Notes

Ally clicked the “Send” button, which sent in her very last assignment for school. While the request loaded, she got up out of her chair and stretched. Being in the same chair for eight hours definitely wasn’t fun. Once the site confirmed it had been sent, Ally smiled.

Once she was sixteen, she would be able to fully access the Internet. She would be able to make friends, date, write books, create videos for the whole world to see, and maybe have sex for her first time.

“Am I even ready for all of that?” Ally whispered to herself, looking out the window. Or rather, she looked at the screen on her wall displaying what the weather is like above ground. Currently, it was raining. She sighed, walking into the kitchen and looked in her fridge, searching for some pudding.

“Mom is home,” announced the highly annoying voice who is known as Veronica in her household. Ally turned the corner, and her mom was indeed present, holding a singular box. “Door is locked,” Veronica said, her voice attempting to be sweet.

Mom scowled at the computer, though it couldn’t see that at all. “Your grandmother sends love your way. Oh, and I brought you a present for your last day of school!” she said, her Hispanic accent very obvious. Ally crinkled her nose in embarrassment, a habit she learned from her father.

“Oh, thanks,” she said sheepishly. Gifts didn't come Ally's way often, and even when they did, she never really liked them. Mama followed her to the dining table, where she sat and started to undo the ginormous bow. Ally wrapped the ribbon around her head and then proceeded to peel away the bright, decorative paper. She expected to find a new mouse for the computer, or a new keyboard, or something like that, but to her surprise, it was just a white box.

Ally opened the top of the box and saw the most peculiar things to be grouped together: a small camera, a black baseball cap, and the most surprising of all, a knife with a long blade and a metallic purple handle, with four gems on it. One pink, one blue, one green, and one red. She stared at it in her hands, twirling it every few seconds. "Mama-I...What is all of this for?" she asked, curious to know. Mama sighed and sat down across from Ally.

"You see, when I was just a...a teenager like you," she said, trying to find the correct word in English. "I always wanted to explore, to find a way above ground. And I got kind of close, but I was nearing my seventeenth birthday, so I had to find a partner. And I did, but by the time I did, life got in the way, being an adult in a work-free place," Mama continued, winking at the last part. "So, I forgot everything about it. I got the camera for you to record your findings, the cap to disguise yourself, and the knife, just in case anything bad happens to you." Mama finished speaking, and Ally frowned. How in the underground world did she know that she wanted to be above ground?

Sure, she always double-read anything her school textbooks said about the world above, and maybe looked at the window for hours, wondering what the world was actually like. Ally sighed, and she and her mother sat for a few minutes, without saying anything to each other.
“Does Dad know?” Ally asked nervously. Mama quickly shook her head.

Veronica’s voice was the next thing she heard. “Father is awake,” and quickly shoved her new knife back in the box, and fiddled with her camera as her sleepy father walked in.

. "Hey Dad, did you see what Mama got me?" she asked, showing him her hat and camera. She heard her mother picking up the box and carefully moving it into my room. A quiet sigh of relief escaped from her mouth. She just hoped he didn’t hear anything he wasn’t supposed to.

-~♥~-

At first, she thought it was an average morning. She woke up and nothing had changed. But as Ally woke up fully, and she remembered.

“I’m sixteen now,” she whispered excitedly. She threw off the sheets and ran out to the computer desk in the family room. Her father and mother were there, waiting for her.

“We thought to give you privacy, so we decided to get this for you birthday,” Ally’s father said quietly, who passed her a box.

“And don’t forget, we’re here to help if you have any questions on how to use everything,” Mama said. Ally looked at the box in her hands and mumbled a thanks. She quickly walked back to her room and sat at her writing desk, unboxing her present. Unsurprisingly, inside was a laptop with a pair of headphones.

“Oh jeez, do you see this?” she asked to no one in particular. She immediately hooked it up, turned it on, logged into her account, and saw the email. The email containing her access code. Ally’s hands were shaking as she scrolled through the message, and found the code: 6817-5729-3945-5688. Breathing in deeply, she copied the number and opened up her web browser., typing in iDate’s web address. A bright red message flashed on her screen, saying "Access restricted to 16+. If a second attempt to visit is made in the next 24 hours without a code, the authorities will be notified." Underneath, four boxes were present, waiting to be filled with numbers.

Was she really ready? She exhaled deeply and pasted the code. Ally’s stomach was full of butterflies, moths, and bats, all flapping wildly. She clicked “Enter” and gasped lightly.

“Whoa, look at all the people already! Oh, I need to sign up first,” she said to herself once again. She hastily signed up, her username entered as “PinkUnicornsAreTheBest,” a username she wasn’t allowed to use for school because of her… hobbies.