“There’s more to school than that,” Summer spoke up, suddenly serious. “There’s the social side too. You kids don’t get away from your phones enough or out in the community. The school’s good for that, at least. You go to town, you meet some of the kids who live there. You see something different.”

“The difference is the kids from town all go home after homeroom and do their work from there, but us Rez kids, who don’t live within walking distance, have to stick around the library or the hallways to do ours,” Bugz said.

“There’s things you share in common with those kids too.” Frank smiled, thinking he’d spawned a PSA-worthy moment.

“Yeah, we’re all bored and stare at our phones for fourteen hours a day,” Waawaate griped good-naturedly.

“Waawaate,” Summer said sternly.

“Sorry.” Waawaate sat up straight. “Fourteen hours a day, except for Tuesdays and Thursdays when I have basketball. It’s thirteen hours on those days.”

Bugz couldn’t help but laugh. Her older brother had always been her favorite form of entertainment.

After dinner, she dragged her school bag to the front door, stepped outside, and dove into the Floraverse.

CHAPTER 12

Bugz sat in the center of a ring of stones, a spot not far from her home on the Rez, though to anyone else it could’ve seemed like another planet and another time. This sacred space occupied a clearing hidden in dense woods. The lichen and moss testified to the generations over which these stones had sat in this place. The rocks varied in size, but the ones forming the core of the ring were bigger than large suitcases. Smaller rocks piled around them softened the edges of the petroform.

Bugz imagined her Ancestors who’d built this monument. When she was a child, her parents taught her to put tobacco down before a thunderstorm to give thanks to the Thunderbirds. Later, they brought her to this Thunderbird’s Nest to pay homage to the thunder-beings protecting their homelands.

Bugz peered off into the tree line circling the edge of the clearing. Her fingers gently tapped the moss around her, her eyes completely engrossed with the images her headset put before them. The device held her phone to her eyes like a VR helmet, but it also scanned her brain, translating her real-world thoughts into action inside the Spirit World of the Floraverse.

At the moment, her ’Versona was swimming deep in Lake of the Torches. As she thought about picking up speed, her avatar kicked powerfully in the virtual depths of the moonlit water. As she thought of a mermaid, her ’Versona pressed her legs together and thrust herself forward like a dolphin, adding speed again. Most players could only power simple moves like walking or running through their neural links, but Bugz, ever the virtuoso, knew how to shorten the distance between thinking and acting—at least in the Floraverse.