The first time Jay Lawson ordered a drink at a bar, the glass wasn’t real and neither was he.

Neon lights pulsed around him, splashing color across chrome and glass. A digital skyline of Las Vegas shimmered through the panoramic windows of the virtual lounge. Pop music thumped through the speakers. Everywhere he looked, avatars in designer outfits laughed, danced, and clinked glasses.

Jay adjusted the sleeves of his pixelated leather jacket and tried not to look impressed.

He was twenty-one in here.

“Another round, gentlemen?” the virtual bartender asked, towel over his shoulder, smile just slightly too perfect.

“Absolutely,” Mikey said, leaning his elbow on the counter. His avatar had a fresh fade, diamond earrings, and a watch that probably cost more than Jay’s actual house in Los Angeles. “Alcohol is the one thing I don’t like about being an adult. Too many calories. Give me that sparkling apple juice instead.”

“Same,” Noah chimed in, smirking. “Keep it classy, keep it legal.”

The bartender slid three glowing mocktails across the bar. Fizzy colors, floating ice, zero actual alcohol. In the real world, all three of them were fifteen, in Jay’s bedroom in California, standing in the middle of the thrift-store rug with VR headsets strapped to their faces.

The headsets made them forget that part.

Three digital glasses rose.

“Cheers,” Mikey announced. “To being twenty-one for the night.”

“Cheers,” Noah said.

Jay smiled. In here, his voice didn’t squeak and no one called him “kid.” In here, bouncers didn’t check IDs, because the game already had.

“So what you ladies trying to do now?” Mikey said, turning toward the two avatars who’d been hovering nearby. Both girls had big eyes and bigger hair, the kind of perfect that only came from a character creation menu.

“I’ve been watching you,” the brunette said with a flirty laugh. “You’ve got moves.”

“You have no idea,” Mikey said, puffing out his digital chest.

Noah’s avatar shifted closer to the blonde girl. “We could go check out the rooftop,” he suggested. “Way better view.”

“Yeah?” she asked, leaning in.

Noah swallowed. This was it. His first kiss. Sort of. It still counted.

He closed his eyes.

Just as the avatars’ faces were inches apart, the entire world froze.

Everything shattered into a blue pause screen.

In the real world, somebody ripped the VR headset off Jay’s head so fast the strap smacked his ear.

“What—hey!” he protested, blinking in the sudden afternoon sunlight streaming into his very un-neon bedroom.

His mother stood over him, headset dangling from her fist, curls scraped into a messy bun, scrubs still on from the hospital in downtown LA. Her name badge from the children’s wing swung like a metronome as she glared at them.

“You seriously could not have picked a worse time,” Jay groaned. “Noah was about to get his first kiss and you ruined it for him.”

“I’ve gotten a kiss before,” Noah muttered, yanking his own headset off.

“By who?” Mikey asked. “Your aunt at Christmas does not count.”

“Fine,” Noah mumbled. “I haven’t.”

“Exactly. None of us have.” Mikey scratched his hair where the headset had flattened it. “And you just blocked his best shot, Mrs. Lawson.”

“Well, excuse me for interrupting your virtual love lives,” Jay’s mom said, folding her arms. “Maybe if you spent half that effort talking to real girls at your actual high school, you wouldn’t need VR practice.”

Jay dropped back onto his bed with a groan. “Mom, what do you want?”

“To be able to walk into my own house without tripping over teenagers wearing goggles,” she said. “You have been glued to those things every second of winter break. It’s about time you went out and did something else. Outside. In the actual United States of America. Where the sky is not rendered on a screen.”

“It’s cold,” Mikey complained. “We live in LA and it’s still cold.”

“And leaving the house costs money,” Jay added. “Are you going to give us cash for movies or the arcade? In-N-Out? No? Then why are we still talking?”

“You don’t need money to go outside,” she said. “You can play basketball. Baseball. Four square.”

Noah snorted. “Nobody plays four square anymore. That game came out when dinosaurs were still walking around Dodger Stadium.”

“I’m just saying,” Jay’s mom continued, ignoring him, “you could scrape your knees, climb something, breathe air that doesn’t smell like old socks and electronics. And maybe—just maybe—one of you will manage to talk to a girl who isn’t made of pixels.”

“Clarification,” Mikey said. “They’re not just virtual girlfriends. They are extremely attractive virtual girlfriends.”

Jay’s mom gave him a look. “I’ve got a super hot idea for you, Michael. Stop talking.”

“Copy that,” he muttered.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I have to go meet my friends for lunch. When I get back, I expect those headsets off and all electronics put away for the rest of the day.”

“What?” Jay sat up. “You can’t just—”

“I can, and I am,” she said, already heading for the door. “I’m your mother, not your roommate. Try living like real kids in Los Angeles for a few hours, not avatars in a fake Vegas.”

She shut the door behind her.

Mikey flopped facedown on the carpet. “You know what would solve this?” he mumbled into the rug. “Her giving you a credit card. Then we could go out and live like actual adults instead of being trapped in here like children.”

“Facts,” Jay said. “She just got a raise too. We’re rich now.”

“An extra dollar an hour does not make us rich,” Noah said, rolling his eyes. “And you know her. If we ask for a card, she’ll just give a lecture about ‘responsibility’ and ‘grown-up bills.’”

Jay’s phone buzzed. Group text.

MOM: I’m going to lunch. No VR when I’m back. 😘

JAY: tyrant

MOM: Love you too.

At the café near the hospital, three women clustered around a table by the window, sunlight bouncing off the espresso machine behind them, the Hollywood sign just visible in the hazy distance.

“I swear,” Jay’s mom said, swiping to show a photo. “Look at this. Bali. My yoga group went last year. Zip lines, beaches, those floating breakfast trays… I’ve always dreamed of going.”

“You should go,” Mikey’s mom said, stirring her iced tea. “Girl, if it were me, I’d be on that plane so fast, TSA wouldn’t catch my shadow.”

“Seriously,” Noah’s dad’s girlfriend added. “Turn up, live your life.”

“I would,” Jay’s mom said. “For once, I actually have the money. But Jay’s basketball camp is the same week. I can’t do both.” She sighed. “I wish our kids understood how much we sacrifice for them.”

“They don’t,” Mikey’s mom said. “We are ten toes down, all the time, and they just think rides magically appear and bills pay themselves.”

“Noah keeps talking like he’s ready to be a grown-up,” Noah’s dad’s girlfriend said. “He wants the fun parts. Road trips, freedom, streaming subscriptions. Not the taxes and oil changes.”

“That’s the thing,” Jay’s mom said. “Jay told me again yesterday he wants to be ‘treated like he’s twenty-one.’ He wants a credit card. A whole adult experience. Without the actual grown-up work.”

Mikey’s mom’s eyebrows lifted. “Again?”

“Again,” Jay’s mom said.

Silence settled over the table for a beat. Then Kathy—the friend who always had the wildest ideas—leaned in.

“So,” she said slowly, “we let them.”

Jay’s mom snorted. “Absolutely not. We are not doing that again.”

“Why not?” Kathy asked. “It’s worked every time. They get cocky, we give them a tiny taste of ‘freedom,’ they crash and burn, they crawl back humbled. It’s like an annual reset, like updating the software on your teenager.”

Noah’s dad’s girlfriend laughed. “Honestly, she’s not wrong.”

Jay’s mom tapped her spoon against her cup, thinking. A day without being called “Mom” every thirty seconds sounded like paradise. So did watching her son learn that being twenty-one in the U.S. meant more than fake drinks and late-night gaming.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Kathy said. “You set a limit. Clear rules. We supervise from a distance. Let natural consequences do their thing.”

Jay’s mom sighed. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”

“Because it’s brilliant,” Mikey’s mom said. “We hand them the rope. See what they do with it.”

Ten minutes later, Jay’s bedroom door banged open again.

“If you’re here for the VR headsets,” Jay said, not bothering to look up from his phone, “this is oppression and I’m pretty sure it violates the Constitution.”

“Relax,” his mom said. “I’m not here to take anything. I’m here to make you an offer.”

Three teenage heads snapped up in unison.

“Let me get this straight,” Jay said slowly, minutes later. “We get to be twenty-one for an entire day. No chores. No babysitting. No lectures. And we get to use your credit card up to… one thousand dollars.”

“That’s the limit,” she said. “It resets tomorrow.”

Mikey’s jaw dropped. “What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t one,” she said. “With one condition. Grown-ups don’t get to call their moms every time something goes wrong. For the next twenty-four hours, that’s you. No calling me. No calling any of us. You deal with whatever happens like adults.”

“So we can’t call you at all?” Noah clarified.

“You call,” she said, “you admit defeat. And then I never want to hear another word about how you’re ‘ready to be an adult.’ Deal?”

Jay’s heart pounded. It sounded too good. A thousand dollars felt like a million to him. Freedom. Food. Rides. Games. Los Angeles was wide open.

“Someone pinch me,” he murmured. “I’m not sure if this is the real world or VR.”

Mikey happily obliged. “Ow! Not literally.”

“Once in a while, he deserves it,” Noah said.

Jay’s mom held the credit card up between two fingers. It glinted in the afternoon light.

“So?” she asked. “Do we have an agreement?”

Jay looked at his friends. The two ride-or-dies who’d stuck with him through every suspension, every failed prank, every terrible group project. Their faces were lit with the same reckless excitement.

“We accept,” he said. “We’re officially twenty-one.”

She handed him the card. “Remember,” she said. “You don’t get to flip back to ‘kid’ when it’s convenient. You’re adults now. Whatever that brings—you own it.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

They were out the door before she finished the sentence.

“Where are you even going?” she called after them.

“Out!” Jay shouted. “Like you told us to!”

The front door slammed.

“Boys,” Mikey announced on the sidewalk, raising the card like some ancient artifact unearthed in a suburban driveway. “We are rich.”

“We’re not rich,” Noah said. “We just have more money than we’ve ever seen at once. There’s a difference.”

“Semantics,” Jay said. “We’ve got a card, a city, and twenty-four hours. First stop?”

“You already know,” Mikey said. “If we’re twenty-one, we’re not taking the bus.”

Thirty minutes later, a glossy black limo pulled up in front of Jay’s modest apartment building in the San Fernando Valley, looking like it had taken a wrong turn out of a music video and landed in regular-people America by mistake.

The driver stepped out, sunglasses on, posture professional. “Ride for… Mr. Lawson?” he asked.

“That’s me,” Jay said, trying to sound like people called him “Mr.” all the time.

The leather seats inside smelled like cologne and money. A little neon strip of light glowed along the ceiling.

“No way,” Noah breathed. “This is insane.”

“I could get used to this,” Mikey said, flopping back and stretching his legs out. “Hey, can you turn up the music?” he called to the driver.

Hours blurred past in a montage of things they’d only ever seen adults do.

They ordered burgers and shakes at a 24-hour diner on Sunset and tipped the server like movie stars. They browsed at a sneaker shop on Melrose and bought one pair to share, promising to rotate custody every week. They took a ride on the big Ferris wheel down by the Santa Monica Pier, the Pacific Ocean glittering dark under the California night.

Each time, Jay handed over the card. Each time, the receipt printed without a problem.

“Remind me why our parents complain about bills again?” Mikey asked, licking salt off his fingers. “Being grown is easy.”

“We are absolutely never getting married,” Jay said, leaning back in the limo as it glided down the freeway. “No kids. Just the three of us, playing games, ordering food, and living like this forever.”

“Deal,” Noah said, lifting his soda. “To never growing up.”

“To never growing up,” they echoed, clinking plastic cups.

By the time the limo dropped them back at Jay’s complex hours later, the city lights had softened and their adrenaline had started to crash.

Jay’s stomach growled.

“I’m starving again,” he said. “All that walking made me hungry.”

“One of us should’ve ordered fries to go,” Noah said.

“Why suffer?” Mikey asked, pulling out his phone. “We’ve got money. Let’s get delivery. Pizza, wings, dessert. I want everything.”

“Same,” Jay said. “Order fast. My stomach is about to start eating itself.”

Mikey opened the banking app linked to the card, eyes scanning the numbers. His smile froze.

“Uh,” he said.

Jay’s heart skipped. “Uh, what?”

“How much do you think we spent?” Mikey asked.

“I don’t know. Fifty? A hundred?” Noah guessed.

“Try seven hundred,” Mikey said.

Silence.

“Seven hundred dollars?” Jay squeaked. “Already?”

“That means we only have three hundred left,” Noah said quietly. “One thousand minus seven hundred equals—”

“Three hundred,” Jay finished, throat dry. “I knew that. I was just testing you.”

He stared at the screen. Seven hundred dollars. On food and rides and shoes and stuff he could barely remember.

“I thought a thousand would last forever,” he said. “My mom always says money disappears, and I always thought she was exaggerating.”

“Guess not,” Noah said.

His stomach growled again, louder.

“Okay,” Jay said. “We just don’t order from the expensive places. We can still get something cheap—”

Mikey patted his pockets. Then checked them again, slower.

“Guys,” he said. “Where’s the card?”

Jay froze. “What do you mean, ‘Where’s the card?’ You had it.”

“I had it when I paid the limo driver,” Mikey said. “I handed it to him with the receipt. He gave me the receipt back, but I don’t remember him giving me the card.”

Jay felt sick. “You mean the card might still be with him.”

“I’ll call my mom,” he said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll tell her we lost it. She can cancel it.”

“Stop!” Noah grabbed his arm. “Remember the deal. We call, we lose. She’ll never let us hear the end of it.”

“But we can’t just let a random limo guy run around LA with her card,” Jay said. “What if he uses it?”

“He seemed legit,” Mikey said. “He said he always waits in the same spot for nighttime runs. If we can find him again, we can get it back. No parent shame required.”

“And we can grab something to eat on the way,” Noah said hopefully. “If we don’t waste more money, we’ll still have enough for emergencies.”

Jay bit his lip. Somewhere, his mom’s voice reminded him about responsibility and safety and “never getting in a stranger’s car twice in one day.” But her actual voice was miles away, and the memory of her credit card burning a hole in some guy’s wallet was louder.

“Fine,” he said. “We go get the card. No Uber. No more spending. We walk.”

Mikey looked down at his sneakers. “That’s like four miles back to Hollywood Boulevard.”

Jay swallowed. “We… don’t walk.”

Noah stared at him. “Oh no. Absolutely not.”

Jay glanced at the window, where his mother’s silver sedan sat in its parking spot, bathed in the soft glow of the streetlight.

“We drive,” he said.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Noah said. “We don’t have licenses. We’re not even legally allowed to sit in the front seat alone if our parents are paranoid enough.”

“Technicality,” Jay said. “She said we’re adults now. Adults drive. Besides, we’ve all driven.”

“In a game,” Noah snapped. “You can’t compare GTA to the 101 freeway.”

“That’s exactly what I’m comparing,” Jay said. “I’m level 159 in GTA. You don’t get there without being able to handle a car.”

“That is the worst logic I’ve ever heard,” Noah said.

“We’re going to get caught,” Mikey said. “The cops in LA don’t play around.”

“Look,” Jay said, trying to sound braver than he felt, “we don’t have much time. If someone starts using that card, my mom will get alerts. She’ll know we messed up. If we call her now, we admit we’re not ready. If we pull this off, she never has to know, and we keep our adult status.”

It was terrible reasoning. It was also exactly the kind of reasoning that made sense to three hungry teenage boys in the middle of the night.

“Keys are on the hook by the door,” Mikey said quietly.

Noah squeezed his eyes shut. “This is how every bad movie on Netflix starts.”

The car smelled like coffee and hand sanitizer. Jay adjusted the seat forward, heart pounding. The steering wheel felt huge under his hands.

“Okay,” he whispered. “It’s just like GTA. Except if I crash, I don’t respawn. And my mom goes to prison financially.”

“That is not calming,” Noah said from the backseat, clutching his seatbelt.

“Relax,” Jay said. “We’re just going straight, turning a few times, getting the card, and coming back. No freeways. Side streets only. Maybe a little left blinker action if we’re feeling fancy.”

Mikey sat in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle. “If we die,” he said, “I just want my tombstone to say ‘He was almost level 160.’”

Jay started the engine. The vibration roared up his arms.

He eased out of the parking spot like the car was made of eggshells.

Three blocks later, he realized that driving in Los Angeles at night wasn’t actually like GTA at all. There were real people in the crosswalks, real cars pulling out of driveways, real stop signs he almost rolled through until Noah yelled.

“Red means stop!” Noah shouted.

“I know that!” Jay said, stomping on the brake.

“You almost hit that Tesla,” Mikey hissed.

“It’s fine,” Jay said. “They probably have super insurance.”

By some miracle, they made it across town without hitting anything. The limo driver was still parked in the same spot near the strip of bars, scrolling on his phone.

“See?” Mikey whispered. “Told you.”

Jay parked two spots behind him, heart racing.

“Everyone let me do the talking,” he said, climbing out and trying to look taller than five-foot-nine.

The driver recognized them immediately. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Back so soon?”

“Yeah,” Jay said, summoning his inner twenty-one-year-old. “We, uh, think you might still have my mom’s card. The one I used to pay you with.”

The man frowned, checked his wallet, and pulled out the card. “Shoot,” he said. “You’re right. Sorry about that. Long shift. I forgot to hand it back. You kids be careful with this, all right?”

“Yeah,” Jay said, taking it like it was made of gold. “Of course.”

He turned back toward the car, exhaling. They’d done it. No cops. No witnesses. No disaster.

Then someone screamed.

“You almost hit my car!” a woman shouted, storming across the lot from a space they’d squeezed past on the way in. “You scratched it! How old are you?”

Jay froze.

“Twenty-one,” he blurted.

She looked him up and down. “Nice try,” she said. “I’m calling the police.”

Panic crashed over him like a wave.

They sprinted back to the sedan, dove inside, and slammed the doors. The driver’s door mirror vibrated as oxygen returned to Jay’s lungs in short, sharp bursts.

“We have to go,” Mikey said. “Now.”

“We can’t outrun the LAPD,” Noah said. “This isn’t a game.”

Jay’s hands shook on the steering wheel.

The woman held her phone to her ear, talking fast.

“This is it,” Noah said. “We have to call our parents. We’re done.”

Jay pulled out his phone with numb fingers and hit his mom’s contact.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You spent all the money on hot wings and shoes, and now you want me to bail you out.”

“M-Mom,” he stammered. “Please. We, uh… lost your card. We drove your car to go get it, and this lady thinks we hit her car, and she’s calling the cops, and—”

“You did what?” she said sharply.

Red and blue lights flashed at the end of the block.

“He’s here,” Jay whispered. “Please. We don’t have much time.”

“I’m sorry, Jay,” she said, voice suddenly calm. “But like I told you—grown-ups don’t get to switch back to kids when it’s convenient. You made adult choices. You deal with adult consequences.”

“But Mom—”

The knock on the window cut him off.

A real police officer in a real uniform peered inside, flashlight beam bouncing off their faces.

Jay hung up.

“License and registration,” the officer said through the glass.

Mikey leaned over. “Now would be a great time to use those ‘talk my way out of anything’ skills you brag about.”

Jay rolled the window down with shaking fingers.

By the time the dust settled, the car was back in its spot, Jay had a ticket for driving without a license tucked into his pocket, the woman’s car had been examined and found unscathed, and three boys sat on the Lawson living room couch like defendants in a courtroom.

Their moms stood across from them, arms folded. Even Noah’s dad had rushed over from work when he got the call.

“Give me one good reason,” Jay’s mom said, “why you all shouldn’t be grounded until you actually are twenty-one.”

“We didn’t crash your car,” Jay said quietly. “We didn’t hurt anybody. We didn’t spend all the money. That has to count for something, right?”

“And we did get your card back before anyone used it,” Noah added. “We… tried to fix what we messed up.”

“Eventually,” Mikey threw in. “We’re not completely irresponsible. Just… medium irresponsible.”

Jay’s mom held up the ticket. “In case you forgot, there’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for driving without a license in California,” she said. “You went over the limit. And beyond that, you broke the one rule we set. You called me.”

“Technically,” Jay said, “you said the Only Rule was not to call you. So we followed your rules until we absolutely couldn’t anymore. That’s… something, right?”

Noah’s dad cleared his throat. “He… does have a point.”

Mikey’s mom shook her head, but a ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.

Jay’s mom exhaled. “I spoke with their parents,” she said. “We thought about taking all your electronics. Your headsets, your consoles, your phones.”

Jay’s heart dropped. This was it. The nuclear option.

“But,” she continued, “we reconsidered. We agreed that as much as those VR headsets annoy us… you three seem to get into less trouble in the virtual world than you do in the real one.”

They lifted their heads at the same time.

“Wait,” Mikey said. “You’re not taking our VR?”

“No,” she said. “Not this time.”

“Heck yes,” Jay blurted, then caught himself. “I mean—thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “You’re still paying off that ticket. Every chore, every odd job in the neighborhood. No allowance until it’s done. And every time you complain about how hard it is, I want you to remember tonight.”

“We will,” Noah said quietly.

“Trust,” Jay added.

“And the next time you tell me you’re ready to be an adult,” his mom said, “I hope you remember that being twenty-one in America is more than neon lights and fake drinks in a game. It’s bills and laws and other people on the road. And no pause button.”

He nodded. For once, he didn’t have a comeback.

“Now,” she said, softening, “go clean out my car. Every crumb. Every cup. Every sign that three almost-felons were ever inside it.”

They shuffled out to the driveway in a small, humbled line.

As they vacuumed the mats under the mild California sun, Mikey nudged Jay with his elbow.

“So,” he said, “once we’re done paying off your ticket, you might want to hop back into VR. That girl at the bar was about to kiss Noah when you glitched.”

Jay groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“I’m just saying,” Mikey grinned. “In the VR world, you can be twenty-one and do whatever you want. In here—”

He gestured around at the quiet street, the waving palm trees, the familiar front doors of their building in the San Fernando Valley.

“—you’ve got your mom,” he finished. “And traffic.”

“It’s not so bad,” Noah said, stretching his back. “At least we didn’t actually crash. And… we did learn something.”

“Yeah,” Jay said, dropping an empty cup into the trash bag. “Next time we get a crazy idea, maybe we start with checking if the water park is open. Or, you know, if we have a license.”

They laughed, a little shaky, a little older.

Inside, on the table by the window, the Bali brochure lay under a set of car keys and a folded ticket. The beach would have to wait. For now, the moms had front-row seats to the greatest show in America: their kids figuring out that adulthood was a lot more complicated than a VR log-in screen.

And for the next few days at least, the only bar Jay walked into was the virtual one, headset snug on his face, feet planted firmly on the rug of his very real, very American living room.