They could barely wait for second period.
They came out from the basement as the sun came up, unkempt and bleary from their all-nighter, and tried to stay awake through first period. Charlie kept looking at the strange new message from God:
Come to 8710 S. Wayland
Alone—Don’t tell or it goes away.
Social Control—You earned it.
Don’t tell or it goes away.
Why was the Game trying to separate him from his friends?
He googled the address. Just a strip mall. Nothing more.
The bell rang, and they filed into Earth Science—except Vanhi, who had art—exchanging nervous, eager glances.
When Kurt Ellers strode in, taking his seat next to Caitlyn Lacey and putting a proprietary hand on her ass without looking across the aisle of desks, they smiled.
Maybe Peter smiled a little more, because he could imagine Caitlyn being happy to hook up with him in the seclusion of the fields off Meadow Drive, yet just as happy to look at him as if he were crazy when he asked her to homecoming. Caitlyn was the mirror image of Mary: just as popular, but mean where Mary was kind, cruel where Mary was curious and open, if trapped.
“Okay,” Peter said quietly. “Here we go.”
“Remember the plan,” Charlie said.
“Yep.”
Class started, and Mrs. Harlingen was talking about the volcanic forces that arose from the deep earth beneath the ocean and boiled out into the sea. It reminded Kenny of something dark and primordial, like the Leviathan, that ancient sea monster from the Bible. Like the power they were about to unleash.
She clicked through PowerPoint slides on the big screen above them:
Hydrothermal vents.
Black smokers.
Giant tube worms and limpets—sea snails with toothed tongues.
Hot fires and creatures of the deep!
Kenny whispered, “‘Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?’”
Peter began to type in the code for the Breath of God on his phone, subtly, below his desk, something every teenager on earth was now adept at.
Kurt Ellers must have been thumbing something out, too, and seconds later Caitlyn Lacey glanced at her phone and snickered cruelly.
Charlie recalled with pride smashing Kurt’s last phone, before he could broadcast to the world the image of Alex with his pants down, crying, snot running down his face.
Kurt slid his phone back into his pocket.
Peter kept typing, his eyes flicking up and down subtly.
“‘Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears?’” Kenny recited under his breath.
Peter followed the instructions carefully, line by line, just as the fire had shown them:
x = getPosX()
y = getPosY()
It would start soon, and it wouldn’t take long.
“‘Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?’”
size = getOldSize() + 1
“‘Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.’”
def transmit(z):
“‘Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.’”
sendLocation(x, y, z, size)
Peter sent the instructions, one by one.
Now all they had to do was wait for the moment to execute.
His finger hovered over the button.
One more time, Kenny quoted the book of Job: “‘It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.’”
That’s when Kurt Ellers noticed something warm in his pocket, near his crotch. It wasn’t unpleasant, just odd. How could he know what the infinite looping signal would do?
Then it happened so quickly. The lithium-ion battery in Ellers’s phone created a thermal runway, an expanding gas that led to incredible pressure within a tiny metal space.
They had vowed that they would only do it when the phone was in Ellers’s hand or on the desk. It would scare him, maybe. If the timing was right, he might yelp in front of the entire class. Either way, it would cost him another $700, his third phone in two days. That was some justice. He deserved worse, but they weren’t going to sink to his level.
But the phone wasn’t on the desk. It was in his pocket.
The chemical reaction was fast and violent. It caught Kurt Ellers’s pants on fire. He leaped out of his chair, and everyone spun to watch him hop around madly, then hit the floor, yowling and rolling back and forth to put out the flames. The students around him gaped. People kicked their desks backward. Some screamed. A couple took out their phones and filmed.
Mrs. Harlingen grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and ran over to Ellers, but the small flames were already out. Not realizing this, she doused him with white foam.
He stood up.
A strange calm came over the room.
He looked around with his mean-spirited eyes.
He was hurt, but not badly. It could have been so much worse. A singed hole was in his pants, revealing half his thigh and the charred edge of his spotted boxers. The skin was red but not open. He winced with pain for a moment, then willed it away. But the shame rose through him, his cheeks turning red.
People laughed. Not everyone. Not even most of them. But enough, seeing him standing there, covered in foam, his pant leg seared open. Maybe remembering among them the various cruelties he had bestowed, not just to Alex but dozens of others along the way. Slamming them into lockers. Calling them fags and losers. All the way back to elementary school.
They laughed, some nervously, some not, until Mrs. Harlingen flashed a look so severe the room went quiet, and she nursed him to the door, which was a somewhat comic sight, this giant lineman limping with an arm around little Ms. Harlingen, she of the ugly sweaters and eighties hair.
She helped him to the door as if he were the gentlest student on campus, and with a last judgmental look that said, No one move, she helped him to the nurse’s office.