I was chillin’ in my home like I usually do on Friday nights. I was listening to my favorite music and playing my favorite video game. The rest of my family was already asleep, so they wouldn't care if I stayed up late. I was alone in my room, kept awake by adrenaline and energy drinks. I turned the music up. Then everything went black.

01

I sat up in my bed, my alarm beeping loudly on my nightstand. It was 6:30 in the morning, and it was a Monday. I had just been dreaming. I had to face the sad reality of going back to school. I got up and shut off the alarm when my cat came up to me and meowed impatiently. I went out to the kitchen to make myself breakfast when I saw a note my mom had left me.

“Had to leave early. Please feed cats,” it said. I groaned and got out a can of the same old slop my cats ate every day. I woke up my kitten with the sound of the can opening, and before I knew it, I had a little feline halfway up my leg. “Down,” I said, but it only climbed higher. It jumped up onto the counter and snatched the open can. The kitten passed it down to the older cat, and the two started eating right out of the can. I decided that that was good enough, and made my way to the bus stop.

At the stop, the bus went through a huge puddle and soaked my backpack and pants. My high-tech case kept my phone safe, but the rest of me was sopping wet. It was too late to go home and change because the bus had already arrived; I would just have to deal with it. As I got on the bus, I thought that my backpack seemed a bit light. Climbing the steep, slippery stairs was easier than ever. I looked inside to see if everything was inside, in the right place, and everything was there – except my binder, which contained everything I needed for school.

“Stop the bus!” I shouted. “I need to get off!” I yelled even louder, but the ever-oblivious driver didn’t pay attention. I sighed. This was going to be a rough day.

At school, my homeroom teacher marked me late, even though it was really the bus driver’s fault. The bus got stuck in an easily avoidable pothole. He was a cranky old man, so maybe he just wanted everyone to be late. “Okay, class,” said my teacher, Mrs. Mackletoe in her shrill, nasal voice. “You all know about the no-electronics rule here at school, right?”

“Yes,” the class murmured.

“And do you know what I found after school yesterday?” The class didn’t say anything, dreading the consequence of what would come next. “I found a portable video game system,” she said, holding up a Pintendo SD of some sort, “right next to Kermit’s desk!” I jumped in my seat. Yep, that’s my name, and I’m stuck with it. “And,” she said, “there was a game cartridge inserted into the device with a game that is not age appropriate!” She turned to me. “Is there something you have to say for yourself?” she asked me.

“I don’t know what happened here!” I said. “I don’t know how it got there!”

My teacher said, “Well, how else could it have gotten there?”

“Maybe it fell out of someone’s backpack!”

“Kermit, I expect better of you! Why can’t you just own up to your mistakes?”

“I swear, I didn’t do it!” I shouted. “My parents only let me play Super Dario and Sports World, and that’s it!”

The teacher handed me the pink slip. “Detention,” she said slowly, “NOW.”

I sighed, stood up, and walked toward the door.

“Take this back home with you,” she said, holding out the game system. “If I hear from ANYONE that you were using this in school, it gets confiscated, and you get an in-school suspension.”

I shouldn’t have to describe detention or the rest of the school day in general. There was a small food fight in the cafeteria, but that happens almost every day. The bus ride home, though, was something different.

02

“Whatcha got there?” Cornelius, the school annoyance, had gotten to me just as I had sat down and taken the SD out of my backpack. I usually sat in the very back row, and Cornelius always followed me. “None of your business,” I said, and moved closer to the front. Cornelius watched me walk down the aisle, glaring at me as he slowly sat back down. I turned on the SD. Whoever had been playing this game was in the middle of a battle. I tried to move around, but nothing happened. They were viewing a screenshot of Duty’s Call IV. “Ugh,” I groaned. I hate overrated games. I pressed the home button and scrolled around in the menu a bit until I found the real game. “Kitten Simulator?” I thought aloud. “Mrs. Mackletoe is such a sucker!”

“I’M TELLING!” shouted Cornelius, right into my ear. I jumped in my seat and turned around. He had silently followed me and was sprinting to the back of the bus - but I caught him just in time. I held him by the collar of his shirt. “You can’t stop me now!” he said.

“Sure I can,” I said, unzipping his backpack. “But only if you don’t want to keep your ‘secret’ gum stash.” I held the brown paper bag above his head, just out of reach of his short arms. He was practically addicted to gum, and none of the school’s teachers allowed it.

Cornelius gasped. “Give it back!” he shouted. “Now!”

“Do you promise not to tell?” I asked.

“Yes. Now GIVE IT BACK!” Cornelius shouted at me. His face was turning red, and he was starting to cry.

“OK,” I said. “But if you tell ANYONE about what I said, I will tell EVERYONE about your stash of gum.” He nodded his head. He ripped open the bag, and in a few seconds, his mouth was bulging with gum. I saw my stop coming, and I sighed. I would have to lock myself in my room at night if I didn’t want to get caught with an SD. My parents thought most video games were “bad for my brain.”

“JONES PARK!” the bus driver shouted. I, along with a few other students, made my way down the aisle and past the same cranky old man. I stepped down the steep, slippery stairs and began my daily walk home.

03

Getting off, I noticed the same old stuff at the park: people walking on paved pathways, toddlers playing on a small playground, high schoolers in a rough soccer match. I was just turning onto my block when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I turned around, and I immediately saw two words: “SPECIAL OFFER.” As I came up closer, I read the sign: “REWARD OFFERED for RARE VIDEO GAMES: Trade GAMES for MONEY at 1614 Redwood Drive. Reward depends on condition and rarity of game.” I immediately jotted down the information on a pocket-size notepad, then ran home as fast as I could.

When I got home, I dashed to my basement and turned on the computer. I immediately searched the information I had gathered online and came to a very basic website with information on the prices for different games. I immediately noticed high prices at the top: Super Dario for SEN (1976) - $1485 mint condition. As the games got more recent and more common, prices started to drop: Duty’s Call I for SP Original (1988) listed for $208 when unused. I kept looking through the list, scrolling endlessly, but my heart sank when I reached the bottom: Kitten Simulator for Pintendo SD (2004) - $2 mint condition. I groaned and slumped in my seat. What was the point in selling a game for two dollars? It seemed like a scam to me.

“What are you doing?” My mom had silently sneaked down the stairs and had caught me on the computer. I wasn’t allowed to use it without her permission and for no more than 30 minutes a day.

“Just looking at prices for video games,” I responded calmly. “I was interested in making a little money.”

“And WHERE might you be getting these games from?” she pressed.

I went silent for a few seconds. “I’m not getting them from anywhere…” I said without confidence. I couldn’t think of a good explanation.

My mom looked slightly annoyed as she walked back upstairs. “Don’t stay on there for too much longer,” she shouted down the stairwell.

I immediately closed the browser window and shut down the computer. I had some homework to do anyway so I couldn’t forget about that. I went up to my room and started on a math worksheet.

04

It was 10:13 PM, and I had kept the SD hidden for the whole day. I turned it on and saw an indicator flashing on the side of the device: low battery. I disregarded this warning and launched Kitten Simulator. After a long load screen, some text appeared. “This game does not save automatically,” it said. After a few seconds, it moved on to the menu screen, and I selected “new game.” At first, nothing happened. Then, I started to tingle. The room seemed to grow at a slow but steady pace. I looked down at myself and noticed that I was growing a thick layer of fur and I was shrinking inside my clothes. Then, I realized everything: I was the kitten. This game didn’t lie: it really did simulate being a young cat. I crawled out of my shirt and looked at the SD. The screen was showing my point of view! I decided to do a bit of exploring in my new body when I heard something that made me jump.

“Meow.” My cat had sneaked up behind me and had been sizing me up. He walked around and looked at me from all angles before sticking his nose out to sniff me. Then my kitten arrived. He jumped toward me and skidded to a stop before looking at me as if to say, “who are you?”

I tried to explain my situation, but all that came out was “Meow me-meow meow meow.” The cats seemed interested. The older one meowed at me and trotted out of the room. I followed behind him, with the other one running to keep up. They took me to their climbing structure, which looked a lot bigger from my current perspective. They both bounded up a rope-wound pole and jumped onto a high platform. I tried to do the same but fell and landed on my tail. I had forgotten about my claws. I climbed the pole again, this time digging into the rope with my sharp nails. I made my way up to the high platform at a slow pace, taking extra time to coordinate my jumps. Once I reached the two other cats, they each laid down and closed their eyes. I did the same, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep.

05

“KERMIT!” My mom shouted right in my ear. “You’ve overslept! And what’s that in your hand?”

I was in a daze. “What happened here?” I asked tiredly.

“You know perfectly well,” she said. “You have no excuse for what you’ve done!”

I looked over at the clock. It was 7:48 and I had missed the bus. I groaned loudly. I had stayed up playing the game and had fallen asleep in the middle of a game. The SD had run out of battery, and the game had gone unsaved.

“You know you’re not allowed to have a handheld game system,” my mom said. “You’ll have to return it to its owner or donate it to charity.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know whose this is, so I’ll drop this off at the Trash’n’Treasure on the way to school. I pass right by there every day.”

My mom walked out of my room. “Get yourself dressed and come get some breakfast,” she said.

I had to break my promise. I already knew where I was going - 1614 Redwood Drive. I walked up to their door and knocked. A fat, middle-aged man answered. “What do you want?” he asked carelessly.

“I heard you sold games?” I asked anxiously.

“Yep, that’s me,” he said. “Follow me inside.”

He lead me into a cluttered room with all sorts of gaming merch and consoles. On one wall, he had a giant shelf of every game you could imagine. “What are you gonna sell?” he asked me.

I held up the SD without much confidence. “How much will you take for this?” I asked.

The man squinted at the device, then took it from me. After a few minutes of inspection, he popped out the Kitten Simulator cartridge and did a small chuckle. “Sorry, but you won’t get much money out of this.”

I started to walk away when I heard him call me back in.

“Hold on,” he said. “Is this an original first-generation Pintendo SD?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I told him.

“Can you please tell me where you found it?”

“On the classroom floor.”

“Wow,” he said. “Does forty-eight bucks sound good? This is from the first generation of SD devices ever produced! And it’s in mint condition!”

“Okay, sounds good,” I said.

“Also, that’s two extra dollars for Kitten Simulator. That brings you up to fifty. What a deal!” he chirped as he dug around in a desk drawer. “Here’s your money,” he said as he handed me a wad of bills. “Now please move along. I’ve got many more customers to serve.”

I walked out of the house with a smile on my face. School was starting very soon, so I tucked everything into my pocket and dashed away, soon to begin my average school day with a strict teacher, a food fight, and pointless homework assignments.