by Resa Nelson
Sharpening her attention, Zuri felt overwhelmed by what she saw. VainGlorians screamed their way through the maze, chased by monsters of all shapes and sizes that emerged from every crevice and around every corner. Magnificent mayhem dominated every level.
The image of an elegant gold-leaf picture frame floated at the perimeter of Zuri’s vision, showing the image of Milan screaming while escaping the taloned fingers of a vampire.
“I think that means she’s enjoying herself,” Benjamin said.
In rapid succession, dozens of framed images of other VainGlorians filled the space around the blueprints. Dozens turned into hundreds, and they organized into tightly-packed groups.
“And I believe those are clusters,” Benjamin continued.
Clusters.
Donna had told Zuri that earning her place in the Platinum Tower required achieving clusters, endorsements, and breaking trends.
If those are clusters, all I need is an endorsement and a breaking trend.
Zuri brightened with hope.
If I can get an endorsement and a breaking trend, then I can move into the Platinum Tower. And when that happens, I can bring Mae Lin to VainGlory. She’ll be safe with me.
She turned to Benjamin. “What do I do? How can I get an endorsement? How do I make a breaking trend happen?”
“You don’t. It has to happen organically.”
Zuri wrung her hands. “That can’t be right.” She gestured toward the happy havoc infesting the blueprints. “There has to be something I can do.”
“If people had influence on how customers respond, everyone would live in the Platinum Tower. What you want has to be earned. You can’t buy it. You can’t force it.”
Feeling the sweat on her palms, Zuri wiped them against her clothes. “You mean all I can do is wait and see what happens?”
“That’s right.”
Zuri moaned as if someone had punched her in the stomach. “I can’t bear it. I can’t watch. There’s too much at stake.”
But before she could close her eyes or put a veil over the display, one of the elaborate frames broke free of its cluster and levitated below the blueprints. The frame showed a man with breath-taking magnetism grinning as he wrapped a vest fashioned by Mae Lin around his muscular forearm, wearing it like a sleeve. His grin widened when his arm acted like a machine gun, pelting silver bullets at a ferocious werewolf that howled and collapsed at his feet. Pumping his arm in the air, the man let out a whoop of delight.
“I recognize him,” Zuri said in awe. “That’s Shepard Green.”
“A friend of yours?”
“No! He’s the most famous quarterback in the country.” Zuri paused, imagining that Personal Digital Assistants probably knew nothing of sports. “All famous athletes live in VainGlory, and Shepard Green is the most famous of all.”
Her heart pounded with joy.
He’s wearing something from our line. Shepard Green is wearing something Mae Lin designed.
Shepard Green flicked his wrist, and a large stamp appeared in his hand. He pumped it forward, and the word “Endorsed” stamped in bright red in front of his face.
“There’s your first endorsement,” Benjamin said.
Zuri shrieked with happiness, unable to speak.
Her display flipped back to show the façade of the haunted house, where hundreds more bubbles filled with VainGlorians popped into view and then stormed through the front door.
If Benjamin had been a real person, she would have grabbed his arm and clung to it in order to steady herself.
Still watching the façade of the haunted house, Zuri stared in wonder as countless VainGlorian bubbles streamed into view for what felt like a welcome eternity. While they continued to pour into the house, bright white sparks of light framed her field of vision. Those lights formed a banner that read “Breaking Trend.”
Zuri stared in silent wonder. She wanted to scream in delight but couldn’t find her voice.
“Hey,” Shepard Green’s voice called out. His bubble now floated on the stone path leading to the haunted house. “Can we connect?”
Without thinking, Zuri said, “Sure.”
The bubble transformed into a life-size doorway. A room occupied with black furniture and walls made of screens filled with football game footage stood behind the famous man. He jerked a thumb outside the frame, back toward the haunted house. “You made that?”
Zuri felt as if her mouth took on a life of its own and spoke without her control. “Yes. Well, Ben did most of it, but I made the decisions.”
Shepard Green frowned. “Ben? Who’s that? Your boyfriend?”
“No!” Zuri shouted. She focused on bringing the volume of her voice to an acceptable level. Noticing how Shepard Green winced at her shout, she said, “Sorry. Sometimes the volume in my bubble goes out of control. Ben needs to fix it. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my Personal Digital Assistant.” She glanced at Benjamin, hoping she hadn’t hurt his feelings and then realized that programs don’t have feelings. Still, she felt bad about blaming her own stupid shouting on him.
“Great event,” Shepard said. “Best I’ve been to in forever.” He winked. “I endorsed it.”
“I know!” Zuri shouted again. This time, she said, “Sorry. That was me, not my bubble. It’s my first endorsement, and it means the world to me. You’ll never know how much.”
Shepard extended his hand. “Why don’t you come over and tell me?”
Anxiety struck Zuri like an anvil dropped on her head.
She’d moved to Aspire at the age of 14 and had spent her life until now focused on work and striving to achieve success. She’d had only one boyfriend, and their relationship had never gone beyond the online stage.
Zuri now stared at Shepard Green, one of the most famous men in the country—on the planet. Everyone knew about his relationships, which sometimes changed weekly.
I don’t compare to any of the women he’s been with—they’re all so beautiful and famous. I’m just me.
Maybe Shepard Green did this every time he gave an endorsement. Maybe he was like Milan, who had told Zuri how VainGlorians loved to discover new talent and how it brought them attention and credibility.
Surely, that’s what this famous man wanted: more attention and more credibility.
Before Benjamin could weigh in, Zuri walked toward Shepard Green’s doorway, took his hand, and walked into his world.
CHAPTER 21
The next morning, Zuri woke up with a start, not recognizing her surroundings. Panic seized her like a lost child.
Frozen with fear, Zuri took in the environment while she let herself come fully awake.
Under the soft cotton covers of an enormous canopy bed with square mahogany posts, a muscular naked man snored next to her.
Shepard Green. The football star. He invited me to his home after he endorsed my maze.
Gradual memories returned of how they ended up in his bed.
Light-hearted and happy music played on her Personal Soundtrack, but when Zuri tried to turn the volume down, nothing happened. With a start, Zuri realized her Personal Bubble appeared to be blocked. She saw none of the icons from her wall and no sign of Benjamin.
Then she remembered what Shepard Green had told her when she entered his bubble last night.
You can only be in one bubble at a time. If I come into your bubble, mine gets blocked. When you came into my bubble, yours was blocked. It’s automatic. Personal Bubbles only show one reality at a time.
Zuri shivered, partly from delight and partly from anguish.
Did I do the right thing? Will anything come back to haunt me? What does he think of me? And how do I get out?
“Good morning.” Yawning, Shepard Green rolled onto his side and faced her with a smile. “Sleep well?”
Flustered, Zuri managed to utter “Yes.”
Shepard Green climbed out of bed, still naked, and strolled toward a bank of French doors lining the opposite wall. He opened a pair of doors to lo
ok outside, breathing in the fresh air. “I’m surprised you’re still here. Do you need help getting home?”
His question startled the nervousness out of Zuri. She sat up in his bed, hugging the covers close against her chest. “Wait. When I came here last night, it was virtual. I don’t remember leaving home. Am I still there?”
Shepard Green turned to face her again. “Of course.”
More memories rushed back, but they confounded Zuri even more. “But … last night. If I’m not here, how is last night possible?”
Shepard Green laughed and began to get dressed. He put on a shirt but left it open, still mostly naked. “Everything you see is real.”
So confused that she forgot to be embarrassed, Zuri said, “I know. But I felt things. Everything I remember seems real. How can that be?”
Shepard Green didn’t appear to be interested in wearing anything other than an open shirt. He walked around the bed as if strutting on a catwalk, which he sometimes did in his off-season modeling career. “No one told you about your Cuddle Bed? If they didn’t tell you when you first arrived in the city, your PDA should have told you.”
PDA. Personal Digital Assistant.
Benjamin.
Zuri shook her head in confusion.
Shepard Green grinned and gestured at his own bed. “It’s great for sleeping. But when someone gets in it with me, it triggers a different mode.” He shrugged. “I hear it’s linked to your Personal Bubble, and there are a lot of things to trigger your brain into accepting what you see and feel as reality. Tapping into memories and your fantasies and the like. I guess that’s why it feels so real.”
Discomfort washed through Zuri. Never having been in a situation like this before, she didn’t know whether to feel elation or shame. A sudden urge to go back to something familiar took over. “You said you can help me go home. Can you do that right now?”
“Sure. Follow me.” Shepard Green paraded past the bed toward the open doorway to a hallway.
Zuri looked around the room for the clothing she had worn last night but found none. Finding a light comforter folded at the foot of the bed, she wrapped it around herself before following the mostly-naked man leading the way.
At the end of a long hallway, he gestured toward the doorframe leading to the next room. That doorway gleamed bright white. Turning back to face Zuri, his eyebrows lifted in surprise to see her wrapped in his comforter. Smirking, he said, “It’s pointless to take a souvenir. You’ll be empty-handed when you get home.”
“It’s not that.” Zuri felt uncomfortable where she stood and shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then back again. “I’m not used to this kind of thing.”
“What kind—” Shepard Green halted before he could finish his question, and his expression softened in understanding. “Oh. I see.”
When she took a step forward, he held out one hand, signaling her to stop.
“I was thinking,” Shepard Green said. “Maybe we could get together again tonight.”
Zuri sagged in disappointment before she could think to hide her feelings. Like everyone else on the planet, she’d heard a lot about Shepard Green’s reputation with women.
Is that all I mean to him? Is that all he wants? From me or any other woman that catches his attention for the moment?
Because Zuri had spent so much of her life focused on achieving success, she had little interest in spending time with men likely to waste it. Such men would probably interfere with her goals. She’d seen many women in Aspire cave in to lust and get so sidetracked that they failed.
Zuri promised herself long ago that she’d never let anything so pointless and stupid happen to her.
And she’d promised Mae Lin that no man would ever come between their friendship and their dreams of success.
His face mirrored her concern. “We could talk. Or go somewhere. We can go anywhere from here without having to leave.” He waved his hand at the doorway. The doorframe glowed yellow, and beyond it stood the Eiffel Tower surrounded by the streets of Paris. “We can go anywhere you want.”
The change in Shepard Green’s demeanor caught Zuri off guard, and more memories from last night rushed forward. She remembered laughing with him and enjoying his company. She remembered feeling at ease with him in a way she’d never experienced with a man before.
Had his behavior this morning been callous? Or had he simply felt a familiarity with her that she hadn’t remembered or expected?
Zuri didn’t know what to think. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “But I don’t want to go to Paris now. I’d like to go home, if you don’t mind helping me.”
Shepard Green gave another wave to the doorframe. The Eiffel Tower beyond it disappeared, replaced by the familiar sight of Zuri’s bedroom. “All you have to do is walk through.”
Clutching the comforter tightly around her body, Zuri walked past him. As she walked through the doorway, she heard him call out, “Connect with me tonight?”
A shudder shook Zuri, and she found herself tangled in her own bedsheets, lying in her own bed.
She saw no trace of Shepard Green’s comforter anywhere.
CHAPTER 22
As soon as Zuri got dressed and entered her living room, she dashed to the food delivery door and opened it, relieved to find her breakfast bag. Sinking onto her sofa to eat, Zuri couldn’t help but notice the food was barely warm, a sure sign that she must be behind schedule.
The Incoming Connect icon pushed forward from the wall surrounding her. Before Zuri could answer, the image of a large cocoon swung in her living room, as if attached to the branch of a tree. Donna spoke, her voice sounding muffled as it came from inside the cocoon. “Congratulations on your first endorsement.” Her tone took just a hint of a sneer. “And congratulations on snagging one of the most famous men in the world. You’re officially a rising star.”
Zuri blanched. How could Donna know?
The cocoon shuddered and swung like a pendulum. It broke loose from the invisible branch and landed on the floor of Zuri’s living room with a sickening thud, cracking the sides of the cocoon.
With a tearing sound, the cocoon burst open.
A dragon the color of rubies emerged like a fresh chick and spread its paper-like wings out to dry. Donna spoke from its mouth. “This is an auspicious beginning for you. Take my advice: take advantage of everything your business partner creates. You’ve worn that bubble dress too often. Wear something different every day, and make sure all of your new fans see it. Change your outfit often throughout the day, and make sure they take notice. Make sure they talk about you. And then talk about them talking about you. And now that you have an influential boyfriend—”
“I don’t think he’s my boyfriend,” Zuri blurted. “I’ve only seen him once.”
“Then make sure you see him every day. This kind of boyfriend can launch you into real fame—the kind of fame he has—faster than you can image.”
The idea startled Zuri.
Is that what I want? To have a relationship for the sake of achieving success?
At the same time, the opportunity that faced her felt thrilling.
Zuri knew that opportunities like this were rare and usually fleeting.
Opportunities like this could come along once in a lifetime.
How could she snub it and live with the memory of what could have been?
The red dragon gained its strength. Climbing to its feet, the creature shook its wings and flapped them slowly. “One more thing,” Donna said. “I keep my word.” With that, she roared, and fire flamed from the dragon’s mouth, burning the cocoon from which it had emerged into cinders. The dragon then glided through the doorframe and out of sight. The Incoming Connect icon faded back into the wall.
A knock rattled loudly against Zuri’s front door.
Dread raced through her blood.
Is it Shepard Green? Did Donna convince him to come here?
When Zuri went to check the peephole, she discovered her front do
or had none. And the nearest window stood too far away to let her see who knocked outside.
Zuri took a deep breath to calm herself.
Donna said I’m a rising star. It’s in her best interest to send someone who can help me. Would it be so terrible to have Shepard Green as a boyfriend? What if he isn’t as bad as everyone thinks he is when it comes to women? What if he could help me?
Steeling her nerves, Zuri opened the door.
On the other side, Mae Lin grinned. “It took you long enough. Doesn’t anyone in VainGlory know how to answer a knock on the door?”
CHAPTER 23
Zuri stood awash in a tsunami of relief and happiness and gratitude at the sight of Mae Lin.
Had they been back home in Aspire, Zuri would have nodded and gestured for her friend to come inside. Zuri might have then given Mae Lin a quick pat on the back or a brief hug.
The past days of worry caught up with Zuri. She’d felt lonely in VainGlory without her friend. The day Mae Lin shared the news of their friend Ann’s suicide had cast a shroud of apprehension over Zuri and made her feel guilty for the sadness she saw on Mae Lin’s face. Even worse, failing to find Mae Lin during the past few days had nagged at Zuri. Her greatest fear had been that Mae Lin had taken the same path as Ann, and Zuri didn’t know how she could survive in the world without Mae Lin—not just as a business partner, but as her dearest friend.
With all that bubbling up inside, Zuri pulled Mae Lin inside and held her in a bear hug. Zuri’s voice choked as she said, “I’ve missed you so much.”
Mae Lin returned her hug but then tensed. “You’re about to break my ribs!”
Startled by her own strength, Zuri let go and backed away. She shut the front door behind them and then grabbed Mae Lin’s hand and pulled her into the living room and onto the sofa to sit next to Zuri. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for days!”
Mae Lin gave her a blank look. “Here. I’ve been here in VainGlory.”
Zuri returned her friend’s blank look.
The wall of icons around Zuri became animated, and their chatter made it hard to hear Mae Lin. Zuri’s Personal Soundtrack played a bright and lively song about success. Annoyed by it all, Zuri diminished the appearance of the icons and muted its sound as well as the soundtrack so she could hear her friend better.