A week passed. Not a day went by that Roxanne didn't think about the pictures she'd seen. They played on her mind, haunting her every thoughts and seeping into her dreams. Her school life didn't change. She was still the same unpopular blonde every guy wanted and every girl wanted to be. But her home life had become distanced. She'd spend each night in her room either looking at photos or writing on the spare blank pages at the back of the book. Writing to an invisible family she didn't even know, telling them her day's activities.

It was early one night when she was flicking through the book as she did each night when she had began to notice a boy in those photos. He looked at least four years older than the girl. Roxanne took the guess that he was her brother, since they looked somewhat weirdly alike. In the early parts of the book he was everywhere, playing with the blonde baby. But as she went further through, his appearance in the photos decreased, until, after a page with the caption "Roxanne's 5th birthday" he disappeared completely. The girl's smile wasn't quite the same in the book after that, it wasn't as big and didn't seem full, as if a large part of her life had gone missing.

Roxanne began to pay more attention to the photos after that, taking in every detail of it before turning a page. She got so obsessed with the photos that she had began to ignore the captions beneath them. Until the day she relooked at an old photo early on in the book. It was of the baby and the boy. He was cradling her sleeping form in his arms as he looked towards the camera with a big smile. Under it, it read "Prince with Roxanne 04/09/2289".
The girl dropped the book down on her lap. Had she just read that right? She reread it. Yes. The man's words played in her mind.

"My name is Prince, no I'm not royalty before you say anything towards the theory."

Her brother. That man. He had been so close to her. He could have told her everything. Taken her back to where she belonged. But he had just stood there and spoke in riddles. She hated herself for not listening closely. Looking back at what he said she could hear his voice in her head. He had been Scottish. He had her accent and she didn't even hear it. But one thing she couldn't understand. When she had last encountered him his structure seemed that of a grown man in his twenties, but if her calculations were correct, he would only be thirteen now. Roxanne was so confused, but at the same time she somehow fully understood. If that boy was from outside the virtual world, he had to hide who he was, shadow himself from civilisation. She just didn't find it fair that he had just stood there and not told her something that could indicate where to find him.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was surprising to Roxanne that her reputation hadn't changed over the past few weeks. It felt odd to her, because she felt like her whole life had changed, it seemed strange no one had noticed. Each student knew her, so to speak, but they knew a lie.
That day at school she was encountered by a girl in the year above. They had bumped into each other in the corridor and Roxanne had ended up on the floor.
"Oi wotch whear you're goin'!" she told her.
"Well if it isn't little miss Roxanne. Florence has been looking for you all day." the girl, Abbie her name was, said.
"Whot does she wont with me? Ah'm no use to her so lay oaff or ai'll get Professor Gillingam." the girl threatened. The older girl failed to stifle a laugh.
"What is with your voice? You'd think you were from the upperlands. To be honest, the pathetic weed are I wouldn't be surprised." Abbie said in a mocking tone. 'Maybe she's right' Roxanne thought, 'maybe I come from the Scottish Region'. This thought didn't make her feel better,
the Scottish Region, or 'upperlands' as most Gagas called it, was said to be where all the Bohemians, foul worthless beings, were. Most Gagas called it 'the 'upperlands' to mock them, students barely ever crossed paths with a Scottish Regioner without making some remark. Then again, the students didn't tend to cross paths with one. Globalsoft did have an edition of VirtualSchool, a quite good one too, up there, but there had been rumours that that was where more Bohemian outbreaks and invasions to try to overpower them. The percentage was something along the lines of 19% of students rebelled against VirtualSchool laws, 87% of that become Bohemians, and 56% of those are spotted in riots and invasions. Whereas in London only 2% of students rebel, 34% of them become Bohemians, and 21% of those are seen in riots. Those were the rumours that went about the school anyway.

That evening Roxanne was sitting in the lounge, doing her Computer Basics homework when her mum walked in to check on her.
"Mam." Roxanne said without taking her eyes off the computer screen.
"Yes darling." the woman asked without hesitation.
"Whear do ah come from?" the expression on her mother's face was one to be seen.
"W- well, um... you see darling, when a man and a woman love each other very much-"
"Not THAT whear ah come from mam!"

"Oh. Um... What an absurd question to ask Roxanne. Why do you ask such idiocy?" her mother tried to say cheerily, but the paranoia showed through.
"Well Abb- never mind." Roxanne stopped as quick as she started. "Ah was jost wonderin'."
"Well w- where do you think you came from Sweetheart?" the woman was clearly worried about something because her voice stuttered slightly.

"I donnae mind bein' born, and there're nae pictures of me when ah was a bairne." The woman stood stunned at what had just escaped her daughter's mouth. "What yah gawking at?" she continued, seeing the shocked expression on her mother's face.

"Wh- what did you just say?" the woman stuttered. Roxanne didn't know what to reply, but she still tried again.

"Ah donnae ken." Roxanne covered her mouth in shock of the word that escaped it only now realising the reason for the woman's stare. The girl couldn't understand the words that were so fluently leaving her mouth, she knew what she had meant, but she'd never used the word before in her known life, it was always 'don't' or 'did not'. Never 'donnae'. From the look her mother was giving her you would have thought she'd just offended her to the full extent.

"I- you-" the woman stuttered. "G- go to your room, and don't come back down until you learn to talk properly." the child could only follow instruction in confusion, unaware of the wrong she had done.
As she ascended the stairs, Roxanne stopped when she overheard her parents talking.
"We have to do something about this, it's a mockery." her mother said.
"And what do you supposed we do dear? Globalsoft will lock us up if they find out we've been harbouring a fugitive for four years. And think what they'll do to Roxanne." her father argued.
"Well we can't keep her; she's not ours to keep."
"But she's a minor." the man tried to defend the girl, but the woman was having none of it.
"Did you not hear the way she spoke to me?" the woman's pitch rose to a new octave Roxanne had never heard. "Like one of those... Upplanders." she spat out.

The girl couldn't listen to any more of it. She ran to her room and slammed the door as hard as she could - being a pressure censored door it wasn't easy to slam. She crumbled on to the bed in floods of angry tears. She saw the book she was given in the corner of her eye, still resting on the chair. Seeing it she began to cry harder.
"Why did you leave me on my own?" she screamed at the pile of pages feeling the hot tears stream down her face. "I was just a kid! No more than a bloody toddler and you abandoned me!" she choked out the words, drowning in her crying, clinging the sheets for security, but they weren't enough. She needed a safe haven, something she knew she would never find between her four walls.
Her parents sat downstairs, killing time, like all Gagas did. But not Roxanne. She couldn't take waiting for an answer anymore.