Inez had transitioned into a normal life fairly quickly, but the weeks after were hard to adjust to.
It was an odd feeling, not being startled every so often with an alert from Motherboard. She would be making pancakes in the kitchen, a hopeful eye trained on the computer whenever she heard any sort of electronic sound. She would be watching some sort of show on the television, and she would immediately jump at any flash of purple she saw. She would be at a library, and would always rake her eyes over the rows of computers whenever she heard the clicking of a mouse.
It was hard. New technological advances didn't help much.
She got her first cell phone, and she was originally excited at the idea that a portal could appear anywhere, now that she had a portable phone - before realizing that she wouldn't be getting any portals anytime soon.
The only upside was that she had friends she could talk to - she wasn't alone in the withdrawal.
Until she was.
Her father was sent a new job opportunity. They would finally be able to move out of the apartment they were in, but they would no longer be in the small town that Inez was so used to, the small town that held two of Inez's closest friends in the world.
It stopped getting easier.
Time passed anyway.
Inez spent most of her days texting Matt and Jackie, wondering if it was worth it to try and find new friends that never really would understand her. She was forced to when it got a little too hard to talk to Matt and Jackie without remembering everything and resisting the urge to cry.
They started to text less.
Eventually, they stopped.
Inez still had their names in her contacts to remind her.
Time went on.
College was fast approaching, and Inez was worn to the bone. Collapsing on the bed, she sighed up at the ceiling. There was an entire workload that she was ignoring, and she would ignore it until she could do so no longer. It was probably part of the reason why she was so stressed, but Inez couldn't really bring herself to care.
The ceiling was blank, as it always was.
Sighing for a second time, Inez brought out her phone, scrolling through a couple of the apps, before deciding it was probably a good idea to at least start on one of her projects and opening her browser to look up possible research topics.
The browser was glowing a bright purple instead of the normal white, and Inez was once again brought to the past, remembering the familiar bright purple of the portals she used to jump into all the time. The memory of the portal brought up all sorts of unwanted other memories.
Like Jackie and Matt.
She quickly pushed the thought out of her head, easy, as she was stunned by the tugging feeling in her abdomen that was familiar, oh so familiar, as she was pulling into the screen of her phone with nothing the beginning of a shocked scream.