"Please make Alex feel welcome," Mr. Miller said as Alex took a seat in the middle row.
"Yeah right," came a voice from the back corner, opposite side from Mark and Henry.
"That's enough, Daniel," Mr. Miller said without even looking up.
Daniel Sterling. Mark's eyes found the source: two kids in the far back corner. One was skinny and wiry, the other built like a linebacker who'd discovered steroids and never looked back. Please let Daniel be the skinny one. Hell no, he's the other one.
"Phones away, books out. Page eleven, let's do this." Mr. Miller commanded, and surprisingly, the class actually obeyed.
Hugo had taught high school civics part-time years ago, back when he was building his first business. Getting teenagers to focus had been like herding cats on cocaine. But Mr. Miller seemed to have cracked the code.
"I was at a wedding last weekend," he began casually, and suddenly every phone disappeared like magic. "This woman across from me kept staring, so finally she leans over and says, 'Every time you smile, I feel like inviting you over to my place.'"
The class went dead silent, everyone leaning forward.
"So naturally, I get excited and ask, 'Are you single?'"
He paused for perfect comedic timing.
"And she says, 'No, I'm a dentist.'"
The entire class erupted in laughter, even the back-row troublemakers who probably hadn't smiled at a teacher in years. Mark found himself grinning despite everything weighing on his mind. Mr. Miller had just turned a dental hygiene joke into classroom management gold.
Not bad, he thought. Maybe there's more to learn here than I expected.
But his eyes kept drifting to Alex Sentara in the middle row, sitting with the easy confidence of someone who'd never had to fight for respect. And the two kids in the back corner, one of whom apparently was his task. Whatever game he was playing now, all the important pieces were already on the board.
The bell rang what felt like seconds later. Jesus, that was fast. The class had flown by in what felt like five minutes. Mark had been completely lost in thought the entire time, running scenarios, calculating angles, trying to figure out why Alex Sentara was really here.
Henry pulled out his phone, and that's when it hit Mark. He didn't have one. In this generation, a teenager without a phone was like a fish without water. Completely dead in the social ecosystem.
"How do I not have a phone?" he whispered to Henry.
"You do have one, bro. You probably just lost it again." Henry didn't even look up from his screen. "You lose everything."
Students were filing out when suddenly half the class started clustering around phones, giggling and pointing like sharks smelling blood. Mark caught fragments: "Oh my God, this is insane," and "Mark is so fucking dead."
Unless there's another Mark in here...
Mark looked toward Daniel's corner where most of the laughter originated. The skinny kid pulled out his phone, showed it to his muscular friend, and Daniel's face went from confusion to pure, volcanic rage. He shot up from his seat like someone had lit him on fire.
Henry, scrolling on his own phone, leaned over urgently. "Bro, you're screwed. Like, actually screwed. Whoever has your phone posted—"
But Daniel was already stomping over, phone thrust out like a weapon.
"Delete this crap right now!" Daniel shoved the screen in Mark's face.
It was a video posted from Mark's social media account. The skinny kid—apparently Daniel's best friend—was in a bathroom stall, talking to Daniel through the door. The audio was crystal clear:
"Dude, I swear I'd drag my balls through a mile of broken glass just to hear Sherry fart through a walkie-talkie."
The entire class erupted in fresh waves of laughter. Even Mark had to admit it was pretty funny, in a pathetically desperate kind of way. The kind of thing that would haunt this kid for years.
"Delete it right fucking now!" Daniel demanded, grabbing Mark by the shirt and yanking him halfway out of his seat.
Students who'd been pretending to leave suddenly stopped, forming a circle instead. Nothing drew a high school crowd like imminent violence. It was primal, inevitable, like gravity.
"I'm sorry, I can't because—" Mark started, falling back on old diplomatic habits that had once prevented actual wars between actual countries.
"OOOOH!" The crowd made that annoying sound teenagers make when drama's about to explode.
"What do you mean you can't, loser?" Daniel yanked Mark fully to his feet, close enough that Mark could smell his lunch. "You want a fight with Daniel Sterling? Is that what you want?"
Every eye in the classroom locked on them. Mark could feel the weight of teenage social hierarchy pressing down like a physical force. This was the moment that would define his entire high school experience, maybe his entire existence as Mark Lidorf. He could apologize, grovel, promise to delete the video somehow, and cement his place at the absolute bottom of the food chain forever.
Or he could follow the game's instruction and see where it led. Trust the pattern that had never failed him before.
His new body felt weak, untrained, like it had never thrown a punch in its life. Probably couldn't win a fight against a determined middle schooler. But Hugo had learned something about bullies in his previous life—they fed on fear the way sharks fed on blood. Show them weakness once, and they'd never stop circling.
"If that's what you want," Mark said, surprising himself with how steady his voice sounded. Almost calm. Almost confident.
The classroom went dead silent. Someone's phone hit the floor.
"What did he just say?" someone called out from the middle row, sounding genuinely shocked. "Did Mark Lidorf just accept a fight?"
Daniel blinked, clearly thrown. This wasn't in the script. Nerds were supposed to cry, beg, maybe wet themselves. They didn't accept challenges. "You... you actually want to fight me? You want to see your nerd face on a 'Rest In Peace' t-shirt?"
"You offered. I'm accepting."
For a moment, Daniel just stared, like he was trying to process information his brain couldn't handle. Then his confusion morphed back into anger, probably his default setting. "Fine. After school, behind the gym. You and me. Three o'clock."
"I'll be there."
The crowd buzzed with excitement, phones already out to spread the news. Even Henry was staring at his best friend like he'd never seen him before, like Mark had just announced he was actually an alien.
Daniel stomped away, his skinny friend trailing behind looking equally confused. The classroom emptied quickly, everyone rushing to spread the gossip. Mark Lidorf, the king of nerds, had just accepted a fight with Daniel Sterling.
Mark sank back into his seat, his hands shaking slightly now that the adrenaline was fading. Henry just stared at him.
"Bro," Henry finally said. "What the actual hell just happened? Did you hit your head? Are you having a stroke?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're the opposite of fine. Danny is going to murder you. Like, literally murder you. And I'm going to have to explain to your dad why I let his son commit suicide."
Well, Mark thought as the reality of what he'd just done started to sink in. The game's never steered me wrong before.
He just hoped his seventeen-year-old body was tougher than it looked. Or that Daniel Sterling had a glass jaw.