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squeaky. I cleared my throat. “Oh my God, I’m so, so sorry! I totally forgot, and I’m not giving you an excuse, because I don’t have one. I just forgot, and I’m sorry. I suck.” I couldn’t believe that basketball practice was something I had on both my physical and mental to-do lists, and I’d still screwed it up. “I’m the worst girlfriend in the world,” I continued, “and I promise I will make it up to you somehow. Promise promise promise pr—aah!” A car suddenly pulled in front of me from the other lane and I had to slam on the brakes. “Asshole!” I yelled toward the windshield, before aiming my voice back toward the phone, which had fallen somewhere near my feet. “Hi again,” I said loudly, hoping my voice carried down to the floor mat. “Sorry, this car just—anyway. Um. Sorry. Call me later.”
    My phone beeped again as I pulled into my driveway. It was another text from Paul: Its okay dont worry about it. love u.
    Yay, he wasn’t mad! Or at least not enough to pick a text fight. I sighed with relief and sent love u! as a reply.
    Then I looked at my front door.
    “Please let no one be in there,” I said out loud. Unless it’s Mom, I mentally added, but I knew it wouldn’t be—she generally works until at least nine-thirty. Besides, her car was gone.
    I unlocked the door and surveyed the front hall. Then I looked toward the kitchen and living room. Everything was empty and silent. I shrugged off my coat, hung it up, went up to my room, walked in the door, and—
    “Hi!” said Rina.
    Crap.
    “Hi,” I said wearily. I let my bag drop to the floor and winced when I realized that my laptop was in it. Luckily, it had fallen onto a pile of clothes. In fact, the entire floor was a pile of clothes. Every single item in my wardrobe had been liberated from hangers and drawers and strewn haphazardly around the room.
    “Rina,” I said, trying not to scream, “What did you do?”
    “I tried on clothes!” she said cheerfully. “Do you like my outfit?”
    She was wearing a red and black bikini top over a white racer-back tank, dusty blue cargo pants rolled up to the knee, green-and-gray argyle socks, and the strappy silver heels I’d worn to junior prom. Her hair was in pigtails and she was using a pair of my sunglasses as a headband.
    “Your clothes are awesome,” Rina said.
    “Um…thanks,” I said. “You look…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence.
    Rina plopped down on my bed and waved the book she’d apparently been reading. There was an orange bookmark stuck about half an inch into it. “This is really good,” she said.
    “That’s a thesaurus,” I said.
    “I know, it’s really good!”
    “Oh my God, how dumb are you?” I’d figured out that being rude to Rina didn’t dampen her mood.
    “I’m not,” Rina answered cheerily. “I’m really smart, like you. I learned a lot of stuff today. Plus, there weren’t any books in my house, so my standards are low.”
    Her house. I went to my computer and turned it on. It booted up normally, which was a relief. Now all I had to do was uninstall SimuLife.
    “Whatcha doing?” Rina peered over my shoulder.
    “Here’s the thing,” I said, casually trying to block her view of the screen. If I somehow figured out how to get rid of the game, would it, like, kill her? I assumed it would just send her back into the game, but I didn’t want her thinking that I wished her any harm (even though I kind of did). “You don’t happen to know how you got here, do you?”
    “Nope! One second I was in my house—”
    “In the game. SimuLife.”
    “Yeah, in my house, and all of a sudden boom , I was here!” Rina took a running jump onto the bed, bouncing onto it and then off it onto the floor. She squealed a barely suppressed “Whee!” Christ.
    “Could you not do that in those heels?” I asked. “They were kind of expensive.”
    “Oh, sorry,” Rina said, unbuckling the silver sandals. She chucked them onto a pile of