Page 39

“Whoa! Is that a guidebook for a new RPG game that you didn’t tell us about?”

I roll my eyes and hand him the Compendium . “Of course not, Adib,” I say. “I wouldn’t dream of embarking on any quest without my trusty bard.”

Adib’s eyes sparkle. “Whatever it is, I’m excited,” he says, flipping through it with interest. “Where’s Ryan?”

I’d texted our D it looks like a—”

I freeze, looking closer. “Wyvern.”

Ryan nods. “Yup, that’s accurate, a wyvern doesn’t have arms that are separate from wings. Now, dragons have arms, legs, and wings, and D I don’t use it as much as Erica does, and when I do, it is mostly to like her content and to look at random stuff. “What did you say the tag was?”

“Uh, #LAMonster, #fairfaxdragon, #babydragon?”

Those tags themselves don’t bring up anything but cosplay and some toy commentary stuff. “I’m not finding it…”

Erica frowns. “That’s weird, the video I was watching is gone.” She shows me her phone, which just displays an error message.

“I can’t find anything in the tag, either,” Ryan says.

“The creator deleted it?” I ask.

“No way, looks like all of them are gone.” Adib even closes and restarts the app, but none of the videos show up in a search or even his history.

The five of us trade apprehensive looks.

“But you saw it—we all saw it, right?” I ask.

“A conspiracy!” Erica whispers. “A bunch of videos disappeared all at once—someone wants to make sure no one saw that was happening.”

Jenn nods. “It would be easy enough to deny; people would forget if they saw something come across their feed and then it was gone—”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “But if you filmed it, wouldn’t you be suspicious?”

Jenn looks again. “This account is gone. I bet the others are, too.”

Adib lights up with excitement. “I think we should go to that gas station after school. See for ourselves. See if anyone saw anything.”

“Guys! I appreciate the Nancy Drew effort, but—” I take a deep breath.

“Those things are scary. Their spit is acidic and they have these sharp claws! Kat’s world has wranglers and all these precautions, but we don’t.

This isn’t like a D this is real and they can hurt us—we shouldn’t just dive right into danger! ”

“But you’ve been there,” Ryan says solemnly. “No one else has insider information on what to look out for.”

“How to prepare,” Jenn says, nodding in agreement.

“We need to help,” Adib says. “And I vote we find out as much as we can.”

I take a moment. Right. They’re right. If what I know can help other people, I have a responsibility to share that information… and we should see if we could learn more about how these wyverns got here.

Kat said the Order was mostly about smuggling Pokémon cards. I wonder if they know that other things are getting through.