Welcome to Gaia! ::

Chapter 2

The Website turned out to be one like MySpace, only darker, and the people were a lot different. It wasn’t hard to get an account, but finding Megan proved to be a challenge. After he had spent a good deal of time looking for her, he realized that it was nearly midnight. Shutting down his computer, he sighed. This meant that he would have to talk to her friends.

Megan’s friends, at first glance, were just like her. But when you looked closer, they dressed slightly differently, almost more fashionable. Nonetheless, because of their good grades and choices of passtimes, Brandon and his circle of friends stayed away from them. It would have been a sin to be seen with one of them. It was fine to have one do your homework, but to talk to them was unacceptable. That didn’t stop Brandon, though. At the top of the social ladder, he could easily redeem himself. Besides, he thought, it’s senior year. Why not?
“Have you got to the part about the duel yet?” one of the girls was saying.
“Not yet,” the other answered.
“Lauri, you’re falling behind.”
“I know. Don’t tell me, though. I want to read it myself. My grade is riding on this report! I don’t want to be told wrong,” the other answered.
Their voices lowered. He had been spotted. As he got closer, he thought he heard one of them ask, “Is he coming over here?” When he stopped at their cluster, he was at a loss. They didn’t say anything to him, and he had no idea what to say to them.
“Can we help you?” one of them asked. She had unnaturally red hair and a stud in her nose. Amy, he’d heard her called.
“Uhh…um…I was…I wanted to know…Could you tell me…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Do you need help with your English homework?” Both girls started laughing. The other, Lauri, had braces.
“No. I was wondering…do either of you have a ShadowSpiderz account?” There. He got it out.
“We both do. Why? You looking to turn nerd? Emo, maybe? Sorry, dude. You don’t seem the type. Perhaps you should get a MySpace account.” They were taunting him, and he was getting angry.
“I’ve got a MySpace account, thank you. Someone invited me to ShadowSpiderz and I accepted. Now I’m lost, and I figured that one of you knew something about it.” He explained, the edge in his voice standing out just a little. The girl with red hair took his hand, pulled up his jacket sleeve, and wrote something on his wrist. She was rough, making sure to push the pen into his skin. Brandon winced.
“That’s my screen name, Monster_in_the_Dark. Monster for short. Don’t use my real name on the internet. You need anything on there, any help or something, send me a message. To do that, just go to my page and click the ‘Send Message’ button. Not that hard,” she instructed as she put the pen back in her bag.
“All right. Thank you—”
“Hey, guys! What’s going on? Selling your mad math skills, Amy?” Brandon heard Megan behind him. He turned around and started to walk but bumped into her and knocked what looked like an entire locker full of books out of her arms.
“Uhh, thanks for the help. I’ll be in touch!” he yelled over his shoulder as he ran off.
“What!? Get back here you jerk! You could help me with my books, you know!” Megan called after him. He didn’t turn around. “Jerk,” she repeated as she bent over to pick up her books.
“Meg, what’s his name?” Amy, the redhead, asked.
“Um, Brandon, I think. Why?”
“He’s got a ShadowSpiderz account. Said someone invited him. You know anything about that?”
“No. I don’t ever talk to him. Hell, I haven’t even done any homework for him. God knows he needs help, though.”
“Hmm. Well, I gave him my screen name. We’ll see what happens,” Amy sighed as she helped her friend pick up her books.