Read a preview
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Collateral Damage
The worst part about being Jake Pineda wasn't the snoring video. It wasn't the tripping video either, even though that one got shared forty-seven thousand times and his gym teacher, Mr. Kopecki, played it on the projector during class "by accident."
No, the worst part was the crying video.
It had happened six months ago. Jake's family had gone to see a movie about a dog who travels across the country to find his owner. The dog almost doesn't make it. There's this scene near the end where the dog is limping through a snowstorm, and Jake—who was ten years old and had every right to feel things about a fictional dog—let a single tear roll down his cheek.
One tear. That's it.
But his older sister, Valentina, had been sitting right next to him. And Valentina Pineda never went anywhere without her phone.
The video she posted was only eleven seconds long. It showed Jake in the dark theater, illuminated by the glow of the screen, with that one shiny tear track on his face. Valentina had added a filter that made his eyes look enormous and sparkly, like a cartoon character. She'd captioned it: "My little brother is LITERALLY sobbing at a dog movie 😭😭😭 I can't."
Two hundred thousand people watched it.
Two hundred thousand people watched Jake Pineda cry.
By Monday morning at Bellhaven Elementary, everyone knew. Kids he'd never spoken to were coming up to him in the hallway, making exaggerated sad faces and pretending to wipe tears from their eyes.
"Hey Jake, did the dog make it?" a fifth grader named Benji Loomis called across the cafeteria.
"Was it a sad dog or a happy dog?" his friend added, and the whole table erupted.
Jake had eaten his turkey sandwich so fast he nearly choked, then spent the rest of lunch in the bathroom, sitting on the lid of a toilet in the last stall, waiting for the bell to ring.
That had been six months ago. Things had not improved.
Valentina Pineda—known online as "Val P"—was fourteen years old and a rising teen influencer. She had exactly 212,000 followers across her platforms, a ring light in her bedroom the size of a hula hoop, and a growing collection of brand deals that arrived in cardboard boxes on their front porch almost daily. Their mom thought it was "a wonderful creative outlet." Their dad said he was "still figuring out what an influencer actually is" but seemed impressed by the free stuff.
Jake was none of those things. Jake was a fourth grader who liked building model rockets, reading comics about space explorers, and eating cereal in peace. He did not want to be on the internet. He did not want followers. He wanted to be left alone.
But Valentina's camera had other plans.
On a Tuesday afternoon in early October, Jake came home from school to find his sister standing in the kitchen with her phone mounted on a tripod, her ring light blazing, and a posterboard covered in glitter letters that read: VAL P'S FAMILY CHALLENGE SERIES!
"No," Jake said immediately.
"You don't even know what it is yet!" Valentina protested. She was wearing a matching tracksuit and had done something complicated with her hair that involved braids and little gold clips.
"I don't care what it is. I'm not doing it."
"Jake." Valentina put on her serious voice, which was different from her camera voice, which was different from her talking-to-Mom voice. Valentina had about seven different voices. "This is going to be huge. Family content is trending. I'm talking challenges, pranks, day-in-the-life stuff. My manager says—"
"You have a manager?"
"She's a sophomore named Britt. She's very professional. The point is, family content gets three times the engagement of solo stuff. I need you."
"What about Mom and Dad?"
"Mom's in. Dad said he'd 'think about it,' which means yes once Mom convinces him. You're the holdout."
Jake looked at the glitter posterboard. He looked at the ring light. He looked at his sister's face, which was arranged in an expression she probably practiced in the mirror—hopeful but not desperate, confident but approachable.
"I'm not doing it," he said, and went upstairs to his room.
He lasted three days.
It wasn't that Valentina convinced him. It was that their mom, Linda Pineda, sat him down and gave him the Talk. Not that talk—the other one. The one about being supportive of family members and their passions.
"Your sister works very hard on her channel, Jake. All she's asking is for you to participate in a few fun activities. As a family. Together."
"She posted a video of me crying, Mom."
"And you looked adorable."
"I looked like a baby!"
"You looked sensitive. That's a good quality." His mom patted his hand. "Just give it a try. If you really hate it, we'll talk."
Jake knew what "we'll talk" meant. It meant the conversation was over and he'd lost.
So on Friday evening, Jake sat at the kitchen table while Valentina explained the first challenge—something involving blindfolds and taste-testing weird food combinations—and he made a decision.
If he had to be on camera, fine.
But he was going to be the most boring person who had ever been filmed in the history of the internet.
He was going to be so dull, so flat, so utterly uninteresting that Valentina's viewers would click away in seconds. Her engagement would drop. Her manager Britt would panic. And Valentina would have no choice but to leave him out of her content forever.
Jake Pineda was going to bore his way to freedom.
He pulled a notebook from his backpack, flipped to a clean page, and wrote at the top in careful block letters:
OPERATION BEIGE
Underneath, he made a list:
1. Monotone voice at all times
2. One-word answers only
3. No facial expressions
4. Plain clothes (no logos, no colors, nothing interesting)
5. If forced to do a challenge, do it as slowly and boringly as possible
He stared at the list. He added a sixth item:
6. DO NOT CRACK
Jake closed the notebook and smiled. It was the last interesting expression his face would make for a long time.
