The back of the bike sheds. Such a cliche.

The twins shoved him into middle of the rough circle of leering faces where he sprawled in the dirt beside an already prone girl who was quietly sobbing into the dust. He risked a sideways glance, but she didn’t seem to be bleeding or otherwise obviously injured.

“So, scar-boy. Me mam sez you’se a snitch. You’se know what snitches get?” Bully crossed his huge hairy arms across his chest.

A weedy kid standing to his right leaned in. “Stitches, eh?” He elbowed Billy jovially, “stitches, innit?”

Billy casually backhanded the boy. “Shut it Pommy. He’s right tho’. You’se want stitches scar-boy? More’n you got already?”

The weedy kid rubbed his face where a red mark had already started to form. “Ow, Billy. Why’d you do that?”

Billy raised his hand again and the boy flinched and shut up immediately. “So, scar-boy? What’s it gonna be?”

Peter looked at the girl beside him, at the callous expressions surrounding them, at the dusty concrete beneath him. He wasn’t ready for this. He couldn’t expect a quick death and a nap in a stone box here. Nobody would be there with bad jokes and a cup of tea if it went sideways, and there were oh so many ways it could go badly. He hung his head.

“No Billy.”

“Louder.”

“No Billy.”

“No what?”

Peter took a deep breath and released it slowly. “No, I don’t want stitches. I will not be snitching on you.”

Billy took a step in a delivered a swift kick to Peter’s ribs. “See you don’t. I’ll be watchin’. If you’se do anyfin I don’t like you’se gonna get mushed. In fact, you’se might get mushed anyway.”

With the air driven from his lungs Peter could only lie on the ground and wheeze as the gang wandered off, clapping each other on the back and other, equally stupid gestures of machismo.

When he was finally able to stand he rose and lifted his shirt. A careful examination didn’t reveal any broken skin but the bruises along his flank that had nearly faded were darkening again. “Ow.” He poked at the mark. “Ow!”

Lowering his shirt, Peter knelt next to the girl who was still in the fetal position crying into the dirt. “Hey, are you ok? Did he hurt you?”

“He… he… heeee… cough… he said… you… you… yuuu… would… wouldn’t get huuuurt.” It was hard to understand what she was saying between the sobs and the fact that she was curled up into a ball with her face to the ground. “I… I… I’m… mmm… mumm… sooorry.”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay.” Peter put his hand on her shoulder. “Look, I’m fine. Bully can’t kick to save his life.”

She started to uncurl a bit. “Ah… ah… are you suh… sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Look,” he raised his shirt again, “see? This one was his, and over here was his goons from weeks ago.”

The girl sat up and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I’m so sorry. He made me hack the power node. He… he said he just wanted to talk to you.” She straightened her clothes as she stood.

“Who are you anyway? What’s got Bully so riled that he’d go to this length? And how the heck did you hack the power node?” Peter dusted himself off and tucked his shirt in gingerly.

The girl looked him up and down, Peter feeling the intensity of her brown eyes drilling into him. She had the hard stare of an Indonesian grandmother somehow coming from a teenage girl’s face. “You don’t know me? Captain of the chess club, mathlete, student council secretary and lead bassoonist in the school orchestra and you, Mr Nobody, don’t know who I am? Who the hell are you?”

Peter just stared in awe as the petite form in front of him ranted at him like a Karen with an ‘I want to speak to the manager’ cut. There was something oddly familiar about the way she pronounced her ‘R’s though. He closed his eyes and let the verbal torrent wash over him.

His eyes snapped open. “Wait. Pham? Pham Nguyen?”

“Duh, who else?” She crossed her arms.

“But, I thought you were a guy. You are the same Pham who plays The Age of Steam and Sorcery, yes?”

Pham’s eyes went wide and she uncrossed her arms and began waving them in front of her. “No, oh no. No no no no no. No! You’re that Peter? The useless one? You can’t tell anybody about this. Not a soul.” She started pacing back and forth. “No, no, no, no. If my gran finds out, just, no.” she stopped and grabbed Peter by the shoulders. “You have to promise me. You have to swear you won’t tell ANYbody that you know who I am.”

Caught like a deer in headlights, Peter stammered out, “I promise. It’s not like I have any friends to tell anyway. Wait, useless?” The sudden switch from crying princess to haughty empress mode and back again in a matter of seconds had thrown him for a loop. Add in that if he had given any thought to what Pham would have looked like offline he would have expected a tall male of scandinavian descent, not a short girl of southeast Asian extraction and you have a recipe for confusion. “Who says I’m useless?”

“Well, Woz does. He’s not the sharpest spoon in the toolbox, but he’s a decent tank and knows how to use that flaming sword of his.” Pham returned to pacing. “And before you ask, no, he doesn’t know. I made that mistake once. Never again.”

“Woz? Warren, the guy passed out at the table the other night? Why would he know a student here?” The constant stream of revelations was making his head spin.

“Because he’s a student too. He was in a car crash that left him in a coma for, like, four years. He’s still in a wheelchair, which sucks bad for him, they say he used to be the king of track and field, could have gone to the Olympics,” Pham explained. “He’s been in The Age since just after launch day, cos the doctors wired him in while he was still in hospital as an experiment. He reckons it was the game that woke him up.”

“So, you’ve been going to school with this guy and partying with him for, how long? And he has no idea that Pham the elf is actually the lead bassoonist?” he asked snarkily.

“Spoon, toolbox, remember?”

“Yeah, fair enough. I ran into him this morning. I can see what you’re talking about,” Peter admitted. “Is he always that irritable?”

The school bell began to ring and the PA crackled to life again, announcing that the emergency was over and everyone should return to class.

“Sometimes,” Pham replied as she started to walk away.

“Sometimes?”

“Yeah, sometimes he’s angrier. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angrier. See you online, and don’t forget your promise.”