Life Without BookRix - Jessica Kelley (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📗

The girl woke sometime after noon, as usual. She went about her daily routine, stretching and yawning for a half hour before stumbling into the kitchen to grab a snack, today being chicken flavored Ramen Noodles with tea and a sidedish of tuna--Solid White Albacore Tuna from the Starkist brand, of course. She typed in the webaddress with the ease that comes from months of repeating the action.



She shook her head, trying to clear the sleep from her mind. She opened her eyes and she froze, fingers still hanging over the keyboard, waiting to type in the account login that would never come. Her right eye twitched--as it normally did when she became extremely frustrated--as she read the horrid message on the computer screen.

Her mouth formed a silent "No." Suddenly she was wide awake, and sad beyond belief. How could they do this to her? Her only refuge, the one place where she'd invested all of her trust and hope in the form of a handful of stories. What if they had to reset the site and take down all of her books? What if they had to delete her account? What if all of her friends were deleted? What if? What if?

WHAT IF?

What was she supposed to do now? Go on Facebook? And do what? ... Talk? Actually communicate with her peers? Insanity. Absolute insanity. But what else could she do? Her mother was at work; Her sister sat in the living room, completely absorbed in an episode of The Tyra Show. Well...

She could try to watch it with her... She hadn't really given the show a chance.

She sighed a tragic sigh and brought her breakfast to the the living room, plopping down on the couch next to her sister. At first she couldn't understand what the show was about. she couldn't decipher the strange tougue in which the women on tv were speaking. They all seemed to be shouting at each other and smiling and tearing up at the same time. It was exasperating trying to keep track of it all. Eventually she got the gist of it all: wearing too much make-up. Ugh.

She swallowed the last of the Ramen Noodles and, pushing the bowl away, stood and walked back to the computer. Maybe she would give this "Facebook" thing a shot. How bad could it be? Not as bad as an entire hour devoted to make-up, that much she knew. She typed in the webaddress, and it brought her to a page asking for her email address and password. Oh...

She'd gotten out of the Facebook craze so long ago, she had actually forgotten her password. Hmph. She bit her lip, trying to think. She'd read all of her books more than three times already. The library was too far away... She just didn't have the energy. Or the motivation.

She was about to give up and go back to bed when her cell phone rang. She stared at it, perplexed. She hadn't seen it do anything in months. She'd thought it was dead. Who...?

She picked it up. It read:

Message from Marina
READ?
REPLY?
IGNORE?

It took another few seconds for her to remember that Marina was her cousin. Her interesting cousin...

She opened the message and read it. Honestly she didn't understand why her cousin had had to wake her phone from the dead just to tell her to look up a link... Whatever. It must have been important. Once again she sat at the computer chair, this time typing in a new webaddress:

www.PenIsland.com

Three hours and an anti-virus software later, the girl lay, exhausted, on the floor, gazing up at the ceiling.

"Oh, ceiling bumps," she said. "Why do you mock me?"

Her mother walked in at that moment, carrying two bags of groceries. She nudged her daughter with her foot. "Get up, lazy butt. Time for dinner."

The girl groaned at the prospect of sitting around the dinner table trying to converse with these strange-minded beings.

So tired... And all because of BookRix. She vowed to tell of her day of anguish someday. She smiled to herself. Maybe she would even put it on BookRix. Just to mock them. Ha.

With that in mind, she inhaled dinner (lasagna and sweet tea) and slept peacefully. The next day, some time after noon, with a bowl of chicken flavored Ramen Noodles at her side, she typed in the webaddress and logged in. She searched her messages, found the thread dedicated specifically to people who wanted to share their last day.

The girl grinned and cracked her fingers, beginning to type.

"The girl woke sometime after noon, as usual..."

Publication Date: 07-29-2011

All Rights Reserved