Online Friends

All I heard was an explosion; my blood ran cold, and my heartrate picked up.

“What just happened?” I said fearfully,

“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!” said Christian

I knew what this meant; freaking out as I leaned back in my chair and the dreaded “YOUR BED HAS BEEN DESTROYED” displayed on the pixilated screen as I then took a drink of the ice-cold water sitting on my desk, wiping the condensation of the cup from my hands. I told Christian to head to the back of the base on our game where we will hide out. In the chat, a girl named DEPRESSO or so her gamer tag stated has said in the chat

“Aw guys! We can have a fun time”

I frantically typed in the chat, “Leave us alone!”

which was my foolish attempt at pleading has given up our location! I uncrouched in the game like a fool which in turn which showed my username above my head which DEPRESSO saw, and she came to attack us. In one swipe she slayed my friend by hitting him into the void and she turns to look at me, I hit the letter T on my now sweaty keyboard to type my last plead,

“Listen we can team up! I can help you take out the other users!”

She read this and instinctively hit me off the map only to respond before my death

“I’m sorry, little one.”

My friend Christian, thinking this was So funny, laughing hard into the mic which picked up his breath causing me to sigh heavily. Christian then proceeded to send her a friend request;

“We should play some time!” Christian Messaged

She accepted, and she was invited to our discord server, which she remained silent in for the time being.

This was the first time I’ve met someone who has become my friend with very little communication, many times I would meet other people from my already existing online friends whom we have met over voice chats in games such as Counter strike or Destiny. My main group of online friends however had a few main people who are important in my life, their names are Cole, Carson, Mearan, Madison and Michael, yet everyone called Michael “Zye” as that was his online name. Cole and Carson are Identical twins with straight brown hair that was parted through the middle, they both have brown eyes and a birth mark under their eyes, Madison had blond wavy hair that had a right-side part, he also had blue eyes and fair skin, and Michael had short black hair , but its curly when it’s grown out and he has brown eyes and a little on the fair side skin complexion wise, yet tan. Other than that, we were really close friends in 2018. Cameran, despite knowing her for 6 months at this point, almost never spoke to us, she was just in the server, just as cold stones rest against a house never disturbed.

Around July of 2018, something changed that, I remember being in Tennessee visiting my grandmother who moved here in 2008 to avoid the high taxes of New York after her and my grandpa retired. On this day I just got back from hiking with my father and had eaten dinner, my legs were burning as if there were acid melting away the muscles underneath my flesh, this is when my friend Madison called me to tell me that Cameran, who for the entirety of the time other than the first time we have met her was silent, She was now in a call talking to everyone and my friend happened to tell me she was making a prediction about a game that I used to play, saying that some character was going to die. On the other hand, I heavily believed this character was going to be alright and that the death was faked so I joined the call with them, and she asked who I was, and I Reintroduced myself,

“I heard you believe Kenny is dead?” I said with irritation

she said yes and started explaining why she thought this. We got into a pretty heated argument because we were both die-hard fans of this game and we both had opposing opinions. By the end of the argument, I have busted a blood vessel in my eye, and it looked like I had a red eye tattoo done, to this day it still stands as a funny story she loves to bring up to just laugh at me.

Fast forward a few months closer to Christmas time, there is now a crisp smell of fresh cold air, lights of varying Christmas colors that fill the cold atmosphere with life, lasers flashing on houses that are mesmerizing to look at and Christmas music playing on the radio. The date was December 15th, 2018, and I was out at my friend Chris’ house, Chris is another one of my friends whom I hang out with almost daily at that point in time, He also knows my online friends very well because he is involved in our little group, we also had our other friends, Christian and Annarose, over at the time because as mentioned before we were all friends and went to the same school and we shared online friends, today was a very exciting day for all of us as our friends Cameran, Cole, and Carson were coming to New York to visit us, the occasion being that Cameran’s birthday is December 24th so they all came up to New York to celebrate it with us! This was a huge deal to us because for the first time, we would all see each-other in person after knowing each other for a little under a year, so naturally we were all nervous.

When Chris received the text that Cole and Carson got here, our hearts began to rush, it was like how you might feel if you’re on a tall building looking down, you get sweaty and clammy palms and your heart races and you get a weird feeling in your stomach yet, I still had the widest grin on my face, I was even able to feel the burn of the corner of my cheeks that’s how excited and nervous I was. We all felt this as my friend grabbed the rusted and dull doorknob, opening the door, there was a creek as the weathered hinges groaned. The light poured in, and there were the silhouettes of two people! As the door opened more, we saw that it was indeed our friend Cole and Carson! We said hello and we all, in synchronous, basically ran into them, welcoming them with a huge hug excited to show them around Chris’s house, more notably we showed them the basement. This is where Christian, Chris, Annarose, and I hung out a lot.

Chris is more of a nerdy kid; he has lots of stuff. When you enter the basement, you’ll notice the old wooden stairs covered in a maroon carpet with what looks to be a sprinkled pattern of a dull opaque yellow on the carpet. You walk down the old wooden creaky stairs, and you officially enter the basement! you can hear the buzzing of the lights above you, to your right is a white pole that supports the ceiling and a shelf with a bunch of different comics and toys such as funko pops on it, more notably there were a lot of marvel items on the shelf, which was the reason we brought Cole and Carson down here as they love marvel. To the left of the basement are a tv which sits on a stand, the stand has a PlayStation and an Xbox on them for gaming, but we also use it to pull up YouTube videos when we have nothing better to do. When Cole and Carson were finished looking through the items on the shelf, we left to go meet up with Cameran, who was waiting for us at a pizzeria to be safer than Cole and Carson.

The pizzeria, which at the time was named Tarallo’s is a little pizzeria in New York, this place was very popular for kids around my age who lived in Seaford. it was 5 minutes away from our school and you never had to cross a major road. Tarallo’s had a carpet on the inside of the glass door that read the places name along with a tomato drawing. To your left was gumball machines and the 4 tables that were inside the ridiculously small place, the tables were marble textured but were really made from a mixture of aged plastic that was starting to peel at the edges, under the hard plastic was a base of wood accompanied with medal legs, the chairs were made of medal that was painted jet black with a red cushion in the middle. Cameran, who was sitting slouched at the table closest to the door on the left side of the table with a half-eaten slice of greasy regular sliced cheese pizza, saw we were there she gave all of us a big hug and she was already eating a regular slice of cheese pizza and saying how amazing New York pizza is! We sat in this pizzeria for so long, around the entirety of our allowed hangout time which was 4 hours because the main reason for being In New York is both had family a town or two over. Saying goodbye was hard but we were super glad to meet them, and we had our own things to take care of.

Present day we all still talk, although not as much as we would like we still make time for each other, I’m not as close with Cole and Carson as I am with Cameran, but I hear they are doing good, and they are busy in college. My friend Chris and I go to Florida once a year to visit Cameran and we stay at her house in her guest room each time we do. The latest trip had us driving around in her car while she brought us to the beach, brought us to universal, and around the city of Orlando and showing us what she does. Honestly sometimes I look back at all the time I spend online and think about how I took time and just set it on fire, but then I realize there are moments like these that I would never of ever had the opportunity to have if I didn’t spend all that time online.