Chapter Five
Boring
I scramble away from the screen, and then lean on one of the seats to get unsteadily to my feet. I can’t believe what just happened. How could I have gone through the screen into a movie and changed it? I stare at the screen, where Roger and his friends are just arriving in the foyer.
“Where did he go?” Roger demands, looking around wildly.
Tough Kid shrugs. “Who cares? He’s crazy.”
“I don’t think he was,” one of the girls says.
Her friend agrees with her, and pokes Roger. “Besides, do you want to risk your family’s lives on the possibility that he might be crazy?”
“Or ours?” the other girl adds.
Roger looks uncomfortable.
“He said that thing’s coming here first,” the first girl says.
“Oh, come on.” Tough Kid groans. “We were going for pizza.”
The second girl shrugs. “So go, then. Maybe you’ll meet the- the -” She shakes her head. “The whatever it is, on your way! I’m going to stay and help Roger.”
Roger watches Tough Kid head out the front door, slamming it behind him. Then he squares his shoulders. “There’s salt in the kitchen.”
A wave of delight sweeps away my shock. The movie is different now. I changed it.
I race down the hall to Eric’s room and shove his door open. “You’ve got to see this!”
Eric is so surprised he drops his Wiimote. It dangles from his wrist and the creature on the screen shoots. “You are dead,” a polite voice informs him.
“Look what you did!” Eric complains, fumbling to get the Wiimote back in his hand. “I was just about to shoot that thing and go up another level!”
“You can do that later,” I tell him. He shouldn’t complain—he’s got really amazing reflexes and almost never gets killed. I’m sure he can recover and get to the next level with no trouble, but first I want him to see the changes in the DVD. “You’ve got to come see this movie. I’m not joking!”
Eric looks at me strangely, like he’s almost afraid of me. But he kills the power on the Wii console and his TV, and follows me back to the pit.
“Hey, I thought you were going to clean up,” he complains.
“I will in a minute,” I tell him. “But first you’ve got to see this.”
I grab the remote control and jump back a couple of chapters to the scene where Roger and his friends raise the power force.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eric says. “I’ve seen this one. So what? It’s not one of my favorites—it’s actually pretty boring.”
Didn’t he say it was awesome a couple of hours ago?
I let the movie play, and Eric perks up when I suddenly appear on the screen. “I’d forgotten that,” he says, surprised. “That actor looks just like you, doesn’t he?” He turns to me. “Hey, he’s even wearing clothes kind of like yours. That is weird.”
The clothes are exactly like mine, of course.
The scene plays out just the way I talked to them. Roger and his friends follow me up the stairs to find I’m not there anymore. They quarrel, and Tough Kid walks out on them while Roger gets the salt and mixes it into a couple bottles of water. Then, with the girls’ help, Roger heads out to trap the power force.
They almost catch up with Tough Kid a few blocks away, but the force appears and goes after him. Not so tough anymore, he turns and runs back toward the others. There’s more screaming from the girls as they fumble with the bottles, trying to help Roger pour the circle, and Tough Kid turns out to be the bait as the force chases him inside it. The force is tearing the kid apart as Roger closes the circle, and there’s a terrific seagreen explosion, right there in the middle of the street, and the force is vaporized, along with the kid.
“See?” Eric says, shrugging. “It’s way too short, and there’s almost no body count. Boring. There are way more exciting movies on the shelves, you know.”
When I don’t answer, he turns and looks sideways at me. “Still, it was pretty cool that there’s a guy in it who looks so much like you,” he admits. “I can see why you’d like it. He was kind of the hero, wasn’t he?”
“Kind of,” I say, gathering up our stuff to take back to the kitchen.
“But next time,” he tells me, grinning, “let me finish the level before you drag me out to show me something.”
“Right.”
I toss out the remains of the popcorn, and I rinse the bowl, my glass, and my blender, thinking hard as I load the dishwasher.
What had I done? How had I done it?
Could I do it again?
– End Chapter Five –
