Let’s Play House Jasmine Ledesma

I fill their fat, green bowls with pixelated kibble, play slow games of fetch and use my mouse to brush their fur and bathe them. I give badly animated women plastic surgeries; a click of the shift and X buttons makes for a perfect mastopexy.

Let’s Play House

Jasmine Ledesma

“The Internet is going to save me from my feelings.

But what is going to save me from the Internet?”

— Melissa Broder, “So Sad Today”

I am ten thousand miles in the air, on my way home from spending summer vacation with my mom. I even have a pair of new, chunky, mermaid-colored, Velcro latch Skechers to show for it. My feet fidget like hungry chickens. I’m nine years old. The girl seated next to me, dressed in a neon green tank top, is too. Her curls are held up by colorful glass beads with sparkles distilled inside. We are what the airlines identify as unaccompanied minors. Kids who can fly alone. We leap in and out of Jonas Brother conversation, sipping on free soda we aren’t usually allowed to drink. Our luxury knows no bounds. As we begin to descend upon our destination, the girl asks me what my name is. When I say Jasmine, she pulls back.

“No,” she says, with the frustration of a losing gambler. “On AOL.”

I ponder a new title for myself. I most likely won’t ever see this girl again. Beneath us, the night sky is a sea of black, wet gallons. Finally, I confess.

SweetAndHot87xx.

I first transfer my urge for a fresh start, an urge that hums through me like wind, onto plastic toys. Barbie has gotten a terrible haircut and lost a leg after setting her beach house on fire. But now she has three boyfriends and a plate of pink, immobile shrimp. No, she doesn’t. My friend comes over to play for the afternoon. Her Polly Pocket owns a booming shopping mall that sells chewy, teal boots in exchange for only three thousand billion dollars. The elevator keeps breaking.

We do and undo tragedies. We beg my older sister to buy makeup kits from the dollar store across the street and slather our faces until they’re wet and purple. We slather our dolls the exact same way. The final say is always ours in toyland.

Then, my aunt gives me one of her desktop computers for my birthday. It could be passed off as an asteroid on size alone. Everything changes.

The Internet is a thrilling, psycho plunge into an abyss. I swim through images—so many! I have access to anything I can think of: illegal music streams, Magic 8 Balls, faux roller coaster rides, celebrity interviews, movies, clothes waiting to be bought. But most of all, there are other worlds.

I play games for hours. I tend to my digital puppies as if they

Contemplation By Stephanie Gonzalez

are alive—and who’s to say they aren’t? They bark at me in odd tones. I fill their fat, green bowls with pixelated kibble, play slow games of fetch and use my mouse to brush their fur and bathe them. I give badly animated women plastic surgeries; a click of the shift and X buttons makes for a perfect mastopexy. In Club Penguin, somebody from Russia says they like the igloo I’ve decorated with stacks of hay and two couches. I ask if they want to be my friend. We dance until bedtime.

When I call my friend, from my home phone to hers, she says she can’t come over because she doesn’t want her Neopet to die. Do you? I don’t. I hang up. At the dinner table, the television brings me back to the original world. Commercials, splicing episodes of Degrassi and SpongeBob in half like frozen birthday cake, advertising colorful vitamins and Band-Aids for the next time I get hurt. I will get hurt. That I will get hurt again is the only guarantee real life can offer. And I want no part of it.

When my friend turns thirteen, we spend half the night in gawky, mushroom red bowling shoes, monstrously devouring gross slices of pizza. We spend the other half making out for older men on Omegle. The curiosity is a morbid one. In the pit of her bedroom, among her Marilyn Monroe and LMFAO posters, we feel prehistoric. The dirty computer screen is the first fire. Our audience is old oyster men, drunk frat boys huddled together on a couch, other teenage girls and dark screens. As we kiss for the seventeenth time, our tongues worn out, the darkness types. It asks, do u like iCarly too?

Eventually, we get banned and drift to scary stories on YouTube instead.

As I get older, so does the internet. We come into our own together, bleeding in and out of each other. I buy a push-up bra and discover new avenues of life. Yahoo! Answers is my ugly chapel, group home, cool best friend. It is where I learn what nobody is teaching. Anonymous profiles conduct lessons. If you lick your elbow, you get turned into a boy overnight. You’re probably really ugly if you don’t have freckles. Britney Spears is an android. The world is going to end next Thursday and there is nothing you can do. At night, my head hurts from everything I am learning.

I kiss a girl for five minutes on IMVU while avoiding my parents. Her head is a brown buzz gush of hair, as dense as a forest. Black wings explode from her back. She has rips in her dress. Her eyes droop like a cartoon. I tell her I want to kill myself most of the time, that my chemicals are rotted fruit.

“Me too,” she writes back, with a burst of pixelated hearts.

In half the summer, I meet every person on the planet. I beg strangers to indulge in my fantasies. I’m really rich and my name is Jenny, I say over and over in chat rooms. My computer gets a virus. Can you make me famous? Do you love me right now? I want our laser beams to touch, baby. I love myself most when looking into my webcam. Watch me love myself.