Chapter Text
Southwestern United States, October 2006
The shrill sound of the final bell battered Kyle’s ears, making him flinch even as it heralded the welcome end of another tense school-day. Still, he sat, folded in on himself to let the other students stream by him. He stood out enough in this room, the only 7th-grader in Geometry class, and the last thing he needed was to trip over a desk and fall onto someone two grades above him. Again. So he stayed put, double-checking the homework notes in his planner, and once the room was nearly empty he slid it into his backpack along with his textbook and headed out the door.
He kept close to the walls on the way to his locker, hoping to keep from attracting any unwelcome attention, and finally made it to the sparsely-trafficked side-hall that led to the computer room. With his destination in sight, his head filled with the possibilities that after-school gaming-club time allowed. Maybe an Age of Legends match with Chris and Jose? Maybe he’d try again to get a handle on using a gamepad to shoot aliens in Nimbus 2? Ideally, he’d finally get to try out his new Digimon deck. He’d worked hard to put together a team of his favorite Beast types. He wasn’t honestly sure if it would play well, but he was pretty sure it’d be fun.
Kyle was jolted right out of his expectant daydreaming, however, when the doorknob to the classroom failed to turn in his hand. The room beyond was dark, and then he noticed the sign on the door.
Apologies, I had to step out early today. See you all tomorrow!
- Mr. Neary
Kyle groaned, squinting in the window to see if someone else had perhaps stayed in, who could let him in too, but to no avail; the room was dark, just a few screen-savers flickering on monitors. There would be no game club today, and that meant he had two hours to wait until his mom was able to pick him up after work.
He paced the halls, considering his options. There was no sign of his friends; most of them lived close enough to school to walk home, or take a city bus, so they must have headed out already. The school library was open for another hour, and he felt like he’d read all the books there twice anyway. The fallback option was obvious.
He fished out his phone from the side pocket of his backpack, flipped it open, and keyed in a message to his mother.
no game club. going 2 city library. CU @ 5:30
As he put his phone away, Kyle heard an all-too-familiar voice call out from behind him. “Hey Kylie, what’s the matter? Boyfriend dump you?”
He winced, and started walking in the other direction. What had made him a target this time? Staring at his phone too long? Looking slightly frustrated? He tried to put it out of his mind, and focus on blank-faced ignoring. Maybe it’d actually work this time.
“Hey Rainbow Boy, didn’t you hear me? Did Bryan find someone less pathetic to go out with?” It never worked.
He whirled around. “Shut up, Rick. Leave my friends out of it, okay? Bryan’s not even gay. I was just texting my mom.” He turned back and picked up the pace. Maybe Rick wouldn’t be so comfortable bullying him if he got closer to the front office.
“You sure about that? I mean he hangs out with you. What’s that thing? Gay-dar? And June doesn’t seem very straight either!”
Kyle was at a loss of what to say to that, but fortunately the front door of the school was in sight, and Rick’s volume had dropped noticeably once he’d ended up in an area where teachers or coaches were more likely to overhear. “Hope you two work it out!” he called as Kyle pushed the doors open, voice tone dripping with scorn.
Kyle broke into a run as he made it outside, the mid-October air stinging his eyes as he held back frustrated tears. His pace slowed as he reached the sidewalk along the busy road in front of the school. He looked around. Rick was nowhere to be seen, and no one else was taking much notice of him either, so he did his best to relax as he continued down the road toward his destination.
The sky was overcast, and he tugged his coat closer around him, hoping it wouldn’t start raining. It wasn’t a long walk, but his favorite path was through a big arroyo that crossed an empty field. It looked like a miniature canyon, with dirt walls almost as tall as he was, and lots of cool rocks on the ground, unearthed by the water that occasionally flowed through it. But he’d heard more than enough public service announcements about flash floods to know that he had to stay clear of it if there were any real signs of rain.
Dark thoughts swirled in Kyle's mind as he crossed the road and headed into the shallow gully. He’d almost gotten a handle on how to deal with Rick’s torment after enduring it for over a month. The 8th-grader had a bizarrely shining reputation with the faculty, thanks to good grades and academic performance, and he was intent on keeping it, which meant his bullying was mostly covert or subtextual, easy to deny and hide from anyone in authority. But this was the first time he’d brought Kyle’s friends into it. He’d only managed to make a few friends since starting junior high. Would Bryan and June still want to hang out with him if it meant they’d be bullied too?
He kicked at a rock as he walked, his arms wrapped tight around his torso to try to soothe himself. His father’s voice echoed in his mind, a warning from the epic Pride Backpack Patch Argument, the day before school started. “You know we support you, kiddo, but we’re worried about you too. A new school’s hard enough already. Maybe you should try flying under the radar just a bit?”
At the time, he’d shot back that he wasn’t going to hide who he was, and the metaphor didn’t make any sense anyway, and earned a night’s restriction away from TV and games. But he’d gone to school the next day anyway, rainbow backpack decor and all, and almost immediately faced every predictable slur, and zero other signs of non-straight kids in his classes. The GSA turned out to mainly be 11th- and 12th-graders, way too old for him to relate to, and the teachers were only supportive in principle; in practice they weren’t much help.
Maybe his parents had been right. Maybe it had been a huge mistake. “Why can’t I just have a place where I can be myself?” he groaned into the empty arroyo as he trudged toward the low dark library building.
Moments later, a strange light flashed in his vision, dazzling him. He whirled, scanning the sky, bracing himself for a crack of thunder and getting ready to dash out of the arroyo before he became the subject of the next “Ditches are Deadly” cautionary tale. But there was no thunder, and no more signs of rain than there had been a few minutes earlier. Then the flicker-flash came a second time, and it was clear it wasn’t lightning at all; it was coming from ground level, near the end of the arroyo, where a culvert pipe let water flow under the road to the library.
He squinted, stepping a bit closer to the source of the light. It was unpredictable, with erratic flares that were bright enough to leave spots in his vision, but each flash seemed to be a bit dimmer than the one before. At first he’d thought the light was stark white, but as it became less intense, it seemed more like a quickly shimmering rainbow of color.
The opening of the culvert was a concrete pipe, a few feet in diameter, and by the time he made it there, the light no longer hurt to look at, and he could even make out its source. Sitting a foot or so inside the small tunnel was… a phone? It was phone-like, at least, a chunky object a bit bigger than his palm, with a screen that must have had a truly impressive backlight. It was far enough inside the shadowy pipe that if it hadn’t lit itself up, it’d be impossible to see.
“Who would leave their phone here?” Kyle said to himself, peering inside the tunnel to check for any dangerous inhabitants before reaching for the object. “And why is it putting on a light show?”
He pulled it out and gave it a closer look. The scintillating rainbow flash of the screen had dimmed to normal phone-brightness levels now and was still fading, making the rest of the thing easier to look at. It was sleek and smooth, almost twice as wide as it was long, and made of pearlescent plastic with only a few unlabelled buttons on its face. He tried to work out how to open it, hoping to get the screen to stop glitching, and finally worked out that, instead of flipping open, the screen rotated upward to reveal a keyboard.
“Oh cool, it’s one of those new…” His voice trailed off as he took a closer look at the keys. It wasn’t a number pad, or even a tiny QWERTY layout. Instead, it was a grid of squares with strange angular symbols. “What…?” He squinted at them, tracing with a finger. They looked vaguely familiar, until he reached one that looked like a W with some smaller lines above and below. That triggered a definite memory, and he frowned, shaking his head. “No way…”
He slipped his backpack off, and dove deep into it, his hand closing on the familiar shape of a card box. He hauled out his Digimon deck and thumbed through it. Only a few cards featured what he was looking for, but before long, he found them. DigiCode symbols. They were never very prominent on the cards, almost impossible to make out, but each time he found one, he was confident there was a match on the strange keyboard.
He flipped the gadget open and closed again. The screen was dark now, stubbornly unresponsive, and there were no other identifying marks on it. The conclusion settling his mind was simultaneously obvious, and absurd, and he couldn’t help but ask it out loud.
“Is this a Digivice?”