Glitch

"Life is unexpected. You never know when it's really going to start, when it's going to change, and when it's going to end. Whoa, that's a bit depressing. I think I'll just shut up now. It's for the best." - Angelina Ivana Webber, age 17

When I had first met Tamako Mitsubishi, she was a scrawny little thing, with big brown eyes and waist length brown hair that curled at the bottom. We were both 12 at the time, and she was the only girl I knew, other than me, who was far from hitting puberty. Then again, this was a year before I hit my growth spurt and everything but my waist doubled in size.

When we had finally left the studio, I quickly learned that Tamako was not the skinny, flat chested little girl with glasses too big for her face, like she'd been when I had known her.

“Elena, did you know that Tamako was signed on with a modeling agency?” I overheard John's sister in law say in a proud mother voice.

This actually made my heart drop. It was so nice to have someone like me around. Someone who wasn't ugly, Tamako was far from ugly, but still plain. I mean, I was plain, I was the very definition, if you ignored my height and the bones that were almost visible beneath my skin.

My jaw must have almost dropped when I saw the girl my friend had become. Her hair still reached her waist, but instead of being it's natural brown, it was a dark, chocolate colour, with light blonde highlights throughout. Her glasses were gone, and her golden brown eyes sparkled behind her contacts, and let's just say, she'd grown in areas I could only dream of. Only Angie, who considered herself voluptuous, could have beat her in those areas. She was no longer plain. She was stunning. It wasn't fair.

“Will!” She cried, running up to me like an old friend should, “I have not seen you in the longest of times!”

I didn't forget her strange way of speaking. While Kei spoke like he grew up in South Moren with the rest of us, Tamako struggled with even the simplest of common slang.

“It's been a while, that's for sure. How've you been?” I asked as if her newfound beauty wasn't bothering me. 

She smiles brightly, showing off the pearly white teeth that had clearly been through years of braces. "It has been utterly wonderful! Have you heard the great things that have been happened in my life?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's great Tama! I'm so happy for you!"

Despite my obvious jealousy, I honestly was happy for Tamako. She was a great girl, and obviously deserved what she was getting. 

"I thank you! And you, you have gotten news so wonderfully recently too!" she cheered, clasping my wrist in her hands. "Please, I must know the details of this!"

I smile and nodded, for once, feeling equal again, like I had before. "Elena's brother works for a music company here in North America. He says he wants to sign us, make us famous."

I added in the "make us famous" part if only to boost my own confidence. 

"For reality?" she asked, presumably meaning "for real?"

"Yeah! He's actually staying here, you'll probably meet him, he can tell you all about it." I said brightly. 

Kei had this strange glint in his eyes. I tried to ignore it, but he spoke so loud, he interrupted our conversations. “You know, I might have an idea to make this music, er, person, actually want to sign you.”

That was typical Kei. A conceited jerk with good intentions. It was really the only way to describe that boy. Though, he did make me curious. What was this incredible plan of his?

I wasn't the one to ask. Kimi was. “And what is this idea dirtwad?”

Kei smirked and crossed his arms. “Now is that any way to speak to a man that only wishes to help fulfill the wishes of his favourite female cousin?”

Kimi scoffed and held up one finger, “One, you aren’t a man, despite what you may believe, you are only a boy,” she held up another, “and two, I'm your only female cousin, therefore being your favourite.”

“So? Do you want to know now or not?” he asked.

“Fine...” Kimi said with a sigh, “tell me, please.”

This clearly wasn't enough for Kei, he couldn't let his spunky cousin off that easy, he wanted to torment her. “Is anyone else famished? Maybe it was all this packing moving from the hotel? Should we go out and get lunch before catching up, Kimiko?”

Kimi clutched her hands into fists and shouted, “Kei! Tell me now or--”

“Or what Kimiko? What could you do to me? You're parents catch you hitting me again, they'll take away your sound room studio privileges, and where would your little band be without it's singer. Come on, patience, I'd rather show than tell.”

“Show then tell? What do you mean by that?” Laney asked in confusion.

“You'll see, after our meal.”

I didn't like the mysterious air Kei was attempting to put out. It wasn't exactly “mysterious” really, actually, more annoying than anything. I also know I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Kimi's fork roughly hit the plate as we ate, her eyes locked on her cousin, who kept his cool unnaturally. Angie's knuckles rapped out quick rhythms on the wooden table, Laney foot tapped restlessly, and Margie chewed on her bottom lip.

Only Mickie wasn't bothered by this, but then again, I don't think she'd heard the original conversation to begin with. Mickie hadn't been all there the weeks around that time. I never really found out why, she simply just didn't want to talk about it, not even to me, her best friend.

Kei gulped down the rest of the pasta in one quick forkful, and smiled his annoyingly smug smile. “Why don't you call your uncle in? I think I may have something that just might interest him.” With that, he took the book bag that hung on the back of his chair and pulled out a computer.

Kimi sighed, pushed herself back from the table, and cried, “Hey uncle Ethan! Kei here's got something to show you!”

Ethan slowly walked out of his room, still half asleep, wearing a wrinkled dress shirt, the slacks he'd worn yesterday, and a tie drooping around his neck. “What do you need at this time of the morning Kiddo?” he asked in his half asleep state.

“It's past noon already. Have you been up all night?” Kimi asked like a concerned older sister after her brother had been out drinking.

“Jet leg, work, Dean's snoring in the next room over.” he groaned, “Now what did you want?”

Kimi shrugged, “I'm not really sure. Ask Kei, it's his idea.”

Ethan lazily asked what he wanted, and Kei suggested a coffee first. So that's what we did, and spent the next twenty minutes waiting for him to finish said coffee. During that time, Kei began playing around with his computer, seemingly touching something up. I tried to lean over just far enough to get a glimpse, but he turned the monitor away before I could.

“So what is it?” Ethan finally asked, looking slightly more awake than before. Still, he appeared rather sluggish and, to be honest, seemingly hungover, though I doubted it.

Kei plugged his computer to the flat screen TV and brought up what looked like a 3D modeling program. In the center of the grid stood a pretty, Japanese girl. Though this girl was strange, she wasn't real, and yet, she looked as if she were, almost as if she were a picture, yet clearly, she was not, as Kei rotated her around the screen.

“Animated skin, hair, anything, it's not supposed to look that real.” Ethan noted observantly, “It's impressive, but I don't see what you're trying to show me.”

Kei turned to us, who were still sitting at the table, and seemed to be comparing us all to the girl on the screen. “Angelina, can you come here?”

Angie looked at all of us before looking back at Kei and shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

From his book bag, Kei pulled out a black bodysuit covered in small, white, pieces of funny plastic-like material. “Can you put this on?”

She nodded, tore it from his hands, and walked towards the bathroom. While she changed, Kei began to set up some sort of strange projector, no bigger than his fist. He placed it on the floor about five feet away from the TV, and hit a switch which I only assumed turned the wireless connection on, because a bright blue light lit up on both the projector and the laptop.

Angie came back out about five minutes later, walking with a strange confidence for a girl who was clad is the weirdest spandex suit I had ever seen.

Kei hadn't taken his brown eyes off of her, in his head probably wishing he could see the caramel skin underneath. That's what any normal guy would think if they'd seen Angie that day. “Well,” he said, clearing this throat, “Can you just come over here? Stand about 2 feet to the left of that device.”

Angie stood at the stop and crossed her arms. “What does this do anyway? Control body movements or something?”

Kei nodded as he focused on the computer, typing like there was no tomorrow. “Something like that...”

“Wait what?” Angie asked in fear. As any sane person would, she began to second guess herself.

Before he could answer, Kei hit on finally key and the projector turned on, and began to shine an image into thin air, not on a wall, or any surface, but in the air, as if the Japanese girl on the screen just moments ago were standing right in front of us. When Angie moved, she moved, mimicking every single motion, even her facial expressions, though that I did not understand this, because there was no suit on her face.

“That's”

“Absolutely”

“Incredible!”

We all seemed to shriek those same through words in perfect unity. I instantly jumped on and analyzed the virtual girl more closely. Unless I touched her, there was no way of proving she was real or not. She was nearly real.

Ethan stood with his jaw open, watching Angie and the girl like a child watching Mickey Mouse for the first time. “This could work... This could be what we need.”

We all kind of stared at him with the stupidest of looks. “What do you mean?” Margie asked.

“I thought we were near perfect?” Mickie asked with suspicion.

Laney nodded. “Yeah, that's what Kimi said you thought.”

Ethan's eyes went to Kimi, who nervously hunched over. “That's the impression you gave me, stop looking at me like that!”

Rather than yelling at Kimi for twisting his words, Ethan took a deep breath and adjusted himself. “I think we could make this work. Kei, do you think you could make six? Let the girls choose how they look, I'll have them create a new style and personality for each. We get everything both the girls and their parents wanted.”

“Our parents?” We all asked at once.

Ethan shrugged, and said simply, “Your parents don't want you getting caught up in the everyday fame, they said at the most, just let you have a taste. With Kei here's invention, we can satisfy everyone. We can change the world for young performers, or performers in general.”

“Band meeting!” Kimi cried, snapping her little fingers in the air, “Studio, now!”

The six of us met in the studio again, with the door locked tightly so no one could eavesdrop.

“What do you think?” Laney asked as she anxiously tucked strands of blonde hair behind her ear.

“I think we should go through with it,” Mickie announced, “I mean, he'll definitely sign us for sure, and we don't have to deal with paparazzi constantly, or costumes that hurt to wear, and that way, we can actually focus on performing.”

I nodded. “Mickie's right. What's it going to hurt anyway? We can have Kei do up the models, test it out at a small venue, see if we like it, and if we don't, we can try to convince Ethan to take us in on our own, as us.”

“And,” Kimi added, “we can be whatever we want, whoever we want, the only expectations and limitations that we can have would be the ones created by each other.”

“Perfect! And Kim, we don't have limits with each other! We're going farther than we possibly can!” Margie cheered, clasping her hands together with joy.

“So,” Angie asked, almost screaming, “Are we all in?”

Laney was the first to put her hand into the center of the circle. “Well, I'm in.”

“Me too!” I added brightly, stacking my hands on top of hers.

“Me three!”

“Me four!”

“Me five!”

Angie, Margie and Mickie all cheered. We began to stare at Kimi, who broke her concentration and slapped her hand on top. “I'm in too!”

And that's how we started the roller coaster of our life.