Felix the Shark Page 7

  A wail attempted to exit Dirk’s body, and again, the mouthpiece stopped it. All Dirk could do was scream in his mind as he and Felix continued their entwined and endless journey through the bleak, turbid water.

  Mandy Mason shifted in her school desk chair as she tugged on a strand of her hair that had loosened from her two, sci-fi-styled buns. She was in the midst of writing a serious fan-fiction scene for the animatronic game series Five Nights at Freddy’s. She paused her pencil on her notebook, flicking her eyes toward Mr. Peterson as he got up from his desk to speak to a student. Yeah, she was supposed to be doing homework like the other students during study period, but this scene was literally flashing in front of her eyes, begging to be written.

  Her phone vibrated with a message, so she covertly slipped it from her skirt pocket and tucked the phone below the desktop to read the screen.

  [TotalMisfit] OMG Did u read FreakStory’s latest fic?

  [Msquared] SO GOOD

  [TotalMisfit] urs is BETTER

  [Msquared] Thx … gotta go!

  “Mandy, what are you working on?” Mr. Peterson leaned over her.

  Mandy dropped her phone in her lap and crossed her chunky black boots. “Um, English, sir.”

  “Let’s have a look.” He grabbed her notebook before she could stop him. “Hmm. The animatronic looked dead, but in all reality, the bear watched and waited for the perfect opportunity to grab the little boy from across the room.”

  Mandy smiled in discomfort as the other students in the room laughed. She cleared her throat as her cheeks heated. “Just a creative writing prompt, Mr. Peterson.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head. “Let’s get to the real work now, Mandy. I’m sure Mrs. Gentry isn’t assigning you an animatronic bear essay.”

  More laughter erupted in the classroom.

  “Right,” Mandy murmured.

  Mr. Peterson closed the notebook and slipped it back on her desk as he walked away.

  “Fan fiction. So original, just like her pink hair. That must be why she thinks up such great stories,” Melissa Chandler whispered a little too loudly from the desk behind Mandy.

  Mandy gave a quiet sigh. Here we go again.

  “It’s like someone threw up diarrhea meds on her head,” Lily Jansen giggled back. “Oh, wait, is that what happened to you, Mandy?”

  Mandy looked down at her notebook, rubbing the tip of her eraser across the cover. “I dyed it because it works better with my complexion. You should try it sometime.”

  “Right, like I need help with my complexion.”

  Melissa leaned toward Mandy’s shoulder. “You’re a real freak show. You know that, Mace Head? A freak with different-colored eyes.” The girls both laughed.

  It was true. Mandy had been born with heterochromia, with one brown iris and one green iris. Having two different eye colors really hadn’t been an issue with other kids as she grew up until she met Melissa. Then again, Melissa seemed to take issue with everything about Mandy.

  Mandy shrugged, even though she felt tension grip her body inch by inch. By now, she was an ace at not showing her emotions. It had taken some time … and more than a few hurtful comments, though. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You would,” Melissa said.

  “Why are you such a freak?” Lily wanted to know.

  Mandy forced a smile. “Lucky, I guess.”

  “More like cursed,” Melissa said, and the girls both laughed.

  Yeah. Cursed to deal with you for the past three years.

  Melissa was a lot like everyone else at Donavon Prep School for Girls—smart and pampered—except Melissa was over-the-top perfect and the richest girl in school. Her red hair was styled with blunt bangs, the straight edges of her hair brushing her shoulders. Her makeup was just the right shade for her pale skin tone, and her blue eyes were so razor sharp that she could pretty much rip a girl to shreds with a single look. Even worse, other mean girls like Lily orbited around her like she was some sort of evil star.

  As for Mandy, her parents did well enough financially to send her to Donavon Prep. Even though it wasn’t her style, she wore the school’s obligatory uniform—plaid skirt, white shirt, cardigan, and knee-high socks—but she rebelled in her own way by dying her hair. This week it was cotton-candy pink. If the mean girls were going to make a big deal that she was a little different, then she’d go all out. The DP rule book never stated regulations on hair color. Besides, it wasn’t like she was a bad kid—she was a straight-A student—but she apparently didn’t have the right looks—eye color included—to fit in.

  Mandy tried to remember how it all came to be that Melissa hated her. It had been three years of bullying and mean remarks. Had it been because she aced out Melissa on a test their freshman year? Or was it when she answered a question Melissa didn’t know during history class? Whatever the case, Melissa had marked Mandy for life with a big, fat bull’s-eye.

  When the bell rang, Mandy grabbed her backpack and quickly made her way out of class to her locker, leaving behind the annoying giggles of Melissa and Lily. A pathway of students opened when she walked by, as if she was some weird creature to avoid. No one wanted to risk the wrath of Melissa Chandler to befriend Mandy. Most days Mandy felt like a human sacrifice, offered up at the altar of Melissa’s cruelty—the other girls knew she was Melissa’s favorite target, and there was no way they wanted to take Mandy’s place.

  Mandy couldn’t really blame them.

  At her locker, Mandy pulled out her longboard, exchanged books, and shut the metal door. A folded paper had slipped from her locker and dropped to the ground. She picked it up and opened the paper to see a printout of a skinny, odd-looking dog, with its tongue hanging out and its eyes bulging. One eye was colored green and the other brown. Pink buns were drawn over the ears and MACE HEAD was printed in bold letters above the picture.

  Mandy crumbled the paper and grabbed her board, slipped her rainbow backpack to one shoulder, and headed down the hall toward the lobby of Donovan Prep. She tossed the crumbled picture in the garbage can on the way out. In the afternoon sun, she hooked her rainbow backpack on to both shoulders, dropped her board, and rolled on the sidewalk toward home. She pulled a licorice from her backpack and chewed on it as she made a mental list of what she needed to do for the rest of the day.

  Finish government econ homework.

  Finish the latest fanfic story.

  Write a new entry on her blog, The M&M Scoop.

  Twenty minutes later, she walked through the front door of her home and closed it at her back, leaning against the door. All the window shades were closed, making the large house seem dark and isolated. She rolled her board in to the front closet—her mom hated when she left it out—and dropped her backpack on the settee. She wandered in to the kitchen and grabbed a bottled water and a fresh handful of licorice from the pantry. Luckily, her folks were cool like that and made sure she was always fully stocked.

  Her phone rang with a video call. When she answered, her mother’s face flashed on the screen.

  “Your hair is pink,” Mom said, instead of hello.

  Mandy smiled. “You noticed.”

  “What was wrong with the black? At least it was some semblance of normal.”

  “Oh, you know, that was my emo phase, Mom.”

  Her mom lifted her eyebrows. “And what do you call this phase?”

  She shrugged. “Pastel?”

  “Mandy—”

  “How’s work?” Work was always the same with Mom: busy, busy, busy. But at least it got the focus off Mandy and her mom’s subtle disapproval.

  Mom sighed. “Busy as usual. I’ll be home for the weekend. Before my trip to Utah next week.”

  Mom worked as a managing rep for one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the business. Her job was constant travel, overseeing reps, and taking a bunch of meetings all the time, where apparently large amounts of medicine were talked about. At least that was what Mandy knew about it. Mom ofte
n missed out on a lot of stuff at home, but Mom and Dad had always said their jobs were what provided their wonderful home, Mandy’s schooling, and the lives they wanted.

  “Okay, Mom, sounds good.”

  “Mandy, please stop bouncing. You are giving me motion sickness.”

  “Sorry.” Mandy stilled the best she could. Sometimes she couldn’t help her urges to fidget or bounce.

  “I talked to your father in between meetings. He wanted me to tell you it looks like it will be another late one for him tonight.”

  Mandy shrugged off the disappointment. “That’s okay.”

  “There’s frozen meals in the fridge.”

  “I know.” Mandy spun around on one foot.

  “Don’t just eat licorice for dinner. How’s school?”

  Mandy paused and crossed her ankles. “Amazing.”

  Her mom smiled. “Good! Oh, I gotta go, sweetie. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t, Mom. Bye.”

  In her room, Mandy twirled around in her desk chair, pushing one foot on the carpet as she spun in a circle, with one licorice hanging out of her mouth. She had Mr. Happy, an old blue stuffed elephant that used to be her brother’s, clutched under her arm as she played FNAF3 on her phone. Mandy had always loved playing computer and mobile games. She could be anyone she wanted to be, go anywhere she pleased, and solve problems in every way imaginable. Truthfully, gameplay had become her escape from all the drama at school and from her real life, where it often seemed like she had no control at all.

  One summer, she’d stumbled upon the FNAF community—die-hard gamers who loved the series for its scares, who played the games habitually, wrote the fan fiction, and theorized about the game lore. The online community loved trying to unravel hidden mysteries within the FNAF universe.

  She had to admit, she was pretty new to the technical side of gaming. She didn’t know all the coding stuff, but she was an excellent researcher. She’d discovered an online decompiler that broke down the source code of certain games. At the moment, she was waiting on the decompiler to do just that for FNAF3. She’d watched a video game theorist who had found clues in other FNAF games’ code. She thought this was a supercool idea, so she was trying it out for the first time on her own.

  Her laptop pinged, and she stopped spinning in her chair. There was a notification about a new post to her favorite FNAF forum on GamerzUNITE.

  When she saw it was a posting about a mysterious missing kid, her excitement took a nosedive. Missing kids were a dime a dozen in FNAF, but since she was bored, she clicked on it anyway. The posting was about a five-year-old boy who had gone missing seventeen years ago. Apparently, there were conflicting details that a man in purple may have kidnapped him.

  Mandy made a face. “A purple man? Like William Afton?”

  Right then, the decompiler notified her the file was complete. Eagerly, she clicked on the data it created for FNAF3 and an explosion of images, textures, and small files opened.

  “Whoa!” Mandy reached over and grabbed the framed photo of her brother that sat on her desk and put his tiny face to the screen. “Look at this, Bobby! Pretty cool, huh?” She set his photo back down and attempted to save the data.

  “Dang it.” The files for the game were too large to be saved on her laptop, so she started to go through the files online. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she’d know it when she found it. Probably.

  She bit down on a licorice and tugged off a mouthful as she checked out the content. The files were mostly images and sounds from the game. She yawned and took a sip of her water bottle. As she was skimming through the bulk of data, an image file called lookshauntednow.jpg caught her interest. Lifting her eyebrows, she clicked on the image.

  A colorless photo of an old metal building opened up on the screen.

  “What is this?” she murmured.

  She zoomed in to the photo the best she could before it became pixelated, looking for something to tell her of the location. The building was pretty run-down. The door paint looked chipped, and there was a crack in one of the front windows. There was a street name, too. “Willow something Road,” she murmured.

  Why would this photo be in the files of FNAF3?

  The point was, it shouldn’t be.

  Mandy suddenly shook with excitement in her desk chair, tapping her boots on the carpet. She’d actually found something from the game that didn’t belong, something she hadn’t seen online yet! Was this a clue left by the creator? Was this building supposed to mean something to the game lore? People were going to freak!

  Immediately, she downloaded the photo and saved. She logged on to a FNAF forum and uploaded the picture.

  Subject: HOT FNAF3 FIND!!

  [MSQUARED] You guys will never guess what I found!! Something new in the files of FNAF3!! Have you seen this before? What do you think this photo means??? How do you think it’s related to the game story??? Gimme all your ideas! Help!!!

  Mandy was so excited. She once again reached for the old photo of her brother and ran her finger over the frame. “I can’t believe I actually found something. What do you think it means about the game? Where do you think the location is? Do you think it has something to do with the main storyline … or maybe this is a teaser for something new? So many questions, you know?”

  “Stay here.” She set Bobby’s picture down next to her. “We have a lot of research to do.”

  An hour later, Mandy yawned and stretched in her chair. She wrote a quick entry for her blog, then looked at the time. Yikes. It was later than she thought … she forgot to do her homework.

  Something red flashed in her peripheral vision by her bed, and she whipped her head around.

  What was that?

  She saw her full bed against the wall. Her game posters were pinned over it. Her tall dresser and polka-dot beanbag were in their usual places by the door.

  It was as if she had spotted something move … and then it had disappeared in to thin air. A chill swept over her, and she shivered. I’m just tired, she thought. And she’d spent the last five hours reviewing files from a horror game—of course she was going to get spooked. Government econ homework was the perfect thing to give her some grounding … if it didn’t put her to sleep first.

  “Until tomorrow, FNAF World,” she said, and closed her laptop.

  M&M SCOOP Entry #216

  Something beyond cool happened! I was going through the decompiled files of FNAF3, and I found something I don’t think belongs. It’s a photo of an old, mysterious building. I could only make out part of the street name in the old photo, so I’m going to have to do some serious research to find the actual location. I’m asking around for answers. I’ll keep you posted on what I discover! I am SO EXCITED!—M&M

  Mandy clambered downstairs the next morning for breakfast, yawning and bleary-eyed. Following the smell of coffee and the toast her father actually liked burnt, she turned in to the kitchen and spotted her dad in a dark blue suit and tie. He was reading the latest news on a tablet as he leaned against the kitchen island. His blond hair seemed to shine under the kitchen lights, reminding her that under the pink hair, she had his same coloring.

  “Good morning, Mandy Bear,” he said, eyeing her. “Late night?”

  Mandy nodded and opened the fridge to grab the milk. She shuffled to the pantry and pulled out the chocolate puffs. Dad grabbed a bowl and spoon and set it down for her at the island counter.

  “You and I are lucky your mother isn’t here to see you. You’d get busted for staying up late, and I’d get busted for letting you.”

  Mandy squinted at him. He was freshly shaved and showered. His hair was already blown dry and combed neatly. Most days, he got up early and hit the treadmill, so she knew he’d probably already been up for two hours. “You had to work late. How come you’re not even tired?”

  He smiled and winked. “I was born to live on five hours of sleep, kiddo.”

  “How’s that p
ossible?” she muttered, pouring cereal and then milk. “And why couldn’t I get that gene?”

  “It’s my personal superpower.” Her dad shrugged. “So … tell me, how did Mom like the pink?”

  Mandy became suddenly fascinated by her cereal. “She loved it.”

  “Really?”

  Mandy nodded as she wiped milk from her chin.

  “Hmm.” Dad eyed her in disbelief but didn’t prod the matter as he sipped from his cup.

  “So, Dad. You’re good at solving problems.”

  “That’s what I do for a living. Why? Got a school project dilemma? Lay it on me, cupcake.”

  “Well, I was sort of investigating this game. I found a photo within the guts of the game that wasn’t part of the actual game. What do you make of that?”

  “So … not schoolwork.” Her dad took another sip. “I don’t know, Mandy. Sometimes I think programmers just leave junk in there, right? Things they don’t use? Not everything in there is a clue waiting to be found.”

  Mandy snapped awake. “Yeah? Like, maybe someone didn’t want it to be found?”

  Dad looked suddenly hesitant. “Why? This photo’s not something illegal, is it?”

  “No, Dad. Sheesh. What kind of person do you think I am?”

  His eyes widened. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  Mandy smiled. “Maybe not. I do have pink hair.”

  “So, nothing unique about the photo, then?”

  “Nothing that I can tell. Just a random building that could be anywhere.”

  Dad sipped his coffee. “That’s kind of what I was getting at. It’s possible the building was used for the game in a way that you weren’t aware of … like inspiration.”

  “Inspiration,” she murmured. “Interesting.”

  He set down his coffee mug and scooped up his briefcase. “That’s all my brilliant ideas for today, kiddo. Have a great day at school. Don’t get arrested.” He pecked her cheek on the way out of the kitchen. “I have a meeting scheduled later than usual. It could run over—”