How Could This Be Real?

60. Precious Little Princess

Warning: This chapter could cause cringing, face-palming, and eye-rolling. XD You have been warned.

✧✦☆★✧✦☆★

"You know," David said over the Skype call a few days later, "I was surfing the net the other day-"

" 'Surfing the net'?" I interrupted. "What are you, a grandpa?"

He winked, "Not yet."

I immediately blushed and scowled at him, "Please don't say stuff like that."

He smirked and continued, "I was just clicking through random pages, not entirely sure what I was looking for, when I happened to stumble across this." He grabbed his laptop and showed me the screen. I could only see bold colors and vague shapes since I was looking at a screen through a screen, so I had no idea what he was trying to show me.

I frowned, "What is it?"

"Well, what's it look like?"

I tilted my head and squinted at it. "A paint splattered dog maybe? Or... oh, I know, a unicorn throwing up a rainbow. Yeah, that seems logical," I teased. He looked at me like I was crazy and I couldn't help laughing. "I can't see anything doofus! Screens through screens don't work!"

A look of understanding crossed his face and his mouth made an "O" shape. He quickly turned it back around and started typing on it furiously.

"What are you doing?" I asked, chuckling at his concentrated face. His tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth and his eyebrows were furrowed as if he were in deep thought.

After a minute, he grinned and triumphantly pressed the enter button on his keyboard. I raised an eyebrow at him, "Are you okay? You're being really wei-" Suddenly, my phone pinged, telling me I had a new email. I glanced at him and was slightly nervous because of the massive grin plastered on his face. I hesitantly grabbed the phone and opened the link he'd sent me.

A colorful homepage took up my screen. The banner at the top said, "Elsie's Gurls" and I started to have a sneaking suspicion of what this was. I scrolled down a bit and saw a group picture of me surrounded by the girls from lunch. It was from the beginning of the year and they all had my shirts on. Under that in bold print were the words, "Welcome to ElsieGurl's official fan club! Here you'll find all things Elsie, provided by her fellow classmates!"

I continued looking through the website, my eyes widening at each new thing I saw. In the top right corner was a counter that was labeled, "There are currently 25 members in the club" and every few minutes the number would click up one. Directly under it was a button that said, "Join now!"

There were multiple tabs in the navigation bar including playlists, best moments, FAQs, chat rooms, and many more. The one that caught my eye though was titled, "Elsie IRL". I clicked on it and my face took up a good portion of the screen. It was one of my favorite pictures of myself, but I didn't appreciate that they hadn't asked me before they'd used it. I scrolled down and stopped when I came to a section called, "Biography".

My mouth gaped open as I skimmed through what they'd written. Name- Angel Cosgrove. Grade- Sophomore (10). Location- North Branch, Minnesota. That was just the beginning. They had things like hobbies, family, friends, favorites and dislikes. I simply couldn't believe it.

"Well?" came a voice from my computer and my head snapped up. I'd completely forgotten that David was still there. He was staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. "How does it feel to have your own fan club?" he asked excitedly when I wouldn't speak.

"I..." My brain was a jumble of thoughts and emotions, it had no idea what to make of this situation. I glanced back down at my phone and noticed the top of another picture. I moved the page up to look at it and my heart stopped. It was a full body image of me from a few days ago. My eyes slowly took in the cast, crutches, black eye that still refused to go away, bruises and scars and everything else that was wrong with me.