Love On-Line Read online

  ‘Is this yours?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Uh-huh. Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ Rose went over to the desk to check out the computer. It was a new model. ‘Are you on the Internet?’

  ‘Oh, sure. It’s useful for research, and when Mom’s in Atlanta we stay in touch by e-mail.’

  ‘Yeah, I do that with my mum and dad. And Simon, especially. Thanks to the Internet, I don’t miss him so much.’

  ‘Your brother? Where is he?’

  ‘He’s at Oxford.’

  ‘Is he really? Oh, wow.’ Olivia’s lips parted; her eyes were glowing. ‘I never thought of Oxford. I applied to Harvard, but … Nanny gets so huffy about the idea that I could want to go to some Yankee university, like leaving Georgia would be defecting to the enemy – but I’ll bet she wouldn’t feel the same way about an English university. She couldn’t. All good things came from England originally, in her view, it’s just that they’re better after they’ve been over here awhile. Thanks, Rose, for giving me such a great idea.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, thank Simon.’

  ‘I will when I meet him.’ Olivia grinned. ‘What’s he like, your brother? Do you get along with him? I guess you do, if you stay in touch. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a sister or a brother – I used to wish for a sister. Not a brother, though. I guess I had enough male cousins to put me off the idea.’

  ‘Don’t you like boys?’

  ‘Uh-oh, what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You don’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘So? Neither do you.’

  ‘But I’d like to.’ Rose hesitated. ‘You could have anyone you wanted, and you don’t care.’

  Olivia nodded slowly. Her playfulness had vanished. ‘Yeah. Lots of boys would be willing to go out with somebody who’s rich, famous, stacked and blonde … but maybe that’s not why I want to be wanted.’

  Rose thought of the gated entrance, the elaborate security precautions the Masons had erected around their property. ‘Oh, Livy, that’s … you shouldn’t assume the worst of people. The world’s not full of fortune-hunters. There are lots of boys who’d like you for yourself – if you gave them the chance to know you.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe I’d rather not know them. I’m not being flip. Love is too dangerous to play around with. I’ve seen girls who just lose themselves … stop studying, forget their friends, their family, their plans, everything that used to be important to them, all for some boy who’ll be chasing after some other girl three months later. I have plans for the future, and I’m not going to put them at risk. If I fall in love with somebody now, could I bear to leave him behind after graduation? Would my brain go all mushy, would I decide I wanted to go to Georgia State to stay near him? Or maybe just drop out altogether and be his little wifey?’

  ‘So you’re never going to let yourself fall in love in case you have to change your plans for your life?’ Disbelief rang like a bell in Rose’s voice. ‘You make love sound like a disease.’

  ‘I think it probably is. Anyway, I’ve just given you my theory. The truth is, I’m not at risk. Frankly, there’s not a boy in our school who tempts me in the slightest. The real reason I don’t have a boyfriend is that I’ve never met a boy who interests me half as much as, say, you do. Frankly, I’d much rather spend my time getting to know you as a friend than go out and do the boy-girl thing and flirt and pretend I care. I don’t need a boyfriend. I have no interest at all in romantic love.’

  8 Friendships

  Dear Chris and Alice,

  Wow, the hippos sound amazing! I printed your letter out for Gran, and we both enjoyed the story of your latest adventures. Please send more!

  We are both fine. Gran has finally stopped trying to wait on me hand and foot, and will let me do some things for her. After supervising me in the kitchen for three weeks, she finally accepts that I know what I am doing, and I am allowed to cook dinner by myself occasionally.

  The new English class is much better. We are doing a unit on Herman Melville just now. Studying American history is fascinating; I am getting a very different perspective on things I thought I knew. Chemistry has turned out not to be as difficult as I’d feared, and I like the lab work. I am managing to keep up in math (just!), but in French I’m at the head of the class – I got an A+ on my first essay!

  Until I came along, Olivia was always the top of the class, but she doesn’t mind; she says it’s good to have some real competition for a change. She has become a really good friend, and we do lots of things together. We have been going to the Y in Livingston to swim and work out, and now we’ve signed up for fencing classes, which should be fun. She is so nice; I feel so lucky to have found a friend like her. Our backgrounds are so different, but we get along so well. Gran says that you (Alice) used to be friends with Olivia’s mother. I haven’t met her yet, only her granny, who is formidable but sweet, not unlike my own dear gran!

  Forgive the shortness of this letter; there is plenty more I could say, but I know you wouldn’t want me to skimp on my homework.

  Love and kisses and lots of good thoughts.

  Simon, where are you? I’ve been searching our usual haunts with no luck. Don’t tell me you’ve started going to bed at a reasonable hour? Or maybe studying is your excuse? I know I said I’d try to go on-line earlier, but it’s hard to manage. I hardly ever come home on the bus now – most days I do something with Olivia, even if it’s just hanging out together. She’s teaching me to drive! Don’t mention this to the parental unit, just in case … I don’t know how they’d feel about it, but it is perfectly safe. Her family owns a big estate with private roads, so I am not likely to meet other traffic when I’m behind the wheel. Having Olivia for a friend is so great – I can’t wait for you to meet her – but also kind of scary. I’m afraid that when the newness wears off, the novelty of hearing an English accent, she’ll take a closer look and wonder how she could have made such a mistake as to think that she liked me.

  Sometimes I think we have nothing in common, although we do get along very well, laugh at the same things, love many of the same books. But she thinks people who spend too much time in virtual reality or surfing the Net are nerds and losers, so that’s one subject we don’t talk about. I can see why she doesn’t have time for cyberspace, as she is very serious about her studies, and besides regular schoolwork and extra tuition in physics and maths, she takes piano lessons and some kind of martial art.

  I feel lucky she has time for me! If not for Olivia, I wouldn’t have any friends. I have tried, honestly, but nobody seems to want to know. No one is mean to me, or rude, but Olivia is the only one to make any effort to be really friendly. Whenever I try to start a conversation or join in a discussion I seem to get it wrong. I’m forever misunderstanding things which are perfectly obvious to them. It seems that as I’m an outsider, the only place for me is outside their closed circles. One girl who seemed friendly at first has now taken offence; she seems to think my friendship with Olivia is a slap at her, and when I tried to prove otherwise I somehow wound up making things worse.

  Of course, Gran is thrilled that I’m friends with someone from the top social register, and because it is Olivia Mason that I’m going with, there’s no argument if I’m going to be home late. Which is a relief, because there are plenty of other grounds for arguments. I do love Gran, but in coming to stay here I feel like I’ve lost two or three years off my age. Suddenly, I have to get permission for things I’d never have bothered to ask at home, and she has an opinion on everything – only as far as she’s concerned it is not an opinion, it is The Way Things Are Done. Usually it is easier to give in and agree to whatever she says – I am only a visitor, after all, a child and a poor ignorant foreigner. Yet to my astonishment, Olivia goes through the same things with her granny! Olivia says you have to develop a core of steel, but not waste your strength fighting battles that don’t matter (like clothes and curfews). Save it for the big one – which in her case
is going out of state to university.

  Gran has just looked in and asked – sweet little old-lady velvet covering the steel sword-blade – if I’m going to sit up much longer. I agreed that I was just on my way to bed. I don’t argue about bedtime now, following Olivia’s advice. If I really need to finish something, I wait until I hear her snores drifting gently down the hall, and then crawl as quietly as a mouse back to my beloved computer.

  So goodnight, dear brother, but not goodbye.

  Running like a secret, underground river beneath the life that was called ‘real’ was Rose’s virtual existence. She had never meant to keep it a secret, but the contempt she realised Olivia held ‘computer nerds’ in had kept her silent, until the moment for casual revelation had passed. Olivia knew that Rose kept in touch with the far-flung members of her family via e-mail, but she didn’t know about Rose’s other life as Roberto. And although Simon certainly knew that his sister was visiting Illyria, and knew the importance to her of her life on the Internet, she had shied away from confessing her feelings for Orson/Orsini.

  Roberto’s friendship with Orsini had blossomed even more quickly than Rose’s with Olivia: the hothouse atmosphere of virtual reality somehow encouraged intimacy. Virtual strangers became friends, even lovers, after only a few meetings. And then – as Rose knew from stories she’d heard – within a month or so lovers might again be strangers, hiding behind new names and searching for someone new with whom to begin the whole process again. It was all part of the game. It was only a game, not to be confused with real life, she reasoned, to justify not confessing her secret identity to Olivia, to Simon, or to Orson. And yet she knew that Roberto was a part of herself, and that his friendship with Orsini was equally real and important to her. If she told Orson that his friend Roberto was really Rose she knew that he would feel tricked and betrayed. Instead of being indifferent he would hate her and their friendship would die.

  She couldn’t bear the thought. She was determined not to tell Orson any out-and-out lies, not to misrepresent herself in ways that really mattered, but to get away with this meant doing some pretty fancy dancing with language. She would tell the truth even though she had to, in Emily Dickinson’s phrase, ‘tell it slant’.

  It seemed as if she would be able to get away with it indefinitely, if not forever, being one self on the screen and another in the world of flesh.

  *

  Orson had never had a friend like Roberto. Yet in the ordinary sense, they were strangers.

  Farren was his oldest friend. They’d played together every day as children, and defended each other against their enemies. Although they’d grown apart in some ways, they were still united by their shared past and their interests in music, baseball and classic cars. But they didn’t share Orson’s computer life, his liking for fantasy novels and gaming. Emotions were pretty much off-limits for discussion. Before Roberto, Farren was the only person to whom Orson had confided his feelings for Olivia, yet his friend refused to take them seriously. If Orson tried to talk to him about love, he’d get crude jokes in reply. Farren preferred to pretend he was indifferent rather than admit he might be lonely, and not even his best friend was allowed to suggest otherwise.

  Roberto and Orsini shared whatever came into their minds, whether important or trivial: last night’s dream, a favourite song, thoughts about advertising, deeper thoughts about philosophy, love, sex, ecology, worries about death and disaster, relationships with parents, fears and hopes about the future …

  Gradually the characters of Count Orsini and Roberto became, like the Illyrian background, of less interest than the contact between their two selves. More and more often they met in the private room of Count Orsini’s castle, where they could talk to each other without having to worry about being overheard, or being interrupted by someone like the CyberQueen – who definitely had a thing for Roberto and didn’t care who knew it. The adventures they had once enjoyed now seemed almost dull in comparison with their developing friendship.

  Being on-line for hours was expensive, even at local rates, so they exchanged e-mail addresses and wrote each other letters – some very long, some brief thoughts – several times a day.

  Orson had expected Roberto to sign off with his real name. But although Roberto’s e-mail address included what were presumably his initials – RSD – he signed his first missive ‘Ro’, and included no concrete, checkable details about his real life.

  Taking Ro’s cue, Orson signed his missives ‘Or’, enjoying the neat reversal. It seemed like a little hint from the universe that their friendship was preordained, even if Ro was, for some unknown reason, still shy about revealing his RL identity.

  A certain telepathy seemed to exist between them. It had to be more than coincidence that he’d suddenly have the feeling that Roberto was in Illyria, and find out he was right, or that some of his e-mail messages were answered almost immediately. It was as if some slender, invisible line of communication connected them through their computers, even when one of them was switched off. And Orson began to feel this mysterious sixth sense at work, telling him that Ro was avoiding some of his questions, talking around them in a way he would not have noticed once, but which now seemed as obvious as a flashing light on the screen above the words. Orson wondered what Ro was hiding, but he didn’t want to frighten his friend away. So he didn’t hint that he’d noticed, and he tried to avoid the sort of direct questions which caused evasion.

  Using his knowledge of the underlying programs, Orson called up a list of everyone who had visited Illyria since the beginning of term. In addition to knowing the password, users also had to key in their student ID number. They could call themselves whatever they liked during their stay in Illyria – or even go in as a nameless, featureless ghost – but their real names would appear on this list.

  It was a much longer list than he’d expected – Illyria had always felt curiously underpopulated – but Orson realized that many of the names indicated a one-off visit by a curious browser who would never return. Like Olivia Mason. Orson’s heart gave a funny little flip when he saw her name. He wondered if her visit might have coincided with any of his. He wished there were some way of knowing what she had called herself, and what she had thought of Illyria – maybe someday he would be able to ask her.

  His eyes scanned down the list and he made a note of it every time he encountered someone named Robert. He was nearly at the end when he came across another name which took him by surprise: Farren Wiles.

  Orson simply couldn’t imagine the circumstances in which Farren, the self-proclaimed technophobe, could have been induced to sit down at someone’s computer – he certainly didn’t have one at home – and enter Illyria. Had someone else used Farren’s ID number to gain access? But why would Farren agree to that, and why would anyone outside the school system bother? There were plenty of other MUDs on the Net open to the general public. He resolved to ask Farren about it, and then, heart beating a little faster with excitement, he turned his attention back to the list of Roberts.

  Dear Ro, Love is a burden, a heaviness, when it can’t be returned. It weighs down the heart, it’s an ache that never stops. Who’d wish it on anyone? And now I see my little sister stumbling into that grownup world of pain and I want to warn her. But what can I say? She wouldn’t listen to me anyway, wouldn’t believe me. Everyone always thinks it will be different for them, and maybe she’s right. At least she’s not like me, moping around, yearning after someone who doesn’t care. No, Jenny’s all aglow with excitement, the thrill of being chosen, of being wanted. I don’t think she’s in love with the guy, anyway, but, hey, he asked her out, he picked her, so at least he’s got good taste. Why shouldn’t she be happy?

  It’s a Friday night, so Jenny went off to the mall with some friends. I could have gone, too – in fact, Jenny was hoping I’d drive them, but I wanted to stay in. I said I had homework, but the truth was I wanted to go to Illyria and hang out with my good friend, Roberto. Alas, he was nowhere to be found
. Without him, Illyria seemed flat, stale, profitless and dull. I had some good music playing in my room, and lots of thoughts in my head, but no one to share them with. So I wrote you a letter. Maybe you’ve read it by now. What a different mood I was in then, huh?

  Friday night … you’re probably out. Who are you with? Are you with a bunch of kids, hanging out at your local mall? Maybe you’re watching a movie. Are you alone? Do you have a girlfriend? You’ve never said. I’ve told you all about Olivia (what there is to tell!) and you know me inside out. But I don’t know if those feelings ring any bells. Is there an Olivia in your life? Are you in love? Have you ever been in love?

  Anyway, back to my sister Jenny’s big news. She met up with some other people while she was there, the way you do … She even told me Olivia was there, so of course I started beating myself up – silently – for not having gone. Somehow, it never occurred to me Olivia would be there. I’ve never seen her hanging out at the mall before; I never thought she was the type. I guess I thought she did her shopping in Atlanta. Anyway, she doesn’t usually hang out with other kids. Maybe it was her friend Rose’s idea. She used to be a loner, but now she has a friend, so maybe she’s changing. Maybe she’ll even change her stance on dating? Oh, if only I could be the one who changes her mind!

  But I’m off the subject again, rambling … I’m just a ramblin’ kind of guy, Ro. Hope you don’t mind?

  Jennifer’s got a date. The guy who asked her out, when she ran into him at the mall, is Malcolm Watts who, by a strange coincidence works for Olivia’s family. He’s a college student – or an ex-student – earning some money by acting as butler/chauffeur for Olivia’s grandmother. I don’t know why, exactly, but something about this whole business strikes me as ironic … Of course I hope she’ll be very happy.

  Where are you, Ro? I’m lonely and bored and fed up. A word from you would redeem this dull and stupid night. Are you there? Are you listening? Talk to me!