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Becca

Becca Zamolo stood in the corner of the treehouse with her arms crossed, looking over her group of friends as they passed around a bag of chips. Their meeting was supposed to start five minutes ago, but they were still missing one person—Miguel, who was the least likely of them all to show up late. Something about it made Becca feel weird.

“Where is he?” Becca wondered out loud, biting her lip. “Miguel is always on time, like, to everything.”

“Chill out, Becks,” Matt said through a mouthful, spitting bits of chips over the front of his shirt as he spoke. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Totally,” Kylie agreed. “I talked to him yesterday about the meeting and he said he’d definitely be here.”

But something still didn’t sit right in Becca’s stomach. Maybe it was because ever since she and her group of friends were summer schooled by the mysterious Game Master two months ago, Becca felt paranoid about everything: windows that she didn’t remember opening, unexpected knocks on the front door, even the innocent little notes her mother would leave her in her lunchbox. None of these things ended up actually being caused by the Game Master, but they still always left Becca with a lump in her throat and a racing heart.

“You’re right.” Becca finally gave in, taking a seat between Kylie and Danny, who was messing around with his camera like always, zooming in on Matt and his sharklike chomping of the chips. “I think I just need to relax.”

“You’ve got that right,” Matt answered, winking so Becca would know that he was kidding, as if ninety percent of the things that came out of his mouth weren’t a joke. “Make like a cucumber and chill, Becks.”

Before the summer school incident, Becca could hardly stand her longtime neighbor Matt, whose mother was best friends with Becca’s mother. But something about that wild day where they were locked in their school together with Kylie, Danny, Frankie, and Miguel, all at the mercy of the elusive Game Master, changed how Becca and Matt looked at each other. They were becoming something closer to best friends themselves.

“So, interview time while we wait for Miguel,” Danny said, pointing the camera at Frankie this time. “Frankie, how do you feel about the fact that we still haven’t been able to find Elephant?”

Elephant belonged to Miguel’s little brother, Angel. The day the group beat the Game Master and figured out all the clues necessary to break out of the locked school, they came home to find that the game was far from over. Elephant had been kidnapped, and the Game Master had left a note in his place:

You may have won the first round, my friends. But stay alert. Because the games have just begun.

—GM