Slacker: Chapters 1–4

And the aliens coming out of the smoldering wreckage of the mothership were dazed and slow, ripe for the blasting.

I hollered, my finger tapping the Y control, which created a steady pulse of Omega radiation that the extraterrestrials were especially sensitive to.

“Look at yourself, Cam. You’re pale as a ghost. You look like you just got out of prison. The best thing I can say about your grades is that you’re not failing. You’ve never played a sport—” 
“Too sweaty,” I interjected.

She forged on. “Or did drama—”
"Too showy."

“Or participated in a single extracurricular activity. Cam, if you didn’t have a birth certificate, it would be next to impossible to prove that you even exist! Your only interest is video games.”

My dad took up the lecture. “We're not saying there’s anything wrong with video games in moderation. But you don’t do anything else. Sooner or later it’s going to cost you the chance to have any kind of life that doesn’t come with an avatar on a screen. Not to mention that you’re hogging the game system that was bought for the whole family. Your poor sister has to go to a friend’s house if she wants to play at all because you’re always on ours.”

“Melody’s not a serious gamer like me,” I defended myself. “I’m in training. Doesn’t that show initiative and involvement?”

It wasn’t so much that I was better than Chuck, just more levelheaded.

Mind you, every now and then, by sheer random chance, Chuck would go nuts on his controller and wipe out the enemy single-handed.

As it was, every room smelled like a luau gone out of control, and the kitchen cabinets and ceiling were all black.

“What are you going to do?” I asked him the day after the Great Ziti Inferno.

I provided the definition: “Initiative is the drive or ambition to get something done.”

A lot of words had been used to describe Cameron Boxer over the years—goof off, loafer, shiftless, slouch, lazy blob of protoplasm.

“Ruining people’s livelihoods—such a good cause! Some advice, I’ll give you—don’t get involved.”

I regarded him warily.

Chuck was completely baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t get it,” I told him, poised at the keyboard. “If you want to convince your folks you’re getting involved, sign up for the film club and sleep in the dark. How could it be easier to start a middle school Friends of Fuzzy?”

“What if it doesn’t work?”
He was dumbfounded. “How could it not work?”

“It’s—okay,” I admitted in grudging surprise.

“It’s perfect,” Chuck added reverently.

“That’s the beauty of it,” I said smugly.

I bet it hurt to beat your tail against the tarmac of the parking lot.

Writing on walls was almost like vandalism.

I couldn’t see much because there was some kind of pillow jammed in the inside alcove.

I could hear them much more clearly as I hunkered down in the flower bed.

And then we all heard Darth Vader’s diabolical cackle.

And then we all heard Darth Vader’s diabolical cackle.

I used the controller to take evasive action. “He won’t get us this time!”

“No way,” I retorted. “We’re taking down McKillPeople once and for all!”

“You wish,” chortled the deep voice over the headset.

Downstairs, Okinawa beckoned—and another shot at Evil McKillPeople, if he was still online.

“Membership?” I was mystified. “Membership in what?”

I had a flash of inspiration, and interrupted Daphne to say, “You know, the Positive Action Group is really new, and we’re kind of worried about getting too big too fast. So right now there’s a membership freeze. Sorry. But we’ll let you know the minute that gets lifted.”

“Yeah...when they’re in a colony. Poor Elvis is alone, and he’s too old and feeble to build a whole lodge by himself. All he can do is chew on fences and decks and cable wires, getting yelled at by people who don’t understand.”

Daphne had a real knack for asking unanswerable questions.