Gloria and Rose showed up Saturday afternoon with their tablets and snacks. "Are you ready to get started?" Gloria asked.
"Yes! I've been thinking about it all week." Travis led them to her side of the common area.
"Do you have your tablet?" Rose asked as she set hers on the table. As soon as she had Travis' tablet, she plopped down in the large chair, played with it for a few minutes, and then handed it back. "Here you go. You have the program and some special secret content. Don't tell anyone." She held her finger to her lips, and Travis mirrored her.
"So, what do I have to do?" Travis searched the screen for an unfamiliar logo.
"Oh, I didn't put it on your homescreen. That sends the wrong message."
Travis flipped through her screens until she found it. "The wrong message?"
"Yeah," Gloria sat on the other end of the couch and tucked her feet under her. "If it's on your homescreen, people just assume you have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" Travis watched the opening animation swirl into a logo and a login screen. "What do I do? I don't have an account. Oh, wait. Is this a tattoo thing?"
"No," Gloria leaned over. "You have to set up your account." She touched the screen, and a form appeared.
"They think you're addicted to the virtual world. And then you have to go to counseling, and you have to do all this stupid stuff to prove you aren't playing too much. It's annoying." Rose tapped on her tablet without looking up.
"If you're lucky, you get to go through it twice," Gloria winked.
"Oh." What kind of game is this? Travis looked at the form. "Name. Seems simple enough" She typed in: Travis Ando.
Gloria laughed. "No. They mean what do you want to be called in game."
"Oh." Yes, that makes much more sense. Travis thought, searching for a name. When she was making up her stories, she never gave her characters names. It had never occurred to her to name the figments of her imagination. "What are your names?"
"I'm Elenaria, and Rose is Aurabella."
Does everyone in the virtual world have such odd, long names? "How did you choose your names?"
Rose giggled. "We wanted to name ourselves Moon and Dawn, and then we decided we wanted fancier names."
"We were, like, ten years old when we chose our names." Gloria shrugged.
Travis stared at the screen, running books and interactives through her mind, searching for a name that caught her attention. She finally settled on the nickname from an interactive her mother wasn't in and typed: Drea.
Gloria nodded her approval. "I like it. It's short and edgy, kind of like your hair."
"My hair's not that short," Travis continued filling in the form, building her character's physical appearance. "What's a class?"
"It's your job in the game."
"You have to work?" No, seriously. What kind of game is this?
"You're not explaining it correctly." Rose set her tablet on her knees. "You know how characters in stories have roles they play. That's your class, and it decides what kind of skills you can learn and where you can go. Stuff like that."
"So, it's kind of important." Travis scrolled through the list, watching as her character changed clothes and tools and moved around. She finally settled on a martial artist, mesmerized by the animation.
"Um, are you going to touch the start button?" Gloria nudged Travis' leg with her foot.
"What?" Travis hadn't noticed her finger hovering over the button. "I guess I'm not ready for this."
"What do you mean?" Rose was furiously tapping on her screen.
"Rose, you're going to break your screen. You need to pick easier spells." Gloria admonished her cousin.
Travis stared at the screen. "Well... Things haven't gone smoothly at work because I'm Mom's daughter. What if the virtual world doesn't like me for the same reason, or if they expect things from me, or..." Her voice trailed off.
"Travis, no one is going to know who you are in the real world unless you tell them. You're playing under a different name."
"Right." Why am I so paranoid? She touched the button. The screen dissolved and then resolved into a spacious, sparsely furnished house. Everything seemed to be made from light-colored natural materials. It's beautiful.
"Hang on, Travis. We're going to teleport to you."
Travis' eyes never left the screen. "Sure."
YOU ARE READING
A Caged Bird - Chasing Normal, Arc 5
Teen FictionAfter Melinda's party, Travis found herself in the very unusual position of being grounded. Not everyone agrees with her mother's reaction to what's happened, and some take it upon themselves to help her subvert the grounding. Also, what is up with...
