Charlie Cradle's Wonderful Existence: A Novella

by Scott J. Callaway

  Chapter 17

  Charlie had spent the rest of the night cleaning up the remnants of the gnomish invasion. The next morning when her mother finally woke up from Rowan’s spell and her father came home from work, she had successfully cleaned up most of the ceramic pieces and dust, but she had to lie to them about how the windows got broken. She explained to her mother that she had taken her advice and invited a few friends over after she fell asleep, and that unfortunately things got a little wild and a few windows had become casualties. She promised that once she started working again, she would pay for the damages as soon as she was able.

  Then there was the question of what happened to Rowan. Charlie was a little put out when she came back into the house the night before to find that Rowan had already left. But she had to admit, he was in a tight spot and so maybe he escaped the house before she was able to destroy the source gnome. She was sure she’d see him again. It wasn’t like Rowan to leave without saying farewell.

  So for the rest of the morning, Charlie kept herself busy by helping her mother clean up what she wasn’t able to the night before and then rested on the couch when she was able. It was the fourth day of her visit to her parents’ house, and she was now beginning to go through gaming withdrawals. She wished her parent’s laptop didn’t suck so much so she could at least play something other than solitaire or mahjongg. But even though she hated those games, her craving for something to play always brought her back to the laptop at least for a little while, just as she did right now.

  Charlie lay on the couch and opened up the laptop, deciding to check her emails before an exciting game of solitaire or tic-tac-toe. Once she logged into her account, she noticed that Tom had sent her an email the night before. That was strange, she thought. Tom never emailed her. A while back, they had exchanged emails just in case they wanted to contact each other outside of gaming, but even though that was a long time ago, they had never actually done it. It was sort of exciting to see that he emailed her. She wondered what it could be about. So, clicking on the message, she went ahead and read it.

  Hi Charlie,

  Wow, it’s kind of weird messaging you about something that has nothing to with gaming. But I thought it was about time I put your email to good use! Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I was going into the Riverton tomorrow and thought that maybe you would like to meet? I’m sorry if it’s a little forward of me to ask you that, considering we’ve never actually met in person before, but I thought since we’ve been online friends for a couple of years, then it might be cool to finally meet each other. I’m in town for work-related matters, so the thing is that I’ll only be there for one day. Let me know what you think. I’ll understand if you’d rather not take our relationship beyond using me as a meat shield in-game.

  Talk to you soon,

  Tom, aka Vinland

  After reading Tom’s message, Charlie experienced a nervous excitement. If she could name one real friend that she had, regardless if they only chatted online, it would be Tom. She had often wondering what it would be like to meet each other. She had never even seen pictures of him, nor he of her. She never bothered with social media sites like Facebook because of her lack of real life friends, so unless she outright asked him for a picture, which she felt she would never be brave enough to do, then there was no way of her knowing what he looked like unless he offered her his picture himself. But he had never done that either, and Charlie wondered if it were because of the same reasons as her. She didn’t find herself attractive and feared what he might think of her, of whether or not he might act different after knowing what she looked like. So for that reason, she had always liked keeping things simple and strictly in-game. But now that he wanted to meet, she didn’t know what to do.

  Charlie made a decision without taking the time to consider one. If she had learned anything from the past week and half, it was that she was boring and not a chance-taker. If she weighed out the possible pros and cons about meeting Tom, then chances were she’d never agree to meet him for fear that he thought she was ugly or weird. Because the truth was she did want to meet him.

  Taking the plunge, Charlie responded with an email of her own suggesting the time and place that would be ideal for them to meet.