by Carol Snow
Across the room, Daddy continued reading his paper in silence. He turned a page. Turned another page. Reached the end of the newspaper, flipped back to the beginning, and started all over again.
Freesia ate her crackers. She drank her water. She tasted nothing. When her tummy stopped rumbling, she returned the cracker box to the pantry and placed her glass in the sink.
Mummy was still at the stove, still stirring.
* * *
When Ricky’s bright red convertible itty coupe pulled up later that evening, Freesia was waiting out back in the butterfly garden (which normally turned into a firefly garden at sundown, but Todd Piloski had ruined that along with everything else). She was still wearing her red dress, but from Angel she’d borrowed a hooded sweatshirt (pink with green rhinestones). The hated silver bunny purse still held her bubble. At least it was dark outside.
Ricky drove them down the steep hill. His car exhaust smelled like red licorice. Too afraid to say anything, Freesia tilted her head back and gazed at the stars. They rode in silence through town and up the hill that led to Ricky’s mansion, lit tonight with orange lights.
“Why orange?” Freesia asked, breaking the silence.
“Why not?”
At Ricky’s front door, a serf waited with two glasses of happy fizz. For the first time in … ever, Freesia gulped her fizz faster than Ricky and gladly accepted a refill. Thus fortified, they made their way up the stairs and through the various rooms and hallways until they reached Ricky’s secret screen room.
Freesia collapsed on the puffy black sofa. “Oh my Todd, Ricky! I’ve had the most odious day.”
“Did you meet Chase Bennett?” he asked.
“Yes! No. Sort of. I wasn’t sure it even happened, or that anyone knew it had happened. I saw Jelissa, and she didn’t even mention it.”
“Todd prescribed memory blockers all around and rebooted the entire program.”
“That explains it,” Freesia said. “I met Todd. Only he made himself look and sound like Chase Bennett. It was wiggy. No, worse than wiggy. It was cruel.”
She told him about her empty closet, her empty bubble account, her distracted parents, her traitorous cat.
Ricky sighed. “We shouldn’t even be here, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t disappear off their monitors too regularly, Free. You can’t give them any more reasons to watch you. You need to go back to your life. Parties. Shopping. Coffee. Lounging around my pool—”
“I can’t go shopping, because they took away all my shells, remember?”
“It’s not forever,” he said. “Just till they’re sure you’ll behave. In the meantime, I’ll buy you anything you want. Clothes, meals, dolphin rides. You want a sandwich?” He reached into the pull-out fridge under the couch.
She chose tuna salad, thrilled to bite into something that had more taste than the crackers she’d eaten for dinner. Even if that taste was really just the suggestion of a taste.
Freesia thought about Ricky’s many perks. “They must know you know,” she said.
“I know they know I know.” Ricky had downed his cheese and tomato sandwich in three bites.
“Then why don’t they punish you like they’ve punished me?”
“One, because my father is a major investor in Todd Piloski’s company. And, two, because I’ve never let anyone in on the secret.”
“Is Jelissa computer-generated?” she blurted.
Ricky’s eyes bugged with surprise. “Of course not. She’s living through an avatar like the rest of us, but she’s a real person. Her given name is Jessica Melissa or Melissa Jessica. I can never remember which. She lives in Canada, one of those far-north provinces that are always cold and really hard to get to. The nearest school was over a hundred miles away. That’s why she’s here.”
“I hate thinking this way!” Freesia rubbed her face. “Who’s real and who’s not, and where we really live and—”
“Come.” Ricky stood up and held out a hand.
She shook her head. “I’m feeling too squiggy to go back out just yet. I can’t stand the thought of them watching me.”
“No one will see us.” Ricky crossed the room and tapped what she’d taken for a plain wall but that, with a tap, turned into a doorway.
“Take my hand.”
She did.
“Close your eyes.”
She did.
“Now, follow me…”
18
She smelled brine and flowers. Felt a breeze that plunged from warm to cool. Thunder clapped. She opened her eyes just as the rain began to fall, and Ricky pulled her into a familiar space.
“Taser’s cave!”
It was as she remembered: the stone room with the domed ceiling; the alcove with the green, glowing, teardrop-shaped pool; the surprisingly warm air; the dark doorway that led to unexplored depths.
Hand in hand, they made their way over to the little pool, sat on the edge, and plunged their feet in the water, which immediately sparkled.
“Taser may have found this cave, but I wrote the code,” Ricky said.
“When?”
“A couple of years ago, right after I got my screen room up and running. I was into pirates that year, and I was going to hide a treasure chest farther back, but I never got around to it. I haven’t been here in ages.”
“If you can get here through your screen room, why connect it to the ocean?”
“I was curious to see if anyone would brave the rough water—figured they deserved a reward if they did. I never thought that ‘anyone’ would be Taser.” He wrinkled his nose.
“You’re jealous.” She tried not to sound as pleased as she felt. “Is that why you told me the cave wasn’t safe?”
“Maybe.” Ricky’s mouth twitched. “Come. Let me show you the rest.”
“It’s awfully dark back there,” she said as he led her to the yawning door trimmed with glittery stalagmites. Beyond, they found deeper darkness. Something dripped and echoed. Around a corner, lights flickered.
Splash! The stone floor gave way and Freesia was over her head in warm water. Her hand slipped out of Ricky’s. When she surfaced, she groped for him and opened her eyes. A hundred diamond-shaped lights on the bottom had turned the water purple.
Freesia and Ricky swam toward each other. Freesia began to laugh. “Don’t tell me you forgot about your own swimming pool!”
Ricky grinned, the pool’s purple light casting an eerie glow on his face. “Nothing like an unexpected swim to cheer you up.”
After a little more paddling, Ricky swam to a far side of the pool and hauled himself out. “We should get back soon. I don’t want them to wonder where you’ve gone. But first let me show you the firefly garden.”
As soon as Freesia got out of the pool, the purple lights began to dim. Dripping wet as they were, Freesia would have expected to feel cold, but she not only felt warm she felt … dry. Probably because in the real world she was dry.
Stop thinking this way, she commanded herself. Agalinas is real because it feels real.
Ricky took her hand, and they walked very, very carefully toward the flickering lights. They turned a corner and—
“Aargh!” Freesia threw up her hands to shield her face. They were everywhere: skimming her hair, bumping up against her arms, swiping her legs.
Ricky grabbed her elbow and dragged her back into the now fully darkened pool room.
“Those were the biggest fireflies I’ve ever seen!” Freesia’s voice shook.
“Those weren’t fireflies.” He was breathing hard. “They were illuminated bats.”
“Did you write the code for them?”
“No.”
Now Freesia really was cold—not from the water but from fear. She didn’t dare brave the bat room to hunt for towels, however. Ricky was right: it was time to go. Holding hands, they made their way through the pool room, sticking close to the walls.
At last they made it to the big domed stone roo
m, where they were startled to see a boy unrolling a sleeping bag.
“Taser!” Freesia dropped Ricky’s hand and hurried over to her ex-boylink, who continued his task without looking up.
Taser had never been much on personal grooming, but Freesia had never seen him looking so uncombed, unwashed, and underfed. Dirt and dried blood darkened his hollowed-out cheeks. His hair, buzzed into a military cut, stuck straight out as if it were trying to get as far away from his scalp as possible.
Just like that, he broke from his stupor and screamed.
“Enemy forces! Incoming!” He gazed in terror at the stone ceiling before sinking to the ground and weeping.
“It’s like he can’t tell the difference between reality and unreality.” Ricky paused. “Or between one unreality and another.”
“I don’t understand,” Freesia said. “He’s always played zap wars, but they never had this kind of effect on him before.”
Ricky sighed. “The real money these days is in war games—the more realistic, the better. Piloski’s looking to open a military academy in the interior—kind of like Bubble World only with uniforms and guns.”
“That sounds like a lot for one island.”
Ricky shrugged. “It’s a lot for one server, that’s for sure. Also, Piloski’s got the programmers so busy developing war games that they’ve been neglecting site maintenance. That’s why the site has been so wiggy.”
“How do you know all this?” Freesia asked.
“Piloski’s e-mail. It’s not even password-protected. Unbelievable.”
Taser was still weeping. Freesia crossed the room and put her arms around him.
“Taser, it’s okay. The war is make-believe. And this cave is make-believe, too, and so is Avalon and all of Agalinas. You’re safe, Taser. You’re home in…”
“New Jersey,” Ricky said.
“You’re in New Jersey. And no one’s going to hurt you.”
Taser stopped weeping. Freesia tried to get him to look at her, but his gray eyes seemed to be seeing something very far away.
Ricky put a hand on her shoulder. “We’d better get back.”
“We can’t just leave him here.”
Ricky sighed. “I know.”
Ricky grabbed Taser under the arms, and Freesia held up his legs. He wasn’t that heavy. Together, they hauled him out of the cave. Above, the moon shone almost as brightly as the sun.
They placed Taser gently on the stone dock. He curled into a fetal position.
“How do we get back to your secret room?” Freesia asked.
Before Ricky could answer, two illuminated bats appeared out of nowhere and swooped down. Freesia and Ricky hit the rock floor and covered their heads. When the air cleared, Freesia peeked up. “Bats scare me.”
“Bats don’t scare me as much as…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s get out of here.”
Ricky walked to the very edge of the rock dock and put out his hand. Just when it looked like he would plunge into the glassy sea, a tall pale rectangle appeared, as if it were floating in the air. He pushed at it, and the rectangle became an open door into Ricky’s secret room.
“Vicious,” Freesia whispered.
They scooped up Taser and hauled him through the door. They didn’t linger in the screen room, hurrying instead through the hallways and doors up to Ricky’s roof deck, where they deposited Taser on a puffy lounger. Freesia’s arms ached.
Ricky pulled a bottle of happy fizz from a cooler and popped it open. “Drink this.”
He held the bottle up to Taser’s lips. Taser drank. And drank. And drank. Something like a smile played around his mouth.
Ricky pulled his tangerine-sized bubble out of his pocket. “I need a driver. And maybe a helper.”
Just like that, two of Ricky’s many serfs appeared on the deck.
“Please take Taser back to his house,” Ricky instructed.
Without a word, the serfs helped Taser to his feet. Taser giggled. He wobbled. The serfs each took an arm and helped him off the deck.
“Happy fizz makes everything better,” Ricky said. Above them, the stars shone like mini searchlights.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?”
“Of course. He’s in Agalinas. He’ll be better than okay.”
Freesia said, “Being with you, it makes me feel happy.”
Ricky said, “Being with you, it makes me want to…”
“What?”
He thought for a good long time. “Leave my house more often.”
Freesia bit her lip. “That would be wicked.”
They leaned toward each other, and Freesia’s face grew warm and tingly. This was the best face-link ever, even if it felt like every other face-link she had ever had. For the moment, Freesia forgot who she was and where she was. She forgot about everything in the world except Ricky.
And then, of course, everything went black.
19
“Not now!” Freesia yelled into the darkness. Her voice echoed against the hard walls of her bubble. She felt as if she were being awakened from the nicest dream she had ever had. Yet it was more than just a dream because she had shared it with Ricky. Who was once her second bestie and now … something more.
Ricky was right: Agalinas was real because it felt real. And now this had to happen. The timing was as bad as it could be.
“Mother!”
Nothing.
“Father!”
Nothing.
“Angel!”
Angel thumped the wall from the other side and yelled something that sounded an awful lot like “shut your stupid face.”
Freesia stood in total darkness, presumably on the rubber floor in the front half of her bubble. She took a tiny step backward and then another, until she felt the big leather recliner. She sat down. She waited. And waited.
Status updates, she told herself. Minor malfunctions. Don’t panic.
Odious Todd Piloski. If he weren’t so focused on those doltoid war games, stuff like this wouldn’t happen. She could mention the system problems to her mother, but then she’d risk her parents finding out that she wasn’t getting quite the education they’d been promised.
All she had to do was … sleep! Of course. When she woke up, the system problems would be fixed and she’d be in her ocean-view room, which, with any luck at all, would have her peacocks and balcony and clothes back where they belonged.
She leaned back. The recliner wasn’t reclining. She fished around for buttons or levers. Nothing. The chair must be programmed to recline whenever she headed for her bed in Avalon. Or maybe every night she left the bubble to sleep in the narrow bed against the wall?
She groped in the darkness, feeling her way along the smooth walls to the hinged doorway. She fiddled with the lever, pushed it open, and stepped down onto the hard floor. The bed was here somewhere, pushed against a window. On the side of the room? Or the back?
She felt along the wall, along the wall, along the wall—
“Oh, smack!” She banged a knee against the metal bed frame.
She worked her way around the side of the bed, leaned forward, touched the bedspread, and climbed on top. Just like that, she was asleep.
* * *
“What. In the name. Of holy heck. Are you doing here?”
Morning.
No singing peacocks. No coffee cloud. Just a dim room with a cranky Mother in a ratty brown bathrobe.
Freesia sat up and rubbed her eyes. “This is where I live. You said I was always here, even when it felt like I was in Agalinas.”
“Here as in your bubble. Not here as in the bed.”
“The program crashed. Everything went black and then I found myself here. I tried to go back to sleep, but the recliner wouldn’t recline. So I thought maybe this was where I slept.”
Mother shook her head. “As soon as you leave the bubble, you leave Bubble World. Bubble—Bubble World. Get it?”
“Why is there even a bed in this room, then?�
� It wasn’t a very comfortable bed; Freesia’s back was stiff.
“We need it for guests,” Mother said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. It was just your grandmother. Once. Okay, three times. What was I supposed to do? Put her in my office?”
Mother crossed to the bubble, which was transparent except for a silver box near the door. She opened the box and poked some keys. “Maybe you need to be in there first before I can reboot.”
Freesia pushed herself out of bed and shuffled over to the bubble and into the recliner. She felt funny. Shaky.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Mother hurried out of the room and returned with a plastic cup. “Drink this.”
“Memory blocker?” Freesia took the cup.
Mother stiffened. “Is that what your father told you?”
“It was just a guess.” How wonderful if the memory blocker actually worked this time and she could go back to believing in everything and everyone in Agalinas.
Suspicion crossed her mother’s face. “When I came in, you knew who I was and where you were. In the past, you’ve been much more confused. Did something happen the last time you were here?”
Freesia didn’t say anything, just downed the thick, sweet liquid in four gulps. Within moments, she felt calm enough to face her mother’s questions.
Mother, however, had already lost interest in everything except getting Freesia back into a bubble state. “Okay. Here we go.” She resumed poking at the silver box.
Freesia took a deep breath, and …
Nothing.
“Come! On!” Mother poked harder at the keys, which of course accomplished nothing.
“Stay here,” she commanded, as if Freesia had somewhere else to go. “I’m going to call tech support. We’ll have you out of here in … soon. It better be soon.”
Alone in the room within a room, Freesia could hear her mother’s sharp voice from across the hall. “Somers. With an O.… Well, there must be some mistake.… No, I’m certain that nothing like that occurred. My daughter would never— Excuse me? I’ll have you know that I am a close personal friend of Todd Piloski’s and— That! Is not! Acceptable! Hello?”