Perfect Generation 3

He looked even better than he ever did in class, wearing a dressy brown jacket and slacks. Simple yet elegant, that was Tover. She wondered briefly what he looked like in real life then changed her mind. She didn’t want to know. He looked perfect as a sim, so however he looked in real life it couldn’t be better than this.

Just as she was working up the courage to go over to him a sim pushed her, literally, to the ground. Tawny looked up as Kereun Chung, famous celebrity mingler herself, strode over her sim’s body to Tover- without so much as a glance under her feet. Tawny picked her sim up, brushing off dirt and dust and saw that her sim had a scraped knee through a new hole in her nylons. She looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching, she hoped Tover hadn't seen but he wasn't looking at her. No one was.

She was stupid to think he would be looking at her. Saran had probably showed him a picture of her real face just like she had Kereun back when they were thirteen, back when she had made Tawny the laughing stock of the whole school and Tawny had had no choice but to forgive her- she was her only friend.

Tawny sank down into the couch and turned on the TV.

She turned the volume of the party down really low so she wouldn’t have to hear the other kids talking and enjoying themselves. She turned the TV's volume up.

In what she swore was the sim cartoon she heard someone ask if they could sit down. Then someone touched her sim’s shoulder.

Tawny could see before her sim that it was Tover. She turned her sim around slowly, waiting for her heart to quit pounding and trying to think of something to say.

“Hi Tawny.”

“Hi.” Was all she could think of.

She turned on her smell sensor again; Tover never sat next to her in class so she didn’t even know what he smelled like. His sim smelled like the same brand cologne every sim boy she had ever smelled wore, of course. Tawny turned it down again. Tover was head bobbing with the music which Tawny had turned down. She and Saran had different taste in music to say the least.

“You like music?” He asked. Tawny reached over to twist her music sound on. Not this music, she thought.

“Yes,” she said while wondering if Tover was only pretending to head beat to it. There was no discernible beat that Tawny could notice, just a lot of electronic noises sounding at random times. Tawny did like music but she liked old music, oldies, really old music, the kind anyone who performed would have died long ago and there was no more of it produced ever. The kind no one else liked anymore because it was “quarky”, like Tawny. It was no wonder she was always sitting by herself.

She was a little disappointed Tover liked this music too but at least he was sitting with her. She hoped it wasn't because he felt sorry for her. Saran had probably told him she liked him. She had told Bing Brady last year and Bing, not being a sensitive boy like Tover, had used this knowledge to make Tawny his personal slave for months before showing up at the Evolution dance with Kereun Chung and informing Tawny that she would be “like dating a dog.”

Tover's sim draped a long perfectly shaped arm over the back of Saran’s couch, just inches from Tawny’s sim’s head. Tawny could feel the hair on her own head stand up.

“Nice heels,” he breezed.

Finally someone had noticed. They were only one of 622 pairs she could have chosen but she’d chosen these because they complemented her dress- one of 470 she could have chosen- but she’d chosen them both together, on purpose and in only two minutes. It was this attention to detail that made you stand out as a sim but for some reason no one ever noticed Tawny.

There were seven bars anyone could see if they clicked on her sim. They kept track of her education, her monetary value and among other things- romance points. The romance bar had a heart next to it and it was pink or if it was Tawny’s it was empty colored. She had never even been asked on a sim date. It was embarrassing to think that everyone could click on her and see that. One of the disadvantages of being in sim mode.

Tover had stopped head bopping and he wasn’t saying anything- he was just sitting there. Tawny hoped he wasn’t looking at her romance bar. Tover’s was about half full, very impressive for an only sixteen. He was going to figure out he was way too good for her and would probably get up and leave soon.

“Have you ever kissed a boy before?” He asked instead.

Tawny flushed hotter than her romance bar should have been. Luckily her sim always retained her perfect composure, even if she didn’t ever know what to say. She just gazed into his virtual eyes. Up this close she saw that they were flecked with bits of amber that twinkled like gold dust. Tawny’s own eyes were melting into sorry globs of forgotten ice cream.

“Tawny!” A sharp voice interrupted her trance. It was coming from the hall of her own house. A real voice. She ignored it and turned up the volume to the party.

“Tawny!” It called again. It was a voice that was not very good at knowing when it was being ignored. “Supper time!”

She muted so she could yell, “Dad, I’m at a party!”

“Well turn it off.”

As if you could just turn off a party, like it was a game! You couldn’t just turn off your life. Why did dusties like her dad always act like this wasn’t real life?

She turned the volume up to full blast, not even caring that she could hear the awful music again. It was just more noise, more noise to drown out the footsteps coming down the hall.

Even louder than the noise were Tover’s gold flecked eyes coming closer and closer. Tawny closed her sim’s eyes but left her own open to watch. Was this going to be it? Her first kiss?

Suddenly everything went black and quiet like the time they’d had that power outage when she was six years old. Her sim, Tover, Saran’s couch, the entire party had disappeared. Her dad’s face jumped in front of her screen.