Read Online The Anti Social Network by Sadie Hayes - Free Book Online Page B

challenged one another to different games and tasks—ranging from gladiator-style fencing to who-can-pick-up-a-virtual-girl-in-a-virtual-bar-first competitions—on a large screen in front of the whole room. When you won a competition, you got points that could be used to buy accessories, weapons, and superpowers for your avatar. As the night went on, the crowd got more and more drunk, and more and more into the game.
    Three hours and four vodka-cranberries later, Amelia was seated on a bean bag chair between George, T-Bag, Tom, and Tom’s girlfriend Janet, an awkwardly lanky blonde wearing a thrift-store prom dress two sizes too small for her tall frame. They made an astonishingly strange looking pair, but whenever she told a joke—which she did often, between swigs of tequila straight from the bottle—Tom watched her with a loving pride that made Amelia instinctively like them as a couple.
    “I think,” Janet said drunkenly, reaching out for Amelia’s hand, “that you are just delightful.”
    Amelia grinned into her plastic cup and took another sip. Although she barely knew them, she felt right at home with these people.
    “Don’t you think so, T-Bag?” asked Janet.
    T-Bag raised his glass. “I do, indeed. You simply must join our ZOSTRA nights and get your own avatar. Then you won’t have to continue on as that ghastly, unrealistically muscular Italian man,” he said, referring to George’s avatar.
    “Hey!” George protested, mocking T-Bag’s accent. “I think he’s quite strapping.”
    “You straight men don’t have a clue.” T-Bag rolled his eyes, turning back to Amelia and grabbing her hand. “Trust me, darling. We’ll design her together, and she will be stunning. I am a second-life fashion genius.” She giggled tipsily. He went on. “Do you have a gay best friend yet?
    Because I would really love to be that for you.”
    “Wait,” she said. “You’re gay?”
    “
Flaming
.” He grinned. She grinned back. She’d never met a gay person before, but she liked him. In fact, she liked just about everything right now.
    They stayed for another half hour before saying their goodbyes. When she tried to stand up, she fell back down, giggling at herself. George put out his hand to help her up. “Let me walk you back to your dorm,” he offered.
    They walked along the narrow pathways, Amelia chatting animatedly about strategies for next weeks’ ZOSTRA . When they got to her dorm, George waited while she found her keys. “Can you get to your room okay?”
    “Yeah, I think so.” She smiled.
    “Great.” He smiled back. “I’m glad you came, tonight, Amelia. I had a really good time.”
    “Me, too,” she said.
    They paused for a moment, smiling drunkenly at each other.
    “Okay, then,” he said. “See you tomorrow at Gates?”
    “I’ll be there!”

Chapter XX
The Inner Room
    A cross campus, Adam’s lips were clenched around the spigot of a tapped keg, his hands gripping either side of the metal barrel and his legs held above his head by a couple of burly rugby players.
    “Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen,” a crowd of manically drunk coeds chanted as Adam swallowed the beer rushing out of the spigot. This was his first keg stand, and he was
dominating
, to use a term he’d picked up since moving into Phi Delta. The last guy had only made it to twelve and he here he was on …
    “Twenty four. Twenty Five. Twenty six … ” But then something happened. The beer went down the wrong side of his throat and he started coughing into the spigot. The rugby players dropped his legs and he landed clumsily on the floor.
    “Twenty six!” cried Chris, the Phi Delta social chair who was standing with a clipboard, recording performances. “Our reigning champion!” Everyone cheered and Adam grinned drunkenly, accepting a beer from a girl wearing a tight red dress and five-inch heels. “You were amaaaaazing!” she slurred, pushing her hand into his chest. “What’s your name?” Adam felt on top