Everyone was talking about the purchase at school. Actually everyone was talking about it in the town, on the news, on the bus, everyone everywhere was talking about it. Newt jogged his leg as he tapped his pencil on his desk. Jorge had been silent on the issue which made the whole thing even more alarming. He was never one to be quiet, but now he was refusing to speak.
The teachers had a hard time getting a hold on everyone that day. It was like absolute chaos hit every adolescent in the town and in a way it kinda did. The servers went down almost immediately after the announcement was released. Newt hadn't been able to talk to the rest of the garage for almost twelve hours, it was almost sad how crazy he was going without them.
"You play right?" tier nine kid suddenly asked him.
"Yeah," Newt said, trying to keep the shock out of his voice that the kid was actually acknowledging him.
"What the fuck is up with this?" He pulled at his hair. The game was this kid's entire personality, it being down probably was making him have some weird sort of identity crisis.
"Why would they just shut it down?"
Newt rose his shoulders in a shrug. "I couldn't even tell you."
"It's stupid," the kid stuck out his bottom lip and crossed his arms, making him look way younger than he actually was.
Newt gave him a half nod of agreement before looking back down at his phone. He didn't know why not being able to talk to the garage was freaking him out so much. He missed Kilee's constant stupid comments and the fact that they were just there. He knew he could always text them and at least someone would reply. Now that wasn't an option anymore and Newt felt his chest tighten just thinking about that.
"They have to turn it back on soon," the kid piped up again.
Newt nodded again.
"They're gonna lose money if they keep it off, plus why would they buy it just to turn it off?" Newt was now convinced that the mildly irritating kid was just talking to himself but using Newt to make it look like he wasn't. "It just wouldn't make sense!"
"They'll turn it back on," Newt replied.
"They better, it took me so long to get to the level I'm at," the kid said matter-of-factly. Newt could not possibly care less.
"Are you a two hundred?" Newt asked, feeling satisfaction when the kid frowned. Two hundred was the highest level someone could be, it was also near impossible to reach. You had to beat every stage, every easter egg, every hidden secret. Only Jorge himself was a two hundred. Everyone else barely scraped one hundred besides a few groups that got up there but Newt had never heard of anyone getting over one seventy.
"Well no- but I'm close!"
Newt gave him a fake smile. I bet you are.
What tier nine kid didn't know was that Newt, along with the rest of the garage, were dusting one fifty. They were good, really good, but they played it out of fun. Some players had logged times of a couple thousand hours, they treated it as their job. Newt played it because it was fun, because it was his safe place.
The rest of the school day was torture. Newt couldn't text the garage during lunch, he couldn't update them about the stupid things he managed to encounter in a day in his shitty high school. He knew that Kilee would have laughed about the guy who fell asleep and the kids behind him shoving as many pencils as possible in several different spots of his shirt without waking him up.
It wasn't until that night, until a full twenty four hours later that the game opened up again. Newt knew immediately because his phone absolutely blew up with texts from the garage. Newt couldn't stop the sigh of relief that left his lips as he wrapped his blanket tighter around him and squinted at his lit up screen.
the garage:
[Kilee] 11:45pm: GUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUSYGUSYU
[Delario] 11:45pm: THANK GOD
[Oben] 11:46pm: ohmygodohmygod hey guys
[Sang] 11:46pm: that was the most terrifying twenty four hours of my life
[Kilee] 11:46pm: HA fan theory confirmed Sang likes us
[Sang] 11:46pm: what are you going on about? of course I like you guys
[Delario] 11:47pm: this scared me, I was worried I wouldn't be able to talk to you guys again
[Oben] 11:47pm: ^^^ !!!!
[Kilee] 11:48pm: holy fuck Oben baby you have such a WAY with words
[Sang] 11:49pm: me too D
[Oben] 11:49pm: oh my god fuck OFF Ki
[Kilee] 11:50pm: it freaked me out too. I didn't realize how much I don't hate talking to you guys
[Sang] 11:51pm: garage forever amirite
[Kilee] 11:51pm: please tell me at least one of you is willing to get on with me right now, I want to hear your beautiful voice changer mods. I want to scream at you how much I love you until you tell me to shut the fuck up
[Delario] 11:52pm: I'll play with you Ki
[Oben] 11:52pm: guysssss I'm already in bed
[Sang] 11:52pm: I'm currently getting out of bed
[Kilee] 11:52pm: Oben you don't even love us enough to go to your computer to talk to us. Rejection hurts
[Oben] 11:53pm: fine fine I'm getting on I don't even have fucking pants on
[Kilee] 11:54pm: better for me, just one less thing I have to take off you later
[Oben] 11:54pm: please die.
Newt smiled as he put his phone in his pocket and crept downstairs, being extra careful to not wake his mum.
He closed the basement door behind him before throwing himself down in his computer chair and pulling his blanket around his shoulders. He put on his headset before logging onto the game.
"SANG BABY HELLO," Kilee screamed into his mic as soon as Newt was on. He cringed at the sheer volume of it.
"How are you so loud this late at night?"
"What are you, like forty? Oh my god are you actually forty, have you been lying to us this whole time?"
Delario laughed at that. "Oh no if Sang is forty that ruins your hot threesome dreams with you him and Oben."
"I do not have hot threesome dreams!" Kilee snapped back. "But now that you mention it...that would be kinda hot.
Newt shook his head at that.
"I'm filing a restraining order," Oben said, his voice cracking a bit. He sounded exhausted, he probably was on the brink of falling asleep and Newt actually felt kinda bad.
Kilee dramatically gasped. "Now that's just rude. I'd like you to know that I have girls and boys alike lining up to fuck me."
"In your dreams," Delario scoffed which Newt laughed at.
It was quiet then, a weird silence falling over them.
"We've known each other a while, yeah?" Kilee asked softly.
"Yeah, why?"
The boy took a deep breath. "I don't know, it's just I got so scared when I had no way of contacting you guys I mean I don't even know your real names. You guys are my best friends and I have no fucking idea who you are."
"That's not true," Newt said quickly. "You know exactly who we are, names and faces have nothing to do with it."
"That's not what I'm getting at," Kilee started again. "I don't know, maybe I'm just still freaked out over the whole WICKED thing, but I want to know you guys better than just this game."
"I don't know if that's the best idea." Newt felt his heart rate pick up. Ki was saying everything he wanted yet everything he didn't. He didn't want them to meet him, but he wanted to meet them. He wanted to hug them, thank them for doing things they didn't even know they did.
"I like what we have," Delario said then. "I don't want to ruin it. We all work like this."
"I kinda agree," Oben put in. "I mean, this game is like, different. We all exist in here yet we still exist out there, I don't know. I kinda like having you guys here and then something else out there. It makes it less complicated, mixing gets messy."
"Yeah, okay," Kilee said quietly. Newt heard him cough. "Uh you know it's actually pretty late, I shouldn't have gotten on. I'll talk to you guys later."
There was a click and he was gone.
"Well shit," Delario spoke up.
"Our first fight?" Oben suggested softly.
"I don't think he's mad, I think he's upset," Newt said, staring at their chat box like he was waiting for Kilee to click back in.
"I'll message him." Newt could hear the clicking sounded of the phone keyboard from Delario's mic, her ringer was on loud, weird. "I'll come back if he says something."
Delario logged off then, leaving him with Oben.
"You still there?" The boy asked quietly.
"Yeah," Newt spoke back as he busied himself with rearranging his room in the garage.
"Can you sit on here with me for a bit?"
Newt furrowed his eyebrows at that, it was a weird question, but he didn't have anything better to do so he agreed. They silently renovated the garage, using their points to get rid of the butt ugly curtains they'd been meaning to for weeks and replacing them with softer colored ones.
Oben sighed then. "This is so annoying, but can I talk to you about something?"
"Sure," Newt heard himself saying as he pulled his blanket tighter around him.
"I do want to meet you guys, like in person, but it's terrifying. There's so much about me that you guys just don't know, that I wish I didn't even know. You guys like me, in here, but out there, I'm just not so sure that it'd be the same."
"I feel that way too," Newt said quietly.
Oben swallowed hard. "I-it's just. I really like you guys, I don't want to lose that."
"Me too."
There was a weird silence then Oben gasped. "Holy shit, holy shit Sang check your phone oh my god."
Newt picked up his phone, his heart dropping as he did.
"No way, there's no way-"
Oben made a weird choked up sound. "He can't be-"
"Dead?" Newt whispered into the mic.
He pulled up the news article on his phone.
Jorge, leader of the company The Right Arm, has died of unknown causes
"He wasn't even that old!" Oben practically shouted.
"What the actual fuck is happening," Newt said more to himself than Oben.
Newt hummed in agreement before scrolling down on the article.
When he got to the end his heart stopped and he felt sick.
"I-I gotta..." Newt trailed off. " I gotta go-go yeah I gotta go." He swallowed the pit in his throat, ignoring Oben's protests as he logged off and ripped off his headset.
He tore up the stairs, forgetting that his mum was asleep upstairs and would probably scream his ear off if she woke up. He got to his room, shutting the door behind him and falling to the floor, keeping his back against it. He felt sick, like he might throw up. He pulled his small garbage can next to him and did just that, emptying the contents of his stomach into the plastic can.
His phone was blowing up with private messages from Oben, mostly asking if he was okay. He ignored them, he needed to ignore everything.
He got up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and opened his closet, cringing at the mess inside.
He took a deep breath and shoved his things aside, crawling into the small space the best he could.
Newt was the only one who knew about this. He pushed the pile of clothes on the floor aside, revealing a cut out whole in the plaster. He reached his hand into it, cringing as the rough edges scraped his skin.
His fingers reached the paper and he pulled it out, blowing the dust of of it.
He squinted at it in the dark, curling up into the smallest corner of his closet. He felt better, pressing himself against the close walls, like if he was in that small space nothing could get him.
He unfolded the paper, his hands shaking as he did. He felt his eyes sting as he looked at the typed numbers across the page.
He trailed his finger over the ink, his breath hitching. What were you trying to tell me Lizzy?
The note. The last thing he had from his sister. The note she left shoved under his pillow before some dog walker found her on the street.
Newt felt the tears in his eyes again as he pulled up the news article again. Newt pulled his knees to his chest, feeling himself start to shake. He'd give anything to still be talking with Oben then, but he couldn't. He couldn't let him listen to him break down and sob on the floor because of the string of numbers at the end of that article.
The same string of numbers that Lizzy left on her note.
_____
chapter 2 trial? IDK HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS ONE