had loads of chores to do when I really just had to put the already-clean dishes into the cupboard, but I couldn’t abandon my guild in their time of need. Besides, I had this raid set up way before Tawny called to do “fun things” all day.

“Who was that, Reagan?” my mom asked from the other room as I put the last plate in the cupboard.

“Tawny,” I replied, popping a strawberry into my mouth.

Normally I’d sit at my desk with a bag of chips and a soda when raid time came around, but since it was cheering season, I actually had to keep in shape. I picked up my bowl of strawberries and a huge glass of ice water and headed to my room.

“Are you going out with her today?”

“Nope,” I replied quickly, my mouth full.

“Oh,” my mom answered, sounding like realization was dawning on her but she was still trying to hint that I should go out and be a normal cheerleader. “Are you going out with Zane later?”

“No, I’ve got some stuff I need to do on the computer,” I said meaningfully, letting her know her efforts at having any “normal” children were futile. She was stuck with the genius son and the nerd daughter. I gave her one last shrug before retreating into the safety of my room.

Once inside, I set up my official raid station. I had everything I needed—food, drinks, my headphones (complete with microphone), and my computer. It looked like paradise. To top the experience off, I had my proper raid wardrobe on: sweat pants, a tank top, a ponytail, and not one speck of makeup. It made the whole raiding experience so much more enjoyable when you were comfortable.

“All right, let’s get this started,” I said to myself, booting up the game and smiling as I typed in my username and password.

My character screen popped up and I scanned the names guiltily. I had a bad habit of getting bored with my higher level characters and creating twenty low-level characters, just to see what the class was like. My mouse clicked on my highest level character, Xandris. She was the one I’d take into the raid today.

Xandris was my hunter, which pretty much meant she rocked at killing things. She got to stand back and kill stuff with a bow and arrows while everyone else in the guild got hit by the boss. I always loved the intricacies of raiding; how everything worked together to make a perfect machine.

We had me, the hunter, who did massive damage per second, or DPS as we said in-game. Then there was Rekrap, our necromancer. He did quite a bit of DPS as well, but he was much easier to kill than me . . . I liked to call him squishy because you hit him a few times, then bam, he’s dead. Then we had our tank, Kaydinn. He was our paladin, so he took most of the hits. . .