THUMP! With a sudden jar of pain, Kyle found himself on his back starting up at the ceiling from the floor.
“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” Sera half stepped on him as she bounced out of the bed and over to her dresser. “We’re late! I mean, we’re really, really late!” As Kyle slowly staggered to his feet, he glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. Already, it was past ten o’clock – they weren’t just late for school, they were skipping it!
Without even bothering to watch Sera frantically strip and try to get ready, Kyle rushed downstairs and into the kitchen to grab the phone and check for messages. Seeing none yet this morning, he quickly looked at the list hanging on the wall and called the school. After a few rings, a mechanical voice spoke offering him options for who to speak to. Pressing one, the phone rang again and a woman’s voice answered. “Ridgewood Private Academy. This is Sandra speaking. How may I help you this morning?”
Deepening his voice as much as possible, Kyle spoke into the receiver. “This is Franklin Demoney. Me girl Seraphine won’t be in today, I don’t think. Neither will Kyle Smithson. I was bringing ‘em both ta school and me car broke down. We had ta get towed and it’s just been a pisser of a morning. We gonna be here fer a bit at da shop while they do what they do, and it’ll be late a’for we get there. If’n it’s too late, we might not even worry with it today and give ‘em a day off.”
“Well sir, you’re not supposed to do that,” the woman started on the other end of the phone.
“I KIN DO WHAT I WANTS!!” Kyle slammed down the receiver and just flopped down in the floor. He’d never played hooky before, but he didn’t want them calling and bothering his mom while she was resting, just because he overslept.
The furious stomping of feet down the steps heralded the arrival of Sera, who was out of breath and still buttoning her school shirt. “Come on Kyle! We got to go! We’re later than late, this morning!”
Slowly getting to his feet, Kyle shook his head slightly. “No worries. I took care of it. I called and told the school that we were going to be late and might not even show up today. I blamed it on your father.”
“You blamed dad?” She stopped trying to do up the last few buttons her shirt and just stared in shock at Kyle. “What have you gotten us into this time! We’re going to get murdered if he finds out we used him as an excuse to be late!”
“Not just late,” Kyle corrected. “I told them we might not even be there at all.”
“Oh hell….” Sera walked past him and flopped down in the first chair she came to at the table. “As if there weren’t enough issues going on already.” Shaking her head slowly from side to side, she finally rested it in her arms as she laid it down on the kitchen table.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked, worried. Sera was normally a fairly happy go lucky person, and this didn’t sound like her at all.
“Everything. Nothing. I don’t know,” was her cryptic answer. “Last night, I came home and mom saw me. She was curious why I wasn’t at the restaurant with dad, so I sat and talked with her for a bit. I told her that I was wanting to spend more time with everyone from school, so she advised me to talk things out with Dad.”
Letting out a deep sigh, Sera was quiet for several moments before continuing. “I walked to the store, taking time to get all my thoughts together. I figured we could chat between customers, or while cleaning up. He was happy to see me, but when I told him I wanted to quit at the store, he tossed a tray at the customers and ended up chasing them all out and locking the doors!”
Kyle just nodded sympathetically and walked around to slowly rub her shoulders. Sera was quiet again for several moments, simply enjoying the massage, before she continued once more. “I tried to explain everything to him, and father said for me not to worry about it. He’d just end up closing the restaurant for good! Franklin’s is now ‘Out of Business’, and I didn’t want that at all! I was going to cut back and work part time, but when I told him I wanted to do something else instead of work every evening, he closed the restaurant for good!”
“No more slop burgers?” Kyle said, shocked!
“No more nothing,” Sera confirmed sadly. “Father’s going today to put the place up for sale with some real estate company he does business with, and him and mother have decided that if the game is that interesting, they could play it too! They’re both going to make characters and start playing this afternoon when they get back! What am I going to do?! Father will explode if he ever finds out I’m playing a guy in a virtual world! He might not even let me play anymore, saying I’m some type of pervert or something!
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“And it’s still most of a month left before I can make a new character.” Sera was starting to tear up and cry slightly now.
Letting out a deep sigh, Kyle felt almost like crying himself. There really was only one thing to do. “Then Kylie will just have to be you in game,” he said slowly. “We’ll just have to try and synchronize when we log in, and we’ll let them think Kylie is you, just like Heather does. All we’ll have to do is hide the truth from all of them for a few weeks, and then we’ll both restart over. You can make a female after that, and there won’t be any issues anymore. Just a few weeks of hiding the truth from them. They shouldn’t be too hard.
“Chances are, they won’t start anywhere near me since I’m in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere.” Kyle said, brightly. “You just have to make certain that they don’t make ‘wildmen’ and start the game somewhere near you. Tell your mom about the ‘Ocean Elves’ and how they have the best songs, stories, and dances about the sea. It’d probably be enough to convince her to play one, and she’s likely to make your father make one with her. They can start off on an island in the middle of nowhere, and it’ll be easy to avoid them for a few weeks. Well, I’d think it’d be easy enough. Who knows with your mom – she’s worse than William!”
“I can’t!” Sera actually groaned in frustration. “We’re supposed to be in school. Remember? When they get back this afternoon, we’re not supposed to be here, and we can’t be here. Do you want to let father know we skipped classes?”
“Hell no!” Kyle didn’t even need to think about that question.
“So then, what do we do?” Sera looked up, pleadingly, with tears in her eyes. “We can’t go to school now. We can’t get caught here. We can’t get caught at your house, by your mother. Just what the heck are we going to do now!”
If it was summer, they could go spend all day and hang out at a park or something until school let out, but it was still too cold for that. Wracking his brain for all it was worth, Kyle finally suggested, “I suppose we could go on a date or something. Maybe a movie? Something to eat, after?”
Sera looked up and half smiled. “Sounds lovely.” Then she slowly shook her head from side to side. “The problem is, we can’t do that either. If we go out in our school uniforms, someone might see us and report us for playing hooky. If we don’t go out in our uniforms, our parents will know something's up when we get home this evening. We’re in a pickle.”
“Dammit!’ Kyle cussed in frustration. “Then what the heck are we going to do? We can’t stay. We can’t go. I don’t know what to do. What do all the dope heads, delinquents, and trouble makers do when they skip school?”
“Stay home,” Sera laughed bitingly, “which is something we can’t do.”
“Then we’ll just stay home.” Kyle finally said. “Your parents aren’t supposed to be back until later this afternoon. Mom works this afternoon. If we’re lucky, we can wait over here until mom goes to work, and then we can sneak over to my house before your parents get back.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Sera asked.
“Then we’ll slip outside and hide. All the water’s been drained out of the pool for the winter at my place, so it’d be easy to duck under that tarp and hide there out of the wind. It shouldn’t take too long after your parents get home, until mom goes to work. Then we can slip out and sneak in my house and no one will ever be the wiser. We can do this,” Kyle said with encouragement.
“Yeah.” Sera agreed. “If all those idiots can skip school and get away with it, we can do it once as well. We’ll be fine.”
“And besides,” she giggled. “If we do get caught, I’m blaming the whole idea on you!”