Felix the Shark Read online

  “It’s all right, Dad.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you for dinner.”

  She smiled again. “Yeah, okay.”

  They both knew that wasn’t likely.

  Mandy’s school day seemed to go by in a blur. She found herself zoning out during classes. She was tired, true, but she was more just distracted, turning over the possible meanings of the mysterious building she’d discovered. She was dying to see if other fans had responded to her post—the idea that she could have found a piece of important game lore was so exciting! When the last bell rang, she sprang up and rushed to her locker. The faster she could get out of there, the quicker she could get home and back to the forums.

  She spun the locker combo and whipped open the small door.

  Something popped from the inside and wet goop flung out, splattering her face and chest. Mandy dropped her backpack and stood frozen in shock.

  A burst of applause sounded around her.

  Mandy wiped goop from her face, and her hands came away with green slime. She dripped gobs of it on to the floor and spit out the slime that had flown in to her mouth. The goop smelled like toothpaste mixed with shaving cream, but she couldn’t be sure. She turned to hear girls clapping and laughing as embarrassment plummeted inside her.

  She had the urge to run. She wanted to scream at them all.

  Just leave me alone!

  But she could only stand there and be the freak show they believed her to be.

  Sure enough, when Mandy cleared her eyes, she saw Melissa, standing at the center of it all. Melissa was barely four foot ten and pretty much looked like a little, evil doll as she cackled. No wonder Melissa and Lily had been strangely quiet during study period. No need to bash Mandy during class when they had this to look forward to.

  Melissa strolled up to Mandy, her red hair swaying side to side. “Wow, what happened to you, Mace Head?” she clucked her tongue. “You’ve created quite the mess. You’re a real menace to DP, you know? When are you going to realize you don’t belong here, freak?”

  Mandy started to shake.

  A teacher walked out of a classroom, and Melissa quickly stepped away. “What happened here?” Mrs. Gentry asked in astonishment. She looked at Mandy and the mess on the floor. “Who did this?”

  Mandy wanted to point her finger right at Melissa and her gaggle of friends. But she was too upset. Too unsteady. If she talked right at this moment, she might explode on everyone just like the green slime from her locker. She had no proof it was Melissa and her friends, anyway.

  Mandy merely shook her head.

  “Come on, let’s get you to the office and cleaned up. Move along, everyone. Get going, or it’ll be my pleasure to start pulling people in for questioning.”

  A few minutes later, Mandy had calmed down enough to talk to the secretary. No, she didn’t want the office to call her parents. She told them her mom was out of town and her dad was in important meetings and couldn’t be bothered, which was true. No, she didn’t know who had done this to her, which was sort of untrue. She washed off the best she could in the office bathroom. Her throat tightened when she realized the green wasn’t coming off her face all the way. Her pink hair was now spotted with green. She just had to get out of there and get home.

  She stopped by her locker to salvage what she could. The janitor was there mopping the floor, smearing green everywhere.

  “This’d better come off,” he muttered to Mandy like it was all her fault. “Just get your stuff out, and I’ll try and clean it the best I can. But no promises it will all come off.”

  Mandy thought he muttered something about rich kids, but she wasn’t sure. She threw away some papers in to the garbage can the janitor had provided as well as the weird tube contraption that shot green goop at her.

  That was when she realized her longboard was gone.

  She blew out a frustrated breath. She was barely keeping it together. But she would not break at school. She wouldn’t give Melissa the satisfaction. She grabbed the rest of her stuff and placed it in a fresh garbage bag she’d gotten from the secretary.

  She stopped by the office to report her missing longboard, then left to walk home. She ignored the weird looks she got from pedestrians. As she replayed the explosion of her locker over and over in her mind, she began walking faster. The pain and humiliation seemed to spread throughout her body like wildfire, and she ran as fast as she could to make it all go away.

  It was the fastest she could ever remember running in her life.

  At home, Mandy took a shower and attempted to scrub all the green out of her hair and off her skin. The green dye eventually came off her skin, but it had stained her freshly dyed pink hair.

  As she stared in to the mirror, her eyes burned, but she blinked the sensation away. “Fine, I’ll just go purple tonight before bed. I love purple. Everything will be fine.” She turned away, gathered up her stained uniform, and threw it in a garbage bag. She washed the stickiness off her boots. There was no cleaning the backpack, though … and she wasn’t about to explain this incident to her parents. She’d just have to deal with a green-splattered rainbow backpack for the rest of the school year.

  When she was done cleaning up, she sat at her computer and looked at Bobby’s picture. “It was a bad day, Bobby.” She took a big breath to keep the sadness at bay. “I-I don’t know what to do. If I tell Dad what happened, he’ll tell Mom, and then Mom’ll fly back and … it’ll just be an even bigger mess. I just wish you were here with me. Sometimes, I feel like you’re the only one I can really talk to.”

  Mandy picked up the picture again—her brother smiled up at her, just three weeks old in blue footie pajamas. Usually, talking to Bobby made her feel better, but there was an emptiness in her tonight that threatened to swallow her whole.

  Shaking her head, she logged in to the FNAF forums. She was ready to dive back in to the comfort of her favorite world and forget everything and everyone from today. She didn’t care about anyone at DP; the forums were where her people were, right?

  Subject: HOT FNAF3 FIND!!

  [FREDTHEDEAD] No way this is real. I decompiled this game before and I never saw this.

  [TotalMisfit] Cool, I’ll have to check this out!! Great find!!

  [GameRagr] An old building. Wow. Big deal. Thumbs down

  [ChazPlayz] I tried to find it and couldn’t. You sure you got this from FNAF3?

  [ContrlFreek] Yeah, me too. Couldn’t find it.

  Mandy frowned at the comments she received from her post the night before. It had forty-three downvotes.

  Oh, this day just keeps getting better and better. What do they mean, they couldn’t find it? Mandy wondered. The photo had been in the decompiled files of FNAF3, it didn’t belong to the game, and anyone obsessed with FNAF knew that!

  Her phone rang for a video chat request from Lindy. Lindy, aka TotalMisfit, was a friend she met online the past year. They kept running in to each other in the FNAF forums and fan-fiction site. Soon they started messaging each other and then recently started video chatting. The only problem was that they lived two states away from each other and had never met in person. And with the distance, they probably wouldn’t meet anytime soon.

  Oh, and Mandy had learned right away that, at least with Mandy, Lindy was not a total misfit at all. She was also the kindest person Mandy had met in a long time.

  When Mandy answered, Lindy’s full circular glasses filled the screen. She had rich brown skin with black hair and brown eyes. Her purple frames were always falling down her nose, and Mandy continually watched her push them back up with her finger.

  “Hi, Mandy. Whatcha doing?”

  “Trying to figure out why no one can find that photo I posted from FNAF3.”

  Lindy sipped from a soda can. “That was such a cool find!”

  Mandy’s eyes widened. “Did you find it, too?”

  Lindy shook her head. “Haven’t tried. I’ve been swamped with homework this week.”

  “Well, I’m decom
piling the game again to see what happened. It was the only thing that looked out of place in the files. I can’t believe people think I’m making this up.”

  “They’re all just jealous you found it and they didn’t. That or there’s a glitch somewhere. I wouldn’t worry about it. Besides, shouldn’t we all be focusing on what the photo is instead of where it came from? Oh! By the way, you should try a reverse image search when you have a sec. Maybe you can find out where the photo originated from? I’ll send you the link on how to do it.”

  Mandy felt a bubble of excitement. “Really? Cool, thanks.”

  “Sure.” Lindy squinted. “Did you dye your hair pink and green?”

  Mandy ran a hand through her damp hair. “Not exactly.”

  “Oh … okay. Something like a science experiment gone wrong, right?”

  Mandy smiled. Lindy had this way of making light of things, and Mandy appreciated that. “Pretty much.”

  “Hate when that happens. So you up for a game of twenty questions?” Lindy asked.

  “I got some time.” Twenty questions had been their way of getting to know each other better over the last few months. “You go first.”

  “Okay. What’s your favorite ice cream?”

  “Easy. Fudge brownie is king. What’s yours?”

  “Mint chocolate chip. Nondairy. I’m lactose intolerant.”

  Mandy made an O shape with her mouth and nodded. “Do you have your driver’s license?”

  “Yeah, my dad made me get it right away. He said we all needed to know how to be independent. Don’t you have yours?”

  Mandy shook her head. “Not yet. I just have my permit. My mom keeps bugging me, but I freak out every time I’m on the road, which hasn’t been a lot lately. It’s on my to-do list. Do you have any siblings?”

  “Two.”

  “Two? Wow.”

  “Yeah, I’m the middle child. According to my psychology class, I have a need for attention.” Lindy shrugged and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Not so sure about that. You have any siblings?”

  “Um, well, not anymore.”

  “Oh?” Lindy’s eyes widened behind her lenses. “I’m so sorry, what happened? Is it okay to ask? I mean, I don’t want to be—”

  “No, it’s okay. My brother died when he was a baby, and I never got to meet him. They’re not really sure why he died. Sometimes babies just don’t make it, I guess.”

  Lindy nodded. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine not having my brothers around me … even if they are completely annoying.”

  “What are their names?”

  “James and Thomas. What was your brother’s name?”

  “Bobby.” She switched the phone over to her desk, showing Lindy the photo of Bobby. “This is him.”

  “Totally cute in baby-blue pajamas.”

  “Thanks.” Mandy walked out of her room, twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she strolled downstairs to the kitchen to grab a water. “What’s it like to have brothers, anyway?”

  Lindy pursed her lips and looked upward as if she was thinking about it. “Well, they’re loud and smelly, and mine like to wrestle. Sometimes they steal your fries and definitely invade your privacy. One time, my older brother stole my diary and read it aloud to the whole family. I got him back by calling a girl he liked but was too scared to call. He wouldn’t talk to me for a week, but he got over it.”

  To Mandy that all sounded wonderful. She often dreamed of growing up with Bobby as a big brother—how they’d always be together, playing games, hanging out. Maybe they would even get on each other’s nerves. Her heart gave a little clench every time she thought about it and knew it would never happen.

  “But … other times, they can stick up for you when your parents get on your case or when you need some cheering up. And one of them is always around. I’m never by myself, which can also be super annoying. Family is family, though.”

  Family is family, Mandy thought. From the fridge, she grabbed a bottle, then walked to the living room and plopped on the couch.

  “Oh, hey, I gotta go. Mom’s calling me. I’ll message you later. Coming, Mom!”

  “Okay—”

  Lindy was suddenly gone.

  Mandy set her phone in her lap as she sat in the middle of her large, empty living room, completely alone.

  She started to stare in to space, imagining Bobby still alive and grown just like her. He’d have dark hair like Mom, and he’d have been tall and slim like Dad. Maybe he’d crack jokes, and maybe he’d be in to video games or be some kind of a star athlete. Something flickered at the top of the staircase, catching Mandy’s attention—a small blue shoe was on the top step.

  Mandy sat up quickly on the couch and watched it shift out of view. One second it was there, and by two seconds, it was gone. Mandy got up and moved slowly to the hall closet, where her dad kept a baseball bat. After grabbing the bat, she crept up the stairs, gripping the railing hard with her free hand. She looked down the hallway, then searched each room and bathroom trying to understand what she had seen. When she had looked everywhere she could and didn’t find suspicious little blue shoes or the person wearing them, she just shook her head.

  “I’ve been playing too much FNAF.”

  That evening, after dying her hair from cotton-candy pink/slime green to a passionate purple, Mandy searched again through the newly re-decompiled FNAF3 files one by one, looking for the picture of the metal building. This time she was going to take a screenshot of the discovery so others would believe that it came straight from the game’s files. Then she’d have solid proof to show everyone she wasn’t lying.

  Only problem was … she couldn’t seem to find it.

  Where is it?

  It had been there just last night. She hadn’t created it out of thin air. When she got to the end of the files, her head started to throb, but she didn’t care. She started right from the beginning again, to see if she accidentally skimmed over it.

  Second time through, she still couldn’t find the picture.

  Defeated, she slouched back in to her desk chair.

  How could it be there one night and then gone the next?

  She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. How was anybody going to believe her when the proof was gone? She didn’t understand how it could have suddenly disappeared. She logged back in to the forum and updated her thread.

  Subject: HOT FNAF3 FIND!! (Not so much)

  [Msquared] Guys, I don’t know what happened. The photo was really there in the game files last night … now it’s just gone. Disappeared. Like someone took it from the files. I’m not sure why.

  She felt stupid. Why had she posted the photo so quickly? Why hadn’t she taken a screenshot for proof the night before? GamerzUNITE was her safe and happy place, where she could be herself. Now she was suddenly looking like some kind of flake that no one believed.

  Why are you such a freak show, Mandy?

  Her eyes started to burn again so she blinked a few times. She inhaled and blew out a slow breath, then squared her shoulders. This wasn’t going to stop her from finding out where the picture came from. She knew the picture had been in the FNAF3 files, even if no one else believed her. That it was real. It had to mean something to the game lore or be connected to the FNAF universe in some way. Maybe it was like her dad had said—it was there for a reason the players weren’t aware of, like for inspiration.

  She clicked on the link Lindy had sent to her and started the reverse image search. She put the strange lookshauntednow.jpg image through a search engine to see where the photo might have originated, or even where this building was actually located. After a couple of minutes, several links appeared, pages, in fact, with possible leads. The list kept growing … this was going to take forever. Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she shivered in her chair. She was suddenly super cold.

  She sighed, spinning her chair around to get a sweater—and froze.

  Peering around the corner in to her bedroom was a small child, looking at her.
Mandy held her breath and didn’t dare move.

  The child looked to be a boy about five or six with brown hair. He was tucked behind the doorway, covering most of his body. She saw his little hand gripping the doorjamb, the shoulder of his bright red shirt. One eye peered at her.

  She blinked, and he was gone.

  Mandy released the breath she’d been holding and started to tremble in astonishment. She waited a moment to see if he would appear again, but he didn’t. She pushed herself up out of the desk chair and slowly walked to her doorway, stepping out in to the hall. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but all she saw was her normal hardwood floor and eggshell-colored walls.

  “That was … super weird,” she whispered, then ducked back in to her room, shut the door, and locked it.

  Mandy awoke in the dark, her heart pounding, but she wasn’t in her bed. She was lying on a hard floor in her pajamas, freezing. She pushed to her bare feet with a shiver, trying to understand where she could be.

  This wasn’t her house, either. She could sense the space around her was too large, too open. She reached out with her hands as she walked, hoping she wouldn’t run in to something. She finally felt a wall and glided her hands across the cold, grimy surface as she took small steps. Her eyes began to adjust, and she realized she was in some kind of a warehouse or large building.

  A faint yellow light clicked on in the large area, making her blink to adjust to the strange lighting. She spotted a box of animatronic heads and body parts on a black-and-white-checkered floor.

  “No way,” she whispered. She was pretty sure she recognized Fazbear’s Fright, the haunted house from FNAF3. Her heart started to pound in excitement and fear. Was she dreaming? She had to be … right?

  Before she could think what to do next, the small boy she’d seen in her room appeared in front of her. She recognized his red shirt, jeans, and blue sneakers. Up close, she could see that his brown hair was sort of spiky and mussed. His dark eyes looked empty.

  “Hi,” she said, unsure of how to start. “I’m Mandy. You’ve been visiting me, haven’t you? What’s your name?”