“I think,” I said, making a conscious effort to put my hands in my lap, “we really need to get in contact with Frank Lupiano.”
Adam grunted but pretended he was caught up in studying the computer readouts from those minutes I'd just spent in the game.
“What are you thinking?” Mom asked me.
I didn't want to hurt her, but I didn't want us to miss something because I'd tried to spare her feelings.
“Surely,” I said, “it can't be...” Hmm, what was the word I was looking for? Normal? Right? Healthy? I veered and approached from a slightly different angle. “It can't be a coincidence that all the guys in Emily's world either don't speak English, or don't speak at all?”
Ms. Bennett said, “So you suspect...?”
Suspect was too active a verb. “So I'm wondering ... I don't know ... maybe something happened with Frank. A fight? Maybe she doesn't want to hear what guys have to say because she's mad at him.”
Mom glared at Adam, who— for the moment, in this room, anyway—represented all guys in all their reprehensible breaking-daughters'-hearts ways.
Ms. Bennett said, “We've been trying to reach this Frank ever since your mother gave us his name.”
“How?” I asked.
Although she looked puzzled about why I was questioning that, she answered, “Your sister's phone. We got the number from her contact list, but he hasn't been answering.”
“Which he might not,” I pointed out, “if you've been using her phone and they had a fight.”
Ms. Bennett nodded, even as she said, “But we left a voice mail, and tried texting him, too.”
“From her phone,” I repeated. It almost made more sense than switching to a land line. That way, they could keep hitting redial.
Unfortunately, that was just the way a jilted girlfriend might think. Not that I'd ever done that. But I might have considered it. Once. With a particular seventh-grade boy I have long since realized I was lucky to be rid of.
“Still,” Adam was saying, “I identified myself as being from Rasmussem and said that there was an emergency with Emily and that we needed to talk to him.”
“Adam,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was the one with experience and he was the little kid. “Like a certain kind of ticked-off girl wouldn't text something exactly like that if she was being ignored?”
I could tell by their faces that they saw I was right. Even Mom.
“Call from the phone in my office,” Ms. Bennett instructed Adam.
“Too late,” I said. “He might not pick up if he doesn't recognize the incoming number.”
“What do you recommend, Grace?” Ms. Bennett asked me.
“A call he can't ignore...”
“The police?” Mom asked.
“Mom! No.”
My thinking was Too much time trying to explain. But Ms. Bennett wore a horrified look, and I'm guessing that she was thinking Too much opportunity for a publicity leak.
I suggested, “Announce yourselves as being from Stoney's Barbeque Pit. You know how they have that promotion going: 'Answer your phone or call us back in five minutes, and win a barbeque feast for you and four of your friends.' ”
“Misrepresent ourselves on the phone?” Ms. Bennett asked. But in another moment she told Adam, “Do it.”
I said, “But Adam already left a voice message. Frank might recognize his voice. It might be better if you did this.”
Ms. Bennett said, “Do I sound like a Barbeque Pit sort of gal?” She sighed but started for the door.
“Should we be there?” I called after her. “Just in case?”
“Just in case what?”
Just in case you try something—I don’t know what, but the truth is I don't fully trust you, since you have Emily's best interests at heart only so long as they don’t clash with Rasmussem's best interests.
But while I was trying to figure out a slightly more diplomatic answer, she gave a wave of her hand that we took to mean All right, come on.
I hopped off the total immersion couch and followed her down the hall, not taking the time to put my sneakers back on. My mother walked next to me, holding my hand, which I knew looked three levels beyond pathetic, but I wasn't going to be the one to tell her that, even when we walked past a bunch of cubicles where employees glanced up at us from their computers. Behind Ms. Bennett's back, a pair of women at a water cooler motioned for Adam to join them. He obviously didn't dare risk having Ms. Bennett notice that he'd fallen behind, and shook his head.
Ms. Bennett, it turned out, was important enough that she had a real office, with regular walls and a door. When she opened that door, we all saw Sybella sitting at the desk, talking on Emily's cell phone. True, she'd been told to check Emily's contacts. But we all instinctively knew it was not good to get caught actually parking herself in the boss's chair: Sybella got her skinny little butt out of there even before Ms. Bennett crossed her arms and gave her what kids around the world recognize as The Look.
“No, never mind,” Sybella said, wrapping up her conversation from a standing position. “Sorry to bother you.” She snapped the phone shut and explained the call rather than the reasoning behind making herself at home in the big cheese's office furniture. “JoAnn's. As in the craft store, not a close personal friend named Joann.”
“She wanted to work there last summer,” Mom explained. “They said to keep calling to see if there was an opening, but there never was.”
“Which explains why nobody there knew her,” Sybella said. Glancing at me, but speaking to Ms. Bennett, she asked, “So, any breakthroughs?”
Ms. Bennett held her hand out for the phone and looked up Frank's number, which she wrote down. Then she handed Emily's phone back to Sybella and said, “You can go through the rest of Emily's contact list in the conference room,” proof that she still figured Sybella was an irritant to Mom, even if Mom was willing to speak to her.
Sybella left, and Ms. Bennett reclaimed her desk. She took a deep breath, dialed Frank's number, and put on an enormous smile, which she kept through what must have been three rings and a prompt to leave a message. “Hi!” she said in a voice that had developed a sudden hint of Texas—which, I guess, the thought of smoked ribs and beef brisket tends to bring out in people. “This is Cheryl-Anne, from Stoney's Barbeque—home of the Fabulous Finger-Lickin' Mouth-Watering Stoney's Platter for Five. And you, lucky contestant, have had your number selected—”
By her abrupt stop, we could tell Frank had gone for the barbeque bait and had answered the phone.
“Listen up,” Ms. Bennett said, all trace of Cheryl-Anne from Stoney's gone, replaced with a hard edge that was also new to us. “I'm Dr. Jenna Bennett, chief technical engineer at Rasmussem Corporation, and if you hang up, representatives from the Rochester Police Department will be going to your home to bring your mother in for questioning. I'm assuming she won't be pleased about that, so you consider well, young man.”
I could hear Frank's voice seeping out of the receiver, loud and angry, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.
That was probably all for the best.
“No, this is not a prank. If you hang up, this will become a matter for the police.”
After giving him all of about a heartbeat to think this over, she continued. “Your girlfriend, Emily Pizzelli, has gotten herself into some very serious trouble, and we want to know what insight you can give us into her state of mind. When was the last time you spoke with her?”
A pause, with Frank's tinny voice telling her something.
“Since when?” Ms. Bennett asked. Then she demanded, “Tell me the circumstances.” Then, “It stopped being personal when Emily took it upon herself to do what she did, about which I cannot be more specific because (a) there's no time, and (b) I don't have clearance from our legal department, and (c) the opportunity for that will be when criminal charges are made.”
Having seen Ms. Bennett put on the convincing persona of Cheryl-Anne from Stoney's, it was hard for me to j
udge how real that threat was.
Frank, however, was apparently convinced and spilling his guts.
“So,” Ms. Bennett said after a short bit, “not an amicable separation.”
I glanced at Mom, who looked grim. I probably did, too. I had come to suspect this, from what I had seen in the game, but until then, we had all assumed Emily and Frank were a happy couple.
Ms. Bennett said, “All right, Frank, I need you to keep in mind that a young woman's life literally hangs in the balance. Is there anything else you're not telling me?” She angled her chair away from us. Clearly, she didn't want us to see her face—or maybe it was that she didn't want to see ours. She asked Frank, “Could she be pregnant?”
I heard Mom gasp, felt her grip on my fingers tighten, but she didn't protest.
Ms. Bennett was shaking her head, either to reassure Mom or at something Frank was saying. “It better be,” she said. “It better be the truth. And if I call you again, young man, you'd better pick up.”
She hung up the phone and swung back to face us. “He says no.” We didn't need to ask which part of the conversation she was talking about. To my mom, she added, “I had to ask.”
“I understand,” Mom squeaked.
“He says that they grew apart,” Ms. Bennett told us. “That she became needy and clingy, and demanded constant reassurance.”
“That doesn't sound like her,” Mom protested.
“None of this does,” I pointed out. Flower-matching games and princess dresses and more pink than in a whole case of Pepto-Bismol? Refusing to talk to me? Killing off loyal game characters when, even at eighteen years old, she still had to fast-forward the movie when it got to the part where Bambi's mother gets shot? No, this most definitely did not sound like Emily.
“Agreed,” Ms. Bennett said, though obviously she was just guessing, or saying what she figured we wanted to hear. She couldn't know, not the way we did. “Grace,” she said, “are you willing to go back, armed with this new knowledge?”
“Wait a minute,” Mom said. “So Emily and her boyfriend break up, and that makes Emily so depressed she decides to go into a fantasy game and not come out?”
“It's the closest thing we have to a theory,” Ms. Bennett said.
I'd almost forgotten Adam, because he'd come in behind us and hadn't said a word; but now he cleared his throat and said, “Well, I guess that would sort of explain...”
He hesitated, and Mom snapped, “What? What would it explain?”
I didn't think grown guys could blush, but he did. “Well ... the way ... she ... sort of ... came on to me.”
“Oh for goodness' sakes!” Mom said.
Emily? I thought. Popular, happy Emily, who has to practically beat boys off with a stick? She put the moves on Adam?
But then I thought, She could have had just about any guy in high school, but she chose Frank. And now it turns out Frank is a weasel.
I suspected Adam was a bit of a weasel himself.
But that wasn't the point.
Ms. Bennett scowled at Adam. “You might have mentioned this before.”
“I didn't think it was relevant,” he protested. “I explained to her that I'm engaged, and that was the end of it.”
That wasn't the point, either. The point was: if Emily had her heart broken by a boy, shouldn't she want sisterly companionship and compassion?
I said, “So I'm supposed to ... what? Go in there and tell her 'You're better off without him'? 'There are other fish in the sea'? 'There's someone you're destined to meet, and he's not here in this game'?”
“It's a starting point,” Ms. Bennett said.
“How about this, instead?” I suggested. “If she's retreating into this made-up world because she likes that better than the real world...” I spared a moment to mentally add, Though God knows why, because I can’t see it, with or without Frank's being a worm, not to get my mammals and invertebrates confused or anything. “...why don't we alter the world we can?”
Mom said, “What?”
“Get rid of her perfect setting. Program a cold, rainy day. Give her blight in her garden, termites in the woodwork of the house, guys who can't stop talking—about themselves. I don't know ... dust, mildew, allergens, a plague of locusts. Make the game world less appealing.”
Ms. Bennett was nodding. “Yes,” she said. “We tried that.”
Now it was my turn to be confused. I hadn't seen any of those things.
Adam explained, “She modified the code to shut us out. So, yeah, we programmed things like that—we wrote out the sprites so she couldn't have any more wishes, we made the weather hot and muggy, we inserted a next-door neighbor in a trailer who tuned up his motorcycle engine all day long and played German opera at full volume all night. None of those things showed up. She put in a buffer to delay us. She can change things immediately from within the game, but any updates we put in won't take effect for another seventy-two hours.”
And Emily didn't have seventy-two hours. They didn't need to tell us that. We didn't know how long Emily had before the equipment—meant to be used for under an hour—would overheat her brain. In Principal Overstreet's office, Ms. Bennett had said Emily had already been hooked up for more than four hours. I suspected Ms. Bennett and Mr. Kroll might have been downplaying the elapsed time so that Mom and I wouldn't panic, and that “more than four hours” might mean “a lot more.” But even if it was exactly four back then at school, by now it was closer to six. Maybe it would be another two or three hours before the equipment would cause irreversible brain damage. Maybe a bit longer. But the time Emily had left was definitely less than seventy-two hours.
It was hard to concentrate with a deadline like that looming over us. Don't panic, I had to tell myself. I couldn't be any use to Emily if my brain froze.
Adam finished apologetically, apparently knowing how lame he sounded, “We've got people working on trying to eliminate that buffer.”
So much for my brilliant ingenuity saving the day.
“Which brings us back to Grace,” Ms. Bennett said. “Grace, are you willing to reenter the game and talk to your sister about her love life?”
Before I could say okay, Mom suggested, “Maybe it should be me?”
We just looked at her.
Mom picked up on our skepticism. “What?” she said.
“Let Grace give it another try,” Ms. Bennett told her. “Parents tend to put kids on the defensive. Emily might be more open with her sister than with her mother.” To me, Ms. Bennett added, “Grace, that was good work you did, finding that lead about the boyfriend. See what else you can learn.”
It wasn't that Emily and I had had many conversations of the deep, meaningful variety, not given the difference in our ages, but I had to think Ms. Bennett had a point about the likelihood of Emily being willing to tell all to Mom. Besides, the idea of Mom tromping through the game universe—dealing with malicious sprites and vicious bodyguards, figuring out the magic, having to determine what was important and what was just mundane game stuff—that was enough to cause my brain to overheat.
“I'll try it again,” I said.
Chapter 10
In the Woods
WE'LL WORK on that pain filter,” Adam told me, once we were back in the total immersion room—which might have been more reassuring if they hadn't already explained about that buffer where any changes had a seventy-two-hour lag before going into effect.
With my newfound bossiness, I took control of the one thing I could. I screwed up my assertiveness and announced, “I am not counting backwards from a hundred by sevens.”
Turns out, this was a big deal only to me. “Fine,” Ms Bennett said as Adam attached the leads to my temples.
Prepared for an argument, I said. “Oh. Okay.” Then I said, “What should I count back by?”
“Whatever you want,” Ms. Bennett said. “Or nothing at all.”
Lying there staring at the insides of my eyelids, I found that time crawled by. I suddenly realized th
at the mathematics was to keep my mind from spinning off in alarming directions. “One hundred,” I said. “Ninety-three...” What with my slow start, that was pretty much all I had time for.
I felt the shift in the quality of the air and opened my eyes.
I had gotten so used to the Victorian house, the garden, and the lake, I'd lost track of that path of crushed sparkly stones that led into the woods. But I was in the woods now.
Specifically, I was lying down in a tent in the woods. And by tent I do not mean anything like what the Boy Scouts of America camp out in. This was a pavilion, its sides of white silk billowing prettily in the breeze, which was how I could see the trees beyond. Several sets of wind chimes—some silver-belled, some made with brass tubes, and one of dried bamboo—struck random musical notes that would have been soothing if they didn't remind me of the sprites.
The pavilion was about as big as our living room. No furnishings that I could see, at least not from my current position. But there was a treasure chest, overflowing with both jewels and jewelry. That made me suspect that the tent poles—which looked like gold—probably really were gold. From the umbrella-like scaffolding that held up the ceiling hung a large wicker cage, which housed a happy little songbird that was chirping away. Satin pillows were strewn about the ground for sitting on; I myself was lying on a hammock with its own pillows, so it was very comfortable, and it swayed gently, a very relaxing motion.
The only bit of unpleasantness was a sour, musty smell, like old sweat. Oh, wait. That was me.
Now that I was back in this world, my head once again ached from where the stone had hit me. Time had passed in the game since the events of the night before, so the computer program assumed that I would have begun healing. But only a little. I touched my forehead and found a bump, but it was no longer so big that it felt as though a full-grown squirrel were about to burst out of there. So that was some progress.