Same old thing today as every day: Wake up. Have some dry toast for breakfast. Listen to Uncle Carl complain as he watched the morning news. Walk to school. Suffer through geometry class for forty minutes while the teacher found every excuse to criticize us for not already being Ivy-league PhD graduates. Stumble through science class and pretend to care about the difference between igneous and metamorphic rocks.
At one point, I got so bored that I actually started reading the copyright pages on my textbooks. McGraw-Houghton, 1994. Printed by Geoff Bantam LLC, 900 Green Bay Road, Fox City, WI. This book printed on paper sourced by renewable forestry. Absolutely riveting material, but only in comparison to a five-part lecture on fractals, binomials, and square roots.
The lunch hour finally arrived, but it wasn't much of a relief. The cafeteria was loud and chaotic, echoing with the voices of three hundred teenagers taking advantage of the fact that they didn't have to sit in silence for another forty minutes. Today's menu: brown mystery meat in brown gravy (was it beef, pork, chicken, or giraffe? Even the people cooking it didn't know), canned pears that weren't quite ripe yet, green beans, and a carton of skim milk. Not particularly appetizing, but better than anything Uncle Carl knew how to cook.
Fortunately, that day there was a huge break in the usual dull routine, right after history class. One of the few parts of the school year I actually looked forward to: the spring book fair. I loved seeing those shiny aluminum bookshelves set up like that. It was like the whole library had been transformed. And I only had two dollars to spend. It was an almost physical pain, being surrounded by a thousand fresh new temptations and finding that most of them had been priced out-of-bounds.
Still, I had nothing else to do but browse through the Scholastic shelves and see what was there. There were some good books about dinosaurs, space exploration, the new edition of the Book of World Records, and the newest Goosebumps books. There was a big folding table set up at the back of the library surrounded by cardboard cut-out display stands advertising some new fantasy novel. I went over for a closer look.
"'The Sorcerer's Stone'? Hmm..."
Well, this looked like a fun book. I couldn't afford it here, but maybe I'd be able to find a copy at the public library. Or maybe I'd get really lucky and somebody I knew would turn out to have a copy that I could borrow.
"Hey, Tobias!"
Lee was there, holding the boxes for a bunch of computer games and programs.
"What's up, Lee?"
"Jake wanted me to pass a message to you. He's hoping you can be at Cyberia tonight after school. Wants a rematch to prove that beating him at 'Street Fighter' last time was just a fluke."
"Sorry, what street fight?"
Lee's face flushed red for a moment.
"The arcade game? You know?"
Then suddenly, I heard his voice in my head.
(We're trying to set up a secret meeting to talk about the Yeerks, and you're completely wrecking the cover story, dummy! Now start remembering what Street Fighter is already!)
It was going to be a while before any of us got used to Thought-Speech - never mind the whole alien invasion thing - but I caught Lee's hint pretty quick.
"Oh, that 'Street Fighter'. Yeah, I'll be there. And tell Jake he can play as Raiden this time if he thinks it'll help."
"Huh. Maybe I'll come, too. I'm starting to wonder how you beat him the first time."
"Beginner's luck," I said, knowing full well that there hadn't been a first time. I'd never even played 'Street Fighter', much less played against Jake.