Insert Coin to Continue - Softcover

Anderson, John David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 148144705X ISBN 13: 9781481447058

Verlag: Aladdin, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In this hilarious, coming-of-age novel that’s “Ready Player One for the middle grade crowd” (School Library Journal), twelve-year-old Bryan Biggins wakes up to find that his life has become a video game.

Meet Bryan Biggins. Most of the time he’s a freckle-faced boy, small for his age, who attends a school known for its unwritten uniform of North Face jackets and Hollister jeans. The rest of the time he is Kieran Nightstalker, the level-fifty dark-elf hero of his favorite video game, Sovereign of Darkness.

Until one day Bryan wakes up to find out his life has become a video game. Sort of. Except instead of fighting dragons or blasting bad guys, he’s still doing geometry and getting picked last for dodgeball. It’s still middle school. Only now there’s much more at stake.

Stealing the Twinkie from underneath the noses of those dieting teachers isn’t enough to earn him another life. And battling the creature that escaped from the science lab doesn’t seem to cut it either. And who knew Romeo and Juliet would turn into a zombie bloodbath?!

All the while he’s losing hit points and gaining levels, and facing the truth that GAME OVER might flash before his eyes at any minute. It all seems to be building to something…something that has been haunting Bryan since way before his life turned into an X-Box nightmare, a challenge that only he can face. Will Bryan find a way to beat the game before it’s too late?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John David Anderson writes novels for young people and then, occasionally, gets them published. He is the author of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, Sidekicked, Standard Hero Behavior, Minion, and The Dungeoneers. He lives with his patient wife and brilliant twins in Indianapolis, Indiana, right next to a State park and a Walmart. He enjoys hiking, reading, chocolate, spending time with his family, playing the piano, chocolate, not putting away his laundry, watching movies, and chocolate. He likes video games where mustachioed plumbers fall into pools of lava and thinks twenty minutes of Dance Dance Revolution counts as a full cardio workout. He has leveled up forty one times, but he hasn’t grown up yet. 

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Insert Coin to Continue THURSDAY THE DAY BEFORE FRIDAY


Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

Bryan swept out blindly and missed the alarm clock, floundering for the snooze button before finally shutting it up. He pulled himself up in bed and stared through the open slats of his blinds. It was still dark outside.

That was the worst part about school days. Having to get up before the sun. That and the school part.

Outside, he knew, the leaves had turned, spray-painting branches in bursts of orange and red, contrasted with the emerald carpet of manicured lawns, but this early all he could see were shadows. Bryan stretched and stumbled toward the bathroom, dodging towers of laundry, trying to muster some enthusiasm. It was a Thursday, which at least made it close to Friday. That was something. He could hear his mother banging around in the fridge downstairs. She would already be in her tracksuit, drinking a vitamin shake and watching The TODAY Show. She had a crush on Matt Lauer. Bryan’s dad didn’t seem to mind.

Face washed, teeth brushed, he slipped back into his room and into cleaner-at-least clothes, glancing at his computer, where the title screen for Sovereign of Darkness stared back at him. He had played another couple of hours last night, foregoing his desire for a good night’s sleep in the hopes of uncovering the secret bonus level that he was sure existed.

He hadn’t found it.

Maybe Oz was right. Maybe it wasn’t there. But Bryan had a problem letting things go. It wasn’t determination, exactly. He had given up on lots of things over the course of his life—soccer, piano lessons (he still played the saxophone at least), karate, a perfect complexion, an A in math—but occasionally he would fixate on something, let it nag him, like an itch on the roof of his mouth. Finding the secret bonus level to Sovereign of Darkness was one of those things.

On-screen, Kerran Nightstalker—the character Bryan had nursed from level one to level fifty through a steady diet of Mountain Dew–driven demon-bashing—spun his sword and stared heroically, as if he had spotted a pack of imps on the horizon and was begging Bryan to sit down and give him orders. Come on, Bryan, the dark elf whispered. Play ten more minutes. But Bryan couldn’t be late for school. Not again. He grabbed his backpack and hurried downstairs.

Bryan Biggins was a level-fifty, dual-wielding dark elf ranger only some of the time. The rest of the time he was a freckle-cheeked boy, short for his age, living at the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood known for its high rate of community garage sales, and attending a school known for its unwritten uniform of North Face jackets and Hollister jeans. A place where everything looked the same from a distance. It was disconcerting sometimes, the sameness. The identical mailboxes. The columns of minivans ranging in hue from slate gray to charcoal gray. The flat-topped hedges marking the boundaries between copycat houses. Sometimes it was hard to tell anything apart.

Bryan checked his reflection in the mirror above his dresser; he looked nothing like Kerran Nightstalker. He was scrawnier, for one, and his eyes were blue, not green. His nose rounded into a knob at the end, as if it were always slightly pressed against a window. Bryan didn’t own a flaming mace, though the crop of orange curls on his head sometimes gave the appearance that his skull was on fire. He had never held a sword in his life and had never slain anything, unless you counted the caterpillar he had accidentally rolled over with his Big Wheel when he was five. His mother said he cried for almost an hour.

And unlike Kerran Nightstalker, Bryan had never been in a fight. He had been pushed. Shouldered. Tripped. But he’d never taken a punch. He was no adventurer. Some days he didn’t even feel like the main character in his own life.

“Bryan, you better hurry. You’re going to be late!”

Bryan came down the stairs and snatched a waffle from the freezer. His mother handed him a glass of milk. “You’re not even going to toast that?”

“Nope,” Bryan said, cramming half of the ice-crystal-crusted waffle in his mouth.

“You were up late again playing that stupid game, weren’t you?”

“Mrff wrff frrm frrfrrwr.” He swallowed his milk in three gulps and went in for the hug. “Don’t want to be late,” he reminded her. She tried to sneak in a kiss, but he dodged it. Mom kisses were totally uncalled for.

“Have a good day,” she called out after him.

He said he would, but he really doubted it.

Bryan pedaled hard, still chewing his frozen waffle. It was a two-mile ride to school, which some mornings felt like the Tour de France, but it was still better than taking the bus. On buses nearly anything was fair game, as long as it could be done in secret behind the sticky vinyl seats and out of sight of the driver. On the bus in elementary school, Bryan had once been forced to mash a banana in his armpit—actually peeling it and sticking it underneath his shirt and squeezing—and then eat the sweaty remains. So when he finally graduated to middle school, he begged his parents to let him bike. To his surprise, they agreed. They didn’t know about the banana-armpit incident, but they had heard other horror stories. Plus, like all parents, they insisted that exercise was good for you.

Bryan arrived at Mount Comfort Middle School with sweaty but bananaless pits and five minutes to spare. He chained his bike and sped through the halls to his locker, where Oz was dutifully waiting and shaking his head.

“Almost late again.”

“I know,” Bryan said.

Bryan had lots of friends—at least fifty or so online, half of whom he recognized and at least ten that he could remember having spoken to in real life. Mostly, though, Bryan had Oz: the self-proclaimed Wizard of Elmhurst Park and unconfirmed holder of the world record for Pixy Stix slamming (twenty-three in one minute) and the only kid at Mount Comfort who looked up to Bryan. Oz was second generation. His parents had come to the country from Puerto Rico, packing little Oswaldo in Mrs. Guzman’s belly, only two months from delivery, ensuring he would be 100 percent American when he arrived.

Oz was born to be a magician. You don’t name a kid Flash and then not expect him to try out for football. Or name your daughter Moonbeam and then act surprised when she pierces her nose. And since there were no such things as wizards—not in real life—magician seemed the next-best thing. Oz had a whole trunk full of magic paraphernalia in his closet: top hats and disappearing coin boxes, weighted dice, little red balls, and an array of colorful scarves. Strangely, having a trunk full of silk scarves didn’t up his cool factor any at school.

Bryan couldn’t endure life at Mount Comfort Middle School without him, though. They had been best friends since they were six years old and both of them peed on Mrs. Bucherwald’s maple tree together. It didn’t matter to Bryan that Oz was always too loud and a little overweight. It didn’t matter to Oz that Bryan had pasty vampire skin and seldom wore matching clothes. They had marked their territory, and that was enough.

“Okay, so I was watching episode fourteen of The Firelight Chronicles again last night, and I think I know who’s behind the Enigma Virus,” Oz began breathlessly.

“No you don’t,” Bryan said, opening his locker and finding his books. The Firelight Chronicles was a show he and Oz watched that featured space pirates, aliens,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 148144705X
• ISBN 13: 9781481447058
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande