Deadly Pink (3 page)

That should be me offering comfort to my mother,
I thought. But I've never been very good at that sort of thing—too selfconscious, too concerned about being rebuffed, too afraid of saying the wrong thing and making everything worse. Emily, of course, is a naturally warm and sympathetic person and always knows exactly what to say and do when people are happy or sad or scared.

I WOULD have put my arm around Mom,
I thought as I stood there in the hallway.

It was just that Ms. Bennett was faster.

Even though she had hesitated.

If our positions had been reversed, Emily would have put her arms around Mom.

Ms. Bennett made Mom sit down on the edge of the couch, by Emily's feet. There were tissues on the shelf beneath the couch, and Ms. Bennett—taking no chances—handed Mom the whole box.

In an accusing voice, Mom managed to say, “You told me you had disconnected her.” She reached out her hand as though to pull loose the feed wires that stretched from Emily's temples to the wall panel behind her.

Ms. Bennett blocked her. “We did,” she assured Mom, assured both of us, even though I was still standing lumpishly in the hallway. “But when that didn't do any good, we hooked her up again so that we can monitor her responses and see where—in the game world—she is.”

Mom took a deep breath, but her voice shuddered nonetheless. “And now you want to do the same to Grace?”

I forced myself to be calm enough to say, “It doesn't hurt, Mom. It's just suction cups.” My mind, always ready to come up with a dire alternative, was quick to chime in:
Or at least, it's never hurt before.

Ms. Bennett touched a button on the wall panel and the side wall slid down into the floor—instant small-groupsized room.

Little-Miss-Tim-Hortons Sybella was there, waiting to set me up.

“It should be me,” Mom said. She once more burst into tears, so I went over to the other couch. No kid should see her parent cry.

And no kid, even a beige, nondescript kid whose best quality is her lack of excitability, should leave her sister stranded and in trouble, even if it's that sister's own choice.

“As soon...”—Mom had to work hard to make her words intelligible to me—“...as soon as you get into the game, come straight back out again, so that I know you can.”

I could see Sybella press her lips together to keep from saying anything about how that was useless or a waste of time, but Ms. Bennett said, “That will be fine.”

Sybella gave me a hairband to get my forehead clear.

As though she had never seen me with my hair pulled back, Mom dissolved into tears again.

“Do you want to go to the restroom?” Ms. Bennett asked her. “Throw some cold water on your face?” Before I even realized this might have been something to panic over, Ms. Bennett assured Mom, “We won't send Grace till you're back.”

Mom nodded, and Ms. Bennett led her out of the room.

“Shoes or no shoes?” Sybella asked. “You don't
need
to take them off, but you might be more comfortable without.”

I kicked my sneakers off, only hoping—once it was too late—that my toes weren't beginning to come through my socks. I snuck a peek. No obvious signs of wear, but I wouldn't have chosen the Bugs Bunny pair if I had known anybody was going to see them.

“There's a shelf beneath the couch where you can put your shoes and any personal items,” she told me. “They'll be perfectly safe there. No one besides me will be coming in here.” She blinked, then added, “Well, and your mother and Ms. Bennett.” She patted the couch to indicate which direction for me to lie down—like it wasn't obvious by the pillow at the end near the wall with the panel.

“Need to loosen the button of your jeans? Your clothing shouldn't be tight or restrictive. Again, keep in mind that no one else will be seeing you.”

“I'm okay,” I told her. “I've done this before.”

She nodded emphatically. I noticed that she kept glancing at a clipboard. She wasn't checking things off, but she was making sure she went through the routine correctly. Since I'd played before, she could skip some of the handholding instructions, but now she'd lost her place.

“New here?” I asked, because she looked so frazzled.

It wasn't fair.
She
should have been calming
me.
It was
my
sister who was ... Well, I wasn't sure what was going on with Emily. But she was in
some
sort of trouble.

“Yeah,” Sybella said as she slathered my temples with some of that cold jellylike stuff that is supposed to help keep the leads on, but not
stuck
on. “The course description said 'game development and facilitation.' I didn't realize I'd be interacting with the public.”

After a few seconds of silence as she triple-checked that the wires were positioned correctly, it sank in that she'd said
course
description, not
job
description. “Are you an intern, too? Like my sister?”

“Yup,” she said. “I don't know her. They already asked. I mean, it's a big class.”

“You're in her
class?”
I echoed. It was hard to believe they could be in the same school and not know each other. Even people from my grade, three years younger, had known Emily. “So you only met once you both started working here?”

“Not so much,” Sybella said.

This was March. Emily had been going to school for almost seven months, working at Rasmussem for three. It was amazing that she hadn't arranged a Get-to-Know-One-Another Ice-Cream Social, or a Halloween party, or a Thanksgiving feast, or a Christmas gift exchange in that time, not to mention a Valentine's Day dance.

Mom and Ms. Bennett came back in. Mom looked like she was holding herself together through sheer will. She sat down on Emily's couch, but on the side near me, and she took my hand.

“Ready, Grace?” Ms. Bennett asked. “We're going to set you down in the game that Emily's development team was working on. Because game time moves much more quickly than real time, we can't pinpoint exactly where she is, but you should be in her vicinity.”

“So,” my mother asked, “how does Grace get out of the game?”

I knew the answer to that, because that's something they always remind you of just before you go under.

“As with all our games,” Ms. Bennett told Mom, “there's a safety feature we've built in, because these games are supposed to be fun. If something seriously spooks one of our players, or if—in this case—Grace wants to confer with us because she's learned something she thinks might be helpful, all she has to do is say: 'End game. Bring me back to Rasmussem.' ” To me, she said, “Again, bear in mind it won't be instantaneous because of the time differential, but we'll pull you out if you speak those words—or if we sense by your bio readings that something is severely bothering you. Except for this first time, when we'll just pull you back automatically right away, to assure your mother it can be done.”

I couldn't think of any more questions to delay things. “Okay,” I said.

“Do I need to let go of her hand?” Mom asked, which I thought was a reasonable question, but apparently not, because Sybella snorted, though she tried to mask it with a cough.

Ms. Bennett must have been getting exasperated, because she said, “It's not like we're giving her electric shock treatment or defibrillating her. Grace, close your eyes and count back from one hundred by sevens.”

Why was it always sevens? Last time I'd played, I'd told myself I was going to do some memorizing so as not to embarrass myself, but of course I hadn't gotten around to that. I closed my eyes. “One hundred. Ninety-three...” Okay, everything after that was complicated, at least for me, at least without pencil and paper. Okay, seven from fourteen would be seven, so—minus one...“Eighty-six.” Could they tell if I used my fingers? Did everybody else do this faster? Was I the biggest loser to ever lie down on one of these couches?

I opened my eyes to see if they were laughing at me, and I was in Emily's game.

Chapter 3

Emily’s Game

N
OBODY HAD SAID
anything about what kind of game Emily had been working on, but immediately I could see that it was a kids' game. Specifically—and I say that even though normally speaking I hate stereotyping—it was a little girls' game. The colors gave it away: pink and lavender and lilac and violet and teal. Any self-respecting boy would be gagging already. I myself was concerned about instant-onset diabetes from all the sweetness.

It wasn't that I'd been expecting something in particular. But now, forced to think about it, I was amazed to find that Emily was trying to lose herself in a game aimed at ten-year-olds. I guess I'd subconsciously been assuming she'd be in a fantasy medieval world where—as a kick-butt type of warrior queen—she'd be in the middle of high adventure in some exotic locale, menaced by fierce-but-surprisingly-attractive bad guys, and surrounded by her own handsome-and-ready-to-die-for-her company of fighters.

Oh, wait. That was what I would have chosen.

Still, this game looked like PBS programming for kids barely old enough to spell PBS.

I found myself in a white latticework gazebo, sitting on one of those suspended-from-the-rafters porch swings, which was garlanded with fragrant flowers of the aforementioned girly-girl colors. To the left of the gazebo was a Victorian-style house—ditto on those colors—sitting on the edge of a little lake, complete with swans. At least the swans were white and didn't look too much like plush toys. To the right was a wooded area—not scary let's-lose-Hansel-and-Gretel-type woods, but almost like a slightly disorderly orchard with a variety of trees, many of them in full blossom. The trees were obviously more than a background, because there was a path of crushed sparkly white stones leading into them.

A butterfly—an oversized monarch that looked as though it had been tapped by a glitter stick—landed on my hand on the swing's armrest.

“You don't happen to know where Emily is, do you?” I asked the butterfly.

But the thing seemed more interested in being seen than in communicating.

In the games I've played, there's a mechanism gamers call the “Finding Rasmussem Factor.” I have no idea what the official name for it is, but it works like this: if all else fails, we're told in a not-so-subtle bit of self-aggrandizing self-promotion to go to Rasmussem. Sometimes that's a person, or it can be an artifact, or a place—someone to meet or something to get or somewhere to go to have the quest explained or to learn the more essential ins and outs of the particular game world you're playing. For most kids, it's a matter of pride
not
to seek Rasmussem, but in some games you absolutely cannot proceed without checking in.

In this case, however, I didn't need to find the purpose of the game; I only needed to find Emily.

I got off the swing. As far as I knew, the Rasmussem people hadn't programmed any changes to my personal appearance, but I saw they'd made my clothing fit in with this world. I was wearing a white floaty dress and delicate silver ballet flats. Something moved near my face in my peripheral vision, and instinctively I put my hand up. Ribbons. Cascading down from a flower crown. Of course.

Standing in the entryway of the gazebo, I looked around.

House.

Lake.

Flower garden.

Woods.

No Emily.

No hint where Emily might be.

Well,
I thought,
let’s not dismiss the obvious.
“Emily!” I called.

But of course it couldn't be that easy.

I knew Ms. Bennett and Sybella would be pulling me back shortly, but that didn't mean I should just hang around here. That was a waste of time. The recall program could find me wherever I went, and I was worried about Emily. Ms. Bennett had been vague about what would happen if Emily stayed in the game too long. But international companies don't send chief technical engineers and lawyers on trivial errands.

House,
I decided. That was a limited space for me to explore.

I stepped out of the gazebo onto the lawn. The grass was as lush and soft as green velvet, and every step released a just-mown scent.

The house had a wraparound porch that completely encircled the place, but there were steps on this side leading to what I presumed to be the front door, complete with iridescent leaded glass.

No doorbell, I noticed.

No lock, either. When I turned the knob, the door opened, and I found myself in a huge foyer with slate tiles in the pastel-heathers family of color. “Emily!” I called.

The place was too kid-friendly to have anything even remotely spooky like an echo. Despite the fact that there was no answer, I could smell sugar and cinnamon, as though someone was baking.

A magnificent stairway curved gracefully to the upstairs rooms. As inviting as that looked, with the red carpet and the shiny wooden banisters, I decided to check the ground floor first.

The rooms were lavishly furnished: grandfather clock in the foyer; orchids and sunflowers and rhododendrons and a pink baby grand piano in the sunroom; cupboards and buffets and a big-enough-for-state-dinners-at-the-White-House table in the dining room; floor-to-ceiling shelves in the library, accessed by a ladder that slid around on a track so that you could reach even the farthest volume on the highest shelf and then read it in one of the big comfy chairs. But no clutter or knickknacks. Nothing personal. No sign that anyone actually lived here.

Nobody in the bright and shiny kitchen, either, despite the crystal bowl with fresh-cut flowers on the counter, and a platter of those aromatic cinnamon cookies. I took one—out of curiosity, not real hunger—and it was warm and delicious. Well, that was
one
thing I liked in this game.

I had just decided I would have to go upstairs after all, when I happened to look out the kitchen window. Which wasn't hard to do. This place had more glass overlooking pretty expanses than a window manufacturer's ad. The particular view I had was of the lake. I could still see the swans, but from this vantage I also noticed a dock—a pretty, flower-festooned dock—which made me look a little farther out onto the water, and that's when I saw another swan shape, a big one. It was, in fact, a swan-shaped boat.