His mother’s proud smile slowly turned into a smirk.

“That’s right, Mom,” Nathan said. “The thing you always complained I did too much of is the thing I finally like about that stupid school.”

Not that enjoying the eSports club was enough to let Nathan forgive his mom for forcing him to leave his friends and move halfway across the country to this two-stoplight dump of a town. Back when they first moved, he loved how his mother kept saying, “Don’t worry, Nate, you’ll make new friends.” Yeah, right! Like making friends is the easiest thing in the world. “Just smile and introduce yourself,” she said. Sure, Mom, he thought. Introduce himself to who? Know who wants to be your friend when you’re a new kid at school? Losers, that’s who.

His mother didn’t understand that it wasn’t only about making new friends. It was about having to reestablish himself. He hadn’t lost just his old friends when he and his mom moved to Ironville. He’d lost his place, his position. He’d been popular at his old school. A winner. Someone who got invited to do stuff. Someone kids wanted to sit with at lunch.

Now he had to begin all over again. He’d even had to start playing a new video game. For the past month he’d grinded TGW each night. It finally paid off today with that triple kill and his squad’s win.

But as far as Nathan was concerned, this was just the first step toward a much bigger goal. The problem with the eSports club was that there was no one in it he really wanted to be friends with. Caleb seemed pretty smart, but he was too buttoned-up and goody-two-shoes for Nathan’s taste. The captain of the squad, Emma, was okay, but outside of the club she could be really quiet and withdrawn….Definitely not one of the popular kids. And the weird guy, Zach? Nathan had canceled him the second he’d laid eyes on him.

As far as the kids on the other squad, Crosby was just a clinger-on to Gavin, who struck Nathan as the last guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley. Tyler was too much of a joker to be able to tolerate for long. And that left Mackenzie, who was both stylish and mean enough to be popular but somehow didn’t appear to connect with the girls Nathan had identified as the red-hot core of the seventh-grade social scene. Girls like Bethany Willis and Tanisha Proctor, who Nathan knew only by sight for now but who he would have to get to know better if he ever hoped to get where he wanted to go. At best, the eSports club was only a start, and little more than the first tiny rung up a long, long ladder.

One of the things Emma both liked and disliked about herself was her need to know. In one way she was proud that whenever there was a question about something she didn’t know, she felt compelled to look it up. But it could be annoying, too. Especially with questions to which there were no obvious answers. Like, where had life come from? And how did the universe begin? And why were some girls, like her, stuck with dry, thin, curly hair? And was there anything she could do to become less anxious and more self-assured and outgoing? Maybe the answer to the last question was: stop being such a nerd and always looking things up!