Chapter 4: Leveling Up and Payback

Not long after leaving the group, I got a friend request from Jessie.

Along with it came a tidal wave of messages from Taylor and the other girls, packed with every insult in the book:

"Sam, so that’s all the backbone you have? No wonder you’re broke, you’ll be broke your whole life."

"Shameless, you think sucking up to her will help? She only says those things to get attention. You think she’ll give you money?"

"You’re cheap, broke, and cheap. Go play solo queue your whole life, you’re not worthy to play with us."

Didn’t waste a single second arguing. I blocked them all.

Then I added Jessie as a game friend and pulled her into my lobby.

I picked my best Angela and carried her to victory all night long.

We played until 5 a.m.

After the last match—

Jessie yawned in voice chat:

"Okay, I’m done, I’m sleepy. Pick out a couple skins you want, I’ll hook you up."

I thanked her and picked Sera’s new skin.

Jessie: "Just one? Forget it, I’ll Venmo you, I’m going to sleep."

The next second, my phone buzzed with a Venmo notification.

[Jessie sent you $300.]

Me:

This girl is loaded.

Getting three hundred, my sleepiness vanished instantly.

I kept a hundred and put the other two hundred in my secret stash.

One thing Taylor and the others weren’t wrong about:

My family really was pretty broke.

My parents ran a tiny shop in small-town Ohio, business getting worse every year.

Just scraping together tuition for me and my sister was hard enough.

Not to mention Dad still needed his prescriptions.

Luckily, after college, because I was good at games, I took some boosting jobs.

I could earn a few thousand a month—enough to help Mom with the shop’s overdue bills and keep Dad’s prescriptions filled. Small-town Ohio life didn’t leave much room for pride.

Jessie was so generous.

I would definitely treat her as my boss and have her back.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I logged into another client’s account to rank up.

Who knew, as soon as the game started, I saw two familiar IDs on the other side—

Taylor and the vice-captain, Drew.

Taylor recognized my boosting account.

As soon as we loaded in, she typed in all chat to mock me:

"What, didn’t you go suck up to that princess? Didn’t get the money? Still doing boosting jobs at this hour?"

It was like watching a wannabe Regina George try to run a Facebook group—equal parts sad and hilarious. I cracked my knuckles and ignored her, the way you ignore an ad for a pyramid scheme on Facebook.