Roadside Crosses

the boy seemed to be troubled. “You really don’t know very much about Travis, do you?”
    Dance was about to say they knew all too much. But interviewers know when to let the subject take over. With a glance at Boling, she said, “No, I guess we don’t.”
    “I want to show you something,” Jason said, standing up.
    “Where?”
    “In Aetheria.”
    KATHRYN DANCE ONCE again assumed the identity of the avatar Greenleaf, who was fully resurrected.
    As Jason typed, the character appeared on the screen in a forest clearing. As before, the scenery was beautiful, the graphics astonishingly clear. Dozens of people were wandering around, some armed, some carrying bags or packs, some leading animals.
    “This is Otovius, where Travis and me hang out a lot. It’s a nice place. . . . You mind?”
    He bent forward toward the keys.
    “No,” Dance told him. “Go ahead.”
    He typed, then received a message: “Kiaruya is not logged on.”
    “Bummer.”
    “Who’s that?” Boling asked.
    “My wife.”
    “Your what?” Dance asked the seventeen-year-old.
    He blushed. “We got married a couple months ago.”
    She laughed in astonishment.
    “Last year I met this girl in the game. She’s totally cool. She’s been all the way through the Southern Mountains. By herself! She didn’t die once. And me and her hit it off. We went on some quests. I proposed. Well, sort of she did. But I wanted to too. And we got married.”
    “Who is she really?”
    “Some girl in Korea. But she got a bad grade in a couple of her classes—”
    “In the real world?” Boling asked.
    “Yeah. So her parents took away her account.”
    “You’re divorced?”
    “Naw, just on hold for a while. Till she gets her math scores up to a B again.” Jason added, “Funny. Most people who get married in DQ stay married. In the real world a lot of our parents’re divorced. I hope she gets back online soon. I miss her.” He jabbed a finger at the screen. “Anyway, let’s go to the house.”
    Under Jason’s direction, Dance’s avatar maneuvered around the landscape, past dozens of people and creatures.
    Jason led them to a cliff. “We could walk there, but that’d, you know, take a while. You can’t pay for a Pegasus ride because you haven’t earned any gold yet. But I can give you transport points.” He began to type. “It’s like my dad’s frequent flier thing.”
    He keyboarded some more codes and then had the avatar climb on the winged horse and off they flew. The flight was breathtaking. They soared over the landscape, around thick clouds. Two suns burned in the azure sky and occasionally other flying creatures would cruise past, as did dirigibles and bizarreflying machines. Below, Dance saw cities and villages. And, in a few places, fires.
    “Those’re battles,” Jason said. “Look pretty epic.” He sounded as if he regretted missing the chance to lop off some heads.
    A minute later they arrived at a seashore—the ocean was bright green—and slowly eased in for a landing on a rolling hillside overlooking the turbulent water.
    Dance remembered Caitlin saying that Travis liked the shoreline because it reminded him of some place in a game he played.
    Jason showed her how to dismount the horse. And, under her own controls, she navigated Greenleaf toward where Jason pointed, a cottage.
    “That’s the house. We all built it together.”
    Like a barn raising in the 1800s, Dance reflected.
    “But Travis earned all the money and the supplies. He paid for it. We hired trolls to do the heavy work,” he added without a bit of irony.
    When her avatar was at the door, Jason gave her a verbal password. She spoke it into the computer’s microphone and the door opened. They walked inside.
    Dance was shocked. It was a beautiful, spacious house, filled with bizarre but cozy furniture, out of a Dr. Seuss book. There were walkways and stairs that led to various rooms, windows of odd shapes, a huge, burning fireplace, a fountain and a large pool.
    A couple of pets—some goofy hybrid of a goat and salamander—walked around croaking.
    “It’s nice, Jason. Very nice.”
    “Yeah, well, we make cool homes in Aetheria ’cause where we live, I mean, in the real world, ourplaces aren’t so nice, you know. Okay, like, here’s what I wanted to show you. Go there.” He directed her past a small pond populated with shimmery green fish. Her avatar stopped at a large metal door. It was barred with several locks. Jason gave her another pass