If I owned the Pendragon series (which I don't), Courtney and Mark would have been together. Unfortunately, D.J. MacHale, the actual author, thought up some dumb ending that didn't include that at all. This gets me no money.
Hey guys.
Look, I know this is going to sound really bad. I've been lying to you guys a lot. There's really no right way to tell you any of this, so I'm just going to say it. I'm gay. There. I said it. I, Bobby Pendragon from Second Earth, am a homosexual. A really weird sequence of events led up to this discovery. Living in Veego and LaBerge's little funhouse has taught me a whole lot, but above all, never trust a killer. My story goes a little something like this:
When I walked into that Challenger party that second night in the compound, I immediately zeroed in on the face of Challenger Green. I sort of made up that story about just walking by. Challenger Green approached me, and I responded… and that was probably my first mistake. Green intimidated me at first sight, smirking as he noticed my eyes taking in his attractive form. Wait, what? Had I really just thought of another guy as hot? As we made eye contact, a shiver ran up my spine, but it wasn't a cold shiver. It wasn't even really a terror shiver, either. I felt my insides suddenly melt and my cheeks burn, panicking as I wondered if he could tell. Why did I care? He was just another jerk in my way, right? This time, though, it felt different. This guy was an attractive jerk in my way, and he could probably read my face like an open book.
"Red," he murmured. "I can read your face like an open book." Oh.
How had his face gotten so close to my ear? I had hardly stammered a greeting when he disappeared into thin air. When I turned around, I realized he had retreated into the shadows. My spine did that shivery thing again.
Later that night, as I lay in my clown-striped bed, drifting between consciousness and dreams, a sudden tapping sound startled me awake. A person, darkly silhouetted in the French doors, had evidently climbed onto my balcony. Against my better judgment, I crept to the door and stepped out onto the balcony. "Who is it?" I whispered into the night.
A throaty reply came from the darkness: "You know who it is."
My breath caught in my throat. "Challenger Green?"
"Don't call me that. It's too impersonal," he said. A large, rough hand grabbed my own in a tight grip, the other moving to stroke my hair, mussed from sleep. "My name is Keiichi."
"Bobby," I told him, without a second thought. Even more against my better judgment, I let him into my room. "How did you get onto the balcony?"
"Being in love gives you an adrenaline rush," he sighed in my ear. His muscular arms snaked around my lower back.
When I awoke the next morning, I was alone. No sign remained to confirm that he had ever visited. Had I dreamed the encounter?
At the communal Challenger breakfast, Green barely acknowledged my existence. The candied tribbun, once so exhilarating to my taste buds, tasted bland and grainy on my tongue. When I passed him in the doorway, he greeted me with a noncommittal nod of the head and a murmur of, "Red." My torso suddenly felt hollow, like an echoing chamber, and my throat constricted. The only guy I'd ever felt some semblance of love for had ditched me without so much as an embrace. I don't think anyone noticed my dejection as I trudged through the smoky fog and the grass to the damp walls of the Octagon, beads of rain from the night before clinging to each blade like diamonds to a princess's wrist, considering the tone of utter despondency that permeated the entire area. Ah, back to the thought of jewels on a wrist… the smell of musty fabric… warm, ragged breaths on my neck… his hair brushing my chin… Every image conjured up a memory of the previous night.
Barely audible under the rushing of small waterfalls over slimy rocks as I entered the steamy Octagon, I detected a faint hum of a melancholy tune that echoed off of the walls. Maddeningly, each time I turned a corner on the winding pathway of wet cobblestones, my vision blurred by mist and obscured by bushy plants, the voice seemed to jump to a completely different path. Soon, captivated by the search for a mysterious singing voice, I found myself utterly lost in a garden of plants higher than my head. Also, it was wet. Did I mention how completely soaked everything was? Short of a swimming pool, I'd had no idea it was even possible to have this much water accumulated in one place. My Challenger shirt was starting to absorb droplets and my Challenger shoes weren't nearly enough protection from the erratic cobbled path. To add insult to injury, I then realized it was all my fault. I stripped off my soaking shirt, which had begun to cling annoyingly to my body.
"Red?" A curious utterance startled me out of my self-pity. Challenger Green, miraculously dry, emerged from the hazy path behind me. "What are you doing here?"
Just following the voices in my head – thanks for asking. "Just thinking," I lied, glaring at his annoying smirk. "I could ask you the same thing."
He smirked in that peculiar way that only Challenger Green could pull off. "This is a funny way to think," he commented, gesturing vaguely to my position: standing at an intersection, soaked to the bone, and in a state of undress.
"Let's go think somewhere else," he suggested, grabbing my forearm in a vice-like grip and dragging me off into the depths of the garden. My shirt lay forgotten on the path.
As we escaped into a nook, seemingly cut off from the world, small part of me, a part I'd never known was there before, relaxed into his arms and let him take charge. You know me – I'm not exactly a submissive person, but for some reason I just felt so comfortable with Challenger Green. I felt right when I was with him.
"Why were you ignoring me?" I grumbled.
"You're cute when you pout," was his reply.
I wondered fleetingly whether he deserved my instant forgiveness, but as my lips parted and a soft moan escaped my throat, I knew where my affections truly lay.
"Hey, Red, is this your jersey?" Challenger White, his face betraying his utter shock at finding two other Challengers making out in the garden, suddenly appeared, bearing my neglected shirt.
White, his complexion fading to the color of his uniform, made his stuttered excuses and stumbled off in the general direction of the exit. Soon, White's lumbering footfalls finally faded into the distance, Green and I left in a tense silence. "Is this worth it?" I worried aloud. "He's going to go and tell everyone what he saw."
"That rat?" snorted Green. "I could take him in Wippen."
"You're not worried?" I asked incredulously.
"Bobby," he sighed. "We could all die any minute now, and you're afraid people will find out we're spending time together?"
"But won't you be embarrassed?" I protested.
"Do I embarrass you?" He looked hurt.
"What –? No, I"— I stammered. "I mean we're both guys!"
"Are you breaking up with me?"
"No, that's not what I meant!" I started to panic, realizing this was leading in a dangerous direction. "I thought you were embarrassed this morning when you were completely ignoring my existence! Why can't you just tell me what you want? Do you want to hide it or not? I hate your mixed messages!"
"Fine." His tone grew cold, his expression impassable. "See you around, Challenger Red."
Something about his retreating back made that hollow feeling return in my chest. "I missed you," I called after him.
He stopped, turning around to face me, visibly puzzled.
"I thought you forgot…" My voice quivered and my vision swam. Suddenly caught in a compromising position, half-naked and crying in front of my love interest, I bolted. I was halfway to my room when I realized Challenger White still had my shirt. "Damn it," I muttered under my breath, and proceeded to find the most roundabout route possible back into the castle in order to avoid the prying eyes of anyone who should happen upon a soaking, topless Challenger.
I skipped Challenger dinner that evening. To me, even sustenance wasn't worth the unendurable shame of the piercing stares of other Challengers. Okay, so maybe I was being a bit of a drama queen. Still, I just didn't feel hungry after all of that gay nonsense earlier (quite literally, very gay). Also, I still didn't have my shirt. I retired to my room early and watched the burning, bloody sunset for at least an hour until the Quillan sun finally set over the horizon. Yeah, I was definitely being a drama queen. The rest of the evening disappeared, and I awoke suddenly to the cold realization that I'd fallen asleep on the floor in front of the window. With no sense of time or balance, shivering in the drafty castle, I fumbled in the disconcerting darkness for the digital clock on the bedside table. It read, "17:00:56." Oh, right – Quillan time. I had barely enough time to register the shock of waking up on a hard, icy floor when my bed sheets startled me by rustling loudly. A ragged gasp escaped me as none other than Challenger Green stepped into the soft moonlight, harshly illuminating his every chiseled feature. Did I mention I still wasn't wearing a shirt?
For what seemed an eternity, we stared into each other's eyes, his gaze piercing my throbbing heart. His expression softened as he noticed my apparent distress. "Bobby."
My dry throat wouldn't let me speak, but I think my tear ducts fixed that. Sobbing, I ran into his open arms and let him cradle me. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I repeated, my words muffled by his neck. It wasn't just Green, of course; the entire horrifying truth of what was happening to me had finally sunk in. I was fifteen and bouncing around the universe, saving lives. I'd made monumental mistakes that killed innocent people. I wasn't even through puberty yet and I was supposed to be some kind of intergalactic hero! Finding out I was gay should have been a normal, human benchmark of my life, something I could tell my mom and anxiously anticipate her reaction. Instead, it was just something weird and inconsequential I found out while waiting to get thrown off a tilty-platform-thing or attacked by evil robot-clowns. My life was the stuff of fairytales – or horror movies. I think this was the first time I'd shed a tear since… well, a while ago. Somehow, it felt good to just cry in someone's arms.
Once my heaving sobs had been reduced to pitiful sniffles, Green whispered, "Let's start over."
I nodded, trying unsuccessfully to hide my tear-streaked face from him. He grabbed my shaking hands and pulled them away from my eyes, which he closed with two soft kisses.
"I thought you didn't want me around anymore," I mumbled. "But then White appeared, and you were okay with it."
He pursed his lips, staring up at the ceiling in deep concentration and seemed to be choosing his reply carefully. "White and I… We had a thing."
"A thing like this, you mean?" I clarified.
"Um… It was just one night, but it was a little more… physical, if you know what I mean."
"Oh." I didn't really feel like probing him for details of his sexual encounters with other men. "Is this thing serious?"
He began to run his fingers through my hair. "This is the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me."
Another night we spent in each other's arms as he relived for me the story of his life in whispers. His background was pretty dismal, even by Quillan standards, but I'd never repeat any of it. I fell asleep that night with his fears and dreams dancing in circles around my head, and my last conscious memory of that night was a kiss and a whisper of, "I love you."
That was the way we spent all of our nights. I still haven't the faintest idea how he was able to climb onto my balcony to get into my room, but it didn't matter to me at the time. Dreams I never even knew I had were coming true in the sickest and cruelest of ways. We cuddled in between fights to the death, stealing kisses when the creepy clowns weren't watching. Life stopped when we were together, and that was probably the most dangerous aspect of our relationship. It was separate from real life, and the two worlds were destined to collide.
…and collide, they did. I'll spare you the details of our other encounters, but suffice to say that they were the only happy moments of my time on Quillan. The most twisted and horrible part was that it all turned out to have been a lie. The Grand X was looming.
"The Grand X is coming up," I reminded him one night as we lay on my bed.
"Hm."
"I really think we should talk about this," I said.
"Hunh."
"They're going to play you," I persisted. "I want to know how you're going to survive!"
"Umphh."
In the end, I gave up, unwillingly putting my faith in his ruthless nature to get him through the tournament. What I didn't expect was what actually happened, which was getting kidnapped by the Revivers and thrust into the game with Challenger Green against my will. I told you the truth about that part, and the part after that, too. When I returned to the compound, Green really did ignore me. But I expected that. I expected it, but nothing could have prepared me for it. I had to betray Keiichi.
I stepped onto the springy floor of the Tato platform, my heartbeat a cacophony in my chest. I raised my eyes hesitantly to meet his across the platform, only to meet an icy, indifferent glare. My heart sank. This was all I'd ever feared from the very first night we spent together – that we'd be pitted against each other and he'd turn into a soulless killing machine.
The memory of that Tato challenge still plays over and over in my head, with his last words ringing in my ears every night: "Do you like killing?"
Maybe I do. Maybe I really am a merciless killer. If I have to save the universe, though? It's probably just as well.