Saturday Serial #1 - Moving Again

Travis Ando fumbled about in a desk drawer, hoping she still had a pack of batteries tucked away somewhere. The party had been raging for several hours, and she knew it would be at least another two before things quieted down.

Her fingers wrapped around a gum eraser, the spring she unwound from her notebook during the last party her parents dragged her to, and half a dozen styluses before finally tracing the hard edge of the battery pack. Thank goddess! She tore the pack open and switched out the fresh batteries for the ones that had died in her headphones. Just in time, too. How can anyone call that “music”?

Her tablet screen was fading. It needed fresh batteries, too. Well, a good charge, at any rate. Travis dug through her bag, even though she knew exactly where she left her charger that morning. Guess I’ll be picking up a new one on the way into work. If this party was anything like the other ones her parents had dragged her to, her poor charger would be used to beat a guest who had crossed someone in her mother’s acting group. A shudder iced Travis’ spine as she dropped the bag back beside her desk chair.

She gave up for the night and snagged a sketchbook off her shelf as she headed toward her bed. Over the music coming through the headphones, she heard her father’s raucous laugh and an unusually loud boom. Her lamp made a soft popping noise as it and every other electronic device in the room shut off. Great.

If she were like the girls in the books she read, she’d call a girlfriend to come rescue her, and then she’d slip out her bedroom window to meet her friend at the corner of the estate.

But she wasn’t like those girls. She wasn’t a normal girl. She’d never had a chance. Her mother was Shiri Ando, darling of the virtual screen. Her father was Ben Carter, one of the only rock stars in the world who had performed on every continent and in virtual venues. Nothing had been normal in her life.

What she wouldn’t give for a little bit of normal…

##

The next morning, Travis tiptoed out of her room to survey the damage.

“Good morning, angel!”

She jumped at the melodious voice. “Mom? What are you doing awake?”

Her mother, who had never so much as washed a dish in Travis’ life, swept a pile of garbage off the splintered dining room table into a bag and tied it off. “Just dealing with some of this.”

“You aren’t making Tavy deal with it?” Travis looked around the room. Most of the larger trash had been organized into mounds.

“Well, she’s going to have so much else to do when she gets here that I thought I would help her out.”

“Like?” Travis stepped over to help her mother fill another garbage bag.

“Like packing up this place. We can’t do it all ourselves.” Her mother started humming as she stacked up cracked cups and tucked them into the bag as daintily as if she were handling fine crystal.

“We’re moving again? We just got here!” It was a knee-jerk argument. They’d been living in this estate since the early spring. Travis had actually hung posters and schematics on her walls.

“We’re moving to New Glory.” Her mom suddenly looked at her, eyes dancing. “We’re going home.”

Home. Travis couldn’t wrap her mind around that idea. They’d moved so often that  “home” was something normal people had, not her. Then, she realized she hadn’t seen her father. “You’re not leaving Dad, are you?”

Her mother laughed. “No, of course not, dear. We’ve been offered a chance to work with a virtual production company in New Glory, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

Travis had only been to New Glory a few times. They’d spent a week with her grandparents here and there. She couldn’t see the excitement. “So, does that mean I’ll get to serve a real apprenticeship?” Where did that come from?

“Oh, yes. I’ve already set one up for you.”

“You what?” Travis tugged the robe more tightly around her thin form. Her mother hadn’t shown the least interest in Travis’ studies since she graduated from secondary school.

“At the production company. I sent them your portfolio, and they just loved it. They can hardly wait to meet you.”

“My...portfolio?” Had she left it somewhere her mother could find it? As she saw her charger, mangled beyond easy recognition and draped over the back of a chair, she remembered that she’d had to post it publicly to the distance program’s system. Her mother had set up her schooling, too, so she would have been able to find that portfolio easily.

“Yes, dear. You, your father, and I working together. Won’t that be exciting?”

Travis snapped up the charger and flung it into a nearby garbage bag. “Yeah, great.”