An Online Mystery (VW1)

Prologue

Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, Wattpad and many more.

I can't even count the number of social media apps nowadays. I'm active on most of them except Twitter, but of course my all time favorite app is Instagram. Wattpad is my favorite too, but I use it more for writing and reading than making friends or being socially active. It still counts, though. Anyways, I have a big reason for liking Instagram so much. I'm not addicted to my phone, I'm not obsessed with making 1000+ followers or even 100. Then why, you might ask?

You see, I used to be in another school till forth grade. But by forth grade, I had to change to my current school because we bought a new house. I missed my old friends, but what could a nine year old kid do about it, right? They lived miles away. I didn't have my own phone or number. By the age of 12, I finally owned a phone and some few social media sites, and was finally allowed to have Instagram just before my 13th birthday. I followed my family members first, then searched for my current friends and classmates. And gradually, I found my old best friends and classmates. I still kind of missed them four years later but at least I found them online and could communicate with them.

At my new school, my best friend is Stella. She is more outgoing than I am, but I'm more active among us friends. She's online in WhatsApp mostly 24/7, so I thought she might be there in Instagram as well. To my disappointment, however, she wasn't. My other friend, Mia, however, joined Instagram as soon as I did. My other best friends are Riley, Amy, Samantha and Devyn. Riley, Stella and Mia are my closest friends, though - they talk to me literally everyday. Not a single day without chatting or talking. We act as each other's treasure keepers. 

However, Amy isn't there in Instagram, just like Stella. Sam, Riley and Devyn are there, but Devyn isn't much active while the other two use their parents' account. Sometimes, if we send them something they may check it only after one or two days. Mia was the only one who accompanied me as a social media person. We both have nearly the same number of followers with me having a little more since I joined earlier, and we both get messages from random dudes and even some girls. What's even weirder is that, these dudes haven't even seen us in reality and already want to marry us. And we're not even adults yet!

Okay, maybe that isn't a thing to joke about, but hey, at least it's only online and not in real life, so it's not such a big deal. In fact, I take it in so much of a hilarious way that it can actually be made into a humorous story, but it'll be pretty much of a horror story for people who are easily creeped out by online predators, like my friend Mia. She's a hardcore introvert and can be dumb sometimes. What do people do when they meet creeps online? Either block them or just ignore them, right? Mia, on the other hand, gets completely confused as if she's about to get killed even though it's not much of a thing at all.

Anyways, what happened in my life after the arrival of Instagram is similar to what all of you might have encountered at least once in your life. 

So, this story starts approximately on May 2nd, few months later after the pandemic had started.