Tower Climber (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1) by Jakob Tanner (interesting books to read for teens .txt) 📗

Then something different happened.

The kicks stopped.

A hand caressed his leg, slipping inside the right pocket of his jeans.

They’d never done this before. What were they doing?

The hand pulled out Max’s wallet.

“We’ll be taking this as a souvenir,” said Seth.

Max’s shoulders straightened at those words. He was no longer passively taking the beating, but very much alert.

They can’t take my wallet, he thought.

Elle’s note is in there.

The bullies walked away, leaving Max on the floor with his aching bruised body and tears.

“Should we go shoot some pool?” said one of the goons.

“Maybe the arcade?”

Their malicious beating of Max from mere seconds ago was already a far away memory to them.

“Agh—what the—”

Max clutched onto Seth’s leg and dug his nails into his calf.

“Give...me...my...wallet...back...” said Max.

Max had dragged his pained body across the hall to catch up with Seth and his gang. He wouldn’t let go until he got his wallet back. Until he made sure his letter from Elle was safe and secure.

“Ugh,” said Seth, repulsed, trying to shake Max off his leg. “What are you doing? Get off me you psycho cripple!”

Max didn’t let go.

“GIVE ME MY WALLET BACK!”

Seth looked down at the boy with drool and blood leaking out of his mouth. He pulled the wallet out of his own pocket, drained it of the few measly bucks that were in there, and then tossed it down the hall.

“There you go, psycho cripple,” said Seth. “It’s all yours.”

Max let go of Seth’s leg, only for the boy to give him another walloping kick to the gut. Pain coursed through his whole body.

“Next time,” said Seth. “Stay down.”

The bullies walked away.

Max slowly dragged himself across the empty school hallway.

He pulled himself towards his black leather wallet on the ground and clasped it with relief.

The late afternoon sun shone through a nearby window. The city and its skyscrapers stood stoic and apathetic to the life that swirled around them. So too did the tower at the center of the city, shooting out beyond the clouds and as far as the eye could see.

The tower.

How was it possible that something so wondrous existed within a world full of such cruelty?

Max opened up his wallet and pulled out a piece of worn parchment paper.

He looked over the words. The penmanship. The flourish of each letter.

This note—which he had mysteriously received a year ago—was the only thing in his life that gave him hope.

He read the words once more.

Max,

Don’t forget your promise. Find me in the tower.

Elle

2

Max had already gotten back on his wheelchair and was wiping the blood off his face, when Sarah rushed into the hallway.

The girl had black hair that she kept in a long braided ponytail and large rimless glasses.

“Max!” she cried. “What happened? I was waiting at our meeting spot?”

Sarah and Max lived together at the same group home for orphans and so walked home together every day after school.

The girl was fourteen, two years younger than Max. She would have been his sister’s age if she was still around.

Max appreciated Sarah’s kindness towards him, but he knew that her association with him was causing her trouble within the social circles of her year. For someone kind like Sarah to suffer because of him was the last thing he wanted. So he devised the meeting spot: a corner a few blocks from the school where they’d meet after school, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the student body.

“I got held up,” said Max.

Sarah’s eyes watered. “Seth again?”

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

He lifted his arms to roll himself forward. A sharp pain ached across his whole body. Max grimaced from the hurting bruises all over his body.

“Here let me get that,” said Sarah, going around him and taking the handles behind Max’s wheelchair to push him forward. “And before you protest, all the other students have gone home now. So you can’t worry about me.”

She beamed a smile down towards him and Max craned his neck back with a groan.

“Fine,” said Max. “You win today, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to make this a regular thing.”

“You realize your wheelchair has these handles for a reason, right?”

“A design flaw, if you ask me,” Max joked as they left the school.

It was a sunny day, so they took the long way home along the canal.

The city of Zestiris lay before them: the tall skyscrapers, the giant wall that separated the outer-rim and the tower-zone, and, of course, the always looming mysterious tower at the center of it all.

“I just don’t understand why you chased after them,” said Sarah after Max had relayed the whole story of the incident with Seth. “Like, you didn’t have that much money on you. You don’t have a credit card or something hard to replace. Would it have been so bad to lose your wallet, save yourself from that final blow to the stomach?”

Sarah had a point. It had been stupid to fight back, but then he thought of Elle’s note. It was the only thing that connected the two of them. The only proof of her existence.

Until that note had randomly appeared in his locker twelve months earlier, Max had assumed his sister had died in the same car crash from ten years ago that had killed his parents and left him with two immobile legs.

“I couldn’t leave Elle’s note behind,” said Max.

“Oh,” said Sarah.

Sarah’s realization hung between them, anchoring the conversation into silence.

She was the only one Max had ever told about the note. The only person he remotely trusted out of everyone he knew. Even still, he could tell Sarah struggled to believe him. She wanted to believe him, but she struggled to.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “But how do you know that note wasn’t a prank?”

“I don’t,” said Max, staring at the looming tower beyond the wall. “But here are the facts. Our lockers don’t have any slits in them. So the only way